Slim apparently spoke to the manager of the Old Princeton Inn, personally, trying to wrangle me a room. The manager had explained that the reporters had everything tied up, except for one suite taken by these two psychic characters, who’d been making it known to all concerned that they had “revelations from the spirit world” about the case.
Some of the reporters had glommed onto the pair, and the spiritualist couple had been holding psychic court for days. But now the fortune-tellers were old news. The manager had offered to talk to them for Lindbergh, to see if they would relinquish their room.
“The only way they’ll give up their suite,” Lindbergh explained with wry matter-of-factness, “is if we see them.”
“You’re not going along, too, are you?” I asked him.
“No. Too much going on here. Some promising developments.” He didn’t elaborate.
“Well,” I sighed, “anything to get a roof over my head.”
Any roof that wasn’t over the kidnapped kid’s nursery, that is.
So now Breckinridge, his usual gray, three-piece-suit self, was knocking on the door to 414 in the Old Princeton Inn; we had hung our topcoats in the lobby. The dimly lit hallway fit the Halloween mood.
The door cracked open. A thin, sallow male face peered out; bald, spade-bearded.
“Ah,” the cadaverous figure intoned, in a mellow, minister’s voice, “you would be Colonel Breckinridge.”
“Yes,” Breckinridge said. “Are you Martin Marinelli?”
Opening the door wider, the cue-ball bald, devil-bearded fellow nodded. He was wearing a flowing black robe; around his neck was a heavily jeweled gold cross on a gold chain. He turned his gaze on me, arching a plucked-for- effect eyebrow. His eyes were small and dark, but piercing, in deep sockets.
“And who would you be?”
“You’re the psychic,” I said, nicely. “You tell me.”
Breckinridge flashed me a reproving look.
Marinelli’s nostrils flared, and he stepped back, and shut the door; it clicked ominously.
I sighed. Without looking at Breckinridge, I said, “Yeah, I know. I got too smart a mouth. But I can’t take too much of this carny hokum lyin’ down.”
“Speaking of lying down,” Breckinridge said, “
“Good point. Knock again. I’ll behave.”
Breckinridge’s fist was poised to knock when the door swung open.
Marinelli, seeming to float in space in the long flowing robe, was haloed in soft light against darkness.
“Come in, gentlemen,” Marinelli said, gesturing theatrically. And this he directed to me: “But I would request you leave your skepticism in the hallway. If we’re to have success this evening, we will need open-minded cooperation from all participants.”
The sweet, smoky scent of sandalwood beckoned; somewhere in the darkness, incense was burning.
We were in a nicely furnished sitting room—lit, or barely lit, by a large red candle dripping wax in the middle of a wooden card table set up in the middle of the floor, with three chairs. There were several closed doorways, one of which was to a bedroom, presumably. If we could chase these fortune-tellers out, I’d have some pretty fancy digs.
“You still have not given your name,” Marinelli said to me, sternly.
I stood twisting my hat in my hand, wondering why the flickery darkness was making me so damn nervous.
“My name is Heller,” I said. “I’m a police officer assigned to the Lindbergh matter.”
“I sense you are not local,” Marinelli said.
He didn’t have to be psychic to know that; I have the flat nasal Chicago accent you’d expect. But Breckinridge seemed a little impressed.
“I’m not local,” I said, and smiled politely, and didn’t tell him a nickel’s worth more.
Marinelli gestured grandly to the candle-dripping card table, finding an extra chair for me; one of those already placed at the table seemed to be reserved.
“Gentlemen,” Marinelli said, after we’d settled into our wooden folding chairs, “I am the father of the One Hundred Twenty-Seventh Street Spiritualist Church in Harlem. My wife Sister Sarah Sivella is the mother of that church. As you have already surmised, Mr. Heller, I have no great gifts of second sight, myself. But my wife has definite, even staggering, abilities in that realm.”
“Abilities,” Breckinridge said, “which she is willing to lend to the search for Charles Lindbergh, Jr. Is that correct?”
“She does not use these abilities,” he explained patiently. “They use her.”
“What do you mean?” Breckinridge asked.
Marinelli sculpted the air with his hands. “She did not seek information, on this matter, directly, consciously. She began speaking of the kidnapping during the course of a seance at the church. The seance was part of our regular church ritual, that happened to have been held one day after the tragic occurrence.”
“So you came here,” I said, “to be close to Colonel Lindbergh.”
