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“I had to ask,” muttered Dare.

“Yes, there you have it.”

Dare reached out, retrieved his glass and sipped. He stared at the fireplace flames as if in a reverie. “I may have had a taste of the supernatural once,” he said in a quiet tone. “I was in Budapest doing some research. I knew few people. I was lonely. On the morning of my fortieth birthday I went to the lobby and in my box there was a cablegram, my only mail in several days. It said ‘Happy Birthday, dear Terry’ and at the bottom it was signed, ‘Your brother, Ray.’ “ Dare paused and looked down into his glass and swirled the scotch. “Oh, yes, I had a brother Raymond,” he said after that. “But he died, you see, in infancy. Another brother had sent me the cable. Edward. But how on earth did Edward turn into Ray?”

The author held his glass out to Case.

“May we hear To your health’ one more time?”

“You need ice?”

“I need warmth, my dear man, I need fire. Just the scotch. The world is quite cold enough for me, thank you.”

Case picked up the bottle. Its treasure had dwindled and he poured it all out into the author’s glass.

“Forgive me for asking, Mr. Dare—or rather, Terence. You don’t mind if I call you that?”

“I’d say about time.”

Case set the empty bottle down and leaned back.

“May I ask you a personal question?”

“Has it anything to do with LSD?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Or priests?”

“Oh, well, possibly priests.”

Dare glared. “Henri Bergson thought the principal function of the brain was to filter out most of reality so that we could focus on the tasks of earthly life,” he said. “When the filter is weakened by a powerful drug, what we see is not delusion but the truth.”

“I haven’t followed you,” said Case.

“I saw the priest,” insisted Dare.

“Oh, I see. No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what is?”

“What sent you away from your church?”

For a moment there was silence. Dare gulped down the scotch and stared into the fire. “All that rot about eternal hell’s fires and damnation. Just because I like Mackinaws more than silk blouses, I’m condemned to take baths in jalepeño juice and eat napalm hot fudge sundaes with Son of Sam for all of eternity in some Miltonesque Jack in the Box? Is hell fair?”

“No, no one said that it was fair,” said Case quickly.

“Well, it isn’t.”

“In any case, you’re over that now.”

“Absolutely. Dead is dead and that’s that.”

“So there we are. Oh, incidentally—one more thing about that one-eyed old ghost …”

Dare lowered his brow into a hand. “Ah, my God!”

“You find this threatening?”

“No, my fingernails always look charred. It’s some sort of genetic balls-up in my family.”

“I see.”

Dare looked up and set his glass down on the table.

“You were saying?”

“Well, the ghost spoke to Jung.”

“Good Christ!”

Case looked slightly bemused, a little grave.

“And what did it say?” Dare asked.

“’When you have learned to forgive others, Jung, you will finally learn to forgive yourself.’”

Dare paled. He seemed taken aback.

“It really said that?”

Case was staring at him steadily. He shook his head. “No.”

“You’re a dangerous man, Dr. Case,” Dare said softly. “I’ve said that before. Yes, you are. You’re a peril.”

Case turned and looked out through a window. The shadows of the trees were beginning to lengthen, and the sound of birds calling were fewer, more muted.

“The sun’s lower,” he said softly. “I’m impatient for the night.”

“Pretty sky,” said Trawley.

“It’s a sky.” Freeboard shrugged.

They had sauntered through the oaks around the house and now were ambling by the evening river’s glistening shore where the sun had laid a gold piece on the surface of the waters. Her tanned arms folded across her chest, the Realtor seemed pensive, staring down at the ground.

“Something wrong, Joan?”

“Huh-uh.”

“You seem edgy.”

“No, I’m fine. I’m just thinking.”

“What about?”

At that moment she’d been pondering her dream of the angel, the one with the memorable name unremembered and his cryptic admonition, “The clams aren’t safe.” Before that she’d been thinking of Amy O’Donnell from