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“Oh, no thank you. I’m fine. I travel light.”

“Yes, of course. Tambourines weigh almost nothing.”

“Jesus, Terry!”

Trawley entered, swept her hat off and set down her bag. “That’s all right,” she told Freeboard benignly; “I didn’t hear it.” In tact, she had heard enough from Dare in the limo, including a request to compare her methods with those of Whoopi Goldberg in the morion picture Ghost, in addition to a penetrating follow-up question concerning the cholesterol content of ectoplasm. At each sally, Trawley’d nodded her head and smiled faintly, mutely staring out serenely at the landscape through her window, and the effect of this on Dare had at last begun to show: with every mile that brought him closer to the island and the mansion, his darts at matters psychic or supernatural had grown increasingly frequent and acerbic. “Edgar Cayce reportedly first went into trance,” he asserted as the limousine neared Bear Mountain, “as an excuse for not going to school, and when someone claimed a frog that he had kept in his pocket was somehow cured of mononucleosis, why, of course, people tended to sit up and take notice.”

Freeboard leaned into the wind and shut the door. In the silence, it was Dare who first noticed the music. “Dearest God, am I in heaven?” he exclaimed. “Cole Porter!” The author’s face was aglow with a child’s first joy as from behind the stout doors that led into the Great Room drifted a melody played on a piano.

Dare beamed. “My favorite: ‘Night and Day’!”

Freeboard moved toward the doors.

“That you in there, Doc?” she called out.

“Miss Freeboard?”

The voice from within was deep and pleasant and oddly unmuffled by the thickness of the doors. Freeboard opened them wide and stepped into the Great Room. All of its lamps were lit and glowing, splashing the wood-paneled walls with life, and in the crackle of the firepit flames leapt cheerily, blithe to the longing in the notes of “Night and Day.” Freeboard breathed in the scent of burning pine from the fire. The howlings of the storm were a world away.

“Yeah, we’re here!” she called out to the man at the piano. She smiled, moving toward him, while at the same time removing her dripping sou’wester. Behind her strode Dare and, more slowly, Anna Trawley. Freeboard’s boots made a squishing sound. They were soaked.

“Ah, yes, there you all are again, safe and sound,” said the man at the piano. “I’m so glad. I was worried.”

He had strong good looks, Freeboard noticed: long wavy black hair above a chiseled face that seemed torn whole from some mythic quarry. The firelight flickered and danced on his eyes and she saw that they were dark but wasn’t sure of their color. She judged him in his forties or perhaps early fifties. He was wearing a short-sleeved khaki shirt and khaki pants.

“This storm is amazing, don’t you think?” he exclaimed. “Did you order this weather, Mr. Dare? Are you to blame?”

Dare was noted for his Gothic mystery novels.

“I believe I ordered Chivas,” the author said crisply. He and Freeboard had arrived at the piano and stopped while Anna Trawley hung back beside a grouping of furniture that was clustered around the fireplace. She was glancing all around the room with a puzzled and uncertain, tentative air.

“Are you a ghost?”

Dare was speaking to the man at the piano.

Freeboard turned to him, incredulous.

“What crap is this?” she hissed in an irritated undertone.

“That’s how they show them on the spook ride at Disneyland,” said Dare in a full, firm voice: “A lot of spirits dancing while a big one plays piano.”

“I’ll strangle your dogs, you little creep!” Freeboard gritted.

Anna Trawley sank down into an overstuffed chair and fixedly stared at the man at the piano. “I’m Gabriel Case,” he declared. He stood up. “I’m quite honored that you’ve come, Mr. Dare. And Mrs. Trawley.”

“Oh, please don’t stop playing!” Dare insisted.

“Then I won’t.”

Case sat down and began to play “All Through the Night.” Freeboard stood quietly studying him. His eyes, she now saw, were pitch-black, so that even his casual gaze