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put on his muddy clothes, and then climbed through The Place Between looking for Tacroy. The only difficulty was that the valleys were not arranged in the right order. Number Ten was not next one on from Nine, but quite a way lower down and further on. Christopher almost thought he was not going to find it. But at length he slid down a long slope of yellowish scree and saw Tacroy shining wetly through the mist as he crouched uncomfortably on the valley’s lip. He held out a dripping arm to Christopher.
    “Lord!” he said. “I thought you were never coming. Firm me up, will you? I’m fading back already. The latest girl is nothing like so effective.”
    Christopher took hold of Tacroy’s cold woolly-feeling hand. Tacroy began firming up at once. Soon he was hard and wet and as solid as Christopher, and very pleased about it too. “This was the part your uncle found hardest to believe,” he said while they climbed into the valley. “But I swore to him that I’d be able to see—Oh—Um. What do you see, Christopher?”
    “It’s the Anywhere where I got my bells,” Christopher said, smiling around the steep green slopes. He remembered it perfectly. This Anywhere had a particular twist to the stream halfway down. But there was something new here—a sort of mistiness just beside the path. “What’s that?” he asked, forgetting that Tacroy could not see the valley.
    But Tacroy evidently could see the valley now he was firmed up. He stared at the mistiness with his eyes ruefully wrinkled. “Part of your uncle’s experiment that doesn’t seem to have worked,” he said. “It’s supposed to be a horseless carriage. He was trying to send it through to meet us. Do you think you can firm that up too?”
    Christopher went to the mistiness and tried to put his hand on it. But the thing did not seem to be there enough for him to touch. His hand just went through.
    “Never mind,” said Tacroy. “Your uncle will just have to think again. And the carriage was only one of three experiments tonight.” He insisted that Christopher write a big 10 in the dirt of the path, and then they set off down the valley. “If the carriage had worked,” Tacroy explained, “we’d have tried for something bulky. As it is, I get my way and we try for an animal. Lordy! I’m glad you came when you did. I was almost as bad as that carriage. It’s all that girl’s fault.”
    “The lovely young lady with the harp?” asked Christopher.
    “Alas, no,” Tacroy said regretfully. “She took a fit when you firmed me up last time. It seems my body there in London went down to a thread of mist and she thought I was a goner. Screamed and broke her harp strings. Left as soon as I came back. She said she wasn’t paid to harbor ghosts, pointed out that her contract was only for one trance, and refused to come back for twice the money. Pity. I hoped she was made of sterner stuff. She reminded me very much of another young lady with a harp who was once the light of my life.” For a short while, he looked as sad as someone with such a merry face could. Then he smiled. “But I couldn’t ask either of them to share my garret,” he said. “So it’s probably just as well.”
    “Did you need to get another one?” Christopher asked.
    “I can’t do without, unfortunately, unlike you,” Tacroy said. “A professional spirit traveler has to have another medium to keep him anchored—music’s the best way—and to call him back in case of trouble, and keep him warm, and make sure he’s not interrupted by tradesmen with bills and so forth. So your uncle found this new girl in a bit of a hurry. She’s stern stuff all right. Voice like a hatchet. Plays the flute like someone using wet chalk on a blackboard.” Tacroy shuddered slightly. “I can hear it faintly all the time if I listen.”
    Christopher could hear a squealing noise too, but he thought it was probably the pipes of the snake charmers who sat in rows against the city wall in this