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pills. “You forgot to take them this morning,” she says.
    “Oh, dear. Thank you, love.” Peter downs them as Carol asks if they’d like some wine, then retires to the kitchen again, declining Cathy’s second offer of help. Peter puts down the glass. “Hydrocholorizide,” he explains to Robert. “Inderal. Hypertension.”
    “I use Inderal and bio-feedback,” Robert says.
    “You’re too young, to have hypertension,” Peter says. “No, I take that back. I had it in my thirties. We intellectual types have hidden angst.”
    He smiles as Fritz looks around, apparently at nothing. “What do you see, sir, a phantom?”
    Cathy groans again. “She doesn’t believe that cats see ghosts,” says Peter. “For that matter, she doesn’t believe in ghosts.”
    “Neither do you, don’t mislead the poor man,” Cathy responds.
    “I don’t know about that,” Peter says, the twinkle in his eyes belying his words. “My dream of dreams is to investigate a real live, purebred haunted house. Who needs the Soviet Union?”
    “You know you’re dying to go there as much as I am,” Cathy says, smiling; clearly, she adores her rotund mentor.
    “I suppose,” says Peter.
“So.”
He looks at Robert. “Tell us about your outline.”
    Robert briefly tells him that, to date, he’s covered early psi, the Fox sisters, the beginning years of Spiritualism, D.D. Home and Nettie Colburn.
    “Good
,” says Peter. “Sounds as though you’re right on track. What’s next?”
    Robert says he thinks he might spend some time on the first serious enquiries into Spiritualism by the London Dialectical Society in 1869, the founding of the Phantasmological Society at Oxford and the Ghost Society at Cambridge in the 1870’s and, of course, the establishment of The Society of Psychical Research in 1882.
    “Might make an interesting sidelight,” Peter suggests, “to mention that Spiritualism was the first religion to endow dignity on the North American Indian because so many of their so-called spiritual guides
were
Indians.”
    “Good point,” says Robert, nodding. Of course, he adds, he obviously can’t go into too much detail on the “documentary stuff.” If he’s not mistaken, Alan Bremer will be looking for some razzle-dazzle. He’ll attempt to get to Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Leonard as soon as possible.
    “Oh, but first you
must
do the immortal Palladino,” Peter says.
    Cathy groans again. “You and your immortal Palladino.”
    “And rightfully so,” Peter declares, putting down the cat to stand. He removes a book from its shelf and opens it, reads aloud.
    “Near the turn of the century, D.D. Home was dead
—” (“they mean, of course, passed on,” he amends straight-faced.) “—
and the field of psychic phenomena required a new physical medium. Said medium duly appeared in the person of a stout Italian peasant woman named Eusapia Palladino.”
    He sets the book on Robert’s lap, pointing at a photograph.
    “American Séance Number Ten,” he says. “A cornucopia of miracles.”
    CAMERA MOVES IN ON the photograph which comes to life. We see a group of people moving down the hallway of an office building.
    “December 9, 1909,” Peter’s voice narrates. “Eusapia Palladino arrived at Room 328 in the Lincoln Square Arcade in New York. With her were Mr. Forbes, Mr. Evarts, Dr. and Mrs. Humphrey, an interpreter and a stenographer. Waiting in the office were Mr. Hereward Carrington and his wife.”
    As the group removes their coats and prepare for the sitting, Peter’s voice speaks on.
    “Carrington had taken most elaborate precautions to forestall a chance of fraud. He had obtained, from the owner of the building, a sworn statement that the room was an ordinary office, free from trap doors and other unusual features.”
    We see the following as Peter’s voice describes them.
    “The windows were sealed and connected to burglar alarms.
    “There were special bolts on the insides of the windows and a special bolt