And all the while, when she wondered how all thiscould be possible - that her eyes could live to witnessthis last supper - the only reply she could think of wasSwann's:

'It's magic,' he'd said.

Indeed, she was thinking that very thing, that thismust be magic, when the tiger ambled across to her head,and swallowed it down in one bite.

Amongst a certain set Harry D'Amour liked to believehe had some small reputation - a coterie which didnot, alas, include his ex-wife, his creditors or thoseanonymous critics who regularly posted dogs' excrementthrough his office letterbox. But the woman who was onthe phone now, her voice so full of grief she might havebeen crying for half a year, and was about to begin again,she knew him for the paragon he was.

'-1 need your help, Mr D'Amour; very badly.'

'I'm busy on several cases at the moment,' he told her.'Maybe you could come to the office?'

'I can't leave the house,' the woman informed him.Til explain everything. Please come.'

He was sorely tempted. But there were several out-standing cases, one of which, if not solved soon, mightend in fratricide. He suggested she try elsewhere.

'I can't go to just anybody,' the woman insisted.

'Why me?'

'I read about you. About what happened in Brooklyn.'

Making mention of his most conspicuous failure wasnot the surest method of securing his services, Harrythought, but it certainly got his attention. What hadhappened in Wyckoff Street had begun innocentlyenough, with a husband who'd employed him to spyon his adulterous wife, and had ended on the top storeyof the Lomax house with the world he thought he'dknown turning inside out. When the body-count wasdone, and the surviving priests dispatched, he was leftwith a fear of stairs, and more questions than he'd everanswer this side of the family plot. He took no pleasurein being reminded of those terrors.

'I don't like to talk about Brooklyn,' he said.

'Forgive me,' the woman replied, 'but I needsomebody who has experience with ... with theoccult.' She stopped speaking for a moment. He couldstill hear her breath down the line: soft, but erratic.

'I need you,' she said. He had already decided, in thatpause when only her fear had been audible, what replyhe would make.

Til come.'

'I'm grateful to you,' she said. 'The house is on East61st Street -' He scribbled down the details. Her lastwords were, 'Please hurry.' Then she put down thephone.

He made some calls, in the vain hope of placating twoof his more excitable clients, then pulled on his jacket,locked the office, and started downstairs. The landingand the lobby smelt pungent. As he reached the frontdoor he caught Chaplin, the janitor, emerging from thebasement.

'This place stinks,' he told the man.

'It's disinfectant.'

'It's cat's piss,' Harry said. 'Get something done aboutit, will you? I've got a reputation to protect.'

He left the man laughing.The brownstone on East 61st Street was in pristinecondition. He stood on the scrubbed step, sweaty andsour-breathed, and felt like a slob. The expression onthe face that met him when the door opened did nothingto dissuade him of that opinion.

'Yes?' it wanted to know.

'I'm Harry D'Amour,' he said. 'I got a call.'

The man nodded. 'You'd better come in,' he saidwithout enthusiasm.

It was cooler in than out; and sweeter. The placereeked of perfume. Harry followed the disapprovingface down the hallway and into a large room, on theother side of which - across an oriental carpet that hadeverything woven into its pattern but the price - sat awidow. She didn't suit black; nor tears. She stood upand offered her hand.

'Mr D'Amour?'

'Yes.'

'Valentin will get you something to drink if you'dlike.'

'Please. Milk, if you have it.' His belly had beenjittering for the last hour; since her talk of WyckoffStreet, in fact.

Valentin retired from the room, not taking his beadyeyes off Harry until the last possible moment.

'Somebody died,' said Harry, once the man hadgone.

'That's right,' the widow said, sitting down again.At her invitation he sat opposite her, amongst enoughcushions to furnish a harem. 'My husband.'

Tm sorry.'

'There's no time to be sorry,' she said, her every lookand gesture betraying her words. He was glad of hergrief; the tearstains and the fatigue blemished a beautywhich, had he seen it unimpaired, might have renderedhim dumb with admiration.

'They say that my husband's death was an accident,'she was saying. 'I know it wasn't.'

'May I ask ... your name?'

'I'm sorry. My name is Swann, Mr D'Amour.Dorothea Swann. You may have heard of my husband?'

The magician?'

'Illusionist,' she said.

'I read about it. Tragic.'

'Did you ever see his performance?'

Harry shook his head. 'I can't afford Broadway, MrsSwann.'

'We were only over for three months, while his showran. We were going back in September ...'

'Back?'

'To Hamburg,' she said, 'I don't like this city. It's toohot. And too cruel.'

'Don't blame New York,' he said. 'It can't helpitself.'

'Maybe,' she replied, nodding. 'Perhaps what hap-pened to Swann would have happened anyway, whereverwe'd been. People keep telling me: it was an accident.That's all. Just an accident.'

'But you don't believe it?'

Valentin had appeared with a glass of milk. He set itdown on the table in front of Harry. As he made to leave,she said: 'Valentin. The letter?'

He looked at her strangely, almost as though she'dsaid something obscene.

'The letter,' she repeated.

He exited.

'You were saying -'

She frowned. 'What?'

'About it being an accident.'

'Oh yes. I lived with Swann seven and a half years,and I got to understand him as well as anybody evercould. I learned to sense when he wanted me around,and when he didn't. When he didn't, I'd take myself offsomewhere and let him have his privacy. Genius needsprivacy. And he was a genius, you know. The greatestillusionist since Houdini.'

'Is that so?'

'I'd think sometimes - it was a kind of miracle that helet me into his life ...'

Harry wanted to say Swann would have been mad notto have done so, but the comment was inappropriate.She didn't want blandishments; didn't need them.Didn't need anything, perhaps, but her husband aliveagain.

'Now I think I didn't know him at all,' she went on,'didn't understand him. I think maybe it was anothertrick. Another part of his magic.'

'I called him a magician a while back,' Harry said.'You corrected me.'

'So I did,' she said, conceding his point with anapologetic look. 'Forgive me. That was Swann talking.He hated to be called a magician. He said that was a wordthat had to be kept for miracle-workers.'

'And he was no miracle-worker?'

'He used to call himself the Great Pretender,' she said.The thought made her smile.

Valentin had re-appeared, his lugubrious features rifewith suspicion. He carried an envelope, which he clearlyhad no desire to give up. Dorothea had to cross thecarpet and take it from his hands.

'Is this wise?' he said.

'Yes,' she told him.

He turned on his heel and made a smart withdrawal.

'He's grief-stricken,' she said. 'Forgive him hisbehaviour. He was with Swann from the beginning of hiscareer. I think he loved my husband as much as I did.'

She ran her linger down into the envelope and pulledthe letter out. The paper was pale yellow, and gossamer-thin.

'A few hours after he died, this letter was deliveredhere by hand,' she said. 'It was addressed to him. Iopened it. I think you ought to read it.'

She passed it to him. The hand it was written in wassolid and unaffected.