“How so?” Lloyd asked, certain that he could imagine much more than St. Ives.

“He called it the Villa of the Mysteries, and the name was apt. There were lightning rods all about, and he had hung up effigies around the grounds to keep the meddlesome townsfolk from spying. That and his dogs, a breed I had never seen before and hope never to see again. Gruesome beasts.”

“Go on,” Lloyd said.

“Well… I know this will sound like flapdoodle, but he carried a seashell around with him. Like a polished black conch. He listened to it-as people sometimes do with shells, thinking they can hear the sea. But he did it often and, stranger still, he spoke into his.”

“What did he say?” Lloyd asked. “Who was he talking to?”

“I wish I knew.” St. Ives sighed. “He spoke in a language I could never understand. To whom, I have no idea. I assumed he was touched in the head. And I had good reason to think so. The estate had an artificial lake, and on the water he had a fleet of automatic model ships that reenacted the British defeat of the Spanish Armada. And there was a greenhouse full of orchids that looked like they were made of glass, but they were alive and grew. God’s truth. He loved books and fine things, but most of all he prized unexplainable things.”

“How do you mean, unexplainable?” Lloyd asked. There were not many things you could actually perceive that could not be explained, he felt. Even the way the fancy woman with the medicine show had seemed able to be in two places at once back in Zanesville. It was the things that went unnoticed that were mysterious.