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Albert Pond certainly paid
visit here. It was in the summer of 1920. This is where Fractured Harry had
directed him.
    I have an appointment with the
present owner, the great-grandson of the brilliant inventor who built the
house. Vincent Banchini answers the door in a plaid bathrobe. He has a coffee
mug in hand and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Funny how we
envision people we've met over the telephone differently from how they turn out
to be in the flesh. This man is not what my imagination had made him out to be.
He is a middle-aged fellow of average proportions, balding on top, with a
longish black tail tied in back. He is unshaven and wears round sunglasses the
color of stout.
    "Man," he says,
"you're punctual." Then he laughs, vigorously shakes my hand, and
drags me in before releasing it.
    I'm immediately ushered into a
sunny parlor full of heavy Victorian furniture. A figure hovers by a tea table
dressed in a sack-like Middle Eastern burka. The dark garment covers the wearer
from head to foot, but for a thin meshed opening at the eyes.
    "This is Tabina, my
housemaid," Vincent says with a gesture. Then, close to my ear, he
confides with a snicker, "I like a challenge when I mentally undress a
woman."
    I struggle out a little laugh and
bid good morning to the inscrutable female pillar.
    My host feels the urge to clarify:
"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not some subjugating patriarchal control
freak. She chooses to dress this way. It's her traditional garb, as they
say."
    "Yes, of course," I
return.
    Vincent thrusts a finger at me and
blurts, "Coffee! Don't tell me...cream and two sugars."
    "That's right," I say.
    The man beams. "I can always
tell. I have a sense for these things. With tea I'm a little foggy, but coffee
drinkers, I can read 'em a mile away."
    We sit. Tabina pours and prepares
my coffee. She does a better job than I am known to do.
    "I'm also a human
thermometer," Vincent chatters. He sticks an open hand into the air,
thinks a moment, then proclaims, "Sixty-six degrees. Guaranteed."
Then he scrunches out his cigarette and lights another.
    The draped figure, like an upright
body bag, stands solemnly a few paces from the table. I find this intimidating.
Considering the locale, how can I know for certain that there is even a human
under that thing?
    Vincent carries the conversation.
"So, you're traipsing around in the tracks of that Pond guy, eh? Cool. I
can't honestly say I know much about him. Hey, didn't he kill somebody?"
    Before I can answer, Vincent is up
on his feet and rushing across the room. He plucks an oversized book off the
cushion of a sofa and returns, puffing a trail from the cigarette in his mouth.
    "See," he says,
"here's his signature."
    There, indeed, is Dr. Albert
Pond's mark. The old leather ledger contains nothing but signatures, the names
of those who experienced the wonders of the hidden room below this structure.
    "My great-grandfather didn't
believe in documentation. He never wrote any articles about his work, no books,
nothing. Not even a journal. He kept it all up here..." He taps his head.
"His work was too important, too secretive, and he didn't want it falling
into hands that would have misused it, and there are always plenty of those
around. Undesirable hands. He kept his secrets to himself and worthy
associates."
    "Understandably," I
utter.
    "So, this book of signatures,
and the contraption itself, are all that remain."
    Vincent allows me to photograph
the ledger. Before I can finish my coffee, I am being led down a steep wooden
staircase into the under-chambers of the old house. There is a short dark hall
with an adjacent compartment dominated by a coal bin and some kind of boxy
object that looks to be a furnace of sorts. At the end of the hall there is a
heavy rust-colored door constructed entirely of metal. The host opens it.
    "Here we are," Vincent
announces, "the Spirito Macchina , as old Arcangelo called it."
    Vincent Banchini is a metal
sculptor, a