I held the envelope high over my head.

"What is . . . No, when will . . ."

I dropped the envelope.

"This is just too hard," I said, raising my face toward the rafters. "Please. No, I understand. All right, I'll try just once."

I clutched the envelope to my breast, closed my eyes, and swallowed hard. Then, in a clear voice, I said, "'Where has my dear mother gone?'"

I opened the envelope and nodded in confirmation.

"Who wrote that? Raise your hand, please."

Timothy timidly placed his hand in the air.

"Sir," I said. "The spirits have a message for you."

He worked his way forward through the crowd, nearly to the edge of the stage. I approached the footlights and knelt, so that I would be at his eye level. I gave him my most beatific smile.

"Brother," I said. "Your dearest mother, Mary Margaret, has been in Summerland these past three years since pa.s.sing over. She wants you to know that she is safe, that pain is only a memory, and that she attends unseen to your welfare."

Timothy's face positively radiated joy.

"She urges you to live," I said. "Live!"

He nodded, his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears.

I gave him a wink. He had played his part well.

Then I stood, smoothed my vest, walked back to the table, and took the next envelope. I held it over my heart for a moment, while gazing out at the crowd. I spotted Judge Grout, hunched in a seat toward the back. His chin was cupped in his hand and he was listening as intently as if he were trying a case.

"'When will Martha come back to me?'" I announced.

I opened the envelope and gave a knowing nod.

"Who asks the spirits this?"

No hands went up.

"Come now, someone asked this question."

A man in a shopkeeper's ap.r.o.n far in the back raised a pale hand. I pointed, and all heads swiveled to look at him.

"This is your question, sir?"

He nodded.

"Sir, I hesitate to give you the answer the spirits have imparted. Are you prepared to learn the truth?"

"Yes," he said, almost a whisper.

"Your beloved Martha will return to you only when you quit your drinking," I said. "The choice is yours. That is all the spirits have to say."

The shopkeeper's chin dropped to his chest.

"Oh, this is a fraud!" a cowboy, with a carefully tended chinstrap beard and auburn curls down to his shoulders, declared. He was sitting in the front row, slouched in the chair. His arms were crossed defiantly. "These two must be in on it."

"How could they?" the old man who had collected the envelopes asked. "They were sealed and pa.s.sed directly from our hands to hers. There was never the possibility of fraud."

"It's a trick," the cowboy said.

"How?" the old man asked.

"I don't know. . . ."

I smiled at the doubting cowboy.

"Believe, brother," I said. "Just believe."

I took the next envelope, and then I frowned.

"Who wants to know if he will regain the use of his right arm?"

A left hand went up in the balcony.

"I'm sorry, the spirits are silent. I advise you to find a doctor you trust, study the Good Book, and put your faith in Jesus Christ."

I took up the next envelope, clasped it to my heart, and stared at Judge Grout. The table rapped sharply, three times. Pause. Then three more urgent raps.

"The spirits are signaling a particularly important question," I said. "They tell me the individual who submits this question wishes to remain anonymous, so I will not ask him to hold up his hand or otherwise identify himself after the spirits have answered the question."

"Then how will we know it's a real question?" It was the doubting cowboy again.

"I guess you won't," I said. "Now, please, I need silence-and faith-in order to commune with the spirits."

I swallowed hard.

"The question . . . ," I said. "Oh, my. The question is from a father who wants to know if he is to blame for the death of his little boy."

I opened the envelope.

"That's all," I said. "There are no names or other information on the slip of paper. But the spirits know."

I stared at Judge Grout.

"The spirits say that this poor man has tortured himself for too long for the death of his son. Too long has this man, a respected and learned man, believed that he failed his precious eight-year-old son, Thomas, who contracted scarlet fever and pa.s.sed over three winters ago."

"She's talking about Judge Grout," someone whispered.

I shook my head and put a finger to my lips.

"This loving child was buried elsewhere, the spirits tell me. Ohio? Perhaps. Or Illinois? No matter. What is important, the spirits say, is that this loving father should know he was not to blame. It was all part of Providence's plan that this angel of a boy would leave this earth so soon, and that Tommy sends happy greetings from the other side."

I paused.

Judge Grout was slumped in his chair. A cowboy reached out and put a hand beneath his arm to keep him from going all the way to the floor.

"There is one other thing," I said. "Tommy wants his father to know that there is no death-that father and mother and son will all be reunited one joyous day in Summerland."

Tears rolled down the judge's face.

Three cowboys offered bandanas.

Cheers and applause rocked the hall.

Jack Calder walked out.

I went on telepathically reading questions and giving miraculous answers from the other side. The doubting cowboy was right, of course; it was all a trick, an old con known as "the One Ahead." There was no tampering of the questions. Only, Timothy had been my confederate, and the envelope he gave to the old man to pa.s.s up contained a slip of paper that said nothing.

With a practiced hand, I had drawn my first envelope from the bottom of the stack, which turned out to be from the shopkeeper about his errant wife. From then on, I was always one question ahead, but appeared to have known the contents of each before they were opened. I had made up the story (and the question) about the dead mother and Potete had instructed Timothy to respond enthusiastically to whatever I had to say. Then, when I opened the envelope to confirm the message, I was really reading the next question, the one about the bad right arm. And so forth, down through the stack of envelopes.

But how did I know that Martha had left the shopkeeper because of his drinking, which had not been hinted at in the question, or the answer to Judge Grout's inquiry about his little boy? Because the working girls at the brothels had shared these bits of gossip. Of course, you didn't get lucky every time, because there were bound to be questions of which you had no inside knowledge. In those cases, you just said something so vague that n.o.body could disprove it, or you said the spirits declined to answer. But what people remember are the hits, not the misses, and it takes only a few seemingly miraculous answers to win an audience-and build a reputation.

As for the spirit raps at the table, that was the easiest. That afternoon I had found a loose board on the stage, one that rocked and struck the bottom of the table legs when you stepped on it. And it took nearly imperceptible pressure from the toe of my shoe, or sometimes the heel, to produce the knocks, and all that from a good five feet away. Anyway, n.o.body was looking at my feet when that was happening. They were all looking at the table.

After an hour, I had worked through all of the envelopes.

I asked for some water-which I truly needed by that time-and Potete brought out a pitcher and a gla.s.s. Slowly and shakily, I drank down a gla.s.s, and then poured another. As I grasped the pitcher, I thought I saw Horrible Hank's face in the water, laughing madly. I poured the water back in, scattering the image.

Then Potete brought out a pedestal and placed a bust of Pallas Athena atop it (in truth, it was just the wooden head of Lady Liberty, a cigar company promotion borrowed from the back bar at the Long Branch Saloon). Then Potete carried out a straight-backed wooden chair and placed it next to the table.

I thanked him, and he took the gla.s.s and the pitcher away.

"Now, if it please the a.s.sembly," I said. "I'd like to share something of special literary significance, appropriate to our subject of study tonight."

I sat in the chair, resting my arm on the table, and turned my face to the candle, which had burned more than halfway down. After establishing an appropriate mood of contemplation, I began.

"'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,'" I intoned. "'While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.'"

I somberly recited the next few stanzas of Edgar Allan Poe's masterpiece, then-at the point in the poem where the scholar narrator goes to the window-I rose from the chair and went to stage left, as if to fling open a shutter. It was then, at the point where the "stately raven" makes its appearance, that Potete, waiting in the wings, opened the door of Eddie's cage and the bird shot out over my shoulder, as if materializing from nowhere.

The crowd gasped.

Eddie flew out, far over the audience, pitching first this way and that, and finally circled around and came to lightly rest on the bust atop the pedestal behind me, swiveling his head in birdlike fashion.

"'Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly sh.o.r.e,'" I said. "'Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian sh.o.r.e!'"

A pause.

"'Quoth the raven:'"

"'Nevermore!'" croaked Eddie.

Then I went through the last few stanzas of the poem, each ending with the bird's familiar refrain, each time delivered perfectly by Eddie. By the time I got to that final sorrowful "Nevermore," you could hear a card drop.

Then the applause began, and grew, along with whistles-and the rooster call was back, but this time in approval.

"The soul of despair," I said, "as rendered by our greatest poet."

I was lying. I thought Whitman better.

Then I stepped forward and bowed, giving Eddie the sign to fly up and perch on my forearm. From my vest pocket, I took a bit of beef jerky, his favorite, and allowed him to tease it from my hand.

Potete brought out an empty quart-sized tin can and placed it on the stage. It had held peaches that had been served at the Beatty & Kelley Restaurant just a few hours before, but I had painted it royal blue with a yellow moon and many stars.

My ursine lawyer also brought a towel, which I used to mop my face and hair, and then tossed back to him as he left the stage.

"Now," I asked, "who has a token of appreciation for my feathered apprentice? He likes silver dollars best, although half-dollars and dimes will also do. Come now, don't be shy."

I saw somebody wave a coin in the second row.

"Sir! Thank you," I said. "Toss it lightly on the stage."

Even before the half-dollar had hit the stage, Eddie had spotted it. He hopped from my arm, scampered after the coin, all wings and claws, and caught it in his beak. Then he flew over to the can and dropped it in, and the coin jangled satisfactorily.

Now the crowd was up on its feet, pressing forward with money in hand, and Eddie went among them, s.n.a.t.c.hing up coins and the occasional greenback and depositing all of it in the can. For a silver dollar, Eddie would give them back a little golden sheet of paper with a Bible verse printed on it, from 1 Corinthians 12:810:

For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of Spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues.

It was a rush job for the printer and his devil at the Dodge City Times to get these made in time for the show. Luckily, I had brought my own Bible with me from the hotel room to check the pa.s.sage, as none could be found in the newspaper office.

The offering of cash went on for ten minutes or so, and the rough men smiled like schoolboys as the clever raven took the money from their hands and deposited it noisily in the peaches can.

Finally I walked Eddie over to the wings and returned him to his cage.

Then I returned to the stage and struck a thoughtful pose, my arms crossed and my head high.

"I am a Spiritualist, my friends," I said. "No matter what you may have read in the newspapers about Spiritualism or mediums, I appeal for you to decide for yourself. Does the soul survive death? I submit that we have had proof here tonight."

I pursed my lips.