Apparition Trail, The by Lisa Smedman Page A

with the intensity of concentration.
    I swallowed, my Adam’s apple bobbing uncomfortably against my stiff collar. “The ace of spades?” I ventured tentatively, after several moments.
    Chambers’s hand squeezed my wrist, and he smiled. Then he laid the card facedown on the table and drew another. Several people crowded around behind him, trying to peer at the card.
    This time, I guessed more quickly, eager to end the test and return to the solitude of my cabin. “The eight of hearts,” I said.
    He placed the card on top of the first.
    “Again,” he prompted, raising another card to his forehead.
    “The four of diamonds.”
    My flesh began to tingle under his fingers.
    “Again,” he said.
    “The seven of diamonds.”
    So far, Chambers had placed every card in the same pile. Either my guesses were all wide of the mark or — even more frightening — I was guessing every card correctly. My nerves buzzing, I continued guessing as quickly as Chambers could raise the cards to his forehead. Although each card was presented to me with its black side facing me, I had a curious double vision that showed me its face slightly above and to the left, as if in a prairie mirage. A curious tickling feeling centred itself upon my forehead, just between and above my eyes. The crowd of onlookers that surrounded me, and the saloon walls behind them, took on a translucent appearance.
    At long last, two piles of cards had replaced the original stack. One pile was large, the other quite small. Chambers counted them silently, then announced the final tally: “Forty-four correct in either suit or number, and eight incorrect. An excellent score of eighty-four per cent, well above the statistical average.”
    I pushed my pillbox hat back from my forehead and mopped my brow. “That’s astounding,” I said. Then my policeman’s instincts took over. Despite the evidence I had seen with my own eyes, and Steele’s assertions that paranormal powers did exist, a part of me — albeit an ever-diminishing part — remained as sceptical as my father. I added, for the benefit of our observers: “But not so surprising when you consider the fact that no one saw the cards except Mr. Chambers himself.”
    Chambers shot me a challenge with dark eyes. Silently, he handed me the larger stack of cards, face up. I rifled through them, and found to my amazement that, from what I could remember, they were in the very order I had described.
    “Would you care to be tested a second time?” Chambers asked. “With independent verification by Monsieur Mont-Ferron, perhaps?”
    He half turned to the steward, who drew back in alarm, one hand making the sign of the cross. But others in the crowd pressed toward the table.
    “I’ll do it!” one cried.
    “No, test me!”
    “He must be a spiritualist,” another whispered to a friend. “Next thing you know, the table will be knocking and tilting and ectoplasm will ooze from his ear!”
    I leaned toward Chambers and indicated his cabin with a glance. “Let’s continue this conversation in a more private place,” I hissed.
    Chambers nodded, and carefully re-wrapped his cards. “Agreed,” he said. Rising from the table and picking up his silver-handled umbrella, he indicated the ordinary deck of poker cards that still lay on the table. “The guessing game is merely a parlour amusement that anyone can play,” he told the curious onlookers. “You are welcome to use my poker deck to test each other.”
    We retired from the table, leaving the crowd of passengers to amuse themselves. As we walked to Chambers’s cabin, the optimist and the sceptic were at war within my breast. I wanted the results to be true — oh, how I wanted magic to be real, and psychical powers and perhaps even miracles to be within my grasp. I tucked the bottle of painkiller back into my pocket, and stepped inside Chambers’s cabin as he held the door open for me.
    I had expected the small room to be filled with the trappings of the