He greeted me as though he hadn’t seen another human being in at least a month, and the swivel chair creaked as he settled back in it, put his long legs up on the desk, and yawned. Then he indicated the card bearing his business slogan—“Nothing Is Impossible”—which was tacked on the wall.

“I may have to take that sign down,” he said lazily. “I’ve just met a theatrical producer, a scene designer, and a playwright all of whom are quite impossible. They came in here a week before opening night and asked me to supply several small items mentioned in the script. In one scene a character said, ‘Begone!’ and the stage directions read: ‘The genie and his six dancing girl slaves vanish instantly.’ Later an elephant, complete with howdah and princess, disappeared the same way. I had to figure out how to manage all that and cook up a few assorted miracles for the big scene in heaven, too. Then I spent thirty-six hours in bed. And I’m still half asleep.” He grinned wryly and added, “Ross, if you want anything that is not a stock item, you can whistle for it.”

“I don’t want a miracle,” I said. “Just an interview. What do you know about ESP and PK?”

“Too much,” he said. “You’re doing another magazine article?”

“Yes. And I’ve spent the last week with a queer assortment of characters, too—half a dozen psychologists, some professional gamblers, a nuclear physicist, the secretary of the Psychical Research Society, and a neurologist. I’ve got an appointment in half an hour with a millionaire, and after that I want to hear what you think of it.”

“You interviewed Dr. Rhine at Duke University, of course.”

I nodded. “Sure. He started it all. He says he’s proved conclusively that there really are such things as telepathy, mind-reading, clairvoyance, X-Ray vision, and probably crystal-gazing as well. He wraps it all up in one package and calls it ESP—meaning Extra Sensory Perception.”

“That,” Merlini said, “is not the half of it. His psychokinesis, or PK for short, is positively miraculous—and frightening.” The magician pulled several issues of the Journal of Parapsychology from the stack of magazines and upset the whole pile. “If the conclusions Rhine has published here are correct—if there really is a tangible mental force that can not only reach out and influence the movements of dice but exert its mysterious control over other physical objects as well—then he has completely upset the apple-cart of modern psychology and punctured a whole library of general scientific theory as well.”

“He’s already upset me,” I said. “I tried to use PK in a crap game Saturday night. I lost sixty-eight bucks.”