“No, no,” Elizabeth pleaded, backing away from the door as the others surged toward it, anxious to see what the commotion was. “Don’t look!” she warned when someone tried to push back the draperies.

Cindy’s father had just reached the door when it flew open and Jake came in, looking around frantically.

“Do you have a telephone here?” he asked, glancing at each of them as if searching for a familiar face. “There’s been an accident.” Then he saw one. “Persephone, do you have a telephone?”

“No. What happened?” she said, coming to meet him.

“Someone has been run over by a wagon,” Cindy’s father shouted to them from the doorway. Since he was holding the door open, they could hear the victim’s agonized screams quite clearly now.

“There was a terrible accident,” Jake was telling Persephone. “I was just coming to tell you. . . .” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lacy handkerchief and held it up. “I found it, the thing you told me about or rather Madame Ophelia told me about, and I was coming here to show you and this man walked out into the street and the horses were going so fast and . . .” He stopped and drew a calming breath. “I said I’d telephone for an ambulance.”

“But we don’t have a telephone,” Persephone reminded him.

“Yes. I . . . I should go help.” He turned and pushed his way past Cindy’s father back out to the street.

“It looks like the poor man was crushed,” Cybil reported from where she was peering out the front window now that someone had pushed open the drapes. The other women were crowded around her and Persephone joined them. They cupped their hands around their faces in an attempt to see through the glass into the darkness.

“I should help, too,” Gideon said.

“Don’t leave me! Besides, you can’t help him,” Elizabeth cried. “He’s dying!”

All the women and even Cindy’s father turned to stare at her, and then the victim’s renewed shrieks of agony drew their attention again.

“What in heaven’s name are they doing to him?” Gideon demanded.

“Putting him into the wagon,” Cindy’s father reported.

“Which is probably the quickest way to get him to a hospital,” Cybil reported tartly, “but they could have been gentler.”

“It’s no use,” Elizabeth said. “He’s going to die.”

They all turned back to her again, even Cindy’s father, who gave her his full attention now that they could hear the wagon pulling away.

“She’s probably right. The way the blood was pouring out of his mouth—”

“Horace!” his wife chastened him.

Horace shrugged apologetically.

“Is that what you saw?” Tilly asked, coming toward Elizabeth with her eyes wide in amazement. “You saw this accident.”

“You did, didn’t you?” her mother said. “You saw horses and someone screaming.”