His eyes drifted off, as if he were picturing a king clasping his shoulder and pressing the medal down into his palm.

“Do you know what the poet Yeats said when he accepted his medal?”

“No,” I answered, for the fiftieth time that night.

“He saw his engraving: a young man listening to a beautiful woman stroking a lyre. And he said, ‘I was good-looking once like that young man, but my unpractised verse was full of infirmity, my Muse old as it were; and now I am old and rheumatic, and nothing to look at, but my Muse is young.’

“Now,” he smiled, “to answer your question. In 1940, the Nazis invaded Denmark. Until that point, the Institute for Theoretical Physics had been a haven for German scientists fleeing the Nazis, including the Nobel Prize winners James Franck and Max von Laue. Suddenly, they had just hours to hide their medals before the Nazis stormed the institute. They had to hide the gold, or the Nazis would use it to fund their horrors. But where to hide it? The Hungarian chemist de Hevesy suggested burying the medals, but Neils Bohr argued that the Nazis would just dig them up. Then de Hevesy came up with a brilliant idea: he would quickly mix together some aqua regia. He dissolved the medals into a beaker-this beaker, actually-and placed it on his shelf among hundreds of identical beakers.

“The Nazis raided the laboratory and walked right by the beaker, God knows how many times, over the years. When the war was over, de Hevesy returned to Denmark and found the beaker untouched. He distilled the gold, and in 1952, the Nobel committee presented Professor Franck with a new medal.”

He paused and smiled at me kindly.

“That’s amazing,” I said. “How did you find the beaker?”

“I purchased it at an auction in Copenhagen. I had to have it. What a magic trick! Good dissolves itself, passes right through evil, and reforms on the other side. Flawless. Come. I don’t want you to be late.”

Late for what?

We walked through a door behind his desk, into a dimly lit room. All at once I smelled a clean, pungent, hollow smell. The first thing I noticed was the strange chandelier hanging above me, and in a moment of revulsion I realized that its twisting, interlocking shapes were bones, tied and fixed together. It swayed gently as fresher air breezed in from the study. Candles rose from the empty sockets, spilling wax over the bones and illuminating the room with a dull amber glow. The shadows flickered and revealed other shapes in the room: above me, cloaked angels made from skeletons were suspended from the ceiling, giving the impression of flight; bony wings butterflied out from their spines. The walls and ceiling were covered with hideous designs: lines and circles of leg bones, wrists, vertebrae. Then I saw the worst thing of all-a fireplace composed entirely of hundreds of skulls, stacked into a macabre mantel.

“It’s a reproduction,” he said from behind me. “The Capuchin Crypt, in Rome, under the church of Santa Maria della Concezione.”

“What is it?”

“An underground tomb, decorated with the remains of four thousand monks who died between 1500 and 1870. Five rooms, all filled with bones. And when you leave, they hit you with the kicker.”

He pointed to the far wall, where a sign was illuminated over a row of skulls. It read:

“Anytime I start taking life for granted, I come sit in here for a while.”

“Oh,” I mumbled. I wondered how any sane person could sit in here without being chained down.

“Come,” he said.

He placed his hand on my back and led me into a long hallway. On both walls, I saw tall glass cases filled with knives, rifles, swords, spears, clubs, maces, crossbows, tomahawks, battle-axes-all mounted to the wall and illuminated with bright lights.

“What’s the story here?” I asked.

“No story,” he said pleasantly. “I just like weapons.”

We came to the end of the hallway. He turned to me, and there was a black cloth in his hands.

“I need to ask your permission to blindfold you.”

“Really?” All of a sudden, Miles’s goat seemed a few steps closer to being a frightening possibility. “Are you serious?”

He half-shrugged.

“I’m afraid so, if you’d like to go further.”

Something told me he wasn’t kidding.

Well, I thought, I’ve come this far.

I nodded.

He moved behind me, and the world went black.

I was suddenly aware of my other senses. I heard the dragging of a heavy door and felt a draft of air.

“One or two steps more,” he said quietly.

There was a jolt, and we were moving briskly down in what felt like a prehistoric elevator, the kind with accordion doors. I had no idea how quickly we were going, but the temperature was dropping fast.

When the door opened, cold, wet air hit my face. He led me forward. The ground suddenly felt rough and uneven.

“Stay to your left,” he said. “In fact, keep one hand on the wall if you don’t mind.” He walked directly behind me and kept a hand on my shoulder.

We walked in silence. The air smelled clean and crisp, like limestone and salt. I couldn’t tell if we were in a small tunnel or a large chamber, but somehow-I have no idea why-I believed that to my right was an abrupt drop.

My fingers ran over something slimy and warm.

Five hours ago, I was in the library briefing cases like a good law student. Now I was blindfolded underground with a man who collects acid.

As if he sensed my thoughts, the man-call him Mr. Bones-whispered, “Please, just humor me a little longer. You have nothing to fear.”

“You don’t hear that all the time,” I whispered. I was starting to feel a little crazy in the dark.

“I’m sorry?”

“ ‘You have nothing to fear.’ You don’t hear that much. The guy at Starbucks doesn’t say ‘You have nothing to fear.’ Someone says that, it’s usually a bad sign.”

He slapped me on the back like we were old college buddies.

“There’s that sense of humor I heard about. Relax. I wouldn’t bring you here if you didn’t deserve it.”

Deserve what, exactly-the Ivy League version of Deliverance?

We finally came to a stop. I realized they did their job well. If I happened to be the unlucky reject who didn’t make the cut, I’d have no idea how to get back here-whatever here was.

I heard a heavy grinding sound, and then a door opening.

My blindfold was yanked away and my eyes were overwhelmed by a blast of golden light. It was too bright, too fast. I couldn’t see a thing. Rough hands shoved me forward. I reached out, trying to keep my balance. That’s when I heard the door behind me slam shut and lock.

The world came into focus and I found myself in a ballroom, lined on all sides with elegant mirrored walls that made the room seem infinite. Golden chandeliers flooded the room with a warm radiance. I heard music.

The room was filled with men in tuxedos and women in black dresses. I was in a far corner, away from the crowd. I scanned the hall and didn’t see Nigel, Daphne, or John anywhere. In fact, I didn’t see a single person I recognized. I turned around and there was no door behind me, only a tall panel between two long mirrors. I pressed on it, and of course it didn’t budge.

Did I mention I hate parties? Luckily, I had a flash of a memory, something from middle school that gave me hope. I’d taken my friend Vivek to my church’s end-of-summer roller skating party. Vivek was the only Indian kid in our town. His house had statues of human elephants and four-armed women who appeared regularly in my dreams. About halfway through the party, the youth pastor asked us to sit at the far end of the rink. He skated up. “Is everyone having a good time?” he asked. We all said yes. “Let me ask you a question,” he said. “Does everyone here know for sure that they’re going to Heaven?” Again, we all nodded. But the pastor looked puzzled. “Well, my question for you is, how do you know? Let’s try something else,” he said. “Raise your hand if you’ve accepted Jesus Christ into your heart.”