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David nodded hello. The Great Man said, “And this is my secretary and close personal friend, Mr. Phil Beaumont.”
    I nodded and I smiled. Politely. It was easy once you got used to it.
    Sir David said, “Do join us. Dr. Auerbach was just explaining psychoanalysis.”
    “Oh no, no,” said Dr. Auerbach quickly, and semaphored his small manicured hands. He had obviously taken charge. “We finish this now, with the great Houdini here. Please, Miss Fitzwilliam, you will sit beside me?”
    She did, on the embroidered love seat. The Great Man chose the empty leather chair at the head of the table, which wasn’t much of a surprise. The only seat remaining was the one beside Mrs. Corneille, on the sofa, and I took that. She inhaled a puff from the cigarette and exhaled pale blue smoke through her delicate nostrils, and she looked at me from beneath slightly lowered eyelids. She was wearing a perfume that had been distilled from flowers grown in the Garden of Eden.
    Sir David was studying the new arrivals. He was still bemused. “So,” said Dr. Auerbach, leaning toward the Great Man, rubbing his hands together. “You are here for a test of the medium, isn’t it? To verify her genuineness, yes?”
    Houdini nodded judiciously. “I see you know of my work. Yes, I have had much success uncovering the fraudulent techniques used by these people. But in my youth I was a noted stage medium myself—although only for a brief time, and only for the purpose of healthy family entertainment. Since then, I have made a lifelong study of the occult. I have put together the finest and most extensive library on this subject in the world. And so naturally, Houdini is better equipped than most men to determine trickery and fraud.” He smiled. “Only as we grow older do we acquire wisdom.”
    Sir David said, “Do you really think so? In my experience, people seldom actually acquire wisdom. They merely accumulate evidence.”
    Houdini put a polite expression on his face. “Oh?” he said.
    “Evidence of what, Sir David?” asked Dr. Auerbach.
    “Their own fundamental correctness,” said Sir David.
    The Great Man kept the polite expression on his face while he waited for the others to stop talking.
    Mrs. Corneille glanced at Sir David. “You include yourself, do you, David?” Her voice was dark and thick, like sealskin.
    “Certainly.” He smiled. “But of course, my own correctness is more fundamental.”
    “Of course.” She turned to the Great Man. “So you’re not a believer then.”
    “I am neither a believer nor a disbeliever, madam,” the Great Man announced. “I approach these things objectively, in the manner of a careful scientist. But a scientist who has had much experience in this field.”
    “Dr. Auerbach,” said Sir David. “Does your colleague Dr. Freud have an opinion about Spiritualism? He seems to have one about everything else.”
    Once again Houdini put a polite expression on his face and waited.
    Dr. Auerbach said, “Herr Doktor Freud has yet to write about Spiritualism specifically. But he is rationalist, yes? I think it is not presumptuous of me to say that he would consider it a form of superstition. And as such, he would of course see it as a regression.”
    “A regression?” said Mrs. Corneille.
    He nodded. “A retreat, so to say, to an earlier level of development. Even the most well-adjusted individual, as a relief from anxiety, does this from time to time. He may bite his nails, for example, or indulge in unusual sexual activities, or read mystery stories.”
    “I’m all for unusual sexual activities, of course,” said Sir David, smiling. “But if I were you, I shouldn’t mention mystery stories in the same context to Conan Doyle when he arrives.”
    “As a psychic evaluator,” said the Great Man, “I often discover that medical doctors and academic professors, when they approach this field, are the most easily misled of investigators. They work with matter, you see, and with physics.