'The spirits from the Outer Circles,' she intoned faintly. 'One of them must have Come Through!'

Mrs Hemming nodded gravely, as if this explained things. 'Thank heaven Dr Chiltern is here. He's one of our most respected alienists, you know. His clinic is renowned all over Europe.'

'Alienist?' Fitz said uneasily.

'Psychiatrist,' the Doctor translated, as Mrs Hemming hurried back to the chaise.

'Doctor,' Anji said in a low voice, 'what happened in there?'

'I'm not sure.'

'She read Fitz's mind. She has to be a telepath.'

'Yes. Certainly a help in the medium business.'

'If she made that tambourine move she's more than just a telepath,' said Fitz.

'Mm, yes,' said the Doctor. 'I'd like another look at that tambourine.'

He slipped quietly into the hall, and, after exchanging puzzled looks, Anji and Fitz followed.

Even in the summer night, the back parlour was slightly chilly. Anji shivered in her silks. The Doctor lit the lamp and held it up. The chairs were in disarray, the cabinet door still open. The tambourine lay innocently on the floor. Anji lifted it. 'Seems all right.'

The Doctor was at the cabinet. 'Bring the light over.'

But the cabinet revealed nothing except its bare walls. Undeterred, the Doctor returned to the table and climbed up on it. He ran his fingers over the branches of the unlit gas chandelier. 'Ah ha.' He held out something invisible to Anji. When she swiped at the air below his hand, her fingers encountered a thread. In the dim lamplight, she still couldn't see it. She passed it to Fitz.

'How's this work, then?' he asked.

'The thread is thin enough to be manipulated through the crack of the cabinet door,' the Doctor said, still checking the chandelier. 'Run it over this lighting fixture and loop it though the tambourine, then hold both ends of the string in your hands. If someone moves to investigate, let go of one end and pull the thread back to you. In this case, she didn't have time.'

'She seemed so nice,' Fitz said, disappointed.

'She's a con woman,' said Anji dismissively. 'They always do.'

'But she did did read my mind. So why would she need to fake anything?' read my mind. So why would she need to fake anything?'

'I ah, hello, Dr Chiltern. How's the patient?'

Anji and Fitz turned. Chiltern's tall, frock-coated figure was silhouetted in the doorway. He looked uncertainly at the Doctor on the table. 'I left her with Mrs Hemming for the moment. Everyone else has gone, and I wanted to talk to all the witnesses to her... attack. May I ask what it is you're doing?'

'Looking for evidence of fraud.'

'A hoax?' Chiltern stepped forward. Fitz handed him the thread. He fingered it, frowning. Fitz thought he looked disappointed. 'Well,' he said finally, 'it is the usual thing.'

'I'm not so sure,' said the Doctor. He put a hand on Fitz's shoulder and took a long step down to the floor. 'At least, not quite the usual thing. Whatever the true nature of her talent, I think Miss Jane honestly believes in it.'

At Chiltern's request, Dr Smith stayed to help him see to Miss Jane. Smith sent his friends home. An oddly assorted bunch, Chiltern thought, but he hadn't time to wonder about them now. He sat on a chair pulled up beside his unconscious patient. Chiltern sat on a chair pulled up beside her. Smith stood at her head. Chiltern had sent Mrs Hemming for warm towels and a blanket he disliked ordering her about in her own home, but as she had dismissed the maid for the seance evening, there was nothing else for it.

'Usually, a hoaxer in this sort of situation is an adolescent,' he said. 'It is traditional, if such a word can be used about these episodes. The so-called haunting of the Wesley family. The Blair Witch case in America.'

'Phylemeda never left the parlour all evening,' said the Doctor. 'She wouldn't have had time to set this up.'

Chiltern exhaled deeply. 'Yes, I noticed that myself.' He rose as Mrs Hemming came back into the room. 'Thank you. Now, if you will allow me to use you as a nurse, please loosen the young woman's clothing and apply the heat. The Throat, the wrists, the stomach '

Mrs Hemming blushed. 'Yes,' she said quickly, 'I understand.'

'And then cover her securely with the blanket. We will wait in the hall.'

The hallway was dim and chilly. Chiltern lit a cigarette and turned up the gas. He caught a glimpse of himself in the large, gilt-framed mirror. He looked exhausted.

'This is the sort of thing you've been looking for,' said Smith softly, 'isn't it?'

Chiltern drew pensively on his cigarette. 'Yes,' he admitted. 'Not to be cold-blooded, but I think it may be.'

'You think this isn't spirit possession but something natural to the mind?'

'Not natural in the sense of common, perhaps. But intrinsic to the mind, yes.'

'Have you ever had a medium as a patient?'

'No although, as I mentioned, I've attended a number of seances. Many mediums are simply fakes, of course. But I've wondered about the ones who were obviously sincere.'

'Have you ever thought that cases such as this might be... I'm not sure what the correct term would be. A hysterical dissociation of personality.'

'Yes,' said Chiltern excitedly. 'There are cases in literature not many. The so-called "split personality", which is a misnomer arising from sensational literature the disturbance is nothing like Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It wouldn't surprise me if Miss Jane's condition turned out to be something of the sort.'

'You believe it's a form of hysteria?'

'Well, you've studied Charcot. You know what the mind can do. Most of us have moods or moments of which we say, "I wasn't myself." It's only a short step from there actually to not being oneself.' Chiltern began to pace. 'When you read the works of Dickens or Shakespeare, or when you see an actor give a succession of utterly convincing depictions of totally different characters you're observing something right on the edge of a true splintering of the one into many. This 'split personality', so-called, is probably only an abnormal extension of the same quality. We are potentially many selves, but most of us only live as one.'

Smith had grown very quiet. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded, head down. Now he looked up, and Chiltern was struck once more by his brilliant eyes, almost relucent in the shadowy hall. 'But our many selves, potential or realised, share a memory that unites them.'

'Exactly. This doesn't seem to be the case with these patients, however. The memory is localised in each of the separate selves it's what makes them separate, in fact. They can hide from one another, the mind hiding from itself.'

'Yes,' Smith agreed softly. 'Secrets within secrets.'

'Secrets,' said a queer high voice. 'I know some secrets.' know some secrets.'

The two men turned. Without their noticing, Miss Jane had slipped into the hall, standing quietly in the shadows by the door. Her eyes were very wide, almost round.

'Are you the one who set the tambourine trick?' said Smith mildly.

'Tricks,' she snorted. 'You're one to talk about tricks!'

'How should we address you?' Chiltern asked.

'You? On your knees and naked, handsome.'

Used to these sorts of remarks from patients, Chiltern was unperturbed. 'Then may I call you Miss Jane?'

'That cow! She doesn't know anything.'

'And what is it that you know?'

She smirked coyly. 'I'm not telling.'

'May we speak to Chief Ironwing?'

'No.' Sulkily.

'Why not?'

'He's gone to sleep.'

'What about Miss Jane?'

'Why do you want to speak to her? She's no fun.' The woman stepped forward and toyed with Chiltern's tie. 'I'm fun. But not you.' She turned on Smith. 'You're beyond all this, aren't you? Far, far beyond.'

'Miss Jane ' Chiltern began soothingly.

'Don't call me that!' She whirled on him again. 'I hate her! I hate her!' Her whirl turned into a circle, and she began to turn in one spot, faster and faster. 'I hate her, hate her, hate her '

Both men moved forward, but as soon as Chiltern reached for her, she shuddered and became still. Her eyes rolled back in her head as if she might faint again, but then with a shiver, she stood upright. She looked into their faces and her own collapsed into terror. 'Oh God,' wailed Constance Jane's normal voice, 'has it happened again?'

Chapter Three.

'You're not a loser,' said Anji.

'Thanks,' Fitz muttered.

They were in the sitting room of the flat the Doctor had rented, finishing their breakfast coffee. The Doctor was upstairs in the TARDIS, which, with surprising skill, he had managed to insert into the third floor box room. Anji assumed he was absorbed in research and instrument readings, trying to make more sense of the odd temporal pattern that had drawn them here.

Ceding the flat's two bedrooms to Fitz and Anji, the Doctor slept in the TARDIS, and Fitz and Anji also made use of it for necessities like bathing and laundry. The Doctor had rented the place at very short notice from the brother of a man who was on an extended journey abroad, and it was certainly comfortable enough, with a large sitting room whose two windows overlooked the street. Certain peculiarities, such as a sheaf of letters and bills affixed to the mantelpiece with a jackknife, had given Anji the impression that the usual tenant was something of an eccentric.

'Really,' she insisted. 'You're not.'

'The spirits seem to think otherwise.'

'One spirit,' she corrected. 'And frankly, it sounded as if it had some sort of personality problem.'

'I didn't think spirits had those.'

'Perhaps not. But people do. '

'Mm.'

They sat in silence for a moment, finishing their coffee.

'So you think it was all her,' Fitz said.

'Don't you?'

'I don't know. Hard to believe she was faking.'

'The Doctor doesn't think she is. He thinks when she goes into a trance other personalities emerge.'

'Yeah, that multiple personality thing he was talking about when he came in last night. I didn't really follow it.'

'They're all really aspects of the same person, but they don't necessarily share memory.'

'Ah,' said Fitz wisely.

'One of the personalities is often nasty. That would be the one that insulted you.'

There was another moment's silence. Neither of them really wanted to get to the central issue.

'The one that insulted me,' Fitz finally said, reluctantly, 'knew about the Doctor and the TARDIS.'

'And the First World War,' said Anji.

'You think she's one of those time sensitives we've been on the lookout for, or did she just read our minds about the future?'

'I don't know.'

'It'd be nice to find one at last, after all the bores and nutters we've talked to and all those other nonsense seances.'

'Except that finding one means there's something wrong. According to the Doctor anyway.'

'Yeah,' he sighed. 'There's that.'

The Doctor came in. 'Any coffee left?'

Fitz passed him the pot. 'What's up, then?'

'I think hello, what's this?' The Doctor paused, coffeepot in hand, and picked up a letter from beside his plate.

'Morning post,' said Anji.

He tore open the envelope and scanned the contents. 'It's from Chiltern. He'd appreciate it if I'd come up and take a look at Miss Jane. How convenient.' He went into the hall. 'Exactly what I had in mind.'