plaster. The smell of age. It was a smell common only to museums and mausoleums. He
imagined much the same smell might arise from the grave of a virginal young girl, forty years
dead.
Up here the relics were piled helter-skelter in true junk-shop profusion; Mr. Carlin led
Spangler through a maze of statuary, frame-splintered portraits, pompous gold-plated birdcages,
the dismembered skeleton of an ancient tandem bicycle. He led him to the far wall where a
stepladder had been set up beneath a trapdoor in the ceiling. A dusty padlock hung from the trap.
Off to the left, an imitation Adonis stared at them pitilessly with blank pupilless eyes.
One arm was outstretched, and a yellow sign hung on the wrist which- read: ABSOLUTELY NO
ADMITTANCE.
Mr. Carlin produced a key ring from his jacket pocket, selected a key, and mounted the
stepladder. He paused on the third rung, his bald head gleaming faintly in the shadows. “I don’t like that mirror,” he said. “I never did. I’m afraid to look into it. I’m afraid I might look into it one day and see… what the rest of them saw.”
“They saw nothing but themselves,” Spangler said.
Mr. Carlin began to speak, stopped, shook his head, and fumbled above him, craning his
neck to fit the key properly into the lock. “Should be replaced,” he muttered. “It’s — damn!” The lock sprung suddenly and swung out of the hasp. Mr. Carlin made a fumbling grab for it and
almost fell off the ladder. Spangler caught it deftly and looked up at him. He was clinging
shakily to the top of the stepladder, face white in the brown semidarkness.
“You are nervous about it, aren’t you?” Spangler said in a mildly wondering tone.
Mr. Carlin said nothing. He seemed paralyzed.
“Come down,” Spangler said. “Please. Before you fall.”
Carlin descended the ladder slowly, clinging to each rung like a man tottering over a
bottomless chasm. When his feet touched the floor he began to babble, as if the floor contained
some current that had turned him on, like an electric light.
“A quarter of a million,” he said. “A quarter of a million dollars’ worth of insurance to take that… thing from down there to up here. That goddam thing. They had to rig a special block and tackle to get it into the gable storeroom up there. And I was hoping — almost praying — that someone’s fingers would be slippery… that the rope would be the wrong test… that the thing
would fall and be shattered into a million pieces — ”
“Facts,” Spangler said. “Facts, Carlin. Not cheap paperback novels, not cheap tabloid stories or equally cheap horror movies. Facts. Number one: John Delver was an English
craftsman of Norman descent who made mirrors in what we call the Elizabethan period of
England’s history. He lived and died uneventfully. No pentacles scrawled on the floor for the
housekeeper to rub out, no sulfur-smelling documents with a splotch of blood on the dotted line.
Number two: His mirrors have become collector’s items due principally to fine craftsmanship
and to the fact that a form of crystal was used that has a mildly magnifying and distorting effect upon the eye of the beholder — a rather distinctive trademark. Number three: Only five Delvers
remain in existence to our present knowledge — two of them in America. They are priceless.
Number four: This Delver and one other that was destroyed in the London Blitz have gained a
rather spurious reputation due largely to falsehood, exaggeration, and coincidence — ”
“Fact number five,” Mr. Carlin said. “You’re a supercilious bastard, aren’t you?”
Spangler looked with mild detestation at the blind-eyed Adonis.
“I was guiding the tour that Sandra Bates’s brother was a part of when he got his look into
your precious Delver mirror, Spangler. He was perhaps sixteen, part of a high-school group. I
was going through the history of the glass and had just got to the part you would appreciate —
extolling the flawless craftsmanship, the perfection of the glass itself — when the boy raised his hand. ‘But what about that black splotch in the upper left-hand corner?’ he asked. ‘That looks like a mistake.’