Nicholas fools absolutely no one when he tells Cassangelique, "I must pay a visit to Miss Evans--purely to gain information, of course." Oh yeah.
Farewell, skeleton hand!
Acting the perfect gentleman, Nicholas asks about Joe, and Maggie tells him, The doctors say that Joe will make a full recovery, but he’ll have to be in the hospital for a long time. [In fact, he’ll be away from the show for three weeks.] That’s good news, says Nicholas with smiling ambiguity, and Maggie naively agrees. He asks to see her father’s work, and naturally Maggie is proud to show it off. (One of the paintings he examines is Sam’s portrait of Vicki’s look-alike, Betty Hanscomb. Even though Sam gave the painting to Vicki back in pre-Barnabas times, somehow it returned to the cottage a few episodes ago.)
Nicholas admires one particular painting (we don’t see it) and offers her $2,000 for it. Surprised, Maggie replies, That’s very generous of you. Pop could never get that kind of money for his work while he was alive, she says sadly. I could use the money now. Strangely, Maggie's candor and innocence make her even more attractive to Nicholas than did his first impression of her outward beauty. He persuades her to consider his offer, sweetening it by adding, I’ll even let you to keep the painting on permanent loan if you’ll sell it to me. He asks about Adam (the manifest reason for his visit), but Maggie says no one has seen him recently, and she has no idea of his whereabouts. They agree that someone must be hiding him. Nicholas persuades Maggie to call him Nicholas, so she says to call her Maggie. After he leaves, they separately reflect on their meeting with pleasure.
Julia presses David to try to remember, but because he didn't understand it, all he remembers is "if Adam lives, Barnabas something; if Adam dies, Barnabas something else." Now frantic to hear Eric's message and knowing that she herself foolishly let it fall into Cassandra's hands, Julia rushes back to Collinwood with David.
Just then Julia and David return. Cassandra tries to play stepmother and pack him off to bed. I’m not a baby, David retorts. I can stay up till whenever I want. Cassandra suddenly tires of arguing with him and decides to go out for some air. Nicholas agrees to accompany her, evidently unconcerned about the tape recorder, which is sitting innocently on the piano in the drawing room. Now Nicholas’s lack of concern alone should have warned our intrepid heroes that something was up, but the idea never occurs to them till they play the tape--and out come the strains of the "Dies irae" ("Day of Wrath," i.e., Judgment Day) from the finale of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique! This isn't the music I heard! It must be another tape! David exclaims. Knowing full well that only one tape is involved, Julia asks him who else has listened to the tape. Finally David tells Julia that the only other person he knows of who heard the tape was Cassandra. He says apologetically, I wish could remember what the man was saying on the other tape, but it didn't make any sense. I don't understand why everyone is so excited about what that man said. I hope someone will explain it to me. Maybe Cassandra left the other tape in my room, he sighs, then trudges disconsolately off to bed. Meanwhile, Julia realizes with horror that Cassandra now knows all about the experiment and about Adam and that she has the power to destroy Barnabas--but Julia has no way of stopping her....
