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twinkled when he pushed his last stack of blue chips across the felt-covered table. “Lucky at love …” One day, moments after the words left his mouth, he keeled over backwards in his chair. As he lay sprawled on the Persian carpet, his final thought concerned the arched and deeply coffered ceiling. It looked to him like a muffin tin. Everyone said Walter Clarke Fletcher died a very happy man.
    The family did not contest the will. The cotton and woolen mill empire went to his children. Opal was left the house on Fifth Avenue, a rustic camp in the Adirondacks (where they’d often made love on a bearskin in front of a roaring fire), and a trust worth five million. She looked very becoming in black, more mysterious when seen through a veil. Two years after the funeral, she still wore no other color.
    On frequent trips to Paris, accompanied only by a personal maid, Opal remained unstained by any hint of scandal in spite of her secret private love life. The weekly séances in the library continued whenever she was in town, her guest list more exclusive than the social register. The city’s most prominent citizens believed this slender girl from the country to be a reincarnated goddess.
    On New Year’s Day, a thirty-three-year-old revivalist named Aimee Semple McPherson dedicated the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, a structure crowned with an electrically illuminated rotating cross visible for fifty miles. Three months later, she filled all five thousand seats weekly and Sister Aimee’s Foursquare Gospel began broadcasting over the radio. Opal Crosby Fletcher didn’t listen to radio. She read H. L. Mencken in the Smart Set. His mocking report of the “supernatural whoopee” the “booboisie” reveled in out in sunny Southern California made her sit up and take notice.
    Not long afterward, Opal announced her plan to build a temple to Isis. It was to be a sanctuary of spiritual harmony, a garden with trees and sparkling fountains, surmounted by a five-story glass pyramid. Under the apex, surrounded by flower beds, reflecting pools, and ancient Egyptian sculpture, the plans called for a windowless onyx chamber: the shrine of Isis in Search.
    At first, she informed only a select inner circle and received immediate offers to bankroll the entire venture. These she politely declined. Her spirit-voice told her the cost should be shared among many. To that end, she proposed renting an auditorium and conducting a public séance, admission free, donations welcome. If this proved successful, Opal was not opposed to a return engagement.
    Erté designed the posters. They featured a stylized Isis in a striking black-and-silver geometric-patterned robe. Two out of an edition of five hundred were displayed outside Liederkranz Hall, leased by Opal Crosby Fletcher for the final Friday in April. Four hundred and fifty were mailed out with the invitations. The remainder she gave to her office staff, servants, and a group of schoolchildren on their way to a field trip in the park.
    Attracted by considerable press coverage, a mob showed up on the night of the séance, crowding outside of the theater on East Fifty-eighth Street between Park and Lexington. Free tickets waited at the box office, first come, first served, for the key social event of the season. Every seat was taken, standing room filled to capacity.
    On the bare stage, a single spotlight focused on a stark wooden crate draped in black. For better than half an hour the audience rustled and coughed until, at last, the spotlight dimmed and Isis swept out from the wings, her fashionable outfit covered by the flowing robe pictured by Erté, a multi-branched silver candelabrum in each hand.
    No applause greeted her. A distant cello played Bach offstage. After setting the candelabra on either side of the proscenium, Opal stood at the center of the apron, wrapped in her metallic robe. She opened her arms in a regal welcome. “All peace be with you, friends …” Her clear, musical voice