"Thank you for the flowers," Constance said, leading me through the grey catspace inside the walls. "They're very pretty. Did you pick them yourself?"

"Yes ma'am," I said. "They're called moonflowers. They bloom at night, just like you."

At that she halted, and looked around with a smile clear as a lighthouse beacon spreading over her face. "Wow. You're going to be quite the tomcat when you grow up."

I followed in the kerosene stench of the lamplight, while outside the wind came up hard against the House of Marvels, chilling the whole passage. "Are you sure you want to do this?" Constance said. "You don't have to, you know, just because he wants that old exhibit to work."

But I was wound up pretty well, and would not be turned back. At the inside door to the Egyptian Room, Constance took her tiara and the blue robe that she wore over her regular costume down from a hook on the wall. Even then she did not look like Isis to me; only a woman who had worked hard all day, and knew that she had still more ahead of her. "Come on," she said.

There was smoke in the air left over from the first showing. We stepped around a barrier of heavy drapes and there was the contraption standing just three feet from the wall, its two slanted wings of star-patterned cloth forming a close V around the straight-backed operator's chair. The professor had done some work since the last time I'd seen it; the chair legs had been bolted to the floor, and a leather belt nailed to the underside of the seat. A backing board covered what remained of the original machinery; the head and mouth controls were set into this very much like the controls of an automobile. And there was something new: a megaphone mounted on a swivel set right into the arm of the chair.

Without wasting any time, Constance belted me in and turned up the megaphone so that its rim brushed against my lips. "Is that all right?" she said, and when I nodded she squeezed my hand and started off around the room, lighting the braziers from a book of paper matches.

I tried the controls one last time. The right eye squeaked awfully when I worked the trigger, so much that I was sure everyone would hear it. But it was too late to fix, even if I had known how. "Just stay calm and follow the script," Constance said. "Just whisper. It'll be over before you know it."

She went softly to the main door and pulled back the bolt, then hurried to take her place behind the velvet rope. I heard her give a faint sigh. Outside in the hall, the new group came shuffling their feet, led on by the professor, his voice raised in signal to us. We waited and held our breath, listening; then the doorknob turned.

"Friends," the professor said, "beyond this door is the most dangerous room in the house. Here in exact detail is a reconstruction of the Tomb of Osiris, including the mortal remains of Osiris himself, as well as many interesting and mystifying relics dug from beneath the belly of the Great Sphinx. Folks, there's ancient magic in this room, magic more powerful than anything --"

"Aw, quit speechifyin'," a man said from the hall. "Are you gonna let us in or not?"

The professor drew himself up very tall. I could almost hear him do it. "Well," he said. "You've been warned."

How many were there? I could not tell: belted as I was behind the casing I could see only faint shapes through the cloth "wings" of the machine. They came in one by one, gathering in the little space at the center of the room, and when Constance stepped forward with a burning brazier cupped in her hands they greeted her with catcalls and nervous laughter. The professor turned it into a joke. He said, "Mister, if I were you I would not get the Goddess of Life angry with me," and some of the people still laughed, except this time it was turned on one of their own.

He walked them along the velvet rope, starting at the north end of the room and working his way around. It was the standard show, the same things I had seen and listened to half a dozen times before, a mish-mash of truth and lies that sounded like truth, all done up in a calculatedly grotesque package. It went all right; no one believed a word of it, but they appreciated the ballyhoo.

I was the last. He drew them all up in a tight little group, then stepped over the rope and gestured at me with his hands. "Now folks, here we have the most intriguing piece in the room, perhaps in the en-tire Museum. It is the actual, living head of an Egyptian Sphinx. I say living my friends because although this head has been severed from its body, as everyone knows Mythical Creatures cannot be killed. No, this head, this creature of the far-flung desert, is only resting. Trapped in the metamorphosis of sleep, it breathes with distant life even now, dreaming metaphoric visions, and on certain nights, under the proper alignment of the planets, this creature raises itself ever so slightly from its eternal slumber and whispers of what it has seen to us, the mortal men and women who wait within its tomb."

The customers fidgeted and coughed nervously at my feet. "Perhaps," said the professor, "perhaps, if we are all lucky, tonight"

A woman said: "It never does. I've been here twice before, and the planets are never aligned."

That was when I moved my fingers, just lightly, and the machine's right eye gave out a soft, tiny squeak. I expected someone to shout: "Look! Look, it's moving!" I expected someone to call it a fake. But nobody made a sound. I brushed the footpedal ever so gently, once and then again. At the second touch, I whispered into the megaphone:

-- eye-ssisss --

"Oh my god," said the man who had wanted to get into the room so badly. There were scuffling sounds, shushing and cursing, and above it the professor trying to get some order. It didn't come, not until Constance knelt at the base of the machine, and said: "Yes?"

The controls jumped in my hands. Eye-ssisss, I said into the megaphone. Eye-siss the beloved of Oh-sire-isss none other may have her none other may taste her Eye-ssisss

This was not in the script. I did not know where it came from, only that I hadn't planned to say it. He's cursing me, I thought when the professor did not respond. But it was only acting; that, and trying to hold them back.

"Folks, this is this is a rare moment. If anyone has--"

"Should I buy stock?" someone said. They whispered and pressed against the velvet rope. "How is my son?"

Too late; the Head had drifted away back into sleep. breathed out into the megaphone, released the controls, and said nothing more.

By the time I came around from behind the machine, Constance had her weight against the door as if the whole crowd were pushing from the other side. "Isis!" I said. She slid the bolt home, shaking with laughter. "That was great!" she said, and scooped me up into her arms

Downstairs in the professor's office, it was like someone had lit a bonfire under the floor. "Son, I never doubted you," the professor said. He clapped his hands, scrubbed them in the air, and danced around in place. "Where'd you get that jealous god stuff, kid? Was that hot! You have the gift, I'll tell you that. Just wait 'til the word gets out, we'll be swamped here every night. Swamped. Here. Here." He turned his pockets inside out; when he lifted his hands they were empty, until the fingers came together and unfolded something crisp and green out of the air.

"Wow!" I said. "Five dollars! Five whole dollars?"

and I snatched it crackling out of his fingers. Constance clapped and laughed and patted me on the back. "You earned it," she said. "Didn't he earn it, and more?"

But the professor had already forgotten me. "That's not all," he said. His eyes were like green glass under the skewed, battered top hat. "Connie, you and I are going to celebrate. I'm going to take you out on the town; we're going to have a big fancy dinner and drink lots of wine, then maybe we'll drive down to the river. I'll take you boating out on the river! How about it?"

Constance stood half in the secret doorway and didn't answer, except to turn her eyes away. How sure he had been, how flushed with success; now it all dropped away from him, leaving the strangest expression, as if he was trying to swallow his lips. "Not the River Styx," he said to me, trying to make a joke of it, lowering himself until his eyes were level with mine and the tails of his coat settled in black puddles on the floor behind him. He gave me a weak smile. "You go on home and get a good night's sleep. Dream metaphoric visions. I want you wide awake here tomorrow night."

He squeezed my shoulder, and I balled the five dollars all up into a thick wad in the center of my hand. I said goodnight to them both, passed between them, turned back at the door, waved.

"Okay," Constance said. She rubbed her nose and refused to meet his eyes. "Just let me get out of this thing. Okay."

The next day we got rain from the edge of a big storm that had only just missed us. I came to the House of Marvels all bundled up in a mackintosh, boots, and my father's rainhat with the big brim almost as wide as my shoulders, looking like a pint-sized railroad man who had lost his way. There was no one about. I stood dripping, looking around, then went clumping down to the cashier's booth, folded my things all up into a slippery bunch and left them in a corner. The professor wasn't up yet; there was nothing unusual about that. I went into his office and made myself comfortable with an old book of his that I'd started the week before, all about an Illusion Device called the Dircksian Phantasmagoria. Learning the secrets did not spoil them, I found; the machinery was so baroque, the writing so elaborate and unfamiliar, that they carried a magic all their own, the magic of history, of lost wonders brought to light again.

I read and waited for what seemed like hours, thinking again about the voice, the true voice of the Sleeping Sphinx, encased in its brittle cylinder of wax. Rain pelted the house off and on; I felt quite alone, and perfectly content. By three thirty the professor had still not come down. I climbed up onto the desk, reached for the bronze handle that had been screwed into the ceiling. By hanging on tight and lifting my feet completely off the desktop I could just budge his hidden stairway.

Up there in a sea of clutter, of cages, bear traps, stacks of worn-out hats and shoe boxes, the professor lived at one end of the floor, close by the only window in the old house that was not shuttered or covered over. Rainwater leaked through the roof in two places, ran in a broad stream down the walls. I found him on a cot in the corner, stretched out in his undershirt and slacks.

Seeing him like that, asleep with his mouth open, a blindfold covering his eyes and his inkcolored hair all mussed, I realized that he was still a young man. Not my father's age, certainly, though older than my schoolteacher. He couldn't have been much more than thirty five, though in costume, with his old-fashioned tie and his eyebrows that premature grey, he looked sixty.

"Perfessor," I said. "Perfessor?"

"What time is it?" he said without even stirring.

"Quarter to four. Say perfessor, you know what we forgot? We forgot the Sphinx's real voice. We forgot to listen."

Professor Vitae sat up on the edge of the cot with his face in his hands. He didn't say a word.

"Um, how did your date go? With Constance."

He pushed the blindfold back up onto his forehead; when I saw the way his eyes looked at me I was sorry to have asked. "The voice," he said, sticking his feet into a pair of paintspattered shoes. "The Sleeping Sphinx. All right."

For a night and a day, ever since he had lifted it from the body of the Sphinx Machine, the cylinder had been resting in a side drawer of his desk, wrapped in a thick bed of tissue paper. Now he snatched it out with so little care that I asked if I could carry it myself. We went down through the building to the Room of Technological Wonders, past the Astrology Room and the Room of Teratology. There in back, in a corner that never got much attention either from the customers or from the professor himself, was the oldest, most dilapidated recording machine I had ever seen. As I watched, the professor blew away a coating of dust, turned the crank on the end; he lifted the cylinder out of my fingers and fitted it into the machine.

"Ready?" he said.

He lowered the needle so gently that I was sure nothing would go wrong. But perhaps there was a flaw in the wax that neither of us had seen. Rasping noises at once poured out of the horn, masking another, stranger sound that came leaking through as from an impossible distance of time: the sound of breathing; then the cylinder cracked and snapped in two. It fell out of the machine, shattering twice more before it even hit the floor, leaving the needle to drag across empty air

The professor stood frowning a moment watching the machine still turning inside. He lifted the horn back over the top. "Well that's that," he said, and walked out.

*

That night I sat buckled into the Sleeping Sphinx, bumping my heels on the chair legs while Constance lit the incense, rushing from corner to corner until the room was marked off in strands of smoke. Her manner had not changed, not to me, but the professor had hardly talked to her except to say hello and ask if she was ready. It wasn't that there was any anger in him; but he acted as if it hurt something awful just to look at her.

I watched and listened to her tell about restaurant work until I couldn't hold it in any longer. Then I got the idea to make the Sphinx say it for me. It opened Its eyes, fixed her with a curious stare. 'I guess maybe the professor loves you," It said.

Constance shook out what remained of the match. She came over and stood just in front of the stand, where I couldn't see her. But I knew she was looking It in the eye. "I guess maybe," she said. "But I don't love him."

The Sleeping Sphinx blinked at her. "Why not?"

I heard a low sigh on the other side of the screen. "He's been very nice to me. But for heaven's sake, look at the things he saves! All monsters and freaks and things. What does that say about the kind of man he is?"

"Well, I'm not a freak," It said. "I like it here."

Down in the corridor, the professor barked out his warning speech ahead of the group coming our way. "No, you're cute," Constance said. "Are you all set? Think you can give them a good show?"

Big deep voice. "Oh-Kay." Then: "Um, Isis?"

"Mm-hmm?" She slid back the bolt, hurried to take up her pose as Host of the Room.

"I love you, too."

"That's nice. Shh, quiet now!"

They sounded like a pack of elephants coming up from the first floor. They sounded like more people than the room would hold. And there was one thing that they wanted to see; one thing only. As soon as they came in I could feel them rushing the velvet rope, while down at the other end of the room the professor tried in vain to interest them in the other things Egypt had to offer. "Look at Anubis," he said, "the dog-headed god. Look at this alter stained with the blood of a thousand sacrifices." But the word had gotten around fast: give us the Head, they said. Go on. Let's see this thing work.

"That's plaster," one man said. "You can't tell me that thing's for real."

and the professor, showing off his vial of Nile river water, finally gave in. "You're all wondering about that Head," he said to their backs. "You've heard that we had a remarkable experience here last night. Well, folks I can't promise you that history will repeat itself. That thing never stirred in more than a hundred years, and it will probably be another hundred before it stirs again. Come on, folks, and take a look at some of these other exhibi--"

At the sound of his voice, the Sphinx fluttered Its eyes. Ohhhh, broken man, It said now. Listen, listen

"Again," the professor whispered. He pushed through the rubes, turning up the volume with each word as if he could not believe it himself. "It's happening again The Sleeping Sphinx is stirring again! Blanketed not in death but in mystic hibernation. Come on folks, press close, press close but be warned: others have come here, and have been struck senseless by the sound of the sphinx's voice. Does anyone have a question that they would like the Head to answer?"

"Is my husband true?" cried a lady in the middle of the group. "Should we buy that house?" said another. "Where will I get that money I need?" "Leo says I must move to the city. Is he right?" "Will there be a strike?"

"One at a time, folks," shouted the professor. "One at a time."

Then a man came up out of the crowd and put one leg over the rope. I can't say that I recognized his step, but I had a bad feeling about it. I didn't know him until he spoke. "I have a question," the man said. "Where's my boy when he should be at home in bed?"

Scuffling sounds reached me; the professor tried to push him back, and failed. The eyes of the Sleeping Sphinx popped wide open, then drooped again as I dropped the controls. "I thought so," my father said. He came on and this time the fighting sounded mean; at the end of it the professor tore backwards through the right "wing" of the machine, sprawling in the dust with his legs in the air. Through the canvas tear I could see Constance shaking, and a few slack-jawed customers looking in at me. My father came up with his hands raised, took hold of the machine by its molding and started to kick and pull and curse.

"Go on, boy," the professor hissed. He ripped the megaphone away, but could not help me with the belt.

I wasn't fast enough. My father overturned the Sphinx machine, crashing it head and glass casing and all at the feet of those customers who hadn't already run away. I covered my face. His hands clamped down on my shoulders, hands that weren't used to this kind of nonsense, this crazy brawling. He was so balled up that he couldn't understand why I wasn't coming out of the chair; the belt held me fast. At last he stepped back and stood puffing above the wreckage of the machine. "I'll be waiting for you outside," he said. Then he turned his back on me, and picked his way to the door.

The Egyptian Room looked like it had suffered through a raid. Constance stood rigid with her back up against a papier-mache sarcophagus, the professor still floundered in the rubble, massaging his head; a few gawkers remained behind. When they saw that nothing more spectacular was waiting to happen, they shuffled out, one by one, until the only other person left in the room with us was a tall, broad man in a checkered coat and a bowler hat. He stood in the doorway with the hall light behind him, studying the wreckage, saying nothing. A rim of wetcombed hair bordered the top of his face. He looked very uncomfortable.

The professor stood up, slapped at his trousers. Half of his moustache was missing; the other half hung sideways across his right cheek. He glared at the broad man and said, "What do you want?"

The big man's only answer was to look at Constance. He put a fist to his mouth and coughed. "It's all right," Constance said. "I'll be right down."

"Who was that?" the professor said when the big man had gone off down the hall. His face was quite calm. He went on brushing aimlessly at his clothes.

"My ride," Constance said softly. "Just a friend."

The professor wouldn't look at anyone. His hands stopped moving. He sniffed at the air. Constance said nothing more. Still shivering, she turned and walked out.

"Protection," the professor said, following into the length of the dark hall. "You think you need protection from me?"

"Please," I said. "I'm sorry Perfessor? Please," but I didn't know what I wanted and now my face was all wet and I chased after them with my hands over my ears and my voice like a little siren inside the bones of the house.

"No" Constance said. Behind the cashier's booth she took down her overcoat and I saw her turn at the edge of the light. "He's just a friend. We're going -- him and the boys and I -- we're having dinner."

"Perfessor," I said. "I'm suh. I'm suh." But he gave me a sharp push, and I sat down hard against the grey wall.

"Well get out then," he said. He followed her through a clothcovered arch and then out into the dripping yard. A maroon sedan was waiting for her there with its lights on. She went straight out, kicking up flecks of mud with her heels. The car opened itself and she climbed in. "Don't come back," the professor shouted. He stood hatless in the door and watched the headlights rake across the house and down onto the city road, and I sat against the wall and wept.

"You too," he said at last. "Your pappy's waiting. Go home. Get out of here." But by then I was safe inside the wall passage, running up through the house, and his voice came to me from far away. Scrabble and claw, feeling my way in the dark, I climbed to the Egypt Room, halting now and then hand to mouth holding back my breath so I could hear if anyone followed. Inside the Room braziers burned on untended, choking the air. I closed and bolted the door, turned out the lights by the switch. Black came down like a curtain from ceiling to floor. I took hold of the velvet rope, following it from post to post; gradually the ebon shapes of the displays rose up and took form around me. I knew them so well: here the low case with the phony bones inside, here the jade ornaments that were only painted celluloid, here on the stand a magnificent sunburst mask that the professor had made himself out of glue and newspaper and gold paint. I stood with my arms outstretched and my fingers spread and the hokum all around me. My face was all itchy where the tears were drying. It's not wrong to want something, I thought. It's not wrong to want something to be real.

Then I heard a soft sound in the dark, a soft mechanical sound like a whisper of steel, a soft whirring close, close at hand, rising from the invisible floor. It did not frighten me, but I knew that I had to see: and so I ran again and put on the lights and came back to stand nearly a yard away, looking down. The head of the Sleeping Sphinx was lying sideways in a puddle of shattered glass, its eyes wide open as in surprise. At its right was the painted case on which it had rested for so long, broken in three places so that I had a clear view of its mechanical guts. Inside, rusty wheels clattered and turned in perfect unison. A metal arm reached the end of its path, raised itself in a graceful arc, lowered again. The needle came down scraping against an empty spindle. The mouth of the Sphinx was open. It said:

...................ratch...

.......................ratch...

...........................ratch...

................................ratch...

.....................................ratch ...