Ghost Hunter

aloud. She could hear the shock and wonderment vibrating in her own voice. 'This is amazing.'

'It's an herbal?'

'Not just any herbal.' She looked up from the title page. 'Unless this is a forgery, and I can't see why anyone would go to the trouble of creating one, this is Jordan's record of her personal observations and experiments.'

'Who was Mary Tyler Jordan?'

'An eccentric botanist. She died about fifty years ago and was consigned to the dust heap of history in her own time. Her work was never recognized as legitimate. Her peers considered her an outsider, a real crackpot.'

'Eccentric being a polite term for crazy?'

'Not in my opinion. Jordan devoted her life to studying the therapeutic uses of herbs and plants. I use several of her old tisane recipes. In my opinion, she was a genius. But the mainstream medical community dismissed her work because she was not able to do the kind of controlled studies that scientific researchers demand.'

'Why no controlled studies if she was so good?'

'Because she was dismissed as a quack and couldn't get funding from the government or any reputable research firm.' Elly looked at the herbal in her hands. 'That's how it works, you know.'

'Can't argue with that.'

'And there's no getting around the fact that she contributed to her own downfall when she declared that she had discovered what came to be known in the field as Jordan's Jungle.'

'Never heard of it.'

'Jordan wrote that she had discovered a vast underground jungle in the catacombs,' she explained.

'No wonder everyone wrote her off as eccentric. In the whole history of catacomb exploration no one has ever discovered any signs of plant or animal life growing in the tunnels.'

'True,' Elly said. 'The assumption is that Jordan may have experimented on herself with some of her own psychoactive herbal concoctions and experienced a few major hallucinations. In any event, her work was ignored and later forgotten except, of course, by Jordan's Jungle fanatics.'

'Those would be folks who believe that the jungle exists?'

'Right. They are a small but sturdy lot of diehards who have been known to spend years searching for the jungle.' Elly hefted the heavy volume, unable to believe that she was holding it in her hand. 'Do you realize how rare this book is? There are only three known copies still in existence, and all of them are in the libraries of private collectors who have refused to allow access to them.'

'You tried?'

'Oh, yes. I've always been interested in Jordan because of her early work with medicinal herbs. After I started coming across obscure references to this herbal, I couldn't rest until I tracked down every extant copy of her book. I contacted each of the three collectors and asked for permission to examine their copies. They all turned me down flat.'

'Did they give any reason?'

She smiled wryly. 'They're all book collectors. They didn't need reasons. In fairness, two of the three are elderly and quite reclusive. I think they were simply afraid to allow strangers inside their homes, let alone into their private libraries.'

'What about the third?'

She cleared her throat. 'Dr. Frances Higginbottom informed me that she only allowed those with what she termed 'proper academic qualifications' access to her private library.'

'You've got plenty of academic qualifications.'

'Not in Dr. Higginbottom's view. She went on to make it clear that she didn't think anyone from a Guild family could possibly have the right degrees or a suitably serious, scholarly mind.'

'A trifle biased against the Guild, huh?'

'As we all know, the Guilds do have some image issues. And, to be honest, although I've got a couple of degrees, the highest post I held at Aurora Springs College was that of a lowly instructor. In addition, I can't claim any significant publications. I really didn't have the proper academic qualifications to be allowed into her library.'

'Three extant copies,' Cooper repeated thoughtfully. 'So, we ask ourselves, how did a third-rate florist like Stuart Griggs come by an extremely rare, presumably expensive herbal and a couple of highly collectible pre-Era of Discord journals?'

'Excellent question.' She looked around at the spare, shabby furnishings. 'I don't know the answer to it, but I'll tell you one thing about Mr. Griggs that I hadn't realized until this very moment.'

'What's that?'

'I think it's safe to say that he chose to set up his shop here in Ruin Lane for the same reason I did.'

'Which was?'

'Mary Tyler Jordan once lived on this street,' she said. 'In fact, if the old records are correct, she lived at this exact address. I remember talking about it with the Realtor when I was searching for a suitable location for my herb shop.'

'Let's check out the basement.'

'You know, this is kind of exciting.' Clutching the precious Jordan herbal, Elly hurried after him. 'I'm starting to feel just like Harmony Drew.'

'Who's Harmony Drew?' he asked, halfway down the stairs.

'You never read the Harmony Drew, Girl Detective stories when you were growing up?' she asked.

'Doesn't rez any bells.'

'Well, you're a guy. You probably read The Amber Boys series instead. My brothers loved those. All about a couple of brothers with strong dissonance-energy para-rez talents who solved crimes.'

'That must have been the year I was reading Espindoza's A History of the Era of Discord.'

'Oh, sure. Every kid reads Espindoza's History when they're ten years old. How many volumes in that set? Two? Three?'

'Four, not counting the index.'

'Gosh, how could I forget the index? Yes, indeed, fun, youthful reading, all right.'

'You're mocking me, aren't you?' he asked.

'You have to admit, your childhood reading program was a little unusual.'

'My parents assumed that I would follow in their footsteps. When they discovered that I had a strong appetite for history, they fed it, figuring I would become a history professor like Dad.'

'Little did they know,' Elly murmured darkly.

Cooper did not respond to that comment. He reached the floor of the back room and went behind the staircase.

Elly felt the wave of strong psi energy the instant he opened the cellar door.

'There's a hole-in-the-wall down there,' she said.

'Sure is.'

Cooper descended first into the darkness. Elly followed, keeping a close watch on Rose, who showed interest but no alarm.

At the foot of the old staircase Elly saw the thin arc of green light. It emanated from a narrow, jagged opening that was partially obscured by several large boulders.

'It's not far from the hole next door in Bertha Newell's cellar,' Cooper said, crossing the space to examine the opening on the other side of the rocks. 'I wonder if she knows that Griggs had an entrance into the catacombs only afew yards away from the one she uses.'

'I don't think so. She never mentioned it. You know how it is in the catacombs. You can have two bolt-holes separated by only a few feet on the outside, but once you go inside, you're back in the labyrinth. You might never find the second entrance from the interior unless you stumble into it accidentally.'

Beyond the narrow tear in the quartz wall she could see a short corridor that ended in a rotunda. Five other hallways branched off the circular space.