Just after midnight, as I got into the last verse of the last song of my set, I saw Monique enter the bar, turnin' the heads of the male clientele as she made her way to a table up front.

I thanked the audience for listening, and as the house music came on, I got down from the stage and pulled up a chair next to Monique. I kissed her on the cheek and told her how good it was to see her again. We quickly moved into a discussion about the stranger in town.

"He was a tall man, " she said. "About six foot three, with a mustache and a goatee." "It might have been a coincidence," she said, pausing to swallow as if her throat had suddenly gone dry, "but I felt a chill down my spine the moment he walked into the hotel."

"He was dressed completely in black, head to toe -- black suit, shirt, tie, and boots -- everything black. He wore sunglasses with very dark lenses, so you couldn't see his eyes. It may have been my imagination, or a reflection from the neon sign in the window, but I thought I saw a red glow coming from under those glasses."

She continued. "He didn't say anything to anyone, just paced back and forth in the lobby, as if he was waiting for something to happen. I asked him if there was some way I could help him, but he just looked straight at me for a moment, then turned on his heels and walked out through the same door by which he came. I never saw him again."

"But Monique", I questioned. "You said he mentioned my name. Who did he speak to?"

She took a deep breath, held my hand, and looked straight into my eyes. "Doc", she said. "It was me he spoke with…but not that day. It was that same night when he came to me in a dream."

Now I knew the woman before me was prone to one drink too many now and again, but I knew she wasn't crazy and felt she had no reason to deceive me. A dream's a dream after all. Besides, there was still the letter to explain. It was real and wasn't part of any nightmare.

We ordered a couple of drinks and she continued to tell me about her nocturnal visitation. "I was alone, walking down a dark country road in the middle of the night", she said. "I didn't know where I was coming from or where I was going. I just walked straight ahead, knowing that I had no choice but to put one foot in front of the other and that I couldn't turn back."

"I came to a crossroads…and there he was. Just leanin' up against a tree and laughing -- an evil cackle that made me want to turn around and run, but I was just frozen in place."

"He was dressed the same way as I had seen him in the hotel that day, but now he removed his dark glasses, and I looked directly into his shiny red eyes. Evil eyes, not human, the devil's eyes."

"He started to speak in a language I couldn't understand -- it might have been Latin -- all I know is that they were the kind of words that I ain't never heard before."

"And then the red glow from his eyes disappeared, the terror left my body and was replaced by a peaceful calm. Suddenly, the menacing, satanic vision before me had changed. And in its place, I saw the same man, dressed in the same clothes, but he now just seemed like an ordinary, New England gentleman."

"He gave me a smile and started to walk away. But before he vanished into the dark of night, he turned to me once more and said -- tell Doc Welby I'll be meeting up with him very soon."

I could surmise from the look on Monique's face, and the sweat on her brow, that this had been no ordinary dream. And while I had no real evidence that there was any connection between her vision and the envelope I now carried around in my jacket pocket, I knew there was only one way to truly find out. I'd have to pay a visit to the Great Scumbini.