He gestured urgently at the black archway.
Little Jane Carter took Ironsmith's hand again, and the smiling clerk strolled with her into the darkness of the old tower.
White stood aside, waiting for Forester to follow.
Glancing up at him, Forester felt a tremor of awe.
A queer philosopher, he thought, and a very singular soldier.
Uneasily aware that he had come too far to turn back now, Forester reluctantly entered.
The chill wind came after him, and he thought the trap was closing.
But the bait still fascinated him, that solemn-eyed child holding Ironsmith's hand.
The tower room was round and vaulted, dimly lit from narrow slits of windows.
The damp stone walls, black with ancient smoke, were scarred with the names of earlier vandals.
Blinking against the gloom, Forester saw three men, squatting around a small open fire on the stone floor.
One was stirring a battered pot, which reeked of garlic.
Ironsmith sniffed appreciatively, and the three made room for him and the child to sit on driftwood blocks by the fire.
She leaned to warm her hands and Ironsmith smiled genially at the three, but Forester paused in the doorway, incredulous, as White presented the bold little band.
For he could see no weapons; the three were only ragged vagabonds, in need of soap and barbering.
The gaunt man stirring the pot was named Graystone.
He rose stiffly, a gaunt and awkward scarecrow in rusty black.
His angular face was stubbled and cadaverous, with dark sunken eyes and a very red nose.
"Graystone the Great." Bowing with a solemn dignity, he amplified White's introduction.
"Formerly a noted stage magician and professional telepath.
My act was quite successful until the machine-minded populace lost its interest in the rare treasures of the mind.
We welcome your interest in our noble cause."
Lucky Ford was a small man, bald as Forester, crouching close to the fire.
His dark cheeks were seamed and wizened, and darker pouches sagged under his narrow shrewd eyes.
Squinting up at Forester, he nodded silently.
"Ford," White explained, "was a professional gambler."
Forester stood watching, fascinated.
Absently, still peering up, the little man was rolling dice against a stick of drying driftwood.
Somehow, the dice always came sevens.
He met Forester's astonishment with a thin-lipped grin.
"Telekinesis."
His voice had a hard nasal twang. "Mr. White taught me the word, just now, but I could always roll the bones."
Dancing away from the driftwood, the dice made another seven.
"The art is less profitable than you might think," he added cynically.
"Because every gambler has a little of the skill - and calls it luck.
When you win, the suckers always think you cheated, and the law ain't friendly.
Mr. White got me out of a county jail."
Ash Overstreet was a short heavy man, sitting on a rock in stolid immobility.
He looked sallow and unhealthy.
His thick hair was prematurely white, and massive lenses magnified his dull, myopic eyes.
"A clairvoyant," White said.
"Extratemporal."
"We used to call it just a nose for news, when I was a reporter."
Scarcely moving, Overstreet spoke in a hoarse whisper. "But I had a sharper perception than most. I got to seeing so much, before I learned control, that I had to dull my insight with drugs. Mr. White found me locked up in a narcotics ward."
Forester shook his head uneasily.
All such phenomena of the mind belonged to a disreputable borderland of science, where the truth had always been obscured by ignorant superstition and by the trickery of such cheap mountebanks as this Graystone.
He wanted to stalk out scornfully, but something made him look around for the little girl in yellow. She was gone.
He blinked at the fire, shivering uncomfortably.
The hungry-looking child had been here, he was certain, just a moment before, chattering to Ironsmith, but now her place was empty.
Ironsmith was watching the doorway, with a calm, bright interest, and Forester turned that way in time to see her come running in again.