He waved away my thanks. “John, my son, I must speak with you. Alone and seriously.”
“OK, Father”—and I took him around to the door into my own room. I somehow didn’t want to go into the consulting room just yet. I was sure that there was nothing there; but night had fallen by now, and there was no telling.
I sat on the bed, and the priest pulled a chair up close. “John,” he began quietly, “do you realize that you are in danger of your life?”
I couldn’t help a glance at the door of the consulting room, but I said casually, “Nuts, Father. That little accident out there?”
“Accident? And how many other ‘accidents’ have befallen you recently?”
I thought of the butcher knife and the wild pitch, but I repeated, “Nuts. That’s nonsense. Why should anybody want my life?”
“Because you are doing too much good. No, don’t smile, my son. I am not merely indulging in a taste for paradox. I mean this. You are doing too much and you are in danger of your life. Martyrs are not found in the Church alone. Every field has its martyrs, and you are in most grievous danger of becoming a martyr to your splendid clinic.”
“Bosh,” I snorted, and wished I believed it.
“Bosh it is indeed, but my parishioners are not notably intellectual. They have brought with them from their own countries a mass of malformed and undigested superstitions. In those superstitions there is some small grain of spiritual truth, and that I seek to salvage whenever possible; but in most of those old-country beliefs there is only ignorance and peril.”
“But what’s all this to me?”
“They think,” said Father Svatomir slowly, “that you are working miracles in the clinic.”
“I am,” I admitted.
He smiled. “As an agnostic, John, you may call them miracles and think no more of it. But my parishioners cannot see matters so simply. If I, now, were to work these wonders of healing, they would accept the fact as a manifestation of God’s greatness; but when you work them— You see, my son, to these poor believing people, all great gifts and all perfect gifts are from above—or from below. Since you, in their sight, are an unbeliever and obviously not an agent of God, why, then, you must be an agent of the devil.”
“Does it matter so long as I heal their lungs from the effects of this damned cement dust?”
“It matters very much indeed to them, John. It matters so much that, I repeat, you are in danger of your life.”
I got up. “Excuse me a minute, Father . . . something I wanted to check in the consulting room.”
It checked, all right. My ghost sat at the desk, large as death. He’d found my copy of Fanny Hill, dematerialized it, and settled down to thorough enjoyment.
“I’d forgotten this too,” he observed as I came in.
I kept my voice low. “If you can forget our own murder, small wonder you’d forget a book.”
“I don’t mean the book. I’d forgotten the subject matter. And now it all comes back to me—”
“Look!” I said sharply. “The hell with your memories.”
“They’re not just mine.” He gazed at me with a sort of leering admiration.
“The hell with them anyway. There’s a man in the next room warning me that my life’s in danger. I’ll admit he just saved my life, but that could be a trick. Could he be the man?”
Reluctantly my ghost laid his book aside, came to the door, and peered out. “Uh-uh. We’re safe as houses with him.”
I breathed. “Stick around. This check-up system’s going to be handy.”
“You can’t prevent what’s happened,” he said indifferently, and went back to the desk and Fanny Hill. As he picked up the book he spoke again, and his voice was wistful. “You haven’t got a blonde I could dematerialize?”
I shut the consulting-room door on him and turned back to Father Svatomir. “Everything under control. I’ve got a notion, Father, that I’m going to prove quite capable of frustrating any attempts to break up my miracle-mongering. Or is it monging?”
“I’ve talked to them,” the priest sighed. “I’ve tried to make them see the truth that you are indeed God’s agent, whatever your own faith. I may yet succeed, but in the meanwhile—” He broke off and stared at the consulting room. “John, my son,” he whispered, “what is in that room?”
“Nothing, Father. Just a file that I suddenly remembered needed checking.”
“No, John. There’s more than that. John, while you were gone, something peered at me through that door.”
“You’re getting jumpy, Father. Stop worrying.”
“No. John, there is a spirit in this place.”
“Fiddlesticks!”
“Oh, you may not feel affected; but after all, a man of my calling is closer to the spirit world than most.”
“Father, your parishioners are corrupting you.”
“No. Oh, I have smiled at many of their superstitions. I have even disbelieved in spirits. I knew that they were doctrinally possible and so to be believed; but I never believed in them personally, as an individual rather than a priest. But now— John, something peered at me.”
I swore silently and said aloud, “Calm yourself, Father.”
Father Svatomir had risen and was pacing the room, hands clasped like Felix the Cat. “John, my son,” he said at last, “you have been a good friend to me and my parish. I have long been grateful to you, and never been able to prove that gratitude. I shall do so now.”
“And how?” I asked, with a certain nervous foreboding.
“John,” he paused in his pacing and laid a hand on my shoulder, “John, I am going to exorcise the spirit that haunts this place.”
“Hey!” I gasped. “No, Father. Please!” Because, I reasoned hastily to myself, exorcising spirits is all very well, but when it’s your own spirit and if that gets exorcised— well, what happens to you then? “No,” I insisted. “You can’t do that.”
“I know, John,” he went on in his calm, deep voice. “You think that this is more
