Emperor Norton's Ghost by Dianne Day

Author:Dianne Day [Day, Dianne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-41986-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-02T16:00:00+00:00

15

———

The Spirits Are Moving

Wherever Michael had gone, he had not taken Max; which was a good thing, because of Bernal Heights being some distance away and not easy to get to by streetcar. In fact, since I did have the use of the auto, I had not bothered to ascertain whether there was or was not a streetcar to that part of town.

Mr. Conrad Higgins lived on Precita Avenue, a short street of Victorian houses clinging to a hillside with a spectacular view of the City of San Francisco in the distance, and the Bay with its boats and islands. I stood looking at that view for quite some time, because it refreshed me and gave me hope. I had found Edna Stephenson’s story of Ingrid Swann’s ectoplasmic extrusion to be both affecting and depressing, and in fact had felt, during the longish drive out from our house on the north end of Divisadero to Bernal Heights, as if a residue of the story itself were somehow clinging to me like that cold slime.

“Poor Ingrid,” I murmured. The logical part of my brain told me I should not feel sorry for her, because she must have been a charlatan of a very high order indeed to produce such an illusion; but some other part of my inner self, the part that is commonly called in sentimental parlance the heart, simply understood how hard Ingrid had worked, and how desperate she must have been, to produce this illusion. Finally, in spite of myself, in spite of my very best efforts, there was an even deeper, darker part of me that asked the question: What if it really happened? What if Ingrid Swann, at risk to her own health and certainly great expenditure of energy, had really produced the substance called ectoplasm out of her own body, so that spirits might have substance for even the shortest and most futile of explorations in that glass box?

“How lonely she must have been,” I murmured. In my mind I had such a vivid vision of her sitting enclosed, trapped, in that glass box. And now the poor woman was dead. All because some vicious, cruel person was murdering the mediums of my beloved City. Well, it just wouldn’t do.

I pulled myself together, marched up some very steep steps to a front door, and rang the bell. I was quite prepared for no one to be at home, as it was only the middle of the afternoon; but somehow I didn’t have the feeling that Mr. Conrad Higgins would prove to be a nose-to-the-grindstone type of man. Else why would a woman like Myra, also known as Ingrid, decide to leave him and earn her own way in the world in the manner she had, which ultimately had gotten her killed?

My surmises, or hunches, proved correct. I had to ring a second time, and stand waiting for a while longer but then the door opened inward to reveal one of the ugliest-looking men I had ever seen in my entire life.

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