looking directly at the floor. A muscle twitched spasmodically in his neck. “Admit it, Spangler.
It looked like a hooded figure standing behind you, didn’t it?”
“It looked like friction tape masking a short crack,” Spangler said very firmly. “Nothing more, nothing less — ”
“The Bates boy was very husky,” Carlin said rapidly. His words seemed to drop into the
hot, still atmosphere like stones into dark water. “Like a football player. He was wearing a letter sweater and dark green chinos. We were halfway to the upper-half exhibits when — ”
“The heat is making me feel ill,” Spangler said a little unsteadily. He had taken out a handkerchief and was wiping his neck. His eyes searched the convex surface of the mirror in
small, jerky movements.
“When he said he wanted a drink of water… a drink of water, for God’s sake!”
Carlin turned and stared wildly at Spangler. “How was I to know? How was I to know?”
“Is there a lavatory? I think I’m going to -”
“His sweater… I just caught a glimpse of his sweater going down the stairs… then…”
” — be sick.”
Carlin shook his head, as if to clear it, and looked at the floor again. “Of course. Third
door on your left, second floor, as you go toward the stairs.” He looked up appealingly. “How was I to know!’
But Spangler had already stepped down onto the ladder. It rocked under his weight and
for a moment Carlin thought — hoped — that he would fall. He didn’t. Through the open square in the floor Carlin watched him descend, holding his mouth lightly with one hand.
“Spangler — ?”
But he was gone.
Carlin listened to his footfalls fade to echoes, then die away. When they were gone, he
shivered violently. He tried to move his own feet to the trapdoor, but they were frozen. Just that last, hurried glimpse of the boy’s sweater… God!…
It was as if huge invisible hands were pulling his head, forcing it up. Not wanting to look,
Carlin stared into the glimmering depths of the Delver looking-glass.
There was nothing there.
The room was reflected back to him faithfully, its dusty confines transmuted into
glimmering infinity. A snatch of a half-remembered Tennyson poem occurred to him, and he
muttered it aloud: ” ‘I am half-sick of shadows,” said the Lady of Shalott…’ ”
And still he could not look away, and the breathing stillness held him. From around one
corner of the mirror a moth-eaten buffalo head peered at him with flat obsidian eyes.
The boy had wanted a drink of water and the fountain was in the first-floor lobby. He had
gone downstairs and —
And had never come back.
Ever.
Anywhere.
Like the duchess who had paused after primping before her glass for a soiree and decided to go back into the sitting room for her pearls. Like the rug-merchant who had gone for a
carriage ride and had left behind him only an empty carriage and two closemouthed horses.
And the Delver glass had been in New York from 1897 until 1920, had been there when
Judge Crater —
Carlin stared as if hypnotized into the shallow depths of the mirror. Below, the blind-
eyed Adonis kept watch.
He waited for Spangler much like the Bates family must have waited for their son, much
like the duchess’s husband must have waited for his wife to return from the sitting room. He
stared into the mirror and waited.