"An addition to your collection,
from an anonymous donor.
Figure this out."

He carefully removed the note, and turned it over. The writer had evidently cut the notepaper out of a xeroxed page. The back read:

"Pluto's only moon.
Phobos, B. Deimos, C. Io, D. Titan,
tric orbit comets spend most of thei
lose to the sun, B. in the Oort clou
ance beyond Pluto, D. orbiting Jupit"

"Hmm," Tram unconsciously mumbled as he turned back the front side of the scrap. "It would help if we could find who wrote this note," he said. "Notice how the letters bend backwards. That may show that he has something to hide. Or his psychology is such that he conceals his true face from others."

"Dishonest, you mean?"

"Well, more... perhaps, secretive. Have you opened the trunk yet?"

"No, I left that for you. It's a rusty old lock."

"Ah, but there's a tiny scratch on the rust underneath the catch. Our friend or someone must have examined the contents. The trunk is tightly sealed. Almost as if it was intentionally constructed air- tight, with an underlip. I can't even slip my penknife between the top and bottom."

Tram went for a toolbox. With hammer and screwdriver he was soon able to send the latch flying backward across the top. He opened the trunk slowly, as if aware that a peculiar drama was about to unfold.

The trunk was open merely half an inch, when the odor of formaldehyde was mildly evident. The gruesome interior revealed the horrific implications of its contents, mesmerizing them both. Dressed in a black velvet dress with white lace trim was a female mummy, her white kinky hair flowing across the front of her dress. There was a wound to the neck in the location of the carotid artery. The gash was about an inch wide running vertically, entering near the location of the voice box. She clutched a portable oil lamp tightly in her left hand.

Her dressmaker had embroidered in white over her heart a three-inch high insignia of a pyramid. It was like the signet on the back of a dollar bill. Above the stone structure hovered an inverted gloved hand.

"She has a peaceful look, in spite of the evidence of violence," Tram noted.

"It's almost like she's dreaming. Do you think she died in the eighteen hundreds, or was she made up to look that way?"

Tram reached down to touch the dress. The spot he touched crumbled into small ash-like pieces. "There's your answer," he said.

"God! This is a piece for the museum: mummies and pyramids. Why the trunk; and who, in heaven's name, formaldehyded her?"

Tram froze and considered the alternatives. 'Possible connection to a mortician,' he thought, 'in which case such perfect preservation is not possible.' "Her assailant left her in the desert," he told me, "or some place very dry--over a hundred years ago."

"I sense the story doesn't end with her," I commented. "Think we should call Zina in on this one?"

'Zina' was short for Hurzina Shallot-Beamer, a precocious seventeen year old college girl, who was studying for her degree at the local university. Her particular gift was a 'sixth sense' some would call 'psychic'. Brashly intelligent, she was due to graduate in one more year. Though psychic help in criminal investigations had been quite successful in the Soviet republics, it was not widely accepted in America. This fact did not dissuade Tramlyn from using it. "A detective should have both a right and left brain," he suggested.

Tram was Zina's instructor in criminal science at Montana State University. He met her 'gift' during an examination. This consisted of analysis of the clues to a difficult murder case, for which the evidence was circumstantial. She was the only one in the class who came to the correct conclusion, requiring the intuition of concealed evidence.

Tram recalls her taking off her glasses when the problem was presented. Sweeping her straight blonde hair behind her back, she closed her eyes. Two minutes passed. She wrote down her solution.

Her ability impressed Tram deeply. He thought he would fool all of his students. Because of her special ability, he later called her in on several bona-fide cases to illuminate crucial points in the investigation.

"We have something to clear up before we include Zina," Tram said. "What does the back of the note tell you?"

"Oh, you mean that stuff about Pluto and comets? Seems like some kind of examination... Astronomy or something like it."

"Exactly." Tram pulled one of his hand-rolled blockbuster

cigarettes from an initialed platinum case, and gingerly placed it between his lips without lighting it... he hadn't lit one in four years. He gently closed the lid of the trunk. "There is some connection between our 'informer' and an Astronomy teacher or department."

"Do you think he chose to cut out those words carefully?"

"Now you're really thinking, as the master detective Poirot would say: 'using your little grey cells'. Perhaps they do have significance in the case. An intelligent person might look up the name of

Pluto's only moon': an intentional clue?" The noise of an arriving vehicle interrupted his musings. The rain stopped as suddenly as it started, and in flew the familiar tall thin form of Zina.

"I'm concerned about you, Tram." she blurted out, her hair in tangles, "Are you in danger?"

"Not that I know of. It's peculiar that you showed up now, just when we need you."

"It's nice to be needed, but I'm really worried..."

"What about?" I asked.

"I'm not sure, but my roommate mumbled strange somethings in her sleep."

"Well?"

"'Museum... lights... wheels... murder... a hand.' When I heard this, I concentrated and saw a whole group of people seated around a box. In the box I saw Tram's face... What did you need me for?"

"Is this like the box you saw?" Tram gestured nervously in the direction of the trunk, with a hint of trepidation.

"Not exactly, but close enough. What's in it?"

"It will speak for itself... but brace yourself, it's quite gruesome." Tram opened the lid with the same theatrical flare he had used on Recker.

Zina winced and swooned.

With physical support from Tram, she recovered and countered: "I know what you're going to ask."

"As usual," Tram noted.

"The place," she said.

"Actually two places would be better."

"I see where the trunk came from."

"What about where the lady died?"

"No such luck."

"The place I see is a beautiful beach--the jewel, I think it's

called."

"USA?"

"Yes."

"West or east coast?"

"Obviously west."

"Let's check it out," Tram offered. "I have an atlas in my office."

We retired to Tram's oak-paneled cubicle. There were four FBI photos pinned to the wall.

Curiosity welling up, I asked, "Who are those?"

Tramlyn quickly ripped them off the wall and turned them over.

"This is strictly confidential." He looked a little embarrassed. "Now, for the atlas."

They searched for a place named 'the jewel', but no beach town had that name, at least in English. Finally, I recognized a Spanish version. "'La Jolla'--that means 'the jewel'," I said. "I learned that in high school Spanish."

"Excellent!" The discovery pleased Tram, and he showed it by grinning widely on the side of his mouth opposite the cigarette. "Isn't there a campus of the University of California near there?"

"In the same town," Zina offered.

"And I'll bet they have an astronomy department. We could swing some of our grant and fly down, since this box will surely become part of the museum. We need to know its history." Tram had learned to trust Zina's ability with locations implicity.

"Could I go too?" Zina asked.

"You would have to let your mother know." Her mother, who lived in Great Falls, would have to approve. Tram met Althea earlier, when he invited Zina on her first case. He travelled 200 miles to visit her the first time. Though she had concerns for her daughter's safety, Tram convinced her with his masculine charm. He was attracted to Zina's mother, a fact he recalled with a pleasant warmth.

The need for an additional fact pulled Tram loose from his reverie. "Zina, do you know the name of Pluto's only moon?"

"It's Charon. It's very small and close to the planet," she offered.

"This note may be telling us there is a Sharon, someone, or something similar connected with the case." He pointed to the rain-soaked clipping.

"I hope she's single and attractive," I joked, affectionately flipping Tramlyn's unlit cigarrette with my index finger.

I arranged the plane trip for the next morning. Disembarking the plane in San Diego, Zina sensed danger: "Tram!" she screamed. She grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him to one side of the entrance to the waiting room. A bullet whizzed by into the thin wall behind him.

"Do you see the culprit?" Tram asked. Both of them said they hadn't. "Then we will have to retrieve the bullet." He pulled out his Tibetan penknife (with a carved ivory skull handle) and ferreted the missile out of the wall.

"45 Caliber!" he exclaimed. "They wanted to blow a big hole in me! I'd say from the impact that they fired from a distance of about 50 feet. That would have to make it come from over here." The waiting room was narrow and had a large aisle in front of the seat. They had seen no one run, and the waiting room was empty when they led the stream of disembarking passengers. There was no one to give them information. Tram stood in the area from which the bullet was fired and looked around.

He looked up, and in an indentation in the ceiling he discovered the cause of his scrape with death. He climbed on a seat to examine the ambush device.

"A remote video camera, replacing airport surveillance, a mechanism, and... a 45 hidden in this black box above it."

"Isn't there a way we could trace the video signal?" I asked.

"'Fraid not," Tram replied. "What's your impression, Zina?"

"I see the same group of people who were looking at your face in the box... in the dream."

"Can you identify them?" Zina was in a mild trance.

"No, but they were chanting."

"Can you make out the words?"

"No, it's a foreign language."

Tram carefully collected a stamped-out cigarette from below the ambush machine. With some delicacy, he placed it in one of the many-sized plastic bags he had attached to the vest inside his tweed coat. This habit of storing clues like a pack rat often led to amusing comments by those accompanying his investigations. "Moroccan Turfay," he said. "Haven't seen one of these since my first job with the New York Police department in the 60's."

"How do you know the ambusher left it?" I asked.

"A bit of a Morrocan ashy smell on the camera." Tram prided himself on his accute sense of smell. This was a faculty he had developed in his observation of the movements of organized crime in the metropolis. He could tell where Mafia figures had been by traces of odor in their clothing.

"Quickly, let us get on to the University. We have no time to waste. Lives may be at stake."

The cab driver tried to dispatch them rapidly to the University of California Astrophysics department. However, he was mistaken as to its location. 20 minutes later he dropped them at the library, an unlikely building that looked like an upside-down pyramid. They got directions from a student, and in five minutes they were in the department head's office.

Tram introduced himself to Madame Ruggieri, a stocky Italian woman. She made her place in the world of Astronomy by detailed studies of gravitational lenses. She talked slowly for a woman of intellect, but her statements were precise.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

"This slip of paper," Tramlyn queried, "do you know where it might have originated?"

"Perhaps you could ask the graduate instructors," she said, perusing the astronomical cutout.

"Could you introduce me? Time is short. Lives are at stake."

At this statement, Madame Ruggieri surprised them all by darting out the door, shouting at the top of her voice:

"Emergency meeting! All grad instructors come to my office immediately." There was urgency in her voice.

In about 30 seconds, four men and one woman had gathered. Tram showed them the note.

One particularly thin, tall, student with long, straight, dark hair peered across his glasses and said, "Hmm. I think I've seen that before."

"Where?" Tram curtly urged.

"Yes. Could it be... where's James, James Wilson? This could be part of one of the exams he's given. I recall looking it over for him. I'm just not sure..."

"Sharon, do you know something about this?" M. Ruggieri asked.

"Sharon?" Tramlyn interrupted. "A homonym for Pluto's only moon.

We must be on the right track!"

"James is my fiance, but I haven't seen any exams like this," the female grad student replied.

"This is an urgent matter: life and death." Sharon stiffened, but Tramlyn continued. "Do you know where he lives? I am a private detective."

"Yes. Rumford court."

"Could you take us there immediately?"

"My car is hard to start. What about yours, Robert?"

"Fine."

Robert Pelley drove them to the Rumford Court address. The door of the second flight apartment was ajar. From the marks on the jam, it had been shimmied.

Tram told the others to stand back while he and Recker entered cautiously, pistols in hand. A gold toy terrier was whining and sniffing at a small pool of blood on the living room floor.

"We're too late," Tram said.

"Oh, my God, my God!" Sharon Stiver was sobbing on Robert Pelley's shoulder.

"I know this is difficult, but we must try to save James," Tram

urged.

"Do you think he's still alive?" Robert asked, looking into the

fresh-lit hope in Sharon's eyes.

"Yes, it's possible. The pool of blood is rather small, and if this is the work of some devilish cult, we may save his life yet."

"Oh God! I thought that devil worship was all some sort of myth."

"The word I used was 'devilish'. I don't believe we are dealing with something involving the devil as we understand it. I need some information. Was James involved with any unusual people, suspicious arabs or Egyptians?"

"He was quite friendly with an Egyptian archaeology professor. Stamir, think his name was. I don't know his last name."

"Do you know anything about their relationship?"

"I've never met Stamir, but James told me he was working in the digs in the area of the Sphinx. And... wait a minute! His wife belly dances in a middle eastern restaurant in Hillcrest."

"I think it's time for me to catch a show. It's too bad we won't have time for dinner." Tram remarked.

Sharon expressed great anxiety on the way to the restaurant. "Could you drive a little faster, Robert?" Robert was the studious, careful type, and a bit nearsighted in spite of his glasses.

Robert's had very little parking skill, but they managed to get within two blocks of the place. Leading and walking rapidly, Tram took command, and soon the restaurant marquis was in view. "Stay here," he said, "it might be safer to allow them to identify only one of us."

They waited for a full twenty minutes on the sidewalk before Tram returned. He was nervously twiddling an unlit cigarette in his lips as he spoke: "The lady wasn't much help," he said. "I told her I was a professor friend of her husband's flown in from Harvard, and was wondering where I could find him. She told me she didn't know, but he mentioned an ocean fishing trip that morning. I didn't believe her, of course. She was nervous about it, as if she didn't want to reveal his actual whereabouts. I did, however, manage to rifle her purse on a table outside her dressing room. I found this card."

"That's the Oak Tree Inn near Julian," Joan said, examining the card, "but even if Stamir were there, we don't know his last name to locate him."

"We win again," Tram said. "Her name is Starina Alzad. I presume his last name is the same."

"How far is Julian?" Recker asked.

"About 45 minutes," Sharon replied.

The owners had decorated the lobby of the Oak Tree Inn with dozens of statues of cats. Cats purring, cleaning themselves, eating. House cats Persian cats, Siamese cats, black cats. Tram approached the desk clerk.

"Where can we find Stamir Alzad?" he asked.

The desk clerk looked puzzled, turned his head in the direction of a row of cabins, and said "just a moment." He seemed concerned, and slipped behind a blue velvet curtain to talk with the manager. In a few moments he returned, and motioned to Tram. "Come with me, you alone," he said. "He said I shouldn't disturb him, but perhaps one of you could see him. The rest of you stay here in the lobby."

Regrettably, though protesting, we obeyed the request. Tram gave me an eye and then glanced at Zina, as if to say 'get Zina to help, if there's any trouble.'

The group: Sharon, Recker (myself), Zina, and Robert sat down at a table in the adjoining dining area. Robert immediately picked a cigarette but out of the ash tray. "Turfay!" he said cooly.

"Zina," I said, "please tell me what you can, but keep it down, we don't want them to catch on."

Zina found the trance state with difficulty. Three times she gazed upward but couldn't find a way lock in. Finally, I gave her a pink piece of salt water taffy. "Sometimes sugar helps her concentrate," I said. Sharon and Robert were mystified by the scene unfolding before them.

With the aid of the sweet, Zina found the groove, and blurted,

"Tram is in big danger this time. They have him captive!"

I had a plan. "I'm going into the bathroom and see if I can get out the window. The rest of you wait here. Zina, what cabin has Tram been taken to?"

Her eyes rolled back several times. A few moments of harder concentration brought the key, "...cabin 7".

I found that the bathroom window was small and quite high. I had ïÉto stand on the sink, and squeeze through a tight opening, a manuever which caused me a lot of back pain. Falling out of the window, I winced as I hit the ground. I soon found himself outside of cabin 7, at a substantial distance from the office, well hidden in the woods. I knew it would only be a few minutes before I would be missed inside. My heart beat like a jackrabbit as I pulled my 38, and listened the conversation inside the cabin. My spine was pulsing pain.

"Tramlyn Glower," a gruff voice said, "what a suprise catch! I know your work well. It is a pity that you have fallen into my hands.

I, the grand priest of the temple of Nut welcome you to the ceremony of immortality." His tone was nauseatingly mocking. "Gaze upon these wheels and become Osiris as we bring in the night."

Near the window, I was tempted to view the scene. Fortunately, as I raised my eyes above the level of the sash, the group and leader were turned in the opposite direction. I saw the hideous wheels.

"Nut, Nut, Nut," they chanted, following it with a rhythmic dirge in low tones, and employing a dialect quite unlike modern Arabic. Three wheels, one large and two small were slowly spinning like wheels of fortune. There were colorful paintings of different ancient weapons and means of murder on the large wheel. One of the small wheels had a sun and a moon on opposite sides. The other had a spinning eye located at its center.

I lowered my eye as the leader turned to face the group.

He spoke ponderously, "the wheel has shown us the means of returning Glower to immortality. It is to be smothering."

Sounds of a struggle came from inside. I had to act quickly. Though I was strong, exertion was almost always painful. Now, I must face more pain than I could recall.

With the fiercest yell I could muster (learned from the Viet Cong in the Viet Nam War), I kicked the door open. This startled Stamir, who held a pillow over Tram's head. The Arab dropped the pillow, and I could throw Tramlyn his gun, which was sitting on a table in the back of the room. We had the drop on the Egyptian hooligans.

"Where is James Wilson?" Tram demanded of Stamir, their leader.

No answer, just a sardonic smile, echoed on the faces of the seven.

"I'll examine the back room, if you hold them," he told me.

The murderous clan had bolted the door to the room in the rear of the cabin and padlocked it with a heavy combination lock. Tram placed his ear to it, and in a matter of seconds, it gave way. He entered the room. It had a long table displaying weapons: spears, knives, whips, hammers, and torturing devices.

At the end of the table was a trunk, almost the same as the one sent to him in Montana. Prying it open with an available screwdriver, Tram saw a thin young man with dark, straight hair and a trim beard. He wore a black robe with the infamous pyramid insignia. His eyes were open, rolled back as if gazing at the center of his forehead. 'He looks dead,' Tramlyn thought, 'and yet, perhaps... '

A ruckus broke out in the other room. The others from the hotel office had come out to check my absence. They covered me with a shotgun. The rest of the troupe--Zina, Sharon, and Robert--were with them.

Tramlyn had the advantage of being out of view of the new intruders.

"Watch out! He's in the back room," one of the seven yelled.

Tram was too quick for them to react. He came from behind the ïÉdoorway and fired his gun at the hand of the man with the shotgun. He screamed, and dropped the weapon. Tram, Recker, and Robert soon had the three available guns trained on the mob.

"Is James all right?" Sharon asked.

Tram replied: "he is in the other room, but is in an odd trance. His breathing and heart have stopped, but I have the sense he is still alive. Some yogis can stop their vital signs and live. What do you think, Zina?"

"True," she said with certainty. "Maybe they know how to wake him up."

Tram pushed the leader against the wall with the but of his pistol. "Do you know how to pull him out?" he asked.

"The gods have taken him," he responded.

"Just like they will take you, if you don't answer me." Tramlyn fired a volley that missed his right kidney by inches. "Next time I won't miss. If you value your ability to urinate, you will tell me, now!"

"Take me to him," he said.

Stamir walked with Tram and Sharon to the makeshift coffin. The Egyptian closed James' eyes with his fingertips, and began a long invocation. He explained it would recall James from his temporary stay in the realm of the 'immortals'. Tramlyn could see long cuts across the boy's chest from the position in which he stood. Stamir explained that the cuts were to allow his male and female soul to escape the body.

The chanting was soon complete. James opened his eyes groggily, as if he had risen from the dead.

"Who am I?" he said slowly in zombylike tones.

"James!" Sharon exclaimed. "James Wilson."

He seemed to respond to his fiance's voice, shook off his sleep of death with a writhing motion, and started to talk in an animated fashion.

"Tramlyn Glower! How much I have read about your exploits."

"Easy, James," Sharon suggested.

"I'm all right now."

"Do you feel comfortable enough to tell us your story?"

"Perhaps something to drink." Sharon got him a glass of water.

He took his time to assimilate the liquid, then began.

"I discovered that Stamir was up to strange goings on, when I happened upon a strange altar at his home. The pyramid and the hand were on display. I became curious about the meaning of the symbols, but he told me only: 'it is my religion.'

"One night when he claimed to be busy, I followed him to this cabin. I found a group of Arabs chanting, but they intended no murder, as far as I could tell. When he and the group left, I entered this room and stole the trunk I sent to you. The body was obviously quite old, so I didn't see any urgency in sending it to you. I never guessed that the same kind of murder was still going on. I thought the corpse was some object of admiration, a former member of the cult who met her end by having her throat slit. I wanted to test your abilities, send you the trunk, and not reveal my own identity. Perhaps, it would have been better if I did.

"Stamir found I had stolen the trunk, and he talked to the hotel desk clerk, who had seen me leave. He went to my apartment. There he saw some of the rubbings from the wood of the 'casket' in the back seat of my car. He bound me and took me to this cabin. They were

planning to have dogs eat my heart out, so they put me in a trance, until it was arranged. Before I went under, I heard them plotting to kill you by remote in the airport. Thank God you lived through that. And here I am, thanks to you, still alive!"

We called the county sheriffs to the scene, and eventually they found cult records in Stamir's home. The clan had murdered 17 persons throughout the west over a period of about 150 years. At death, they shipped the bodies to the Arizona desert, embalming them Egyptian- style. The cult was practicing a kind of 'voyeuristic' glimpse into immortality. This was provided by innocent victims. The gloved hand above the pyramid symbolized the hidden hand of the gods taking control of the soul, whisking it to its afterlife. The cult members believed themselves to be incarnated gods.

Thus, they murdered the woman in the trunk, and dressed and mummified her remains. The record said she was a schoolteacher, a Brenda Solomon. She left no survivors, and was the victim of the leader of 'The Order of the Hand' nearly a century ago.

The oil lamp, placed in the trunk with the victim, represented the spiritual nature of her trip into the world beyond death. She had come into contact with the cult leader, Marnad Sargay, a parent of a girl in her schoolroom in St. George, Utah. Sargay's diary said that from the moment he met her, he recognized her potential for exploring the nether regions. She was soft-spoken and walked with an aerial glide. Brenda was a beautiful, unmarried woman, but Sargay apparently did not have sex with his death slaves. No record of such things was found.

Sargay plotted for several months, constructing a plan for her

abduction. He kept his daughter out of school because of 'ill health', and privately asked the teacher for special tutoring for her. When Brenda arrived at his home, Sargay drugged her tea. He dressed her in the black dress, embroidered with the pyramid and the hand.

The wheels and the ritual of the Order determined that Brenda was to die from exposure to the elements. She was taken to a desert valley at some distance from Saint George, Utah. This was the same valley where John Wayne much later acted in the infamous celluloid, "The Conqueror." (The film was infamous because many crew members died of cancer caused by nuclear testing in nearby Nevada. As Zina would say, records of death tend to magnetize one another.)

Chained to a dried tree trunk, and terrorized by a shallow gash in her neck, just missing her carotid artery, Brenda's soul would be free to wander in 'regions of power', as Sargay called them. He left her to the mercy of the devil sun, with no water or food. Sargay, along with his wife, also a member of the Order, spelled each other, warding off predator animals with a slingshot. They watched her shrivel in the glaring heat.

At the time of her demise, they two cultists went into meditation. Sargay recorded that he never had an experience like that. He described following her soul into the realms of the netherworld. Committing four previous vicarious murders, Brenda was his final misadventure. He died of a rare disease, suffocating in his own blood.

Describing Brenda's death experience in his diary, Sargay commented, "we came the place of great light, radiating from an intensely glowing ovoid. I followed Brenda into this 'egg' of light, where her soul took on the characteristics of an innocent child."

"The child traveled to the grand canyon, flying from its rim to an island pinnacle isolated by vast spaces from the edge of the canyon. The pinnacle had a pyramid-like hillock on its tip. We entered into its heart. There we met with a being of great mastery who sealed the child in a pink sheath of light, with a ray shooting from his wizened brow. The sage was thin, with a long flowing white beard. His beard seemed to merge with the earthen floor, composed as if of crushed quartz crystal." "The master sensed my presence, and quickly his gaze parted me from the girl and his kingdom. I fell in my soul to the bottom of the canyon. There I wandered among ghosts of Indians and horses. A terrifying monster I can only describe as a 50 foot lizard with a zig-zag spine, took bites out of my soul energy field, frightening me back into my body."

The authorities seized the mummy (Brenda's body) from the Western Museum of Crime. After official investigations lasting more than three years, they returned it to Tramlyn for exhibit, a 'modern' mummy of the West. They rounded up the members of the Order of the Hand as accessories to the crimes. However, their ringleader, Stamir's overlord, evaded capture. He hides his true identity by continual disguise, seeking to form new chapters of the vicious 'order' under an assumed name.