"Hi, Father."

"Were you sleeping? I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"Chris, where's this Doctor...." Karras ran a finger down the records. "Doctor Klein?"

"In Rosslyn."

"In the medical building?"

"Yes."

"Please call him and tell him Doctor Karras will be by and that I'd like to take a look at Regan's EEG. Tell him Doctor Karras, Chris. Have you got that?"

"Got It."

"I'll talk to you later."

When he'd hung up the phone, Karras snapped off his collar and got out of his clerical robe and black trousers, changing quickly into khaki pants and a sweatshirt. Over these he wore his priest's black raincoat, buttoning it up to the collar. He looked in a mirror and frowned. Priests and policemen, he thought, as he quickly unbuttoned the raincoat: their clothing had identifying smells one couldn't hide. Karras slipped off his shoes and got into the only pair he owned that were not black, his scuffed white tennis shoes.

In Chris's car, he drove quickly toward Rosslyn. As he waited on M Street for the light to cross the bridge, he glanced right through the window and saw something disturbing: Karl getting out of a black sedan on Thirty-fifth Street in front of the Dixie Liquor Store. The driver of the car was Lieutenant Kinderman.

The light changed. Karras gunned the car and shot forward, turning onto the bridge, then looked back through the mirror. Had they seen him? He didn't think so. But what were they doing together? Pure chance? Had it something to do with Regan? with Regan and...?

Forget it! One thing at a time!

He parked at the medical building and went upstairs to Dr. Klein's suite of offices. The doctor was busy, but a nurse handed Karras the EEG and very soon he was standing in a cubicle, studying it, the long narrow band of paper slipping slowly through his fingers.

Klein hurried in, his glance brushing in puzzlement over Karras' dress. "Doctor Karras?"

"Yes. How do you do?" They

shook hands.

"I'm Klein. How's the girl?"

"Progressing."

"Glad to hear it." Karras looked back to the graph and Klein scanned it with him, tracing his finger over patterns of waves. "There, you see? It's very regular. No fluctuations whatsoever."

"Yes, I see." Karras. frowned. "Very curious."

"Curious?"

"Presuming that we're dealing with hysteria."

"Don't get it."

"I suppose it isn't very well known," murmured Karras, pulling paper through his hands in a steady flow, "but a Belgian--- Iteka--- discovered that hysterics seemed to cause some rather odd fluctuations in the graph, a very minuscule but always identical pattern. I've been looking for it here and I don't find it."

Klein grunted noncommittally. "How about that."

Karras glanced at him. "She was certainly disordered when you ran this graph; is that right?"

"Yes, she was. Yes, I'd say so. She was."

"Well, then, isn't it curious that she tested so perfectly? Even subjects in a normal state of mind can influence their brain waves at least within the normal range, and Regan was disturbed at the time. It would seem there would be some fluctuations. If---"

"Doctor, Mrs. Simmons is getting impatient," a nurse interrupted, cracking open the door.

"Yes, I'm coming," sighed Klein. As the nurse hurried off, he took a step toward the hallway then turned with his hand on the door edge. "Speaking of hysteria," he commented dryly.

"Sorry. Got to run."

He closed the door behind him. Karras heard his footsteps heading down the hall; heard the opening of a door; heard, "Well, now, how are we feeling today, Mrs...."

Closing of the door. Karras went back to his study of the graph, finished, then folded it up and banded it. He returned it to the nurse in Reception. Something. It was something he could use with the Bishop as an argument that Regan was not a hysteric and therefore conceivably was possessed. And yet the EEG had posed still another mystery: why no fluctuations? why none at all?

**********

He drove back toward Chris's house, but at a stop sign at the corner of Prospect and Thirtyfifth he froze behind the wheel: parked between Karras and the Jesuit residence hall was Kinderman.

He was sitting alone behind the wheel with his elbow out the window, looking straight ahead.

Karras took a right before Kinderman could see him in Chris's Jaguar. Quickly he found a space, parked and locked the car. Then he walked around the corner as if heading for the residence hall. Is he watching the house? he worried. The specter of Dennings rose up again to haunt him. Was it possible that Kinderman thought Regan had...?

Easy. Slow down. Take it easy.

He walked up beside the car and leaned his head through the window on the passenger side.

"Hello, Lieutenant."

The detective turned quickly and looked surprised. Then beamed. "Father Karras."

Off key, thought Karras. He noticed that his hands were feeling dampish and cold. Play it light!Don't let him know that you're worried! Play it light! "Don't you know you'll get a ticket?

Weekdays, no parking between four and six."

"Never mind that,'" wheezed Kinderman. "Im talking to a priest. Every cop in this neighborhood is Catholic or passing."

"How've you been?"

"Speaking plainly, Father Karras, only so-so. Yourself?"

"Can't complain. Did you ever solve that case?"

"Which case?"