flashings; long areas of glass. Its split-level design adapted to the gentle hillside, seemed to curl around the grey outcroppings of limestone.
“Nice place to haunt,” Mandarin reflected.
“I hope you’re going to keep a straight face once we get inside,” his friend admonished gruffly “Mrs Corrington was a little reluctant to have us come here at all. Doesn’t want folks laughing, calling her a kook. People from all over descending on her to investigate her haunted house. You know what it’d be like.”
“I’ll maintain my best professional decorum.”
Styker grunted. He could trust Russ, or he wouldn’t have invited him along. A psychiatrist at least knew how to listen, ask questions without making his informant shut up in embarrassment. And Russ’s opinion of Gayle Corrington’s emotional stability would be valuable— Stryker had wasted too many interviews with cranks and would-be psychics whose hauntings derived from their own troubled minds. Besides, he knew Mandarin was interested in this sort of thing and would welcome a diversion from his own difficulties.
“Well, let’s go inside before we boil over,” Stryker decided.
Russ straightened from petting the dog, carelessly wiped his long-fingered hands on his lightweight sportcoat. About half the writer’s age, he was shorter by a couple inches, heavier by forty pounds. He wore his bright-black hair fashionably long for the time, and occasionally trimmed his long mustache. Piercing blue eyes beneath a prominent brow dominated his thin face. Movie-minded patients had told him variously that he reminded them of Terence Stamp or Bruce Dern, and Russ asked them how they felt about that.
On the flagstone walk the heady scent of warm roses washed out the taint of the asphalt. Russ thought he heard the murmur of a heat pump around back. It would be cool inside, then—earlier he had envied Stryker for his open-collar sportshirt.
The panelled door had a bell push, but Stryker crisply struck the brass knocker. The door quickly swung open, and Russ guessed their hostess had been politely waiting for their knock.
Cool air and a faint perfume swirled from within. “Please come in,” Mrs Corrington invited.
She was blond and freckled, had stayed away from the sun enough so that her skin still looked fresh at the shadow of forty. Enough of her figure was displayed by the backless hostess ensemble she wore to prove she had taken care of herself in other respects as well. It made both men remember that she was divorced.
“Mrs Corrington? I’m Curtiss Stryker.”
“Please call me Gayle. I’ve read enough of your books to feel like an old friend.”
Stryker beamed and bent low over her hand in the continental mannerisms Russ always wished he was old enough to pull off. “Then make it Curt, Gayle. And this is Dr Mandarin.”
“Russ,” said Mandarin, shaking her hand.
“Dr Mandarin is interested in this sort of thing, too,” Stryker explained. “I wanted him to come along so a man of science could add his thoughts to what you have to tell us.”
“Oh, are you with the university center here, Dr Mandarin?”
“Please— Russ. No, not any longer.” He kept the bitterness from his voice. “I’m in private practice in the university area.”
“Your practice is... ?”
“I’m a psychiatrist.”
Her green eyes widened, then grew wary— the usual response—but she recovered easily. “Can I fix something for you gentlemen? Or is it too early in the afternoon for drinks? I’ve got ice tea.”
“Sun’s past the yardarm,” Stryker told her quickly. “Gin and tonic for me.”
“Scotch for you, Russ?” she asked.
“Bourbon and ice, if you have it.”
“Well, you must be a southern psychiatrist.”
“Russ is from way out west,” Stryker filled in smoothly. “But he’s lived around here a good long while. I met him when he was doing an internship at the Center here, and I had an appendix that had waited fifty years to go bad. Found out he was an old fan—even had a bunch of my old pulp yarns on his shelves alongside my later books. Showed me a fan letter one magazine had published: he’d written it when he was about twelve asking that they print more of my John Chance stories. Kept tabs on each other ever since.”
She handed them their drinks, poured a bourbon and ginger ale for herself.
“Well, of course I’ve only read your serious stuff. The mysteries you’ve had in paperback, and the two books on the occult.”
“Do you like to read up on the occult?” Russ asked, mentally correcting her—three books on the occult.
“Well, I never have...you know...believed in ghosts and like that. But when all this started,