"What did you say to him?" she hissed at Josef.
He shook his head. "Not much. I'm saving it."
"He's up to something," Pat said aloud. "Mark." She nudged his elbow, which was inelegantly propped on the table. "Mark, wake up."
"Huh?" Mark started. His mother, studying him with undivided attention for the first time that morning, saw the telltale signs. "Did you get any sleep last night?" she demanded. "What were you doing?"
"Working," Mark said. "Thinking."
"That's work," Josef agreed. He exchanged glances with Pat, and some of her suspicions must have slipped into his mind. "What else did you do last night, Mark? Did you really go back to the house?"
"We better leave," Mark said hastily. "Poor old Jud must be about ready to burst. I mean-"
"So you didn't go to the house," Pat exclaimed. "Where-"
But Mark was halfway to the door, and by the time Josef had paid the check, he had vanished into his own room and closed the door.
"We may as well check out," Josef said resignedly. "When we get him home I'll string him up by his thumbs and ask him again. I don't want to make a scene here in public."
True to his promise, he said nothing during the drive. Mark was in a peculiar state, mumbling under his breath, squirming and twitching, and once, to his mother's consternation, bursting into a hoarse, sardonic laugh. Seeing Pat's alarm, Kathy patted her hand.
"It's all right, Mrs. Robbins. He's got an idea, that's all."
"If it affects him that way, he'd better give up intellectual activities," said her father, from the front seat.
"Do you know what the idea is?" Pat asked.
"Well…" Kathy looked as sly as it was possible for her to look. "I promised I wouldn't talk about it till he has it all worked out. If it does-we might have this whole thing settled by tonight. Wouldn't that be great?"
"Uh-huh," Pat said. She wished she shared Kathy's faith in Mark. She did not express her doubts; why should she destroy the girl's optimism prematurely?
Never before, even when it was ramshackle and abandoned, had her house looked anything but innocent to Pat. Now, under an evil, threatening sky, it had a sinister air. The turrets and tower seemed grotesque instead of charming.
Mark led the way. He went straight to the kitchen and Pat heard Jud's yelp of pleasure mixed with reproach as Mark greeted him and let him out. Standing in the hall she sniffed, wrinkling her nose; but there was no trace of that foul aroma. That did not prove that the night had been quiet. The aura was not a physical smell, it probably worked directly on the mind of the person affected.
She lingered by the door, oddly reluctant to go farther. As she stood there, the bushes by the steps rustled. Albert's neatly marked head emerged. He eyed her dubiously for a moment and then meowed.
"I called you last night," Pat said defensively. "It's your own fault if you didn't want to come in."
Mark and Kathy went upstairs. Josef was obviously torn between curiosity and another emotion, but there was no real conflict; he turned to Pat, who was still arguing with the cat.
"Don't come in, then, if you don't want to. But you'll have to make up your mind. I won't leave the door wide open."
The cat took two tentative steps toward her, its tail at half-mast and twitching. Then it spat and bolted into the shrubbery.
"He is acting strangely," Pat said. "I wonder…" Then she heard Mark call from upstairs. "Mom. Mr. Friedrichs. Can you come up here, please?"
The trail of destruction had left debris as far down as the stair landing, where shards of a broken vase glittered. A dent in the plaster showed where it had struck and shattered. The upper hall was strewn with broken glass from pictures. Every one of them had been torn from the wall. Mark's room had taken the brunt of the attack. There was hardly a breakable object left intact, including his camera; but none of the other upstairs rooms had completely escaped. It was as if some large savage animal had been let loose and had ranged up and down, searching and smashing.
Nine
I
I thought you said Peter had given up aimless poltergeist action," Josef remarked, as they stood in the doorway of Mark's room contemplating the mess.
"This was deliberate," Mark said. "It couldn't find what it was looking for, so it went storming up and down smashing things. Damn it, Mr. Friedrichs, this knocks your poltergeist theory all to hell. There wasn't a living soul in this room last night. According to the conventional theories, a poltergeist needs a human catalyst. I had the car keys, so you can't accuse Kathy of-"
He gulped, his eyes widening, as he realized the impli-: cations, but Josef shook his head, looking at Mark with grudging respect.
"You're too smart to incriminate yourself that way. If you had planned a stunt like this you'd have made damned good and sure you weren't found within a mile of those keys. Where did you go last night, Mark?"
"I'll tell you, I'll tell you," Mark said. "I'm just trying to think how to explain it."
In a stupor of distress Pat knelt down and began to pick up broken scraps. Josef took her arm and raised her to her feet.
"We'll form a cleanup team later, Pat. Come on downstairs while Mark tries to figure out how to break his latest bad news to us."
Muted howls and meows led them to the kitchen, where they found both animals waiting on the back porch. When Pat opened the door Jud bolted in, flung himself at her feet, and writhed delightedly. Albert still refused to come in, but indicated that he was faint with hunger, so Pat took a bowl of food out onto the porch.
In an effort to postpone what was clearly going to be a painful revelation, Mark turned on the radio. Rock and roll blasted out.
"Turn that off," Josef shouted.
Mark lowered the volume. "Coffee, anyone?" he asked brightly.
"Talk," Josef said.
"All right, all right, I said I'd tell you, didn't I? But you have to understand the reason. I got to thinking yesterday about some of our assumptions. The discrepancies have been small, but they have been piling up, and that made me wonder if maybe we weren't on the wrong track."
The song ended as such numbers often do, trailing off in discordant howls of woe; an announcer's bright cheery voice began to report the usual international disasters: an earthquake in Iran, a revolution in South America, the failure of the latest talks between the Arabs and the Israelis.
"What do you mean, 'we'?" Josef demanded. "All the assumptions have been yours. You practically shoved them down our collective throats."
"Oh, the basic idea is right," Mark said. "I'm certain of that. What I might have been slightly mistaken about is-er-well, let me put it this way-"
"And now," said the announcer, "for local news. A shop in New Market-"
"Shut that damned thing off," Josef snarled, reaching for the knob. As he touched it, however, the content of what was being said finally penetrated. His fingers froze on the switch, defeating Mark's belated attempt to silence the voice.
"… a number of valuable books," the announcer continued. "The proprietor, Colonel William Blake, estimates their value at approximately fifty thousand dollars. The thief gained entrance through an upper window. The police have made casts of tire tracks in the alley behind the shop, and they hope for an early arrest."
Three pairs of eyes focused on Mark.
"Don't worry," he said hastily. "They aren't yours. I wasn't dumb enough to park where I would leave tracks."