The Clairvoyant Countess by Dorothy Gilman Read Free Book Online

St. Bonaventure’s School and about the sort of boys who went there, as well as their grievances, affections, hatreds, and resentments, but by midnight she had learned nothing that would help Lieutenant Pruden.
    “However,” she told him at nine the next morning when she telephoned him, “there is one child there who is extremely disturbed about his family. I’m sorry that I can be of no help to you about the thefts but I pick up—I can only call them
tragic
emanations—from one of the rings. I want to talk to this boy if I may. The initials on his ring are”—she held up the ring to the light—“G.U.O.”
    “If it has nothing to do with the thefts,” began Lieutenant Pruden.
    She said crisply, “Please give me the name of this child.”
    Pruden sighed. She heard the crackling of paper; a list was apparently consulted and the lieutenant replied, “That would be Gavin Ulbright O’Connell, I daresay.”
    “Thank you. Shall I visit him at school, or would you suggest bringing him here to me?” She added gently, “I can only tell you, my dear Lieutenant Pruden, that this is of far more importance than nine thefts. To Bonaventure’s as well as to the child.”
    “You don’t care to explain?”
    “I cannot possibly. I’m not being difficult, it is not clear to me yet, I can only compare it to reception being confused by static. But something is wrong.”
    Pruden was silent and then he said, “I’ll telephone St. Bonaventure’s and see what can be arranged.”
    When he called back ten minutes later it was to say that any interview would have to wait until Monday. “The office tells me that this morning the boy’s father telephoned and asked that Gavin be sent home for the weekend. They’re putting him on the four-o’clock train for Princeton.”
    “Isn’t that rather unusual?”
    “Yes, but the father was very firm.”
    Madame Karitska felt suddenly chilled. She said, “Bring him here before he leaves, will you?”
    “Madame Karitska, for heaven’s sake—”
    “I think it can be managed if you yourself personally volunteer to escort him to the train afterward, don’t you?”
    “Look, I’m a busy man,” growled Pruden.
    “I believe you will find the stolen crosses hiddensomewhere in the chapel of St. Bonaventure’s,” she told him quietly. “You can tell me whether I’m correct when you bring the boy here at three o’clock.” She hung up.
    At three o’clock there was a knock on Madame Karitska’s door and opening it she nodded to Pruden and then turned her attention to the young boy beside him. “Gavin?” she said lightly.
    The boy nodded. He was slightly built, small for his fourteen years, with sensitive, finely drawn features in a face that was strikingly pale at the moment. “I have to get home,” he told her edgily. “I’m wanted. Will this take long?”
    “Come in, won’t you? I want to talk to you, Gavin.”
    “Why?”
    “I want you to go home tomorrow, or even later. I do not wish to see you go home tonight.”
    “Hey, now wait a minute,” broke in Pruden.
    Madame Karitska looked at him. “Gavin knows what I mean. Gavin knows exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you, Gavin?”
    The boy looked up at her in astonishment. Suddenly a look of infinite relief illuminated his face and he burst into tears. He walked into her arms and she held him.
    “Let him cry,” Madame Karitska said to Pruden, and over the boy’s shoulder added, “Did you discover anything in the chapel?”
    “Nothing yet, but they’ve only begun searching. Look, what is it with this boy? I talked to the school psychologist about him and he says he’s unusually bright, stable, interested in his studies—”
    “He’s quite normal,” said Madame Karitska, “but hehas one—deformity, shall we say? He’s extremely psychic. I also get the impression looking at him that he’s been severely punished for it as a child. It is not something he’d mention to anyone.”
    “In the meantime,