"I'm afraid I don't. I'm sorry I'm not intellectual, Blan, but I'd rather have you call me a 'damn fool' if you said it lovingly, than have you say pretty things I can't understand.""All right, then, you're a damn fool!"She laughed happily. "Thank you, Blan, dear, that was nice! I believe you're improving.""Oh, if you prefer Anglo-Saxon, I'll call you a piece, a jade, baggage, harridan, hussy, minx—""Yes, but you must put 'dear' at the end, you know, to show that you're not in earnest.""I'll try to remember."Fancy went on:"It's wonderful to be out here, all alone with you on the water, cut off from everything. It satisfies me gorgeously—it's like the taste of ice-cream to a hungry little kid. I remember how I used to long for it. I was awfully poor and lonely once. I believe I'm happy now. What do you think it is, Blan, you or the coffee? Don't you want to hold my hand? Let's just sit here and forget things—but I haven't very much to forget, have I? I'd like to read books and know some of the things you do—but it's too late now—I guess I'll always be ign'ant.""Oh, I'll teach you all the things you want to know," he said condescendingly. "You're good material and you'd learn quickly. I could make a wonder out of you with a little training. I'll give you lessons if you like.""I accept," said Fancy Gray.Then she added:"I don't expect you'll love me very long, Blan, but you must make up for it by loving me as much as you can. That's where I can teach you. Men aren't faithful like women are—I'm glad I'm a woman, Blan.""I'm glad you are," he echoed.The night fell, and they began reluctantly to make preparations for their departure. While Cayley was busy in the kitchen, packing up a basket to be returned, Fancy went into the little white state-room to do her hair and put on her wrap.As she came out she noticed a little card-tray in the corner of the living-room, and idly turned the names over, one by one. Of a sudden her hand fell, and her eyes were fixed intently upon a card that had just come into sight. It bore the legend:MR. FRANCIS GRANTHOPEShe threw herself upon the couch by the window and broke into sobs."Say, Fancy! It's after seven o'clock," Cayley called to her from the kitchen.She stumbled to her feet and went out on deck, dipped her handkerchief in the salt water and bathed her eyes. Cayley came out just as she finished. It was too dark, now, to notice her expression.They took the rowboat which had been nuzzling alongside the flank of the ark all day, made for the shore and went aboard the steamer.It was crowded with Sunday picnickers, who came trooping on in groups, singing, the girls flushed and sunburned with hair distraught and dusty shoes; the men in jovial, uncouth disarray in canvas and in corduroy, like tramps and vagabonds, laden with ferns and flowers. Hunters, with guns and dogs, tramped aboard; fishermen, with rods and baskets; tired families, lagging, whining, came in weary procession. Both decks of the boat were crowded. A brass band struck up a popular air. The restaurant, the bar and the bootblack stand all did a great business.Cayley and Fancy Gray went to the upper deck for a last draft of the summer breeze. As they sat there, talking little, watching the throng of uneasy passengers, Fancy called his attention to a couple sitting opposite.It was a strangely assorted pair, the girl and the man. She was about twenty years of age, with a pretty, earnest, freckled face and a modest air. She was talking happily, with undisguised fondness, to the young man beside her. His face was hideous, without a nose. In its place was a livid scar and a depression perforated by nostrils that made his appearance malign. He wore nothing to conceal the mutilation, shocking as it was. His manner toward the girl was that of a lover, devoted and tender."Did you ever see anything so awful?" said Fancy. "And isn't she terribly in love with him though! I know who she is; her name is Fleurette Heller. She came into Granthope's studio once and I took a great liking to her. Frank told her that her love affair would come out all right, and she'd be happier than she ever was in her life before.""I don't see how she can endure that object," said Cayley."Don't you?" said Fancy, "that's because you don't know women. She's in love with him. I understand it perfectly. I wouldn't care a bit how he looked."She nodded, as she spoke, to a man who passed just then. He was dark-skinned, with a pointed beard. He gave her a quick jerk of the head and grinned, showing a line of yellow teeth, and his glance jumped with the rapidity of machinery from her face to Cayley's, and away again. He walked on, his hands behind his back against a coat so faded and shiny as to glow purple as a plum.Fancy's eyes followed him. "That's Vixley," she said.Cayley's look turned from a pretty blonde across the way and he became immediately attentive. "Who's Vixley?""Why, Professor Vixley, the slate-writer, you know.""Oh, yes—he's a medium, is he? What sort is he?"She shook her head. "Wolf! He makes me sick. I'm afraid of him, too. He's out after Granthope with a knife, and I'm afraid he'll do for him some day. Frank ought never to have stood in with him, but you know he used to live with a friend of this man's when he was little, and they've got a hold on him he can't break very well.""They know things about him?""Yes, in a way. Before he braced up. He's square now, and he's trying to shake that bunch. Poor old Frank!"Cayley pulled at his mustache. "I wish I had noticed Vixley.""Why?""Oh, I'd like to see him, that's all. He must be a pretty clever fakir. Of course he isn't straight?""As a bow-knot," said Fancy, "but if he amuses you, I'll introduce you to him. I've got a pretty good stand-in with him, yet." She smiled sadly."Suppose you do. I'd like to hear him talk.""All right," said Fancy. They rose and walked in the medium's direction, encountering him on the foreward deck. He was holding his hat against the fresh breeze and gazing at the approaching lights of the city. The meeting was somewhat constrained at first. Vixley seemed to be embarrassed at Cayley's aristocratic appearance, and evidently wondered what his motive was in being introduced. Cayley, however, was sufficiently a man of the world to be able to put the medium at his ease. He told stories, he made jokes, and gradually drew Vixley out. The wolf talked gingerly, making sure of his ground, his little black eyes shifting from one to the other, whether he spoke or listened. Cayley held him cleverly until the crowd began to descend, making ready for the disembarkation. They went down to the lower deck. Here the crowd had begun to pack together into a close mass, jostling, joking, singing—all sorts and conditions of men in a common holiday mood.Cayley managed so that Fancy went ahead, and, with some dexterous manoeuvering, allowed two or three persons to pass between himself and her. Vixley was just behind him, when Cayley turned and said quickly:"Can you meet me at the Hospital Saloon at ten o'clock to-night?""What for?" the Professor demanded."Important—something about Payson. It is decidedly to your advantage to see me.""I'll be there!" A light gleamed behind Vixley's shrewd black eyes.The two squirmed their way to where Fancy was standing, and accompanied her off the boat. At the entrance to the ferry building the medium took his leave. Cayley and Fancy had dinner together, after which, urging an engagement, he put her aboard her car and walked down Market Street to the "Hospital."Vixley was there, waiting for him, sitting at a side table, regarding an enormous painting of a nude over the bar. His quick eye caught Cayley as he entered and drew him on. For the rest of the interview they did not leave the young man's face.CHAPTER XIITHE FIRST TURNING TO THE RIGHT"All I got to say is this," said Madam Spoll, "if you know what's best for yourself, you won't make no enemies.""I scarcely think you can hurt me much," said Granthope, losing interest in the discussion, as he saw he could make no way with her."We can't, can't we? We know a whole lot more about you than you'd care to have told, Frank Granthope. Since I seen you last, things have developed with Payson, and now we're in a position to say to you, look out for yourself. Payson's stock has went up some. We've got inside information that's valuable.""Then you don't need me, surely.""We need you to keep your mouth shut, if nothing else.""You mean not to tell Mr. Payson anything? I would if I thought I could make him listen.""Tellhim? Lord, you can tell him till you're black in the face, and he wouldn't believe it—not till you tell him where we got our information. Why, if he caught me at the keyhole of his room, he wouldn't suspect anything. We've got the goods to deliver this time, don't you fool yourself. Payson's a ten-to-one shot all right. All we want to be sure of now is the girl you're trying to marry.""I'm not trying to marry her," said Granthope bitterly."That's lucky for you!""Why?" he demanded suspiciously.Madam Spoll spoke very slowly and deliberately without asperity, "Because if youshouldbe fool enough to try it on your own hook without helping us out in our game, why, we'd have to show you up to her. I know a little too much about you, Frank Granthope, for you to throw me down as easy as that. You can't exactly set yourself up for a saint, you know; there's the Bennett affair and one or two more like it. Then, again, there's Fancy Gray and several others likethat. It'll add up to a pretty tidy scandal, if the Payson girl should happen to hear about it all; and if not her, there's others that it won't do you any good to have know."Granthope shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, looking calmly at the medium. Her face was as placid and unwrinkled as his. She showed not the slightest trace of vindictiveness, talking as though discussing some impersonal business arrangement."Then I am to understand that you threaten me with blackmail?""Black, white or yellow, any color you like." She made a deprecatory gesture, "But I don't put it that way myself; all I do say is, that it's for your interest to leave us alone. You know as well as I do that we can put the kibosh on your business, if we want to. We've got a pretty good gang to work with, and when we pass the word round and hand you the double-cross, you won't read many more palms at five per, not in this town you won't."He smiled. "That's all a bluff. You can't expose me without giving yourself away as well.""What have we got to lose? We could get the old man back any time we gave him a jolly. You can't bust up our business—too many suckers in town for that. Lord, I've been exposed till I grew fat on it. But we can breakyou, Frank Granthope; we can bust your business and queer you with this swell push, easy, not to speak of Clytie Payson.""Well, then," said Granthope, rising and taking his hat, "go ahead and do it! We might just as well settle this thing now. Smash my business—I don't care; I wish you would! Ruin any social ambition I may be fool enough to have—it'll serve me right for caring for such nonsense. Tell Miss Payson all you know—it'll save me the shame of telling her myself. God knows I wish she did know it! I'm getting sick of the whole dirty game."Madam Spoll, completely taken aback by his unexpected change of base, stood with a sneer on her face, watching him. "You ought to go on the stage, Frank Granthope—you almost fooled me for a minute," she said with an ironic smile. "I fully expected you to say you had joined the Salvation Army next, and had come around here to save me from hell. So you've got religion, have you? You'd look well in a white necktie, you would! And your inside pocket full of mash notes!""Well," he said, walking to the door, "you've had your say and I've had mine. You can believe what you please, but when you do think it over, you may recall the fact that I usually mean what I say."This was the end of the interview. Madam Spoll, at Vixley's instigation, had sent for Granthope and had "put on the screws." Granthope walked back to his rooms in a brown study. He was at bay now, and there seemed to be no escape for him.The red-headed office boy was whistling and whittling a pencil lazily at Fancy's desk as the palmist entered. There was no one else in the room."Has anybody been here, Jim?" Granthope asked.Jim looked up carelessly and replied, "Dere was a lady what blew in about a half an hour ago and she told me she might float back.""Who was she?""She wouldn't leave no name, but she was a kissamaroot from Peachville Center all right. She looked like she was just graduated from a French laundry. She left dese gloves here."He handed over a pair of long, immaculately white gloves, which were lying on a chair. Granthope looked at them carefully, blew one out till it took the form of a hand and then inspected the wrinkles."Oh," he said. "Tell Miss Payson to come into my studio when she comes back.""Say, Mr. Granthope, who's Miss Gray? De lady wanted to know where was Miss Gray, and I told her she could search me, for I wasn't on. She looked like she took me for a shine to be holdin' down de desk here; dat's right."Granthope walked quickly into his studio without answering.He seated himself thoughtfully and looked about him, still holding the white glove caressingly in his hand. His eye traveled from the electric-lighted table, round the black velvet arras, to the panel where the signs of the zodiac were embroidered in gold: then his eyes closed. He sat silent for ten minutes or so, then he drew his hand through his heavy black hair and across his brow. His eyes opened; he arose; a faint whimsical smile shone on his face.Then, still smiling, he strode deliberately across the room, grasped the black velvet hanging and gave it a violent tug, wrenching it from the cornice. It fell in a soft, dark mass upon the floor. He seized the next breadth of drapery, and the next, tearing them from the wall. So he went calmly round the room in his work of destruction, disclosing a widening space of horribly-patterned wall-paper—pink and yellow roses writhing up a violently blue background. On the last side of the room two windows appeared, the glass almost opaque with dust.He threw up a sash; a shaft of sunshine shot in, and, falling upon the velvet waves upon the floor, changed them to dull purple. In that ray a universe of tiny motes danced radiantly. A current of air set them in motion and swept them from the room through the window into the world outside.And, as he stood there, his face like that of a child who had released a toy balloon, watching that beam of yellow light, Clytie Payson opened the door of the studio and looked in at him. She appeared suddenly, like a picture thrown vividly upon a screen. She saw Granthope before he saw her, and, for a moment, she stood gazing. His pose was eloquent; he was, in his setting, almost symbolistic—she needed no explanation of what had happened. Then, it was as if some tense cord snapped in her mind, and she threw herself forward, no longer the dreamer, but the actor, giving free rein to her emotion.[image]His pose was eloquentHe turned and caught sight of her. Her hands were outstretched, her eyes were burning with a new fire, as if her smoldering had burst into flame."Oh! You have done it! I knew you would!"He gave her his two hands in hers, nodding his head slowly; his smile was that of one who viewed himself impersonally, looking on at his own actions. He did not speak. A quaint humor struggled in his mind with the intensity of the situation. Something in him, also, had snapped, and he was self-conscious in his new rôle.She clutched his hands excitedly, and lifted her eyes up to his, with a new, unabashed fondness burning in them. She had thrown away all her reserves."It's magnificent!" she said. "Oh, how I have longed for this! How I have waited for it! And now, how I admire—and love you for it!"Her face was so near his that, like an electric spark, the flash of eagerness darted from one to the other. He felt the shock of emotion tingling his blood. It swept his mind from control and flooded his will with an irresistible desire for her. He saw that she was ready for him, willing to be won. He took her in his arms and kissed her softly, but gripping her almost savagely in his embrace."Do you mean it?" he cried. "Do you love me, really? I can't believe it! It's too much for me. Tell me!"She released herself gently, still looking up at him and smiling frankly. "Didn't you know? You, who know so much of women? I thought you understood me as I have understood you."He still held her, as if he feared he could never get her again so close, and she went on:"Oh, I would never have told you, if you had gone on as you were going, though I should always have loved you—I could never have helped that. But now, after this crisis, this victory—I know what it all means—Imusttell you! Why shouldn't I? It is true, and I am not ashamed to be the first to speak. Yes, I love you!"The reaction came, his sight grew dark at the thought of his unworthiness, and he freed her, putting her away slowly. Then, as if to resist any temptation, he clasped his hands behind his back."I can't stand it!" he exclaimed. "It isn't fair for me to let you say that. Don't say it yet. Wait till I have told you what I am. Then you will despise me, and hate me.""Never!" she said firmly. "Do you think I don't know you? I am sure. It is impossible for you to surprise me. Whatever you have been or done, it will make no difference—for better or for worse. Of course, I can't know all the circumstances of your life, but I feel that I am sure of your motives—I may know an ideal 'you,' but, if that is not what you are now, it is what you are to be. It is that 'you' that I love—all the rest is dead, I hope." She swept her eyes about the barren room, and her hand went out in comprehensive gesture. "Surely all this can't mean anything less than that? You are not one for compromise or half-measures. You have burned your bridges, haven't you?""Oh, yes," he said. "I don't intend to do things half-way. But it's not a pretty story I have to tell. It's selfish, sordid, vulgar.""Oh, I know something of it, already. Mr. Cayley has told me about that Bennett affair, for he suspected, somehow, that you were implicated in it. And I have guessed more. You needn't be afraid. But you had better tell me as much as you can—not for my sake, but for your own. Then it will all be over, and we can begin fresh."She dropped to a seat on the couch and leaned languidly against the cushions, clasping her hands in her lap. He scarcely dared look at her, and walked nervously up and down the room, dreading the inevitable ordeal. For a while he did not speak, then he turned swiftly to say:"Positively, I don't know where to begin!""You would better begin at the beginning, then—with Madam Grant.""You suspected that, then?""It was that suspicion that has drawn me to you. I should never have begun to love you without that, perhaps. It seemed to justify my growing feeling for you. Haven't I hinted at that often enough? I mean that in some way we had been connected before. Youwerethe little boy who disappeared when she died, weren't you?""Yes, of course.""But I can't make it out! There was never any child there when I went, though I was conscious of some secret presence—some one invisible.""I was locked in the closet—I watched you through a crack in the door.""Oh!" Her eyes widened with a full direct stare; her breath came quickly at the revelation. He watched her, as her expression was transmuted from bewilderment to the beginning of an agonized disillusion. He could not bear it, as he saw that her mind was hastening to the explanation, and he forestalled her next question by his ruthless confession."Of course, that's the way I was able to give you that very wonderful clairvoyant reading—the picture of you in Madam Grant's room."She took the blow bravely, but it was evident that she had not been quite ready for it. "Then you are really not clairvoyant at all? You were simply imposing on my credulity? I want to know the exact truth, so that we can straighten matters out." She spoke slowly, hesitatingly."I told you it was a ghastly story—this is the least of it," he said, wincing.The smile fluttered back to her quivering lips, and with a quick impulse she rose, went to him again and clasped his hand."Oh, I'm not making it easy for you!" she cried. "Forgive me, please. I can bear anything you say—be sure of that, won't you? Come here!"She drew him down to the couch beside her, still keeping his hand in hers. "This is better," she said softly. "Don't think of me as an inquisitor, but as a friend. What you have been can not matter any longer. But let us have no more deceit or reserve between us. You see, I don't quite understand yet about that day. How did you know who I was? How did you get my name?"He summoned his courage as for an operation desperately necessary, and looked her straight in the eye."That was a trick. I read 'Clytie' inside your ring."She took it without flinching. "But my last name—that wasn't there!""Oh, that was inspiration; I can't explain it. You see, I had happened to hear the name 'Payson' that morning, and it recalled the fact that I had seen it before upon a picture in Madam Grant's bedroom. Your father's name, 'Oliver Payson,' it was.""In Madam Grant's room? How strange! I don't understand that.""Nor I, either. Yet you say he knew her?" queried Granthope."Only slightly, so he gave me to understand, at least—still, that may not be true. He may have his reasons for not telling more." She turned to him with a strange, deliberate, questing expression, and said, "Whoareyou, anyway?" Then, "Was Madam Grant your mother?""I don't know. I've often suspected that it might be so, but somehow I don't quite believe it. I don't, at least,feelit.""Why did you run away?""Just before she died she asked me to take some money she had and to keep it safe. I hid it and ran away because I was afraid that they'd find it and take it away from me. I went to Stockton and carried the package to a bank, but they frightened me with their questions and I ran away without any explanations. Of course it's lost, and it was, as I remember it, a big sum, some thousands. I could never prove that I left it there, for my name wasn't on the package of bills. I had written some false name—I forget what. I never let any one know that I had lived with Madam Grant, after that, for fear that I should be accused of having stolen the money. My story would never have been believed, of course.""I see." Clytie's eyes half closed in thought. "I'm sure it was meant for you, Francis."The sound of his name stirred him and his hand tightened on hers."Perhaps so. But I've always thought that she intended it for some of her kin. It has been impossible for me to trace any of her family, though. All I know about her is that she was at Vassar College, but I can't possibly identify her, because Grant was undoubtedly a name she assumed here.""We must try to see what we can do, you and I. Perhaps I may be able to help you, somehow. What happened after that?""I worked at odd jobs in the country for a number of years, then came back to San Francisco. There I did anything I could get to do till I met Madam Spoll. She was a medium, and is yet. I lived with her several years."As he had torn down the draperies of that dark, mysterious room, he went on, now, to tear down the curtain of shams and hypocrisies that had hidden his true self from her and from her kind."That was the beginning of a long education in trickery. I was surrounded by charlatans and impostors, I was taught that the public was gullible and that it liked to be fooled—that it would be fooled, whether we did it or not; and that we might benefit by its credulity as well as any one else. There was sophistry enough, God knows, in their miserable philosophy, but I was young and was for a while taken in by it. I had no other teachers; I had only the example of the colony of fakirs about me. I saw our victims comforted and encouraged by the mental bread-pills we fed them. So we played on their weakness and vanity without scruple. I learned rapidly. I was cleverer than my teachers; I went far ahead of them. I invented new tricks and methods. But it was too easy. There was scarcely any need of subtlety or finesse. The most primitive methods sufficed. You have no idea how easily seemingly intelligent persons can be led once they are past the first turning. That was finally why I got out of it and went into palmistry. That had, at least, a basis of science, and a dignified history."He arose again and walked to the open window. His self-consciousness was a little relieved by his interest in the analysis. He looked out, and turned back to her with a grim smile."It's in the air, here—the gambling instinct is paramount!" he said. "Almost everybody gambles in San Francisco. You know that well enough. You can almost hear the rattle of the slot-machines on the cigar-stand at the corner, down there. It's that way all over town. The gold-fever has never died out. Every one speculates or plays the races or bets on ball games or on the prize-fights, or plays faro or poker or bridge—or, at least, makes love. They're all superstitious, all credulous, all willing to take risks and chances, and so the mediums thrive. Tips are sought for and paid for. Every one wants to get rich quickly and not always scrupulously. It's not a city of healthy growth; it's a town of surprises, of magic and madness and rank enthusiasms. We pretended to show them the short cuts to success, that's all. You know, perhaps, how the money-getting ability can eclipse all other faculties, and you won't be surprised when I tell you that we made large sums from men of wealth and prominence—they were the easiest of the lot, usually."She brought him back to his story. "Of course I understood from what I heard, that you had been an accomplice of these mediums. I don't think you need to go into that.""Oh, you don't know all! It will sicken you to have me go into the actual details, but I want you to know the worst. I think I must tell you, lest others may. One picture will be enough to make you see how vulgar and despicable I had become in that epoch. You'd never get to the sordidness of it unless I told you in so many words. Do you think you can stand it? You may not want ever to know me again. God! I don't know whether Icantell you or not! It's terrible to have to sully you with the description of it!"For a moment she faltered, gazing at him, trembling. Her eyes sought his and left them, often, as she spoke. "You don't mean—I've heard that some of these mediums—the vilest of them—don't hesitate to—take advantage of the sensual weakness of their patrons—that they—Oh, don't tell me that you ever had any part inthat!" She covered her face.He walked over to her and pulled her hands away, looking down into her eyes. "Do you think I would ever have kissed you if I had?" he said. "No, there were depths I didn't fall to, after all. Oh, I've had my way with women often enough; but not that way."She threw off her fears with a gesture of relief, and her mood changed. "I believe you. But don't tell me any more, please. I think I know, in a way, just about what you were capable of, and some things I couldn't bear to think about. But my reason has always fought against my intuition whenever I suspected you of any real dishonor. Thank Heaven I shall never have to do so again! I think I was wise enough to see how, in all this, you had the inclinations without the opportunities for better things. You were a victim of your environment. Spare me any more. I can't bear to see you abase yourself so. I am so sure you have outlived all this. It's all over. I have told you that I love you. I shall always love you!"He yearned for her—for the peace and support that she could give him at this crisis, but his pride was too hot, yet, for him to accept it; he had not finished his confession. She was still on a pedestal—he admired and respected her, but she was above his reach. He could not quite believe that hint in her eyes, for her halo blinded him. She was still princess, seeress, goddess—not yet a woman he could take fearlessly to his arms. His hesitation at her advances, therefore, was reluctant, almost coy. He did not wish to take her from her niche; he must first receive absolution. After that—he dared not think. She had allured him in the first stages of his acquaintance, she still allured him; but her spiritual attributes dominated him. "I think I am another man, now," he said, "but my repentance is scarcely an hour old. It is too young; it has not yet proved itself. It's not fair for me to accept all you can give for the little I can return. I must meet you as an equal."She looked at him calmly. "It is more than a few hours old," she said. "Do you think I don't know? What I first saw in you I have watched grow ever since. I told you all I could; it was not for me to help you more. It was for you to help yourself—to develop from within. I think you were all ready for me, and I came at the psychological moment." She looked around the room from which the sunlight had now retreated, leaving it shadowy and dim. The hangings of black velvet were scattered about the floor, the little table and its two chairs were like a group of skeletons, empty, satiric, suggestive of past vanities. "'What is to come is real; it was a dream that passed,'" she quoted.He found a new courage and a new hope. It shone in his eyes, it tingled in his body; something of his old audacity returned. He stood dark and strong before her."Oh, you have helped, indeed!" he said. "I think this would never have come alone, for I was sunk in an apathy—and yet, I'm not sure. The old life was no longer possible. I confess that I was in a trap, threatened with exposure—I feared your discovery of what I had been—I smarted under the shame of your disapproval—but it was not that that influenced me. It was like a chemical reaction, as all human intercourse is; you precipitated all this deceit and hypocrisy at one stroke and left my mind clear.""I'm so glad you feel it that way," Clytie said. "It brings us together, doesn't it? It lessens the debt you would owe me." Her eyelids crinkled in a delicious expression of humor, as she added, "And it makes this place seem a little less like a Sunday-school room!""Oh, I suppose many a man has refused to reform for fear of being considered a prig!" he laughed. "But I haven't swept out all the corners yet. I must finish cleaning house before I invite you in.""Why should we talk about it any more?""But it isn't all over!" he exclaimed. "I haven't told everything. It's all over, so far as I am concerned—I shall not go back—but now you are involved in it. Could anything drag me lower than that?""What do you mean?" she asked."Only that, because of my fault in not warning you before, your father has already become the latest dupe for this gang of fakirs. I'm afraid he's in their power. Hasn't he told you anything about it?""A little. What is there to fear from them?""Of course, it's only his money they're after. They have got hold of considerable information about him—I don't know just how or what—and they have succeeded in hoodwinking him into a belief that they have supernatural powers. I'm afraid it's no use for me to attempt to expose them. He'd never believe anything I could say.""No, that's useless. He has taken a violent prejudice against you, for some reason.""Oh, the reason is easy to find. I've made enemies of Madam Spoll and Vixley, and they have probably done their best to hurt my reputation. They made me a proposition to join them; in fact, their scheme was for me to work you for information—make love to you, in order to help them rob your father."Clytie looked at him trustfully. "You can never convince me that that was the reason why you were attracted to me, for I shall not believe you!" She patted his hand affectionately, as he sat at her feet.He shook his head. "I don't know—I wouldn't be sure it wasn't.""Ah, I know you better!" She grew blithe, and a mischievous smile appeared on her lips. Her eyes twinkled as she said archly: "Perhaps I may say that I know myself better, too. I'm vainer than you seem to think, and you're not at all complimentary. Don't you think—don't you think that—perhaps—I myself had something to do with your attentions to me?" She put her head on one side and looked at him with mock coquetry.His eyes feasted upon her beauty. "I won't be banal enough to say that you are different from every woman I have ever known, or that you're the only woman I ever loved, though both of those things are true enough. If I had ever loved any other woman, probably I should feel just the same about you as I do now. But no woman has ever stirred me mentally before. You have given me myself—nobody else could ever have done that. I have nothing to give you in return—nothing but twenty-odd mistaken, misspent years.""And how many more to be wonderfully filled, I wonder? You're only a child, and I must teach you. Can you trust me? Remember that I knew you when you were a little boy.""I wonder what will become of me? I suppose I shall get on somehow. It doesn't interest me much yet, but I suppose it will have to be considered. I'll fight it out alone." He looked up suddenly. "When do you go East?"She smiled. "I came down here to tell you that I should leave on Saturday."He jumped up with a bitter look and walked to the window.She looked over to him with her eyes half shut and a delectable expression upon her lips. "But I've decided not to go—at all!"She almost drawled it.In an instant he was back at her side, borne on a flood of happiness. For a moment he looked at her hard. His eyes went from feature to feature, to her hands, her hair in silent approval. Then he exclaimed decidedly:"Oh, you can't link yourself with me in any way. I'm a social outcast—why, now, I haven't even the advantage of being a picturesque adventurer! You will compromise yourself fearfully—you'll be ostracized—oh, it's impossible—I can't permit it!""You need not fear for yourself—or for me," she said, clasping his hand. "If I love you, what do I care—what should you care? I have come to you like Porphyria—but I am no Porphyria—you'll have no need to strangle me in my hair—my 'darling one wish' will be easier found than that!"There was something in the unrestrained fondness of her look, now, that made him jump to a place beside her. What might have followed was interrupted by the sound of a familiar voice in the anteroom, demanding Mr. Granthope. Clytie sprang up, her cheeks burning. Granthope turned coolly to the door, with his eyebrows lifted. Mr. Payson appeared at the entrance. He was scowling under his bushy eyebrows, the muscles of his face were twitching. A cane was firmly clenched in his right hand. He bent a harsh look at his daughter."What does this mean, Clytie?" he demanded.She had recovered on the instant and faced him splendidly, in neither defiance nor supplication. "It means," she said in her low, steady voice, "that as you won't permit me to receive Mr. Granthope in your house, I must see him in his.""Leave this room instantly!" he thundered bombastically."Please don't make a scene, father. I'm quite old enough to take care of myself, and to judge for myself. You needn't humiliate me.""Humiliate you! If you're not humiliated at being found here with a cheap impostor, I don't think I can shame you! This man is a rank scoundrel and a cheat—I won't have you compromise yourself with such a mountebank!"Granthope stood watching her unruffled, fearless pose, confident in her power to control the situation."Mr. Granthope is my friend, father. Don't say anything that you may regret. I don't intend to leave you alone with him till you are master of yourself, and can say what you have come to say without anger. He has respected your request not to call on me at the house, and I came here of my own accord, without his invitation. And he has always treated me as a gentleman should.""A gentleman!" Mr. Payson sneered. "I know what he is—he's a damned trickster. I've always suspected it, but since I kicked him out of my house I've had proof of it. I know his record"—he turned to Granthope—"from persons who know you well, sir!""I suppose you mean Vixley or Madam Spoll.""You can't deny that they know you pretty well?""Your daughter knows more, I think. I have just taken the liberty of informing her as to just how much of a scoundrel I am.""And you have the impertinence to consider yourself her social equal!""I think Miss Payson's position is sufficiently assured for her to be in no danger.""Well, yours certainly is not. I've heard of your lady-killing. I suppose you want to add my daughter's scalp to your belt. Haven't you women enough running after you yet? So you wheedled her with a mock-confession—tried the cry-baby on her. Well, it won't work with me. I'll tell her all about you, don't be afraid!"Clytie went to him and laid a hand gently upon his arm. "Father, we'll go, now, please. I can't bear this. You need only to look about you to see that, whatever Mr. Granthope has been, he is no longer a palmist. You see this room is already dismantled—if you'll only listen, I'll explain everything.""It does look rather theatrical here." Mr. Payson looked at the piles of velvet on the floor, then turned again to the young man. "It seems that you have the audacity to want to marry my daughter. No doubt this little scene is a part of the game. It's very pretty, very effective. But let me tell you that this sensational tomfoolery won't be of any use. You are a charlatan, sir! You've always been one, and you always will be.""Mr. Payson," Granthope said, with no trace of anger, "I can't deny that something of what you say is true, but your daughter knows that much already, and she has it from a better authority than yours. I can't blame you for your feeling in this matter; it's quite natural, for you don't know me. But I hope in time to induce you to believe in me. I wish you would let me begin by doing what should have done when I first met your daughter—warn you that you are in the hands of a dangerous set of swindlers who are deceiving you systematically. I can tell you a good deal that it will be greatly to your advantage to know about them."The old man broke into ironic laughter. "That's just what they told me you'd say," he sneered. "They warned me that you'd try to libel them and accuse them of all sorts of impossible tricks. Set a thief to catch a thief, eh? No, that won't work, Mr. Granthope. I happen to know too much for that!""Won't you listen to what he has to say, father? It can do no harm. What do you know about those persons, after all? They are undoubtedly trying to deceive you," Clytie said earnestly.Granthope added: "I can tell you of tricks they habitually practise.""What's that to me? Haven't I got eyes? Haven't I common sense? Can you tell me how they find out things about my own life that no one living knows but me?""I can tell you how it was done in other cases—""Aha, I thought so—you can tell me, for instance, how to crawl through a trap in the mopboard, can't you? I'd rather hear how you impose on silly women, if you're going in for your confessions. What do you expect me to believe? I am quite satisfied with my own ability to investigate. I haven't lived for fifty years in the West to be imposed upon by flimflam. I'm not suffering from senile decay quite yet!"He took Clytie to the door; there he paused dramatically, to deliver his parting shot."I notice you've hidden away that young woman you're living with. You might as well send for her—my daughter is not likely to be back again in a hurry."As they left, Clytie gave him a look which denied her father's words.Granthope waited till the hall door had slammed, then went into the office, where the red-haired boy was lolling out of the window."Jim," he said, laying his hand on the boy's shoulder, "I shall not need you any more. Here's your pay for the week. You needn't come back."Jim shuffled into his coat, whistling, pulled on his cap, and left without a trace of regret. Granthope pulled a chair up to the grate. The dusk fell, and he still remained, watching the fire.
"I'm afraid I don't. I'm sorry I'm not intellectual, Blan, but I'd rather have you call me a 'damn fool' if you said it lovingly, than have you say pretty things I can't understand."
"All right, then, you're a damn fool!"
She laughed happily. "Thank you, Blan, dear, that was nice! I believe you're improving."
"Oh, if you prefer Anglo-Saxon, I'll call you a piece, a jade, baggage, harridan, hussy, minx—"
"Yes, but you must put 'dear' at the end, you know, to show that you're not in earnest."
"I'll try to remember."
Fancy went on:
"It's wonderful to be out here, all alone with you on the water, cut off from everything. It satisfies me gorgeously—it's like the taste of ice-cream to a hungry little kid. I remember how I used to long for it. I was awfully poor and lonely once. I believe I'm happy now. What do you think it is, Blan, you or the coffee? Don't you want to hold my hand? Let's just sit here and forget things—but I haven't very much to forget, have I? I'd like to read books and know some of the things you do—but it's too late now—I guess I'll always be ign'ant."
"Oh, I'll teach you all the things you want to know," he said condescendingly. "You're good material and you'd learn quickly. I could make a wonder out of you with a little training. I'll give you lessons if you like."
"I accept," said Fancy Gray.
Then she added:
"I don't expect you'll love me very long, Blan, but you must make up for it by loving me as much as you can. That's where I can teach you. Men aren't faithful like women are—I'm glad I'm a woman, Blan."
"I'm glad you are," he echoed.
The night fell, and they began reluctantly to make preparations for their departure. While Cayley was busy in the kitchen, packing up a basket to be returned, Fancy went into the little white state-room to do her hair and put on her wrap.
As she came out she noticed a little card-tray in the corner of the living-room, and idly turned the names over, one by one. Of a sudden her hand fell, and her eyes were fixed intently upon a card that had just come into sight. It bore the legend:
MR. FRANCIS GRANTHOPE
She threw herself upon the couch by the window and broke into sobs.
"Say, Fancy! It's after seven o'clock," Cayley called to her from the kitchen.
She stumbled to her feet and went out on deck, dipped her handkerchief in the salt water and bathed her eyes. Cayley came out just as she finished. It was too dark, now, to notice her expression.
They took the rowboat which had been nuzzling alongside the flank of the ark all day, made for the shore and went aboard the steamer.
It was crowded with Sunday picnickers, who came trooping on in groups, singing, the girls flushed and sunburned with hair distraught and dusty shoes; the men in jovial, uncouth disarray in canvas and in corduroy, like tramps and vagabonds, laden with ferns and flowers. Hunters, with guns and dogs, tramped aboard; fishermen, with rods and baskets; tired families, lagging, whining, came in weary procession. Both decks of the boat were crowded. A brass band struck up a popular air. The restaurant, the bar and the bootblack stand all did a great business.
Cayley and Fancy Gray went to the upper deck for a last draft of the summer breeze. As they sat there, talking little, watching the throng of uneasy passengers, Fancy called his attention to a couple sitting opposite.
It was a strangely assorted pair, the girl and the man. She was about twenty years of age, with a pretty, earnest, freckled face and a modest air. She was talking happily, with undisguised fondness, to the young man beside her. His face was hideous, without a nose. In its place was a livid scar and a depression perforated by nostrils that made his appearance malign. He wore nothing to conceal the mutilation, shocking as it was. His manner toward the girl was that of a lover, devoted and tender.
"Did you ever see anything so awful?" said Fancy. "And isn't she terribly in love with him though! I know who she is; her name is Fleurette Heller. She came into Granthope's studio once and I took a great liking to her. Frank told her that her love affair would come out all right, and she'd be happier than she ever was in her life before."
"I don't see how she can endure that object," said Cayley.
"Don't you?" said Fancy, "that's because you don't know women. She's in love with him. I understand it perfectly. I wouldn't care a bit how he looked."
She nodded, as she spoke, to a man who passed just then. He was dark-skinned, with a pointed beard. He gave her a quick jerk of the head and grinned, showing a line of yellow teeth, and his glance jumped with the rapidity of machinery from her face to Cayley's, and away again. He walked on, his hands behind his back against a coat so faded and shiny as to glow purple as a plum.
Fancy's eyes followed him. "That's Vixley," she said.
Cayley's look turned from a pretty blonde across the way and he became immediately attentive. "Who's Vixley?"
"Why, Professor Vixley, the slate-writer, you know."
"Oh, yes—he's a medium, is he? What sort is he?"
She shook her head. "Wolf! He makes me sick. I'm afraid of him, too. He's out after Granthope with a knife, and I'm afraid he'll do for him some day. Frank ought never to have stood in with him, but you know he used to live with a friend of this man's when he was little, and they've got a hold on him he can't break very well."
"They know things about him?"
"Yes, in a way. Before he braced up. He's square now, and he's trying to shake that bunch. Poor old Frank!"
Cayley pulled at his mustache. "I wish I had noticed Vixley."
"Why?"
"Oh, I'd like to see him, that's all. He must be a pretty clever fakir. Of course he isn't straight?"
"As a bow-knot," said Fancy, "but if he amuses you, I'll introduce you to him. I've got a pretty good stand-in with him, yet." She smiled sadly.
"Suppose you do. I'd like to hear him talk."
"All right," said Fancy. They rose and walked in the medium's direction, encountering him on the foreward deck. He was holding his hat against the fresh breeze and gazing at the approaching lights of the city. The meeting was somewhat constrained at first. Vixley seemed to be embarrassed at Cayley's aristocratic appearance, and evidently wondered what his motive was in being introduced. Cayley, however, was sufficiently a man of the world to be able to put the medium at his ease. He told stories, he made jokes, and gradually drew Vixley out. The wolf talked gingerly, making sure of his ground, his little black eyes shifting from one to the other, whether he spoke or listened. Cayley held him cleverly until the crowd began to descend, making ready for the disembarkation. They went down to the lower deck. Here the crowd had begun to pack together into a close mass, jostling, joking, singing—all sorts and conditions of men in a common holiday mood.
Cayley managed so that Fancy went ahead, and, with some dexterous manoeuvering, allowed two or three persons to pass between himself and her. Vixley was just behind him, when Cayley turned and said quickly:
"Can you meet me at the Hospital Saloon at ten o'clock to-night?"
"What for?" the Professor demanded.
"Important—something about Payson. It is decidedly to your advantage to see me."
"I'll be there!" A light gleamed behind Vixley's shrewd black eyes.
The two squirmed their way to where Fancy was standing, and accompanied her off the boat. At the entrance to the ferry building the medium took his leave. Cayley and Fancy had dinner together, after which, urging an engagement, he put her aboard her car and walked down Market Street to the "Hospital."
Vixley was there, waiting for him, sitting at a side table, regarding an enormous painting of a nude over the bar. His quick eye caught Cayley as he entered and drew him on. For the rest of the interview they did not leave the young man's face.
CHAPTER XII
THE FIRST TURNING TO THE RIGHT
"All I got to say is this," said Madam Spoll, "if you know what's best for yourself, you won't make no enemies."
"I scarcely think you can hurt me much," said Granthope, losing interest in the discussion, as he saw he could make no way with her.
"We can't, can't we? We know a whole lot more about you than you'd care to have told, Frank Granthope. Since I seen you last, things have developed with Payson, and now we're in a position to say to you, look out for yourself. Payson's stock has went up some. We've got inside information that's valuable."
"Then you don't need me, surely."
"We need you to keep your mouth shut, if nothing else."
"You mean not to tell Mr. Payson anything? I would if I thought I could make him listen."
"Tellhim? Lord, you can tell him till you're black in the face, and he wouldn't believe it—not till you tell him where we got our information. Why, if he caught me at the keyhole of his room, he wouldn't suspect anything. We've got the goods to deliver this time, don't you fool yourself. Payson's a ten-to-one shot all right. All we want to be sure of now is the girl you're trying to marry."
"I'm not trying to marry her," said Granthope bitterly.
"That's lucky for you!"
"Why?" he demanded suspiciously.
Madam Spoll spoke very slowly and deliberately without asperity, "Because if youshouldbe fool enough to try it on your own hook without helping us out in our game, why, we'd have to show you up to her. I know a little too much about you, Frank Granthope, for you to throw me down as easy as that. You can't exactly set yourself up for a saint, you know; there's the Bennett affair and one or two more like it. Then, again, there's Fancy Gray and several others likethat. It'll add up to a pretty tidy scandal, if the Payson girl should happen to hear about it all; and if not her, there's others that it won't do you any good to have know."
Granthope shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, looking calmly at the medium. Her face was as placid and unwrinkled as his. She showed not the slightest trace of vindictiveness, talking as though discussing some impersonal business arrangement.
"Then I am to understand that you threaten me with blackmail?"
"Black, white or yellow, any color you like." She made a deprecatory gesture, "But I don't put it that way myself; all I do say is, that it's for your interest to leave us alone. You know as well as I do that we can put the kibosh on your business, if we want to. We've got a pretty good gang to work with, and when we pass the word round and hand you the double-cross, you won't read many more palms at five per, not in this town you won't."
He smiled. "That's all a bluff. You can't expose me without giving yourself away as well."
"What have we got to lose? We could get the old man back any time we gave him a jolly. You can't bust up our business—too many suckers in town for that. Lord, I've been exposed till I grew fat on it. But we can breakyou, Frank Granthope; we can bust your business and queer you with this swell push, easy, not to speak of Clytie Payson."
"Well, then," said Granthope, rising and taking his hat, "go ahead and do it! We might just as well settle this thing now. Smash my business—I don't care; I wish you would! Ruin any social ambition I may be fool enough to have—it'll serve me right for caring for such nonsense. Tell Miss Payson all you know—it'll save me the shame of telling her myself. God knows I wish she did know it! I'm getting sick of the whole dirty game."
Madam Spoll, completely taken aback by his unexpected change of base, stood with a sneer on her face, watching him. "You ought to go on the stage, Frank Granthope—you almost fooled me for a minute," she said with an ironic smile. "I fully expected you to say you had joined the Salvation Army next, and had come around here to save me from hell. So you've got religion, have you? You'd look well in a white necktie, you would! And your inside pocket full of mash notes!"
"Well," he said, walking to the door, "you've had your say and I've had mine. You can believe what you please, but when you do think it over, you may recall the fact that I usually mean what I say."
This was the end of the interview. Madam Spoll, at Vixley's instigation, had sent for Granthope and had "put on the screws." Granthope walked back to his rooms in a brown study. He was at bay now, and there seemed to be no escape for him.
The red-headed office boy was whistling and whittling a pencil lazily at Fancy's desk as the palmist entered. There was no one else in the room.
"Has anybody been here, Jim?" Granthope asked.
Jim looked up carelessly and replied, "Dere was a lady what blew in about a half an hour ago and she told me she might float back."
"Who was she?"
"She wouldn't leave no name, but she was a kissamaroot from Peachville Center all right. She looked like she was just graduated from a French laundry. She left dese gloves here."
He handed over a pair of long, immaculately white gloves, which were lying on a chair. Granthope looked at them carefully, blew one out till it took the form of a hand and then inspected the wrinkles.
"Oh," he said. "Tell Miss Payson to come into my studio when she comes back."
"Say, Mr. Granthope, who's Miss Gray? De lady wanted to know where was Miss Gray, and I told her she could search me, for I wasn't on. She looked like she took me for a shine to be holdin' down de desk here; dat's right."
Granthope walked quickly into his studio without answering.
He seated himself thoughtfully and looked about him, still holding the white glove caressingly in his hand. His eye traveled from the electric-lighted table, round the black velvet arras, to the panel where the signs of the zodiac were embroidered in gold: then his eyes closed. He sat silent for ten minutes or so, then he drew his hand through his heavy black hair and across his brow. His eyes opened; he arose; a faint whimsical smile shone on his face.
Then, still smiling, he strode deliberately across the room, grasped the black velvet hanging and gave it a violent tug, wrenching it from the cornice. It fell in a soft, dark mass upon the floor. He seized the next breadth of drapery, and the next, tearing them from the wall. So he went calmly round the room in his work of destruction, disclosing a widening space of horribly-patterned wall-paper—pink and yellow roses writhing up a violently blue background. On the last side of the room two windows appeared, the glass almost opaque with dust.
He threw up a sash; a shaft of sunshine shot in, and, falling upon the velvet waves upon the floor, changed them to dull purple. In that ray a universe of tiny motes danced radiantly. A current of air set them in motion and swept them from the room through the window into the world outside.
And, as he stood there, his face like that of a child who had released a toy balloon, watching that beam of yellow light, Clytie Payson opened the door of the studio and looked in at him. She appeared suddenly, like a picture thrown vividly upon a screen. She saw Granthope before he saw her, and, for a moment, she stood gazing. His pose was eloquent; he was, in his setting, almost symbolistic—she needed no explanation of what had happened. Then, it was as if some tense cord snapped in her mind, and she threw herself forward, no longer the dreamer, but the actor, giving free rein to her emotion.
[image]His pose was eloquent
[image]
[image]
His pose was eloquent
He turned and caught sight of her. Her hands were outstretched, her eyes were burning with a new fire, as if her smoldering had burst into flame.
"Oh! You have done it! I knew you would!"
He gave her his two hands in hers, nodding his head slowly; his smile was that of one who viewed himself impersonally, looking on at his own actions. He did not speak. A quaint humor struggled in his mind with the intensity of the situation. Something in him, also, had snapped, and he was self-conscious in his new rôle.
She clutched his hands excitedly, and lifted her eyes up to his, with a new, unabashed fondness burning in them. She had thrown away all her reserves.
"It's magnificent!" she said. "Oh, how I have longed for this! How I have waited for it! And now, how I admire—and love you for it!"
Her face was so near his that, like an electric spark, the flash of eagerness darted from one to the other. He felt the shock of emotion tingling his blood. It swept his mind from control and flooded his will with an irresistible desire for her. He saw that she was ready for him, willing to be won. He took her in his arms and kissed her softly, but gripping her almost savagely in his embrace.
"Do you mean it?" he cried. "Do you love me, really? I can't believe it! It's too much for me. Tell me!"
She released herself gently, still looking up at him and smiling frankly. "Didn't you know? You, who know so much of women? I thought you understood me as I have understood you."
He still held her, as if he feared he could never get her again so close, and she went on:
"Oh, I would never have told you, if you had gone on as you were going, though I should always have loved you—I could never have helped that. But now, after this crisis, this victory—I know what it all means—Imusttell you! Why shouldn't I? It is true, and I am not ashamed to be the first to speak. Yes, I love you!"
The reaction came, his sight grew dark at the thought of his unworthiness, and he freed her, putting her away slowly. Then, as if to resist any temptation, he clasped his hands behind his back.
"I can't stand it!" he exclaimed. "It isn't fair for me to let you say that. Don't say it yet. Wait till I have told you what I am. Then you will despise me, and hate me."
"Never!" she said firmly. "Do you think I don't know you? I am sure. It is impossible for you to surprise me. Whatever you have been or done, it will make no difference—for better or for worse. Of course, I can't know all the circumstances of your life, but I feel that I am sure of your motives—I may know an ideal 'you,' but, if that is not what you are now, it is what you are to be. It is that 'you' that I love—all the rest is dead, I hope." She swept her eyes about the barren room, and her hand went out in comprehensive gesture. "Surely all this can't mean anything less than that? You are not one for compromise or half-measures. You have burned your bridges, haven't you?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "I don't intend to do things half-way. But it's not a pretty story I have to tell. It's selfish, sordid, vulgar."
"Oh, I know something of it, already. Mr. Cayley has told me about that Bennett affair, for he suspected, somehow, that you were implicated in it. And I have guessed more. You needn't be afraid. But you had better tell me as much as you can—not for my sake, but for your own. Then it will all be over, and we can begin fresh."
She dropped to a seat on the couch and leaned languidly against the cushions, clasping her hands in her lap. He scarcely dared look at her, and walked nervously up and down the room, dreading the inevitable ordeal. For a while he did not speak, then he turned swiftly to say:
"Positively, I don't know where to begin!"
"You would better begin at the beginning, then—with Madam Grant."
"You suspected that, then?"
"It was that suspicion that has drawn me to you. I should never have begun to love you without that, perhaps. It seemed to justify my growing feeling for you. Haven't I hinted at that often enough? I mean that in some way we had been connected before. Youwerethe little boy who disappeared when she died, weren't you?"
"Yes, of course."
"But I can't make it out! There was never any child there when I went, though I was conscious of some secret presence—some one invisible."
"I was locked in the closet—I watched you through a crack in the door."
"Oh!" Her eyes widened with a full direct stare; her breath came quickly at the revelation. He watched her, as her expression was transmuted from bewilderment to the beginning of an agonized disillusion. He could not bear it, as he saw that her mind was hastening to the explanation, and he forestalled her next question by his ruthless confession.
"Of course, that's the way I was able to give you that very wonderful clairvoyant reading—the picture of you in Madam Grant's room."
She took the blow bravely, but it was evident that she had not been quite ready for it. "Then you are really not clairvoyant at all? You were simply imposing on my credulity? I want to know the exact truth, so that we can straighten matters out." She spoke slowly, hesitatingly.
"I told you it was a ghastly story—this is the least of it," he said, wincing.
The smile fluttered back to her quivering lips, and with a quick impulse she rose, went to him again and clasped his hand.
"Oh, I'm not making it easy for you!" she cried. "Forgive me, please. I can bear anything you say—be sure of that, won't you? Come here!"
She drew him down to the couch beside her, still keeping his hand in hers. "This is better," she said softly. "Don't think of me as an inquisitor, but as a friend. What you have been can not matter any longer. But let us have no more deceit or reserve between us. You see, I don't quite understand yet about that day. How did you know who I was? How did you get my name?"
He summoned his courage as for an operation desperately necessary, and looked her straight in the eye.
"That was a trick. I read 'Clytie' inside your ring."
She took it without flinching. "But my last name—that wasn't there!"
"Oh, that was inspiration; I can't explain it. You see, I had happened to hear the name 'Payson' that morning, and it recalled the fact that I had seen it before upon a picture in Madam Grant's bedroom. Your father's name, 'Oliver Payson,' it was."
"In Madam Grant's room? How strange! I don't understand that."
"Nor I, either. Yet you say he knew her?" queried Granthope.
"Only slightly, so he gave me to understand, at least—still, that may not be true. He may have his reasons for not telling more." She turned to him with a strange, deliberate, questing expression, and said, "Whoareyou, anyway?" Then, "Was Madam Grant your mother?"
"I don't know. I've often suspected that it might be so, but somehow I don't quite believe it. I don't, at least,feelit."
"Why did you run away?"
"Just before she died she asked me to take some money she had and to keep it safe. I hid it and ran away because I was afraid that they'd find it and take it away from me. I went to Stockton and carried the package to a bank, but they frightened me with their questions and I ran away without any explanations. Of course it's lost, and it was, as I remember it, a big sum, some thousands. I could never prove that I left it there, for my name wasn't on the package of bills. I had written some false name—I forget what. I never let any one know that I had lived with Madam Grant, after that, for fear that I should be accused of having stolen the money. My story would never have been believed, of course."
"I see." Clytie's eyes half closed in thought. "I'm sure it was meant for you, Francis."
The sound of his name stirred him and his hand tightened on hers.
"Perhaps so. But I've always thought that she intended it for some of her kin. It has been impossible for me to trace any of her family, though. All I know about her is that she was at Vassar College, but I can't possibly identify her, because Grant was undoubtedly a name she assumed here."
"We must try to see what we can do, you and I. Perhaps I may be able to help you, somehow. What happened after that?"
"I worked at odd jobs in the country for a number of years, then came back to San Francisco. There I did anything I could get to do till I met Madam Spoll. She was a medium, and is yet. I lived with her several years."
As he had torn down the draperies of that dark, mysterious room, he went on, now, to tear down the curtain of shams and hypocrisies that had hidden his true self from her and from her kind.
"That was the beginning of a long education in trickery. I was surrounded by charlatans and impostors, I was taught that the public was gullible and that it liked to be fooled—that it would be fooled, whether we did it or not; and that we might benefit by its credulity as well as any one else. There was sophistry enough, God knows, in their miserable philosophy, but I was young and was for a while taken in by it. I had no other teachers; I had only the example of the colony of fakirs about me. I saw our victims comforted and encouraged by the mental bread-pills we fed them. So we played on their weakness and vanity without scruple. I learned rapidly. I was cleverer than my teachers; I went far ahead of them. I invented new tricks and methods. But it was too easy. There was scarcely any need of subtlety or finesse. The most primitive methods sufficed. You have no idea how easily seemingly intelligent persons can be led once they are past the first turning. That was finally why I got out of it and went into palmistry. That had, at least, a basis of science, and a dignified history."
He arose again and walked to the open window. His self-consciousness was a little relieved by his interest in the analysis. He looked out, and turned back to her with a grim smile.
"It's in the air, here—the gambling instinct is paramount!" he said. "Almost everybody gambles in San Francisco. You know that well enough. You can almost hear the rattle of the slot-machines on the cigar-stand at the corner, down there. It's that way all over town. The gold-fever has never died out. Every one speculates or plays the races or bets on ball games or on the prize-fights, or plays faro or poker or bridge—or, at least, makes love. They're all superstitious, all credulous, all willing to take risks and chances, and so the mediums thrive. Tips are sought for and paid for. Every one wants to get rich quickly and not always scrupulously. It's not a city of healthy growth; it's a town of surprises, of magic and madness and rank enthusiasms. We pretended to show them the short cuts to success, that's all. You know, perhaps, how the money-getting ability can eclipse all other faculties, and you won't be surprised when I tell you that we made large sums from men of wealth and prominence—they were the easiest of the lot, usually."
She brought him back to his story. "Of course I understood from what I heard, that you had been an accomplice of these mediums. I don't think you need to go into that."
"Oh, you don't know all! It will sicken you to have me go into the actual details, but I want you to know the worst. I think I must tell you, lest others may. One picture will be enough to make you see how vulgar and despicable I had become in that epoch. You'd never get to the sordidness of it unless I told you in so many words. Do you think you can stand it? You may not want ever to know me again. God! I don't know whether Icantell you or not! It's terrible to have to sully you with the description of it!"
For a moment she faltered, gazing at him, trembling. Her eyes sought his and left them, often, as she spoke. "You don't mean—I've heard that some of these mediums—the vilest of them—don't hesitate to—take advantage of the sensual weakness of their patrons—that they—Oh, don't tell me that you ever had any part inthat!" She covered her face.
He walked over to her and pulled her hands away, looking down into her eyes. "Do you think I would ever have kissed you if I had?" he said. "No, there were depths I didn't fall to, after all. Oh, I've had my way with women often enough; but not that way."
She threw off her fears with a gesture of relief, and her mood changed. "I believe you. But don't tell me any more, please. I think I know, in a way, just about what you were capable of, and some things I couldn't bear to think about. But my reason has always fought against my intuition whenever I suspected you of any real dishonor. Thank Heaven I shall never have to do so again! I think I was wise enough to see how, in all this, you had the inclinations without the opportunities for better things. You were a victim of your environment. Spare me any more. I can't bear to see you abase yourself so. I am so sure you have outlived all this. It's all over. I have told you that I love you. I shall always love you!"
He yearned for her—for the peace and support that she could give him at this crisis, but his pride was too hot, yet, for him to accept it; he had not finished his confession. She was still on a pedestal—he admired and respected her, but she was above his reach. He could not quite believe that hint in her eyes, for her halo blinded him. She was still princess, seeress, goddess—not yet a woman he could take fearlessly to his arms. His hesitation at her advances, therefore, was reluctant, almost coy. He did not wish to take her from her niche; he must first receive absolution. After that—he dared not think. She had allured him in the first stages of his acquaintance, she still allured him; but her spiritual attributes dominated him. "I think I am another man, now," he said, "but my repentance is scarcely an hour old. It is too young; it has not yet proved itself. It's not fair for me to accept all you can give for the little I can return. I must meet you as an equal."
She looked at him calmly. "It is more than a few hours old," she said. "Do you think I don't know? What I first saw in you I have watched grow ever since. I told you all I could; it was not for me to help you more. It was for you to help yourself—to develop from within. I think you were all ready for me, and I came at the psychological moment." She looked around the room from which the sunlight had now retreated, leaving it shadowy and dim. The hangings of black velvet were scattered about the floor, the little table and its two chairs were like a group of skeletons, empty, satiric, suggestive of past vanities. "'What is to come is real; it was a dream that passed,'" she quoted.
He found a new courage and a new hope. It shone in his eyes, it tingled in his body; something of his old audacity returned. He stood dark and strong before her.
"Oh, you have helped, indeed!" he said. "I think this would never have come alone, for I was sunk in an apathy—and yet, I'm not sure. The old life was no longer possible. I confess that I was in a trap, threatened with exposure—I feared your discovery of what I had been—I smarted under the shame of your disapproval—but it was not that that influenced me. It was like a chemical reaction, as all human intercourse is; you precipitated all this deceit and hypocrisy at one stroke and left my mind clear."
"I'm so glad you feel it that way," Clytie said. "It brings us together, doesn't it? It lessens the debt you would owe me." Her eyelids crinkled in a delicious expression of humor, as she added, "And it makes this place seem a little less like a Sunday-school room!"
"Oh, I suppose many a man has refused to reform for fear of being considered a prig!" he laughed. "But I haven't swept out all the corners yet. I must finish cleaning house before I invite you in."
"Why should we talk about it any more?"
"But it isn't all over!" he exclaimed. "I haven't told everything. It's all over, so far as I am concerned—I shall not go back—but now you are involved in it. Could anything drag me lower than that?"
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Only that, because of my fault in not warning you before, your father has already become the latest dupe for this gang of fakirs. I'm afraid he's in their power. Hasn't he told you anything about it?"
"A little. What is there to fear from them?"
"Of course, it's only his money they're after. They have got hold of considerable information about him—I don't know just how or what—and they have succeeded in hoodwinking him into a belief that they have supernatural powers. I'm afraid it's no use for me to attempt to expose them. He'd never believe anything I could say."
"No, that's useless. He has taken a violent prejudice against you, for some reason."
"Oh, the reason is easy to find. I've made enemies of Madam Spoll and Vixley, and they have probably done their best to hurt my reputation. They made me a proposition to join them; in fact, their scheme was for me to work you for information—make love to you, in order to help them rob your father."
Clytie looked at him trustfully. "You can never convince me that that was the reason why you were attracted to me, for I shall not believe you!" She patted his hand affectionately, as he sat at her feet.
He shook his head. "I don't know—I wouldn't be sure it wasn't."
"Ah, I know you better!" She grew blithe, and a mischievous smile appeared on her lips. Her eyes twinkled as she said archly: "Perhaps I may say that I know myself better, too. I'm vainer than you seem to think, and you're not at all complimentary. Don't you think—don't you think that—perhaps—I myself had something to do with your attentions to me?" She put her head on one side and looked at him with mock coquetry.
His eyes feasted upon her beauty. "I won't be banal enough to say that you are different from every woman I have ever known, or that you're the only woman I ever loved, though both of those things are true enough. If I had ever loved any other woman, probably I should feel just the same about you as I do now. But no woman has ever stirred me mentally before. You have given me myself—nobody else could ever have done that. I have nothing to give you in return—nothing but twenty-odd mistaken, misspent years."
"And how many more to be wonderfully filled, I wonder? You're only a child, and I must teach you. Can you trust me? Remember that I knew you when you were a little boy."
"I wonder what will become of me? I suppose I shall get on somehow. It doesn't interest me much yet, but I suppose it will have to be considered. I'll fight it out alone." He looked up suddenly. "When do you go East?"
She smiled. "I came down here to tell you that I should leave on Saturday."
He jumped up with a bitter look and walked to the window.
She looked over to him with her eyes half shut and a delectable expression upon her lips. "But I've decided not to go—at all!"
She almost drawled it.
In an instant he was back at her side, borne on a flood of happiness. For a moment he looked at her hard. His eyes went from feature to feature, to her hands, her hair in silent approval. Then he exclaimed decidedly:
"Oh, you can't link yourself with me in any way. I'm a social outcast—why, now, I haven't even the advantage of being a picturesque adventurer! You will compromise yourself fearfully—you'll be ostracized—oh, it's impossible—I can't permit it!"
"You need not fear for yourself—or for me," she said, clasping his hand. "If I love you, what do I care—what should you care? I have come to you like Porphyria—but I am no Porphyria—you'll have no need to strangle me in my hair—my 'darling one wish' will be easier found than that!"
There was something in the unrestrained fondness of her look, now, that made him jump to a place beside her. What might have followed was interrupted by the sound of a familiar voice in the anteroom, demanding Mr. Granthope. Clytie sprang up, her cheeks burning. Granthope turned coolly to the door, with his eyebrows lifted. Mr. Payson appeared at the entrance. He was scowling under his bushy eyebrows, the muscles of his face were twitching. A cane was firmly clenched in his right hand. He bent a harsh look at his daughter.
"What does this mean, Clytie?" he demanded.
She had recovered on the instant and faced him splendidly, in neither defiance nor supplication. "It means," she said in her low, steady voice, "that as you won't permit me to receive Mr. Granthope in your house, I must see him in his."
"Leave this room instantly!" he thundered bombastically.
"Please don't make a scene, father. I'm quite old enough to take care of myself, and to judge for myself. You needn't humiliate me."
"Humiliate you! If you're not humiliated at being found here with a cheap impostor, I don't think I can shame you! This man is a rank scoundrel and a cheat—I won't have you compromise yourself with such a mountebank!"
Granthope stood watching her unruffled, fearless pose, confident in her power to control the situation.
"Mr. Granthope is my friend, father. Don't say anything that you may regret. I don't intend to leave you alone with him till you are master of yourself, and can say what you have come to say without anger. He has respected your request not to call on me at the house, and I came here of my own accord, without his invitation. And he has always treated me as a gentleman should."
"A gentleman!" Mr. Payson sneered. "I know what he is—he's a damned trickster. I've always suspected it, but since I kicked him out of my house I've had proof of it. I know his record"—he turned to Granthope—"from persons who know you well, sir!"
"I suppose you mean Vixley or Madam Spoll."
"You can't deny that they know you pretty well?"
"Your daughter knows more, I think. I have just taken the liberty of informing her as to just how much of a scoundrel I am."
"And you have the impertinence to consider yourself her social equal!"
"I think Miss Payson's position is sufficiently assured for her to be in no danger."
"Well, yours certainly is not. I've heard of your lady-killing. I suppose you want to add my daughter's scalp to your belt. Haven't you women enough running after you yet? So you wheedled her with a mock-confession—tried the cry-baby on her. Well, it won't work with me. I'll tell her all about you, don't be afraid!"
Clytie went to him and laid a hand gently upon his arm. "Father, we'll go, now, please. I can't bear this. You need only to look about you to see that, whatever Mr. Granthope has been, he is no longer a palmist. You see this room is already dismantled—if you'll only listen, I'll explain everything."
"It does look rather theatrical here." Mr. Payson looked at the piles of velvet on the floor, then turned again to the young man. "It seems that you have the audacity to want to marry my daughter. No doubt this little scene is a part of the game. It's very pretty, very effective. But let me tell you that this sensational tomfoolery won't be of any use. You are a charlatan, sir! You've always been one, and you always will be."
"Mr. Payson," Granthope said, with no trace of anger, "I can't deny that something of what you say is true, but your daughter knows that much already, and she has it from a better authority than yours. I can't blame you for your feeling in this matter; it's quite natural, for you don't know me. But I hope in time to induce you to believe in me. I wish you would let me begin by doing what should have done when I first met your daughter—warn you that you are in the hands of a dangerous set of swindlers who are deceiving you systematically. I can tell you a good deal that it will be greatly to your advantage to know about them."
The old man broke into ironic laughter. "That's just what they told me you'd say," he sneered. "They warned me that you'd try to libel them and accuse them of all sorts of impossible tricks. Set a thief to catch a thief, eh? No, that won't work, Mr. Granthope. I happen to know too much for that!"
"Won't you listen to what he has to say, father? It can do no harm. What do you know about those persons, after all? They are undoubtedly trying to deceive you," Clytie said earnestly.
Granthope added: "I can tell you of tricks they habitually practise."
"What's that to me? Haven't I got eyes? Haven't I common sense? Can you tell me how they find out things about my own life that no one living knows but me?"
"I can tell you how it was done in other cases—"
"Aha, I thought so—you can tell me, for instance, how to crawl through a trap in the mopboard, can't you? I'd rather hear how you impose on silly women, if you're going in for your confessions. What do you expect me to believe? I am quite satisfied with my own ability to investigate. I haven't lived for fifty years in the West to be imposed upon by flimflam. I'm not suffering from senile decay quite yet!"
He took Clytie to the door; there he paused dramatically, to deliver his parting shot.
"I notice you've hidden away that young woman you're living with. You might as well send for her—my daughter is not likely to be back again in a hurry."
As they left, Clytie gave him a look which denied her father's words.
Granthope waited till the hall door had slammed, then went into the office, where the red-haired boy was lolling out of the window.
"Jim," he said, laying his hand on the boy's shoulder, "I shall not need you any more. Here's your pay for the week. You needn't come back."
Jim shuffled into his coat, whistling, pulled on his cap, and left without a trace of regret. Granthope pulled a chair up to the grate. The dusk fell, and he still remained, watching the fire.