Mallory switched on the second computer and flew into cyberspace. With the tap of a key, she landed inside the Washington, DC database of the Securities and Exchange Commission. No recent filings on stock activity would coincide with Candle's recent purchases, but there was a strong link to the Todd and Remmy merger of four years ago. This deal was well inside the statute of limitations, but the SEC seemed to have lost interest in Candle since the Whitman Chemical merger in the early 1980s. Perhaps they were shy of the crystal-ball defense. Ah, gold.

She was scanning the profiteer list of the Todd and Remmy merger. She found a familiar name from Gramercy Park, Estelle Gaynor, and a footnote that tied her to an old investigation. She neatly copied the block of type with five taps of the keys and shifted it onto a floppy disk. Now she patched in Candle's own credit check from the same firm which was feeding the old lady.

Apparently, Edith Candle was a longtime subscriber to this credit-check network, and when one went fishing in information networks, one also became fish food. Mallory had always avoided this by never paying for the networks" she hacked into. Candle had been less prudent. The file was bare-bones traces of financial activity. With a quick shuffle of files, she added this new data to the old US Attorney's file on the Securities and Exchange Commission action, the same document which had led her into partnership with Charles and this window on the old woman up the stairs in 3B.

Perhaps an hour had passed before she heard the door buzzer again, and sounds of the door opening and closing, then the indistinct voices in conversation. She was a few minutes more putting the file on 3B in order before she closed it.

When she walked back to the reception area, Henrietta Ramsharan was gone, and the pinch-faced woman from Gramercy Park was sitting in front of Charles's desk.

"She's the one," said the woman in a shrill voice, waving the business card in Mallory's direction. "Now, don't tell me you don't do this sort of thing, like I've asked you to do something filthy, like a divorce case or something. One can carry discretion too far."

Charles had a trapped look about him as he slouched low in the chair behind the desk.

Mallory sat down in a Queen Anne chair to one side of the desk. "My partner handles a different kind of clientele. He deals with more unusual problems."

Charles looked at her in an openly suspicious way. His face couldn't hide a thought.

To Mrs Pickering he said, "My usual clients are research institutes, universities, the occasional government commission. I explore unusual gifts, talents, different modes of intelligence. I also develop ways of applying these gifts to occupations or research projects. It's my partner here who does the investigative work." He swiveled his chair to face Mallory. "Mrs Pickering was wondering what business you had in Gramercy Park."

He was smiling but hardly meaning it.

"Client confidentiality," said Mallory to Mrs Pickering, smiling and meaning it not at all.

"Oh, back to discretion again. Why won't you take my case?"

"Did I say I wouldn't?"

"He did."

Charles leaned back in his chair and waved one hand with the attitude of oh, please. "Mrs Pickering wants us to expose her mother's pet medium as a fraud."

Mallory smiled with meaning this time. "Why not? Consider her a woman with fraudulent gifts. That puts it right in your field, Charles. Just something new and different, that's all."

"Hardly new," said Charles. "It wouldn't be the first time I had a medium for a test subject. But I look on them as empathies. Some of them really are gifted."

Mrs Pickering was rising off her chair, launching towards the ceiling. "This woman is a money-grubbing fraud!" Unspoken were the words you, fool. She settled back to earth and chair again as though the exertion of accusation was simply too much for her. "You're trying to tell me this fraud can contact my dead father?"

"I'm not so sure a gifted medium gets on all that well with the dead," said Charles. "But she may be quite good at reading the living. These people have more access to their intuition than most. They take in all the details of a human being. They analyze these details and spit them out in reorganized information which the subject can't believe a stranger could possess. It's nearly magic."

But Mrs Pickering was a typical, unmagical New Yorker. Her expression was dubious bordering on you, imbecile, and this was not lost on Charles. Mallory had noticed that very little got by him, if anything at all.

"Take you, for example," said Charles. "You're recently divorced, educated at good schools. You don't sleep well, though you take prescribed medication, and sometimes you feel depression without apparent cause."

The woman was nodding, unconscious of the gesture, eyes locking on Charles in rapt attention. Mallory noted the faint white line where the wedding ring had been. The education was in the woman's voice, and fitted well with the background of Gramercy Park. The dark bruised flesh under the eyes showed through her foundation make-up, but only on close inspection. The expertise of concealer make-up suggested the habitual loss of sleep frequently accompanied by the habitual drugs of the insomniac. And with a pinched, angry face like that, she was bound to be unhappy.

Nice going, Charles.

"You have your hair done every two weeks," said Charles.

That one was easy, thought Mallory. The roots would have to be grey; there were none showing.

"And you studied ballet in your childhood and teenage years."

Where was he getting that? Maybe she had walked in on her toes.

"You favor auctions at Christie's over Sothebys."

You gotta be kidding.

But now she took in the plethora of rings on the woman's hands. Antique settings all. Charles's freakish memory was probably calling up auction catalogs.

"You have a dog."

How did he know that wasn't cat hair on her dress? Oh wait. That magnificent nose of his. It was a drizzly evening, and Pickering had probably walked the dog before she came. Wet fur. Cats were not walked in the rain.

"You dressed in a hurry."

Mallory found no flaws in the woman's fashionable outfit until she reached the tag showing at the nape of the neck, and just a smudge of unblended rouge on one cheek. A vain woman who doesn't scrutinize the mirror to death before she walks out the door? That was a hurry and a half.

"There are no large events in your own life these days," said Charles. "In fact, your days have a maddening sameness to them, and you're looking ahead to an endless succession of days like these. Your mother's duplicity annoys you, maybe angers you, but your own life saddens you and frightens you… But all this is very crude. A gifted medium could look into your feelings, note the waver of your eyes when you insisted this was for your mother's good. A gifted medium might have taken the fact that you showed anger, not concern, and done much more with that than I could."

Than you would, Mallory corrected him silently. Charles always behaved like a gentleman. She counted on that and used it against him every chance she got. It was the only edge she had on his genius IQ. But she would have to be sharper from now on. She had never planned to drag Charles into something dangerous. Use him, sure, but harm him, no. That might be unavoidable if she telegraphed her intentions by taking this case which he had just reduced to ashes.

However, the Pickering woman was offering her access to Gramercy Park and that strata of old money. It was a better entree than she could have hoped for. And then there was the fascinating giantess to consider.

"We'll take the case," said Mallory, all things considered at lightning speed. "That's fifteen hundred up front, and we'll bill time and expenses against the retainer."