By the time he and Ann had a small room service breakfast and read the Sunday Times, it was time to meet Ally and Bebe Gonsalves. On their way through the lobby, they ran into John Steinberg, who asked them where they were off to. When they told him they were going to the theatre, he frowned.
"Do you think that's wise? No one's there yet. The crew doesn't go in until one this afternoon."
"We're meeting someone there, John," said Dennis. "An investigator.”
“Oh. Now a detective. Don't you think you could have told me?"
"It isn't a detective, John. It's…” Dennis cleared his throat. "It's a psychic investigator."
John did not respond. He only stood there looking at Dennis, his expression as unreadable as granite. "Psychic," he said at last, then nodded gravely, and continued on his way.
"I've been working with him for months now," Ann said, "and I've never seen that reaction."
"I have. It's meant to imply utter contempt." Dennis smiled in spite of himself. "When someone brings up something which John thinks isn't even worth discussing, since talking about it would mean that he's actually taking it seriously, he merely grunts a repetition, like, 'flying saucers,' or 'seances,' and then walks away." He took Ann's hand and gave it a squeeze. "You see now why I didn't want to tell him about the Emperor without having physical proof to show him. I swear to God, he'd have me committed."
"Maybe we'll have proof," Ann said.
"I hope not," said Dennis, leading her outside. "The thing I'd really like is to have that damned theatre as empty as an ingenue's head."
Bebe Gonsalves was not at all what Dennis had expected. He had thought to find a short and wide woman bedecked with eyeblinding prints and gaudy if authentic jewelry. But the woman who stood next to Ally Terrazin under the Venetian Theatre marquee was as striking as any actress he had ever met. It was only when he came near enough to see the thin web of wrinkles in the corners of her eyes that he knew she was, like himself, over forty. She wore a beautifully tailored top coat that was opened to display an even more perfectly cut suit beneath. She looked more like the owner of an upscale cosmetics firm than a psychic. Her hair was the blue-black of dark nights, and her skin a rich olive shade. Her only jewelry consisted of two small diamond earrings that seemed to catch the sun even on such a cloudy day.
Ally introduced Bebe Gonsalves, and Dennis introduced Ann, and together they walked to the theatre door, which he unlocked.
"Your hand is shaking, Mr. Hamilton," Bebe Gonsalves said. "It is a cold morning."
"I'm afraid I'm a little nervous," Dennis said.
"At what you may find? Or what you may not?"
Now what in the hell, Dennis thought, did she mean by that? At last the recalcitrant lock clicked, and Dennis ushered the others inside.
"Before we proceed," Bebe Gonsalves said, "I think it would be best if you tell me what it is that you think is here. I know of the things that have happened here, so you need not tell me of them, or if you think that what we are in search of has caused them. Just tell me what you think is here."
Dennis swallowed heavily, then spoke slowly and distinctly, not wanting to be misunderstood. "I don't think there's any name for it. It's a double, in a way. But it's not what they call a doppelganger. It's more like… part of me that got away. A bad part. And I need to get it back. Because on its own, away from me, it takes the energy that's stored here…” He glanced at Ally.
"The psychic energy," she explained. "From that catharsis thing?”
“I see," said Bebe Gonsalves. "Go on."
"And it… and it does bad things with it, with the power. It wants… I don't know what the hell it wants – to be me, maybe, to replace me."
"It's real," Ann added. "I've seen it – it and Dennis at the same time.”
“I don't doubt what you say," the psychic told her.
"I went away," Dennis went on, "hoping that being away from me it might grow weak, maybe die. I thought that you might be able to tell, to… feel something, see if you think there's anything here."
Bebe Gonsalves pursed her full lips. "Theatres are difficult. There are so many things, so much activity, that it's hard to pinpoint any one phenomenon. But I'll try. Now. Where is the creature the strongest? Where have you seen it?"
"The stage, I suppose," Dennis said. "On the stage."
He led the three women into the inner lobby, fumbled about at the wall switch, and turned on the house lights. The interior of the Venetian Theatre was just as they had left it. They walked down the aisle onto the stage, and Dennis noticed that Ally looked overhead nervously, as if expecting the curtain to come crashing down on them the way it had on poor Tommy Werton.
"It's here," Dennis said. "I think it's here that it's strongest."
Bebe Gonsalves's face seemed to shimmer in the dim light, as though possessed of an infinity of unpleasant emotions. "It is very bad here. Not from the presence you seek, but from the act, from the man who died, the one last fall. His pain and shock, the horror of those who watched – I feel it all. It makes things muddy." She put a long-nailed hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. "It will take a moment to dispel these thoughts. They must go before I can seek the entity you dread. Please, be quiet for a time."
The four of them stood, all of them believing, and trembling. After three long minutes, Bebe Gonsalves gave a quick intake of breath, and whispered, "There is something." Her eyelids fluttered. "Something that wishes… or wished… to start a… a dynasty, or rather… an empire. A dark, dreadful empire. But it is very weak, very weak. Near death. It suffers. It is being drained away. It lives in fear…"
She shook her head. "It is gone," she said, turning to Dennis. "It may still be here, but I can sense it no longer. I would advise you to have no fear, Mr. Hamilton."
"Then you think… it's harmless?"
"If what I felt is the entity of which you spoke, I think it is indeed harmless." She shrugged. "Pitifully so. It will not live long, and while it does, it is impotent. Ignore it," she said, and smiled for the first time. "And it'll go away."
Ally and Bebe Gonsalves declined Dennis's offer of lunch, and drove away in their rented car, but not before Ally had kissed Dennis on the cheek and whispered to him, "Hang in there, buster. You got over me, you can get over this," which made him smile, but not laugh.
When they were gone, Dennis stood with Ann on the sidewalk under the marquee. "Do you believe her?" Ann asked, putting her arms around him. "Do you think she has those… powers?"
He held her. "After what's happened to me, I don't disbelieve in anyone's powers anymore. As for what she said, I think she might have felt something. Something that had dreams, something that's weak, that's dying. Something that won't be here for long."
"But isn't that good?"
"I don't know," he said. "It depends on who it was that she was sensing. The Emperor?" He looked down at her. "Or me?"
He felt her muscles stiffen. "Don't say things like that."
"I've got to face the facts. I don't have much left in me."
"It'll change now. You're back on a stage again. Your stage."
"Mine?" He turned and looked back through the glass doors into the shadows of the lobby. "Is it?"
"Yes. It's your building, your theatre, your stage. It's your character."
"No, Ann. They'll be mine when I take them back again, back from him. Not before."
"Then do it, Dennis. Reach down inside you and do it."
He did not answer. He had nothing to say. He felt horribly old, unbearably weary, as though the battle had already been fought and he had lost. "Let's go back to the hotel," he finally said. "I'm tired. I'd like to rest."
At one o'clock that afternoon, the techies went in. Curt Wynn supervised as two assistant stage managers taped the stage, the props people prepared the tables stage right and left, and the crew set furniture for the first scene to be rehearsed the next morning. The set itself, the original road show design by the late Kinsey Holworth, was still being reconstructed in New York scene shops under Mack Redcay's demanding eye, and would be transported to Kirkland on Wednesday. The designer had been disappointed at the delay of Craddock , but the money that John Steinberg offered did much to assuage his regret at having to supervise the rebuilding of another man's design. Still, there was no time for a new one.