When we left our story, Jancy Hall had enamored the Professor with an offer to split the profits made from Tonio's revenge on those she termed the "seven sinners." She had also provided the information on how both the villainous Major Raithburn and the enigmatic Commodore Whitehead planned to profit from her "gift of seeing."
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The wide hallway thronged with guests as the sounds of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" came from the music room. The guests filtered in, gathered around the seven Steinway pianos, and began singing the traditional Christmas hymn. As the Professor stood by the wings of the door, he saw Commodore Whitehead recede slowly behind the reeds of a large potted plant to smoke his cigar. Then, as he spotted the Professor, the Commodore gave a cold, lidless stare as if to take the other man's measure.
Leaning his head back and opening his mouth wide, the heavyset poseur made a simple gesture, one that he slowly stifled with his huge left hand. It was a yawn, but not an involuntary yawn. It was a yawn similar to that made by a hippopotamus when claiming a territory. With that status gesture accomplished, the Commodore made his way to the front door. His leaving before Jancy's performance came as a surprise to Chester, who asked the Professor for a meaning.
"Perhaps he is basking in his own predictability, leaving the guests to bat about his name for the rest of the evening. But more likely he wishes to distance himself from a proceeding of which he may not fully approve."
The Parisian clock in the corner struck the first of seven chimes, causing the Professor to begin to wend his way to the Christmas tree. He stopped short when he saw one of the servants approach Major Raithburn with the tray carrying the lone blue-stemmed glass. He left Chester with a warning: "The glass with the blue stem contains more than the champagne of a Black Pinot Noir grape. If I have surmised correctly, it is spiked with the juice from the poisonous glands of a sea urchin different from the paracentrous urchin being served as an appetizer. A few drops of this poison will be sufficient for instant death, making it appear that one Miss Jancy Hall's passing was caused by heart failure." The expression on Chester's face could not have been more startled had he just been told that he, himself, was about to die.
When the Professor reached the stairway, he found the black man, Stanford, placing a last-minute gift of an unwrapped powder keg under the massive Christmas tree. "I's fixin' things real good. You's follow me. Mistah Tonio, he be upstairs." Grabbing another keg, Stanford led the way, sloshing coal oil merrily along the way.
When the front door closed, word of the Commodore's departure spread throughout the mansion. Before Chester could reach Jancy's side to give her the Professor's warning about the blue-stemmed glass, she had already moved to take a look out the window. Her eyes fixed on the Commodore as he quickened his pace, cloaking himself in the misty edge of the night and then disappearing in the blink of an eye.
When Jancy turned around, it wasn't Chester standing beside her. It was Major Raithburn, literally breathing down her neck. He had summoned the guests for her performance. As the Major ushered her to the front, she became the center of scrutiny. The grandes dames imparted their doubts by letting their talk die to a whisper, their husbands by raising their eyebrows. Once the major released her, Jancy asked for a moment of silence.
The vaulted arches and elongated columns seemed to draw her eyes upward as if she were awaiting the descent of a fiery spirit. While her angelic face brought a shadow of calm over everyone else, the floral arrangement behind Jancy sparked a fiery image in Chester's mind. Nothing gave him a sharper feeling of loneliness than seeing her next to a poinsettia plant, especially a red one. It was a vision that always hugged the memories of his childhood. The mere glance of her and that flower made the past swirl around him. He could hear the morning bell awakening him at the orphanage. He could see himself in the basement with the other children, cutting colored papers into artificial flowers. The orphanage sold the flowers to raise money. The older children got to go out and sell the flowers. He and Jancy were stuck in the cold basement. He remembered feeling trapped like a prisoner. But at the same time he recalled Jancy's wonderful ability to escape from that dark, damp reality-like the day she surprised everyone by making a totally new flower, a red, tropical bloom called a poinsettia.
He remembered, too, how one of her dreams came true that night when, thanks to two caring nuns, Jancy's paper poinsettia turned into a real one. But that was all then. And this was all now, with no nuns around to replace fake things with real ones. There was no one but him to keep Jancy's dreams of love and adventure from galvanizing into realities of failure and disappointment. All he could do now was stare helplessly at her and the Major and a single blue-stemmed glass.
Upstairs, Stanford was pouring a trail of kerosene that led the Professor along the main corridor where portraits of the Major's periwigged ancestors gazed down as if to add their silent approval to their progeny's malice.
At the far end of the hall, Stanford and the Professor found Tonio opening the safe in the Major's office and extracting seven bags of gold nuggets marked Lucky Seven Mine Denver. Tonio split the gold in one of the bags between his two companions. Stanford was ecstatic with his share, and the Professor was more than happy with his handful, an amount that would easily bring several thousand dollars.
From the safe Tonio then pulled a photograph of seven men. The Professor studied the four-inch by seven-inch print and identified the men as Commodore Whitehead's inner circle, seven men who had turned extremely lucky with business holdings in states ranging from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
The Professor's mind flashed back to Jancy's mentioning "seven sinners who must fall." He waited for Tonio to speak, but the magician said nothing. He merely took a marker from the desk, reached over, and drew a black X over the image of Major Raithburn. With that, he kicked over a keg of flammable coal oil to join Stanford's trail on the heavily carpeted floor.
Downstairs there was a collective intake of breath around the room as Jancy slowly came out of her trance. While her face maintained its composure, a tumult beat in her veins. Her lungs began to heave, and the screw curls dangling on her forehead began spiraling up and down as if they were pumping a vision into her eyes. Reaching out, perhaps to pull a vision out of the air, she placed her hand on the grandfather's clock beside her and spoke. "The howitzer cannons will be quiet today."
That was not the message Major Raithburn had dictated. The Major stared at the young woman he thought was his puppet, but her eyes were half shut, her voice becoming husky with emotion, bringing moisture to her eyes. She steadied herself against the mantle, tightened her face. Suddenly her arms raised an imaginary rife. Then, just as suddenly, she lowered it. "There will be no bloodshed today." Double-crossed, the Major rushed toward Jancy, but before he could reach her, the guests swarmed around him, thanking him for bringing them the good news from the battlefield. Once he regained his composure, the Major offered a toast to celebrate the lack of bloodshed.
As a tray of glasses was set down on the serving table, upstairs the Professor was putting the photograph of the seven men inside the flap of his frock coat. While he and Stanford followed the trail of kerosene back down the stairs, behind them they could hear Tonio's baritone voice booming out:-In the name of my mother I light the match! At the clink of glasses, it became clear that the Major had given Jancy the blue-stemmed glass. Chester tried to signal her, but her China blue eyes were east of him, watching the fire race down the steps toward the Christmas tree and the keg of powder Stanford had placed there.
Chester moved closer to Jancy, trying to reach over to take the glass from her hand, but his attempt was prevented as she turned to proclaim another vision. I see an explosion! Chester reached for the glass again, but this time Jancy turned to a voice that cried out: "On what battlefield?" She answered. "On no battlefield. The explosion will be here. Now!"
Instead of the next course, there came a full-blown explosion throwing the upper-crust crowd into a flutter of screams and cries. Rage blasting across his face, Major Raithburn rushed to the stairwell. Bits of fire spread everywhere, with everyone screaming and rushing to escape. Richly braided and ruffled dresses competed with each other scrambling for the doors with their high-nosed men scrambling behind them. A smile of accomplishment lit up Jancy's face and then, as she was about to take a congratulatory sip from the blue-stemmed glass, the Professor stilled her hand.