CHAPTER IITUITION AND INTUITIONIt was a large room, unfurnished except for a couch in a recess of the wall and a table with two chairs drawn up under an electric-light bulb which hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered from floor to cornice by an arras of black velvet, falling in full, vertical folds, sequestering the apartment in soft gloom. Over the couch, this drapery was embroidered with the signs of the zodiac in a circle—all else was shadowy and mysterious.The young woman walked into the place with her leisurely stride—her chin a little up-tilted, her eyes curious. In the center of the room she stopped and looked slowly and deliberately about her. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly with amusement, evidently at the obvious picturesqueness of the studio.Granthope watched her keenly. With his eyes and ears full of Fancy Gray's ardent, dramatic youth, sparkling with the sophistication of the city, slangy, audacious, gay, this girl seemed almost unreal in her delicacy and exquisite virginity, a creature of dreams and faery, the personification of an ideal too fine and fragile for every-day. Her face showed caste in every line. He was a little afraid of her. Her bearing compelled not only respect, but, in a way, reverence—a tribute he seldom had felt inclined to pay to themondaineswho visited him.His confidence, however, soon asserted itself. He had found that all women were alike—there were, as in chess, several openings to his game, but, once started, the strategy was simple."Well, how do you like my studio?""It's like dreams I've had," she said. "I like it. It's so simple.""Most people think it too somber.""It is somber; but that purple-black is wonderful in the way it takes the light. And it's all so different!""Yes, I flatter myself it is that. But I'm 'different' myself.""Are you?" She turned her eyes steadfastly upon him for the first time, as if mentally appraising him, as he stood, six feet of virility, handsome, vivid and nonchalant. The color which had risen to her cheeks still remained."You are, too," he went on, examining her as deliberately.She smiled faintly and took a seat by the table and removed her veil. Her face was now clearly illuminated, and Granthope's eyes, traveling from feature to feature in quest of significant details, fell upon her left cheek. His look was arrested at the sight of a brown velvety mole, a veritable beauty-spot, heightening the color of her skin. It was charming, making her face piquant and human. His hand went to his forehead thoughtfully.At the sight of this mark upon her cheek, something troubled him. His mind, always alert to suggestive influences, registered the faintest impression of a thought at first too elusive to be called an idea. It was like the ultimate, dying ripple from some far-off shock to his consciousness. The impact died almost as it reached him—a flash, vaguely stimulating to his imagination, and then it was gone, its mysterious message uncomprehended.She watched him a little impatiently, seeming to resent his scrutiny. Noticing this, he summoned his distracted attention and seated himself at the table. But, from time to time, now, his glance darted to her cheek surreptitiously, searching for the lost clue. He had learned the value of such subtle intuitions and would not give up his efforts to take advantage of this one.She laid her bare hand upon the black velvet cushion beneath the light, saying, "I'm sorry that something has disturbed you." She looked at him, and then away."Why, nothing has disturbed me," he said. "Why should you think so?" Even as he pulled himself together for this denial her quick perception gave him another cause for wonder."I'm rather sensitive to other people's moods sometimes. That's one reason why I came. I didn't know but you might tell me something about it—how far to trust it, perhaps—though I came, I confess, more from curiosity."Her air was still so detached that her conversational approaches seemed almost experimental. She spoke with pauses between her phrases, while her eyes, now showing full and clear gray, lit upon him only to rove off, returned and departed again, but never rapidly, as if she sought for her words here and there in the room, and brought them calmly back to him. She did not shun a direct gaze, but her look wandered as her thought wandered in its logical course, for the time seeming to forget his presence.He took her hand and felt of it, testing its quality and texture, preparing himself for his speech. Her hand was long and slim, with scarcely a fiber more flesh upon the bones than was necessary to cover them admirably. He had no thought at first except to give his ordinary routine of reading, but his study of her showed her to be an exceptional character. She was beautiful, with the loveliness of an aristocratic and slightly bewildering spiritual type. Her hand in his was magnetic, delicious of contact, subtly alive even though not consciously responsive. Other women with more obvious charm had left him cold. She, aided by no suggestion of coquetry or complaisance, allured him. She awakened in him a desire not wholly physical, although he could not fail to regard her primarily in the sex relation that, so far, had been his chief interest in women. She, as a woman, answered, in some secret way, him, as a man. This was his first wave of feeling. Her hint amused him, true as her intuition had been; she had stumbled upon his embarrassment, no doubt, and had claimed prescience, a common enough form of feminine conceit. There he had a valuable suggestion as to the direction of her line of least resistance to his wiles.Following upon this, as the first feeling of her unreality faded, upon contact, came the thought of her as a wealthy and credulous girl, who might minister to his ambitions. He was without real social aspirations, except in so far as his success in the fashionable world favored the game he was playing. Years of contact with credulity and hypocrisy had carried him, mentally, too far to value the lionizing and the hero-worship he had tasted from his smarter clients. But the patronage of such a fair and finished creature as this girl, especially if he could establish a more intimate relation, might secure the permanence of his position and his opportunities. He saw vistas of delight and satisfaction in such an acquaintance. He had had his fill of silly women whose favors were paid for in ministrations to their vanity. Such tribute, easy as it was for him with his facility, irked him. Here, perhaps, was one who might hold his interest by her fineness and her mentality, and by the very difficulty he might find in impressing her. There would be zest to the pursuit.Beneath these waves of feeling, however, and beneath his active intelligence, there was an inchoate disturbance in some subconscious stratum of his mind. He felt it only as the slight mental perplexity the mole upon her cheek had caused; he had no time, now, to pursue that incipient idea. His impression of her as a desirable, pleasurable quarry incited him to devise the psychological method necessary for her capture. He knew to a hair, usually, what he could do with women; but now he was forced to gain time by a preamble in the conventional patter of the palmist's cult.Her hand, it appeared, was of a mixed type, neither square nor conic, with long fingers, inclined to be psychic. He remarked the extraordinary sensitiveness denoted by their cushioned tips. Nails, healthy and oval; knuckles indicating a good sense of order in mental and physical life. She was, in short, of strong, vigorous mentality, well-balanced, artistic, generous, liberal; but (he referred to the Mount of Jupiter) with a tendency to be a looker-on rather than a sharer in the ordinary social pleasures of life. Saturn, developed more toward the finger, gave her a slightly melancholy temperament; Apollo showed a great appreciation of the beautiful in nature, with no little critical knowledge of art; Mercury was less developed, and implied a lack of humor; Venus betrayed a well-controlled but warm feeling; it was soft—she was, consequently, easily moved. Her thumb was wilful rather than logical, her fingers suggested respectively, pride, perception, self-respect, morbidity, love of the beautiful as distinguished from the ornamental, tact.He had thrown himself into a pose so habitual as to become almost unconscious, though it was keyed to the theatrical pitch of his picturesque appearance and surroundings. The girl's expression showed, to his alert eye, a slight disappointment at the conventionality of his remarks. This spurred him to more originality and definiteness. He tossed his hair back with one hand in a quick gesture and turned to the lines in her palm, examining them first with a magnifying glass and then tracing them with an ivory stylus. Her eyes were fixed upon his, as if she were more interested in the manner than the matter of his task."You are the sort of person," he said, "who is, in a certain sense, egoistic. That is, after a criticism of any one, you would immediately ask yourself, 'Would I not have done the same thing, under the same circumstances?' You're stupendously frank—you'd own up to anything, any faults you thought you possessed; you'd even exaggerate a jestingly ignoble confession of motives because you hate hypocrisy so much in others. You are eminently fair and just, as you are generous. You have none of the ordinary feminine arts of coquetry. If you liked a man you would say so frankly."It was typical of Granthope's enthusiasm for his game that he dared thus play it so boldly with his cards face up upon the table. His visitor began to show more interest; it was evident that she appreciated the ingeniousness of his phrasing. Her lip curved into a dainty smile. Her eyes gleamed slyly, then withdrew their fire.He continued: "You are slow in action, but when the time comes, you can act swiftly without regard of the consequences. You are not prudish. You are willing to look upon anything that can be regarded as evidence as to the facts of life, even though you may not care to go into things purely for the sake of experience. You are faithful and loyal, but you are not of the type that believes 'the king can do no wrong'—you see your friends' faults and love them in spite of those faults, yet you are absolutely indifferent to most persons who make no special appeal. You are lazy, but physically, not mentally—there is no effort you will spare yourself to think things out and get to the final solution of a psychological or moral problem. You love modernness, complexity of living, the wonderful adjustments that money and culture effect, but not enough to endure the conventionality that sort of life demands. You are not particularly economical—you'd never go all over your town for a bargain or to 'pick up' antiques—you would prefer to go to a good shop and pay a fair price. You are fond of children—not of all children, however, only bright and interesting ones. You are fond of dress in a sensuous sort of way; that is, you like silk stockings, because they feel cool and smooth; silk skirts, because they fall gracefully and make a pleasant swish against your heels; furs, on account of the color and softness, but none of these merely because of their richness or splendor."His face was intent, almost scowling, two vertical lines persisting between his brows; his mouth was fixed. His concentration seemed to hold no personal element; there was nothing to resent in the contact of his fingers or the absorption of his gaze. Suddenly, however, he looked up and smiled—he knew how to smile, did Granthope—and the relation between them became so personal and intimate that she involuntarily drew away her hand. He was instantly sensitive to this and by his attitude reassured her. Not, however, before she had blushed furiously, in spite of evident efforts to control herself.His eyes glanced again at the mole on her cheek. Then, as if electrified by the sudden kindling and intensification of her personality, his subconscious mind finished its work without the aid of reason. As a bubble might separate itself from the bottom of the sea and ascend, quivering, to the surface, his memory unloosed its secret, and it rose, to break in his mind. The mole—he had seen it before—where? Like a tiny explosion the answer came—upon the cheek of the little girl who visited them that day, twenty-three years ago, at Madam Grant's—the day she died. It reached him with the certainty of truth. It did not even occur to him to doubt its verity. In a flash, he saw what sensational use he could make of the intelligence. Another idea followed it—an old trick—perhaps it would work again."Would you mind taking off that ring?" he asked.She drew off a simple gold band set with three turquoises. He laid it upon the cushion, turning it between his fingers as he did so. In a single glance he had read the inscription engraved inside. His ruse was undetected; her eyes had roved about the room. He turned to her again."You are twenty-seven years old. You have a lover, or, rather, a man is making love to you. I do not advise you to marry him. You have traveled a good deal and will take another journey within a year. Something is happening in connection with a male relative that worries you. It will not be settled for some time. Are there any questions you would like to ask?""I think you have answered them already," she replied.He leaned back, to shake his hands and pass them across his forehead, theatrically. Another bubble had broken in his consciousness. "Oliver Payson!"—the name came sharply to his inner ear like a voice in a telephone. Oliver Payson—he recalled now where he had seen the name—upon the newspaper cut pinned to the door of Madam Grant's bedroom. Like two drops of quicksilver combining, this thought fused with that suggested by the mole on the girl's cheek. "Clytie Payson"—this name came to him, springing unconjured to his mind. He determined to hazard a test of the inspiration. He simulated the typical symptoms of obsession, trembled, shuddered and writhed in the professional manner. Then he said:"Would you like a clairvoyant reading? I think I might get something interesting, for I feel your magnetism very strongly."She assented with an alacrity she had not shown before. Her eyes opened wider, she threw off her lassitude, awakening to a mild excitement."Let me take your hands again—both of them. This is something I don't often do, but I'll see what I can get."He shut his eyes and spoke monotonously:"I see a name—C, l, y—"The girl's hands gave an involuntary convulsion."—t, i, e. Is that it? Clytie! Wait—I get the name—"Beneath slightly trembling lids, a fine, sharp glance shot out at her and was withdrawn again. It was as if he had stolen something from her."Payson!"The girl withdrew her hands suddenly; she drew in her breath swiftly, paling a little."That's my name, Clytie Payson! It's wonderful! Go on, please!"She gave him her gracilent, dewy hands again, and he thrilled to their provocative spell. He took advantage of her distraction to enjoy them lightly. When he spoke there was no hesitation in his voice."I don't understand this! I don't know who these people are, or where they are, and it seems ridiculous to tell it. But there is a fearfully disordered room with the sun coming in through dirty, broken windows. The floor is covered with rubbish, there's no furniture but a few old boxes. I see two women and a little girl. They are in old-fashioned costumes."Clytie's face was pale, now, and she watched him breathlessly."One of the women has white hair and vivid black eyebrows. She talks wildly sometimes; sometimes she's quite calm. The other woman is middle-aged and has a soft voice. The little girl is dressed in blue; she is sitting on a box listening. The crazy woman is kissing her."He shook himself, shuddered and opened his eyes, to find Miss Payson gazing upon him, her hand to her heart."It's strange!" she said."It sounds nonsensical, I suppose," he said, "but that's just what I get. Can you make anything of it?"'"It's all true!" said Clytie. "That very thing happened to me when I was a little girl—so long ago, that I had almost forgotten it.""You remember it, then?""Yes, it all comes back to me—though I have wondered vaguely about it often enough. It was when I was four years old and I went with my mother to call on this strange, crazy woman—if she were crazy! I never knew. I never dared speak to father about it. He never knew that we went, I think. I had an idea that he wouldn't have liked it, had he known.""And your mother?""She died—the same year, I think. We left San Francisco, father and I, soon after, and we lived abroad for several years. I didn't even remember the scene until long afterward, when something brought it up. Then it was like a dream or a vision.""Do you know, Miss Payson, I feel that you have very strong mediumistic powers; I can feel your magnetism. I think that you might develop yourself so as to be able to use your psychic force."She took it seriously."Yes, I think I do have a certain amount of capacity that way. I can never depend upon it, though, but my intuitions are very strong and occasionally rather strange things have happened to me."It amused him to see how quickly she had fallen into the trap he had set for her. Experience had taught him it was a common enough assertion for women to make, and he was cynically incredulous. He was a little disappointed, too; as, in his opinion, it discounted her intelligence. Nevertheless, he found in it a way to manipulate her."Perhaps I might help you to develop it," he suggested, "although I'm not much of a clairvoyant myself; I claim only to be a scientific palmist.""I think you are wonderful," Clytie asserted, giving him a glance of frank admiration. "This test alone would prove it. You see, having some slight power myself, I'm more ready to believe that others have it."He waived her compliment with apparent modesty."Women are more apt to be gifted that way—it isn't often I attempt a psychic reading. What is written in the palm I can read; as a physician diagnoses a case from symptoms in the pulse and tongue and temperature, so I read a person's character from what I see in the hand. I have been particularly interested in yours, Miss Payson, and perhaps I have been able to give you more than usual. I hope I may have the opportunity of seeing you again; I'm quite sure I can help you, or put you in the way of assistance."She arose and slowly drew on her gloves, her mind full of the revelation. He watched every motion with delight. Her brief mood of irradiation had given place to her customary languor, and her fragile loveliness, emphasizing the opposite to every one of his virile, ardent traits, allured him with the appeal of one extreme to another. Most of all, her mouth, wayward with its ravishing smile, enchanted him. It was controlled by no coquetry, he knew, and it moved him the more for that reason. Yet she seemed loath to go and moved slowly about the room. She stopped to point with a sweeping gesture at one side of the velvet-hung wall."It's rather too bad to hide the windows, isn't it?"He smiled at her divination, doubtful of its origin."You have a very good sense of direction, haven't you?"She appeared to notice his incredulity, but not to resent it."Indeed, I have very little," she said; then, giving him her hand with a quick impulse of cordiality, she smiled, nodded and turned to the anteroom.He glanced at the table, saw her ring, and made a motion toward it. Then it occurred to him that it might be used as an excuse for seeing her again and he followed her out.In the reception-room, Fancy was yawning; seeing them, she brought her hand quickly to her mouth and raised her eyebrows at Granthope. He made no sign in reply. Clytie walked up to her impulsively and held out her hand."I do hope I'll see you again, sometime," she said.Fancy laughed. "I do, too. You're the only one who's ever really appreciated me. You make me almost wish I was a lady." By her tone, there was some old wound that bled."You're that, and better, I'm sure," Clytie answered softly; "you're yourself!"She turned to leave. Granthope, who had watched the two women, amused, opened the door for her, received her long, steady glance, her quiet, low "Good morning," and bowed her out.As soon as she had fairly left, he turned quickly to Fancy. "Where's Philip?""In the back room, I suppose." Fancy looked surprised."Go and get him, please; tell him to find out where this girl lives, and all he can about her.""Say, Frank—" Fancy began, rising."Hurry, please! I don't want him to miss her. She's a good thing!""She'stoogood, Frank, that's just it!""That's why I want her. I don't catch one like that every day. Why, she's worth all the rest put together." He looked impatiently at her.Fancy shrugged her shoulders and sailed airily out of the room.Granthope stood for some time, his hands thrust into the pockets of his velvet coat, gazing abstractedly at the red wall of his reception-room. Then he took up the telephone and called for Madam Spoll's number.He made himself known and then said, "I'll be round to-night before your séance. I want to talk something over."CHAPTER IIITHE SPIDER'S NESTThe architecture of San Francisco was, in early days, simple and unpretentious, befitting the modest aspirations of a trading and mining town. Builders accepted their constructive limitations and did their honest best. False fronts, indeed, there were, making one-story houses appear to be two stories high, but redwood made no attempts in those days to masquerade as marble or granite.During the sixties, a few French architects imported a taste for classic art, and for a time, within demure limits, their exotic taste prevailed. The simple, flat, front wall of houses, now grown to three honest stories high, they embellished with dentil cornice, egg-and-dart moldings and chaste consoles; they added to the second story a little Greek portico with Corinthian columns accurately designed, led up to by a flight of wooden steps; the façade was broken by a single bay-window, ornamented with conventional severity. Block after block of such dwelling-houses were built. They had a sort of restful regularity, they broke no artistic hearts.In later days, when San Francisco had begun to take its place in the world, a greater degree of sophistication ensued. Capitals of columns became more fanciful, ornament more grotesquely original, till ambitious turners and wood-carvers gave full play to their morbific imagination. Then was the day of scrolls and finials, bosses, rosettes, brackets, grille-work and comic balusters. Conical towers became the rage, wild windows, odd porches and decorations nailed on, regardless of design, made San Francisco's nightmare architecture the jest of tourists. Lastly, after an interregnum of Queen Anne vagaries, came the Renaissance and the Age of Stone, heralded by concrete imitations and plaster walls of bogus granite.Madam Spoll's house was of that commonplace, anemically classic style which, after all, was then the least offensive type of residence. It was painted appropriately in lead color—for the house, with the rest of the block, seemed to have been cast in a mold—a tone which did its best to make Eddy Street prosaic. It had been long abandoned by fashion and was now hardly on speaking terms with respectability. It occupied a place in a row of boarding-houses, cheap millinery establishments and unpretentious domiciles. There was a dreary little unkempt yard in front, with a passage leading to an entrance under the front steps; above, the sign "Madam Spoll, Clairvoyant and Medium," was displayed on ground glass, and below, hanging on a nail against the wall, was a transparency. When the lamp was lighted inside this, one read the words: "Circle To-night. Admittance ten cents."This Thursday the lamp was lighted. It was half-past seven o'clock.Devotees had begun to arrive, and, entering by the lower door, they paid their dimes to Mr. Spoll, who stood beside the little table at the entrance, left their "tests"—envelopes, flowers, jewelry or what not—and passed into the audience-room.This had once been a dining-room and its walls were covered with a figured paper, above which was a bright red border decorated with Japanese fans and parasols. A few gaudy paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, and here and there were hung framed mottoes: "There Is No Death"—"We Shall Meet Again"—"There Is a Land that is Fairer than Day." This room was filled with chairs set in rows, and would hold some forty or fifty persons. It was separated by an arch from a smaller room beyond, where, upon a platform, stood a table with an open Bible, an organ, two chairs and a folding screen.Only the front seats were at present occupied, these by habitués of the place, all firm believers, a picturesque group showing at a glance the stigmata of eccentricity or mental aberration. For the most part they were women in black; they bowed to one another as they sat down, then waited in stolid patience for the séance to open. The others were pale, blue-eyed men with drooping mustaches and carefully parted hair, and a whiskered, bald-headed old gentleman or two who sat in silence. The room was dimly illuminated by side lights.Farther down the hallway, opposite the foot of a flight of stairs leading upward to her living-rooms, was Madam Spoll's "study," and here she was, this evening, preparing for business.This room was small and crowded with furniture. The marble mantel held an assortment of bisque bric-à-brac, sea-shells, paper knives and cheap curiosities. The walls were covered with photographs, a placque or two, fans and picture cards. A huge folding bed, foolishly imitating a mirrored sideboard, occupied one corner of the room. A couch covered with fancy cushions and tidies ran beside it. A table, heavily draped, a three-legged tea-stand, an easel with a satin sash bearing the portrait, photographically enlarged in crayon, of a bold, smirking, overdressed little girl, a ragged trunk and several plush-covered chairs were huddled, higgledy-piggledy, along the other side of the room.Upon the couch Madam Spoll sat, spraying envelopes with alcohol from an atomizer on a small bamboo stand before her.She was an enormous woman of masculine type, with short, briskly curling, iron-gray hair and a triple chin. Heavy eyebrows, heavy lips, heavy ears and cheeks had Madam Spoll, but her forehead was unlined with wrinkles; her expression was serene, and, when she smiled, engaging and conciliating. She was dressed in black satin with wing-like sleeves, the front of her waist being covered with a triangular decoration of bead-work.Watching her with roving, black eyes was Professor Vixley, smoking a vile cigar. His face was sallow, of a predatory mold with a pointed, mangy beard, and sharp, yellow teeth. He wore a soft, striped flannel shirt with a flowing pink tie. From the sleeves of his shiny, cutaway coat, faded to a purplish hue, his thin, tanned, muscular hands showed like the claws of a vulture."You seem to be doin' a pretty good business," he remarked, dropping his ashes carelessly upon the floor."So-so," Madam Spoll answered. "If things go well we hope to get a new hall up on Post Street, but there ain't nothing in tests. Straight clairvoyance is the future ofthisbusiness. Of course, we have to give cheap circles to draw the crowd, but it's a lot of bother and expense and it does tire me all out. Then there's always the trouble from the newspapers likely to come up.""Pshaw! I wouldn't mind gettin' into the newspapers occasionally, it's good advertisin'. The more you're exposed the better you get along, I believe.""'Lay low and set on your eggs' is my motto," said the Madam. "I don't like too much talk. I prefer to work in the dark—there's more money in it in the long run. I don't care if I only have a few customers; if they're good and easy I can make all I want.""What do you bother with sealed messages for, Gert?" Professor Vixley asked."Oh, I got to fix a lot of skeptics to-night. I can usually open the ballots right on the table easy enough behind the flowers, but I want to read a few sealed messages besides. It may help along with Payson, too." She took up an envelope numbered "275." It was saturated with alcohol. She held it to the light, and squinting at the transparent paper, she read: "'When is Susie coming home?' Now, ain't that a fool question? I'll take a rise out ofher, see if I don't! That's that woman who got into trouble in that poisoning case.""Say, the alcohol trick's a pretty good stunt when you get a chance to use it! But I don't have time for it in my business.""Yes, it's easy enough if you use good, grain alcohol, but I wish I had an egg-tester. They save a lot of time, and you can read through four or five thicknesses of paper with 'em. Spoll, he has plenty of chance to hold out the ballots and bring 'em in to me; his coming and going ain't noticed, because he has to fetch 'em up to the table, anyway. By the time I go on, all the smell's faded out. If it ain't, my handkerchief is so full of perfumery that you can't notice anything else. I'm going to fit up my table with one o' them glass plates with an electric flash-light underneath that I can turn on with a switch. You can read right through the envelope then. But I don't often consent to tests like that. It deteriorates your powers. And my regular customers are usually contented to send their ballots up open and glad of the chance to get an answer.Theydon't want to give the spirits no trouble! Lord, I wish I had the power I had when I begun." She smiled pleasantly at her companion."I see old Mrs. Purinton on the front row as I come in," Vixley observed, shifting his cigar labially from one corner of his mouth to the other."Say, there's a grafter for fair!" she exclaimed. "She's been coming here to the publics for two years and never once has she gave me a private setting. That's what I call close. She's as near as matches! And always the same old song—little Willie's croup or when's Henry going to write, and woozly rubbish like that. I got a good mind to hand her a dig. I could make a laughing-stock out of her, and scare her away easy. Folks do like a laugh at a public séance; you know that, Professor.""Sure! It don't do no harm as long as you hit the right one.""Oh, I ain't out for nothing but paper-sports and grafters. I know a good thing when I see it. I hope there'll be something doing worth while in this Payson business. He may show up to-night. Lulu claims she conned him good.""I hope I'll have a slice off him," said Professor Vixley, his beady, black eyes shining. "We got to get up a new game for him before we pass him down the line.""Oh, if anybody can I guess we can; there's more'n one way to kill a cat, besides a-kissing of it to death.""Yes, smotherin' it in hot air, for instance!" Vixley grinned."They's one thing I wish," said Madam Spoll, "and that is that we had a regular blue-book like they have in the East. Why, they tell me there's six thousand names printed for Boston alone. If we had some way of getting a lead with this Payson it would be lots easier. But I expect the San Francisco mediums will get better organized some day and coöperate more shipshape."Here Mr. Spoll entered, a tall, thin, bony, wild-eyed individual with a rolling pompadour of red hair, his face spattered with freckles. He walked on tiptoe, as if at a funeral, bowed to the Professor, coughed into his hand, and took up the letters Madam Spoll had been investigating, putting down some new ones."Oh, here's that 'S.F.B.' that Ringa told me about," she said, glancing at an envelope. "Is Ringa come in yet?""I ain't seen him; but it's early," said Spoll. "He'll show up all right. I'll send him right in.""Is Mr. Perry in front?""You bet!" Spoll was still tiptoeing about the room on some mysterious errand. "Perry ain't likely to lose a chance to make a dollar, not him!""He's a good one!" Madam Spoll smiled at the Professor. "I don't hardly know what I'd do without him. I can always depend upon him to make good. He ain't too willing, and sometimes, I declare, he almost fools me, even. I've known him to stand up and denounce me something fierce, especially when there was newspaper men in the audience, and then just gradually calm down and admit everything I wanted him to. He looks the part, too. Why, I sent him round to Mrs. Stepson's circle one night, when she first come to town, and she was fooled good. I've seen him cry at a materializing séance so hard it would almost break your heart.""Does he play spook?""No, he's best in the audience. He's a good capper, but I don't believe he could play spook—besides, he's getting too fleshy.""Who else have you got regular?" asked Professor Vixley."Only two or three. I don't need so many touts as most. I pride myself on doing my own work without much help. Of course, you got to give a name sometimes when a fishing test won't work, and a friend in the audience helps. Miss French, she's pretty good, but she's tricky. I'm afraid of her. I was gave away once to theChronicleand I lost a whole lot of business. Men are safer. Harry Debert is straight enough, but he's stupid. He's the too-willing kind, and you don't have a chance to get any effect."Say, Spoll," she added to her husband, "be sure and don't take no combs nor gloves! I ain't going to do no diagnosing in public—not for ten cents. Them that want it can pay for it and take a private setting.""They're mostly flowers to-night," said Spoll as he crept out of the room."Lord, I do hate a flower test!" she groaned. "It's too hard work. Of course, they're apt to bring roses if their name's Rose, or lilies and daisies the same way, but you can't never be sure, and you have to fish. Lockets is what I like, lockets and ballots."At this moment Mr. Ringa entered. He was a bleached, tow-headed youth, long and lanky, with mild gray eyes and a stubbly, straw-colored mustache. Two front teeth were missing from his upper jaw. His clothes seemed to have shrunk and tightened upon his frame. He bowed respectfully to Madam Spoll and Professor Vixley, who represented to him the top of the profession."Did you get that 'S.F.B.' letter, all right?" he asked."Yes, what about it?""She's easy!"Vixley grinned. "If she's easy for you she must be a cinch for us!"Ringa persevered. "Well, I got the dope, anyway. She's a Mrs. Brindon and she's worried about her husband—he's gone dotty on some fluzie up North. I read her hand last week. I told her they was trouble coming to her along of a dark woman—she's one of these beer-haired blondes—what I call a Würzburger blonde—then I showed it to her in the heart-streak. 'Go ahead and tell me how it will come out,' she says. I says: 'There's a peculiar condition in your hand that I ain't quite on to,' I says. She says: 'Why, can't you read it?' Says I: 'Madam, if I could read that well, I wouldn't be doing palms for no two bits a shot; I'd be where Granthope is, with a fly-away studio and crowding it at five plunks, per.' Then I says: 'Say, I hear Madam Spoll has great gifts in predicting at all affairs of the heart. I ain't never been to any of her circles, but why don't you shoot around next Thursday night and try her out?' 'What'll I do?' she says. Then I told her to write on a paper, 'Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me, and how will it come out?' She done it and sealed it up into an envelope I give her."[image]"I told her they was trouble coming to her""Good work!" said Madam Spoll. "I'll give you a rake-off if I land her. I've got her ballot right here. I won't need to open it.""Ain't that job worth a dollar to you as it stands?" Ringa asked nervously. "I'll call it square and take my chances on the percentage.""All right. It's a good sporting chance! Only I wish it was a man. Women are too close." Madam Spoll opened her purse and paid him.As Ringa left, Vixley asked: "By the way, how about this fellow Payson? Do you think Lulu roped him?""I guess so. Lulu's done pretty well lately, and she's brought me considerable business. She ought to be here by this time.""I should think she'd be able to handle him alone.""Don't you go and tell her so! The thing for her to do is to get a manager, but I don't intend to queer my own game.""What line is she workin' now? She's failed at about everything ever since she begun with cards.""Oh, she's doing the 'Egyptian egg' reading. Wouldn't that freeze you? Lord, that was out of date twenty years go; but everything goes in San Francisco.""Say, ain't this town the penultimate limit!" Vixley ejaculated, grinning. "Why, the dopes will stand in line all night for a chance to be trimmed, and send their money by express, prepaid, if you let 'em. Gert, sometimes I'm ashamed of myself for keepin' 'em waitin' so long! Talk about takin' a gumdrop away from a sick baby; that's hard labor to what we did for Bennett. What I want to know is, how do these damn fools ever get all the money we take away from 'em? It don't look like they had sense enough to cash a check.""If I had one or two more decoys as good as Ringa and Lulu Ellis, I'd be fixed all right. I could stake out all the dopes in town. Say, Granthope could cut up a lot of easy cash if he'd agree to stand in. I tried to tap him about this here Payson, and he wouldn't give me a tip.""Perhaps he didn't know anything. You can't loosen up when you're wide open, can you?""He generally knows all there is to know. The trouble is he's getting too high-toned. Since he fitted up his new studio and butted into society you can't get near him with nothing like a business proposition. I believe he thinks he's too good for this place and will go East. He's a nice boy, though. I ain't got nothing against him, only I wish he'd help us out. Hello, here's Lulu. Good evening, Lulu, how's Egyptian eggs to-day?"Lulu Ellis was a dumpy, roly-poly, soft-eyed, soft-haired, pink-cheeked young woman, as innocent appearing a person as ever lived on her wits. Not that she had many of them, but a limited sagacity is enough to dupe victims as willing to be cajoled as those who appeal to the Egyptian egg for a sign of the future. Lulu's large, brown eyes were enough to distract one's attention from her rule-of-thumb methods. Her fat little hand was soft and white, her plump little body full of extravagant curves."Say, Mr. Payson has come!" she exclaimed immediately, with considerable excitement. "He's on the third row at the far end."Madam Spoll became alert. "Did you see his test?""No, he was here when I come," Lulu replied."Go out and get Spoll." Madam Spoll spoke sharply. "We've got to fix this thing up right now."Lulu returned to say: "There's such a crowd coming in he can't leave, but he says it was a gold watch with a seal fob.""All right, so far," said the Madam. "Now, Lulu, are you sure of what you told me?"Lulu's reply was interrupted by the entrance of Francis Granthope, in opera hat and Inverness cape, making a vivid contrast to the disreputable aspect of Professor Vixley. He greeted the three conspirators with his customary elegance."I'm sorry I had nothing about Payson when you rang me up, Madam Spoll, but just afterward his daughter came in for a reading. Queer, wasn't it?""God, that's a stroke of luck!" said Vixley eagerly. "I say, Frank, you can work her while we handle the old man, and we'll clean up a fortune. They say he's a millionaire." Vixley's little eyes gleamed."Let's hear what Lulu has to say, first," said Madam Spoll."Why, I didn't get much," Lulu confessed. "He said he dropped in by accident as he was passing by, to see what Egyptian egg astrology was. I got his name off of some letters he had in his overcoat pocket. I made him hang it on the hall hat-rack. I did all I could for him——""Did he get gay with you?" Professor Vixley interrupted. He had been overtly enjoying Lulu's plump charms with his rapacious eyes.Granthope smiled; Lulu Ellis colored slightly."No, he didn't! I don't do none of that kind of work!""The more fool you!" Madam Spoll retorted. "He's an old man, ain't he?""Sixty," said Vixley, "I looked him up.""Then he ought to be easy as chewing gum," said Madam Spoll.Granthope lighted a cigarette and listened with a mildly cynical expression."He ain't that kind, though," Lulu insisted. "I ain't altogether a fool, after all. Why, he don't even go to church!"Her three auditors laughed aloud, the Professor raucously, Madam Spoll with a bubbling chuckle, Granthope with scarcely more than an audible smile."That settles it, then. You're coming on, Lulu! What else do you know?" said Madam Spoll."Well, he has a daughter——""Yes, Granthope knows all about that," from the Madam."Her name is Clytie," said Granthope. "Twenty-seven.""Is she a looker?" asked Vixley.Granthope turned to him and gave him a patronizing glance. "Youwouldn't think so, Professor. She's hardly your style. But she's good enough for me!" He languidly flipped the ash from his cigarette and took his pose again.Lulu went on: "I think he had a love affair before he was married, but I couldn't quite get it. I didn't dare to fish very much. And that's about all I got.""That's plenty, Lulu. You can go now. Here's a dollar for you and much obliged for passing him up.""Oh, thank you," said Lulu. "I'm afraid it ain't worth that much. He gave me a dollar himself, though I don't charge but four bits, usually.""Lord, what a fool!" said Vixley, watching her go out. "That girl won't ever get nowhere, she's too innocent. She knows no more about real life than a boiled egg.""She's all right for me, though," Madam Spoll replied. "That's just the kind I need in my business. She fools 'em every time. They ain't nothing like a good blusher for a stool-pigeon, you take my word for it. Lulu's all right in her place." She turned to wash her hands at a bowl in the corner."Well," said Vixley, crossing his legs, "are you coming in with us, Frank?""It looks pretty good to me, so far. But it depends. What have you got about Payson, anyway?" Granthope's tone was languid.Madam Spoll winked at Vixley, as she wiped her hands behind the palmist's back."Why," Vixley replied, "Payson's in wool and is director of a bank, besides. He's a square-head with a high forehead, and them are easy. Gertie, here, can get him into a private sittin', and when she does, you leave him to her—she'll find a way all right. She don't do no lumpy work, Gertie don't, you know that, all right! When she passes him along to me, I'll manage him like the way we worked Bennett with the real estate. I'd like another chance as good as him.""You just wait," said Madam Spoll. "I got a hunch that this Payson is going to be pretty good pie; and we got a good strong combination, Frank, if you want to do your share.""It's a pity Spoll ain't got some of Gertie's gumption," said Vixley, smiling with approval at his partner."Don't you make no mistake about Spoll—he's done some good work on Payson already." The Madam was adjusting her waist before the glass and coquetting with her hair. "The trouble with you, Vixley, is that you ain't got no executive ability—I'm going to organize this game myself. I can see a way to use Spoll and Ringa, and Flora, too. We want to go into this thing big. Payson's a keener bird than Bennett was, but they's more in him.""So Spoll has begun, has he?" Granthope asked."Yes. He located the Paysons over on North Beach.""I know that much already. The mother's dead. Mr. and Miss Payson have traveled abroad. What else do you know about her?""Why, it seems she's the sole heir. Good news for you, eh? High society, too—Flower Mission, Kitchen Garden, Friday Cotillions, Burlingame, everything. She could help you, Frank, if you got on the right side of her."Here Mr. Spoll tiptoed in, bowed to Granthope, and said:"Eight o'clock, Gertie."Madam Spoll arose cumbrously, took a last peep in the mirror of the folding bed and turned into the hall, saying, "You take my advice, Frank. We depend upon you. See what you can do with the girl." She paused to bend a keen glance upon him. "What did you do with her, anyway?""Why, I did happen on something," he answered. "Do you remember Madam Grant, who used to live down on Fifth Street, twenty-odd years ago?"Madam Spoll came back into the room eagerly."The crazy woman who lived so queer and yet had lots of money? Yes! She did clairvoyance, didn't she? I remember. She had a kid with her, too. Let's see—he ran away with the money, didn't he? And nobody ever knew what become of him. What about her?"There was a duel of astute glances between them. Granthope had his own reasons for not wanting to say too much. He guarded his secret carefully, as he had guarded it from her for years."Miss Payson used to go down to see Madam Grant with her mother, when she was a little girl.""No!didshe, though? With her mother? That's queer! Hold on, Vixley. What did Lulu say about a love affair before Payson was married? Do you get that? Here's his wife visiting Madam Grant; you remember her, don't you? There's something in that I believe we got a good starter already."Spoll appeared again, anxiously beckoning, and she went with him down the hall.Vixley took up the scent. "Say, Frank," he asked, "how did you happen to get on to that, anyway? That was slick work."Granthope turned to him and replied patronizingly, "Oh, I ought to know something about women by this time. I got her to talking."Vixley frowned, intent in thought, stroking his scant, pointed beard and biting his mustache; then he slapped his knee with his claw-like hand. "Say, you got a grand chance there," he exclaimed. "See here, you can get in with the swells and be in a position to help out lots. It's the chance of a lifetime, and we'll make it worth your while.""How?" Granthope inquired contemptuously."By a fair exchange of information. You put us wise, and we'll put you wise. I'll trust you to find ways of using what help we give you." He cackled."Yes—you can trust me. I think I might have some fun out of it. I don't mind helping you out, but all I need myself is a little imagination, some common-sense and a frock coat."Vixley looked at him admiringly. "I wish't I had your chance, Frank; that's what I do. Say, you just light 'em and throw 'em away, don't you! I s'pose if I had your looks I could do it myself."Granthope looked him over calmly. "There's no knowing what a bath and a manicure and a suit of clothes would do for you, Professor.""You can't make brains out o' soap," retorted the medium."And you can't make money out of dirt."We'll see who has the money six months from now.""It's a fair enough bargain. I take the girl, you take the money. I'm satisfied." Granthope arose and yawned. "Oh," he added, "did you know Payson had a partner named Riley? He was drowned in seventy-seven.""That's funny. Queer how things come our way! Mrs. Riley is here in the front room with a test. She was tried for the murder of one of her husbands. Gert's goin' to shoot her up with it to-night. You better go in and see the fun. She'll give it to her good.""I think I will," said the palmist.He left Vixley plunged in thought, and walked out.Turning into the audience-room he sat down on a chair in the rear. The place was almost filled. His eyes scanned the assembly carefully, roving from one spectator to another. On a side seat near him, a party of four, young girls and men, sat giggling and chewing gum. The rest of the company showed a placid vacancy of expression or lukewarm expectancy.Madam Spoll at the organ and her husband with his violin, had, meanwhile, been playing a dreary piece of music, "to induce the proper conditions," as she had announced from the platform. They stopped, retarding a minor chord, and the medium went to the table and began to handle the tests, rearranging them, putting some aside, bringing others forward, in an abstracted manner. Then, looking up with a self-satisfied smile, she spoke:"I want to say something to the new-comers and skeptics here to-night in explanation of these tests. Them who have thoroughly investigated the subject and are familiar with every phase of mediumship, understand, of course, that these objects are placed here merely to attract magnetism to the sitter and induce the proper conditions, so that your spirit friends will be able to communicate with you. This phase of mediumship is called psychometry, but if I'd stop to explain just what that means, I wouldn't have time to give any readings. Now, it won't be possible to get any messages unless you come here in the proper mood to receive them. You must send out your best thought and do all you can to assist, or else my guides won't be able to establish communication on the spirit plane. If you merely come here only to laugh and to make a scoff of the proceedings, I'll have to ask you to leave before I begin, for they's many here to-night who are honestly in search of the truth, seeking to communicate with the dear, loved ones beyond on the other side."She passed her hand across her eyes, sighed, and fingered her chin nervously. She poked the articles on the table again."As I come on to this platform, I see an old man over there, in that direction, what you might call a middle-aged man, perhaps, of a medium height, and whiskers, like. I feel a condition of going on a journey, you might say, somewhere east of here, though maybe not very far, and I get the name John. The light goes over in your direction, lady, that one with the red hat. Yes, you. Would that be your father, possibly?"The lady, straightening herself upon being thus addressed, said timidly, "I think perhaps you mean my uncle. His name was John.""Maybe it is an uncle, though I get the influence of a father very strong, too. Has your father passed out?"The lady in the red hat nodded."Then itisyour father, do you see? Yes, I get an uncle, too, who wishes to communicate, only his influence ain't strong enough. That shows it ain't mind reading, as the newspaper folks say, don't it?" She smiled, as if she had made a point, and the audience appeared to be impressed."About this journey, now: maybe you ain't had no idea of traveling, but John says you will. I don't think it's liable to be very far, though. It'll be before the last of September or the first of October and John says it'll be successful. Do you understand what I mean?"The lady, frightened at the terrible import of this question, did not speak."Did you send up an article?""It's that purse with the chain."Madam Spoll fingered it and weighed it reflectively."I get a condition of what you might call inharmony. Seems to me like in your home something is worrying you and you ain't satisfied, you understand, with the way things are going and sometimes you feel as if, well, you just couldn't stand it!" Her smile, now, bathed her dupe with sympathy.The lady nodded vigorously, with tightly shut lips."You kind of wonder if it does any good for you to go to all the trouble you do to sacrifice yourself and try to do your duty, when it ain't what you might call appreciated. And you're worried about money, too. Ain't that so?"She received a ready assent. The woman's eyes were fixed upon her. Every one in the room watched the stripping naked of a soul."Well, John says that your father and him are helping you all they can on the spirit plane, and he thinks conditions will be more favorable and will take a turn for the better by the first of the year."A question fluttered on the woman's lips, but before it had time to escape, Madam Spoll suddenly turned in the other direction."While I was talking to that lady," she said, "I felt an influence leading me to that corner over there by the clock, and I get the initials 'S.F.B.' Is there anybody of that name over there?"A flashily dressed woman, with tinted yellow hair and rhinestone ear-rings, raised her hand."Those are my initials," she announced.Madam Spoll grew impressive. "Your name is Brindon, ain't it?"The woman gasped out a "Yes.""Did I ever see you before?""No," said the blonde, "not to my knowledge, you didn't."Madam Spoll made a comprehensive gesture with both hands, calling attention to the miracle. "You sent up a sealed ballot, didn't you?"The woman nodded. She was obviously excited, looking as if she feared her skeleton was to be dragged forth from its closet; as indeed it was.Madam Spoll took up the envelope with her delicate thumb and forefinger and displayed it to the audience."You see, it's still sealed," she announced, then, shutting her eyes, she continued: "My guides tell me that he's what you might call infatuated, but he'll come back to you and say he's sorry. Do you understand that?"The woman was now painfully embarrassed and shrank into her seat. The medium, however, did not spare her. It was too good a chance for a dramatic sensation. She tore the envelope open and read its contents boldly: "Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me?" It was a psychological moment. The old women stared at Mrs. Brindon with morbid delight. There was a little buzzing of whispers through the room. Then the audience prepared itself for the next sensation.The medium picked up another envelope. "This is marked '275,'" she said, then she clutched her throat. "Oh," she cried, "I'm strangling! They's somebody here who passed out very sudden, like they was poisoned. It's terrible. I can't answer the question the party has written because there's an evil influence here, a wicked woman. She had three husbands and two of 'em died suspicious. Her name is Riley. Would that be you?" She pointed forcefully at a dried-up, old woman in a shawl, with bleared eyes and a veined nose.There was no response."Was this question something about your daughter?" Madam Spoll asked.The woman coughed and bowed, shrinking into herself."I guess you better go somewhere else for your readings," Madam Spoll declared cruelly. "Your aura don't seem to me to be very harmonious. I don't know what's the matter to-night," she went on, passing her hand across her forehead in apparent distress. "The conditions around me are something horrid." Her voice rose. "There's somebody in this very room here who has committed murder. I can't do a thing until I get that off my mind. My guides tell me who it is, and that they'll be satisfied if he'll acknowledge it and say he's sorry. Otherwise, this séance can't go on."She stopped and glared about the hall. By this time she had worked her audience up to an intense excitement. Every one looked at his neighbor, wondering what was to come, but no one offered to confess to a crime. Madam Spoll raged up and down the platform in a frenzy. Then she stopped like an elephant at bay."I know who this person is. It's a man, and if he don't rise and acknowledge it, I shall point him out!"No one stirred. On the fourth seat, a clean-shaven man of thirty-five, with sharp, aquiline features and wide-spread ears, sat, transfixed with horror, his two hands clenched. It was Mr. Perry, the cleverest actor in the medium's support.She advanced toward him as if drawn by a secret power, stared into his eyes, and putting her hand upon his shoulder, said:"Thou art the man!"Mr. Perry wriggled out of her grasp. "See here," he cried, "you mind your own business, will you. You're a fake! You got no right to make a fool of me." His voice trembled, his face was a convincing mask of guilt arraigned.The medium shook a warning finger at him. "You either acknowledge what I say is true, or you leave the hall! I can't go on with you here."Mr. Spoll came in to stand beside her valiantly; spectators stood up to watch the drama. Mr. Perry's eyes were wild, his face distorted; suddenly he arose and rushed out of the room. Madam Spoll snapped her fingers two or three times, shook herself and went back to the platform. The murmurs died down and the séance was resumed.Madam Spoll waited a while in silence, then she picked up a gold watch with a seal fob from the table. "I'm glad to feel a more peaceful influence," she said. "I'm directed toward this watch. I don't know who brought it up, for I was out of the room at the time, but I get the name 'Oliver.'" She looked up expectantly.A gentleman arose from an end seat in the third row. He had a high domed head, partly bald, and a gray chin-beard with a shaven upper lip; under shaggy overhanging eyebrows, cold gray eyes looked through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. His air was benevolently judicial and bespoke culture and ease. He had, moreover, a well-marked presence, as of one used to being considered influential and prominent. A row of false teeth glittered when he opened his mouth."That's my name," he acknowledged in a deep, fluent voice that was heard all over the room, "and that is my watch."Madam Spoll fixed him in the eye. "I'd like to know if I can't get your other name. My guides are very strong to-night." After a few moments of self-absorption, she smiled sweetly upon him. "I think I can get it clairaudiently. Would it be Pearson?""No, but that's pretty near it, though.""It sounds like Pearson to me, Pearson. Payson, oh, yes, it's Payson, isn't it?""That's right," he said, and sat down."Did I ever see you before?""Not to my knowledge, Madam."She looked triumphantly at her audience and smiled."If they's any skeptics here to-night, I hope they'll go away satisfied." A number of old ladies nodded emphatically. "Of course, newspaper men never come on a night like this, when my guides are strong. Funny what you see when you ain't got a gun, ain't it? The next time I'm half sick and tired out, they'll be plenty of them here to say I'm a fake, like our friend here who left so sudden, white as a sheet. Now, when I was directed to that watch, I was conscious of a spirit standing beside this gentleman," she pointed at him benevolently, "influencing me to take it up. It's a woman, and she must have been about thirty when she passed out, and remarkably handsome, too. She was sort of fair-complected, between dark and light. I get a feeling here in my throat and down here," she touched her breast, lightly, curving her arm gracefully inward, "as if she went out sudden, like, with heart disease. Do you know what I mean?"Mr. Payson had bent forward now. "Yes," he said, "I think I do. Has she any message for me?""Yes, she has; but—well, you see, it ain't one I'd exactly care to give in public, and I don't think you'd want me to, either. If you come up after the séance is over, I'll see if I can get it for you. Or you might do still better to have a private setting and then I'll have time to tell you more. She brings me a condition of what you might call worry or anxiety, as if you had something on your mind."She turned to a bunch of flowers, and, taking them up, smelled them thoughtfully, for a while. Mr. Payson settled back in his seat.As the medium commenced again, Granthope arose with his faint, cynical smile and walked quietly out. He found Mr. Spoll at the table by the door."Well, I guess he's on the hook." The palmist buttoned his cape and lighted a cigarette."Trust Gertie for that," said Spoll; "she'll land him all right, see if she don't. Good night!"Granthope turned up his collar and walked out into the street.
CHAPTER II
TUITION AND INTUITION
It was a large room, unfurnished except for a couch in a recess of the wall and a table with two chairs drawn up under an electric-light bulb which hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered from floor to cornice by an arras of black velvet, falling in full, vertical folds, sequestering the apartment in soft gloom. Over the couch, this drapery was embroidered with the signs of the zodiac in a circle—all else was shadowy and mysterious.
The young woman walked into the place with her leisurely stride—her chin a little up-tilted, her eyes curious. In the center of the room she stopped and looked slowly and deliberately about her. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly with amusement, evidently at the obvious picturesqueness of the studio.
Granthope watched her keenly. With his eyes and ears full of Fancy Gray's ardent, dramatic youth, sparkling with the sophistication of the city, slangy, audacious, gay, this girl seemed almost unreal in her delicacy and exquisite virginity, a creature of dreams and faery, the personification of an ideal too fine and fragile for every-day. Her face showed caste in every line. He was a little afraid of her. Her bearing compelled not only respect, but, in a way, reverence—a tribute he seldom had felt inclined to pay to themondaineswho visited him.
His confidence, however, soon asserted itself. He had found that all women were alike—there were, as in chess, several openings to his game, but, once started, the strategy was simple.
"Well, how do you like my studio?"
"It's like dreams I've had," she said. "I like it. It's so simple."
"Most people think it too somber."
"It is somber; but that purple-black is wonderful in the way it takes the light. And it's all so different!"
"Yes, I flatter myself it is that. But I'm 'different' myself."
"Are you?" She turned her eyes steadfastly upon him for the first time, as if mentally appraising him, as he stood, six feet of virility, handsome, vivid and nonchalant. The color which had risen to her cheeks still remained.
"You are, too," he went on, examining her as deliberately.
She smiled faintly and took a seat by the table and removed her veil. Her face was now clearly illuminated, and Granthope's eyes, traveling from feature to feature in quest of significant details, fell upon her left cheek. His look was arrested at the sight of a brown velvety mole, a veritable beauty-spot, heightening the color of her skin. It was charming, making her face piquant and human. His hand went to his forehead thoughtfully.
At the sight of this mark upon her cheek, something troubled him. His mind, always alert to suggestive influences, registered the faintest impression of a thought at first too elusive to be called an idea. It was like the ultimate, dying ripple from some far-off shock to his consciousness. The impact died almost as it reached him—a flash, vaguely stimulating to his imagination, and then it was gone, its mysterious message uncomprehended.
She watched him a little impatiently, seeming to resent his scrutiny. Noticing this, he summoned his distracted attention and seated himself at the table. But, from time to time, now, his glance darted to her cheek surreptitiously, searching for the lost clue. He had learned the value of such subtle intuitions and would not give up his efforts to take advantage of this one.
She laid her bare hand upon the black velvet cushion beneath the light, saying, "I'm sorry that something has disturbed you." She looked at him, and then away.
"Why, nothing has disturbed me," he said. "Why should you think so?" Even as he pulled himself together for this denial her quick perception gave him another cause for wonder.
"I'm rather sensitive to other people's moods sometimes. That's one reason why I came. I didn't know but you might tell me something about it—how far to trust it, perhaps—though I came, I confess, more from curiosity."
Her air was still so detached that her conversational approaches seemed almost experimental. She spoke with pauses between her phrases, while her eyes, now showing full and clear gray, lit upon him only to rove off, returned and departed again, but never rapidly, as if she sought for her words here and there in the room, and brought them calmly back to him. She did not shun a direct gaze, but her look wandered as her thought wandered in its logical course, for the time seeming to forget his presence.
He took her hand and felt of it, testing its quality and texture, preparing himself for his speech. Her hand was long and slim, with scarcely a fiber more flesh upon the bones than was necessary to cover them admirably. He had no thought at first except to give his ordinary routine of reading, but his study of her showed her to be an exceptional character. She was beautiful, with the loveliness of an aristocratic and slightly bewildering spiritual type. Her hand in his was magnetic, delicious of contact, subtly alive even though not consciously responsive. Other women with more obvious charm had left him cold. She, aided by no suggestion of coquetry or complaisance, allured him. She awakened in him a desire not wholly physical, although he could not fail to regard her primarily in the sex relation that, so far, had been his chief interest in women. She, as a woman, answered, in some secret way, him, as a man. This was his first wave of feeling. Her hint amused him, true as her intuition had been; she had stumbled upon his embarrassment, no doubt, and had claimed prescience, a common enough form of feminine conceit. There he had a valuable suggestion as to the direction of her line of least resistance to his wiles.
Following upon this, as the first feeling of her unreality faded, upon contact, came the thought of her as a wealthy and credulous girl, who might minister to his ambitions. He was without real social aspirations, except in so far as his success in the fashionable world favored the game he was playing. Years of contact with credulity and hypocrisy had carried him, mentally, too far to value the lionizing and the hero-worship he had tasted from his smarter clients. But the patronage of such a fair and finished creature as this girl, especially if he could establish a more intimate relation, might secure the permanence of his position and his opportunities. He saw vistas of delight and satisfaction in such an acquaintance. He had had his fill of silly women whose favors were paid for in ministrations to their vanity. Such tribute, easy as it was for him with his facility, irked him. Here, perhaps, was one who might hold his interest by her fineness and her mentality, and by the very difficulty he might find in impressing her. There would be zest to the pursuit.
Beneath these waves of feeling, however, and beneath his active intelligence, there was an inchoate disturbance in some subconscious stratum of his mind. He felt it only as the slight mental perplexity the mole upon her cheek had caused; he had no time, now, to pursue that incipient idea. His impression of her as a desirable, pleasurable quarry incited him to devise the psychological method necessary for her capture. He knew to a hair, usually, what he could do with women; but now he was forced to gain time by a preamble in the conventional patter of the palmist's cult.
Her hand, it appeared, was of a mixed type, neither square nor conic, with long fingers, inclined to be psychic. He remarked the extraordinary sensitiveness denoted by their cushioned tips. Nails, healthy and oval; knuckles indicating a good sense of order in mental and physical life. She was, in short, of strong, vigorous mentality, well-balanced, artistic, generous, liberal; but (he referred to the Mount of Jupiter) with a tendency to be a looker-on rather than a sharer in the ordinary social pleasures of life. Saturn, developed more toward the finger, gave her a slightly melancholy temperament; Apollo showed a great appreciation of the beautiful in nature, with no little critical knowledge of art; Mercury was less developed, and implied a lack of humor; Venus betrayed a well-controlled but warm feeling; it was soft—she was, consequently, easily moved. Her thumb was wilful rather than logical, her fingers suggested respectively, pride, perception, self-respect, morbidity, love of the beautiful as distinguished from the ornamental, tact.
He had thrown himself into a pose so habitual as to become almost unconscious, though it was keyed to the theatrical pitch of his picturesque appearance and surroundings. The girl's expression showed, to his alert eye, a slight disappointment at the conventionality of his remarks. This spurred him to more originality and definiteness. He tossed his hair back with one hand in a quick gesture and turned to the lines in her palm, examining them first with a magnifying glass and then tracing them with an ivory stylus. Her eyes were fixed upon his, as if she were more interested in the manner than the matter of his task.
"You are the sort of person," he said, "who is, in a certain sense, egoistic. That is, after a criticism of any one, you would immediately ask yourself, 'Would I not have done the same thing, under the same circumstances?' You're stupendously frank—you'd own up to anything, any faults you thought you possessed; you'd even exaggerate a jestingly ignoble confession of motives because you hate hypocrisy so much in others. You are eminently fair and just, as you are generous. You have none of the ordinary feminine arts of coquetry. If you liked a man you would say so frankly."
It was typical of Granthope's enthusiasm for his game that he dared thus play it so boldly with his cards face up upon the table. His visitor began to show more interest; it was evident that she appreciated the ingeniousness of his phrasing. Her lip curved into a dainty smile. Her eyes gleamed slyly, then withdrew their fire.
He continued: "You are slow in action, but when the time comes, you can act swiftly without regard of the consequences. You are not prudish. You are willing to look upon anything that can be regarded as evidence as to the facts of life, even though you may not care to go into things purely for the sake of experience. You are faithful and loyal, but you are not of the type that believes 'the king can do no wrong'—you see your friends' faults and love them in spite of those faults, yet you are absolutely indifferent to most persons who make no special appeal. You are lazy, but physically, not mentally—there is no effort you will spare yourself to think things out and get to the final solution of a psychological or moral problem. You love modernness, complexity of living, the wonderful adjustments that money and culture effect, but not enough to endure the conventionality that sort of life demands. You are not particularly economical—you'd never go all over your town for a bargain or to 'pick up' antiques—you would prefer to go to a good shop and pay a fair price. You are fond of children—not of all children, however, only bright and interesting ones. You are fond of dress in a sensuous sort of way; that is, you like silk stockings, because they feel cool and smooth; silk skirts, because they fall gracefully and make a pleasant swish against your heels; furs, on account of the color and softness, but none of these merely because of their richness or splendor."
His face was intent, almost scowling, two vertical lines persisting between his brows; his mouth was fixed. His concentration seemed to hold no personal element; there was nothing to resent in the contact of his fingers or the absorption of his gaze. Suddenly, however, he looked up and smiled—he knew how to smile, did Granthope—and the relation between them became so personal and intimate that she involuntarily drew away her hand. He was instantly sensitive to this and by his attitude reassured her. Not, however, before she had blushed furiously, in spite of evident efforts to control herself.
His eyes glanced again at the mole on her cheek. Then, as if electrified by the sudden kindling and intensification of her personality, his subconscious mind finished its work without the aid of reason. As a bubble might separate itself from the bottom of the sea and ascend, quivering, to the surface, his memory unloosed its secret, and it rose, to break in his mind. The mole—he had seen it before—where? Like a tiny explosion the answer came—upon the cheek of the little girl who visited them that day, twenty-three years ago, at Madam Grant's—the day she died. It reached him with the certainty of truth. It did not even occur to him to doubt its verity. In a flash, he saw what sensational use he could make of the intelligence. Another idea followed it—an old trick—perhaps it would work again.
"Would you mind taking off that ring?" he asked.
She drew off a simple gold band set with three turquoises. He laid it upon the cushion, turning it between his fingers as he did so. In a single glance he had read the inscription engraved inside. His ruse was undetected; her eyes had roved about the room. He turned to her again.
"You are twenty-seven years old. You have a lover, or, rather, a man is making love to you. I do not advise you to marry him. You have traveled a good deal and will take another journey within a year. Something is happening in connection with a male relative that worries you. It will not be settled for some time. Are there any questions you would like to ask?"
"I think you have answered them already," she replied.
He leaned back, to shake his hands and pass them across his forehead, theatrically. Another bubble had broken in his consciousness. "Oliver Payson!"—the name came sharply to his inner ear like a voice in a telephone. Oliver Payson—he recalled now where he had seen the name—upon the newspaper cut pinned to the door of Madam Grant's bedroom. Like two drops of quicksilver combining, this thought fused with that suggested by the mole on the girl's cheek. "Clytie Payson"—this name came to him, springing unconjured to his mind. He determined to hazard a test of the inspiration. He simulated the typical symptoms of obsession, trembled, shuddered and writhed in the professional manner. Then he said:
"Would you like a clairvoyant reading? I think I might get something interesting, for I feel your magnetism very strongly."
She assented with an alacrity she had not shown before. Her eyes opened wider, she threw off her lassitude, awakening to a mild excitement.
"Let me take your hands again—both of them. This is something I don't often do, but I'll see what I can get."
He shut his eyes and spoke monotonously:
"I see a name—C, l, y—"
The girl's hands gave an involuntary convulsion.
"—t, i, e. Is that it? Clytie! Wait—I get the name—"
Beneath slightly trembling lids, a fine, sharp glance shot out at her and was withdrawn again. It was as if he had stolen something from her.
"Payson!"
The girl withdrew her hands suddenly; she drew in her breath swiftly, paling a little.
"That's my name, Clytie Payson! It's wonderful! Go on, please!"
She gave him her gracilent, dewy hands again, and he thrilled to their provocative spell. He took advantage of her distraction to enjoy them lightly. When he spoke there was no hesitation in his voice.
"I don't understand this! I don't know who these people are, or where they are, and it seems ridiculous to tell it. But there is a fearfully disordered room with the sun coming in through dirty, broken windows. The floor is covered with rubbish, there's no furniture but a few old boxes. I see two women and a little girl. They are in old-fashioned costumes."
Clytie's face was pale, now, and she watched him breathlessly.
"One of the women has white hair and vivid black eyebrows. She talks wildly sometimes; sometimes she's quite calm. The other woman is middle-aged and has a soft voice. The little girl is dressed in blue; she is sitting on a box listening. The crazy woman is kissing her."
He shook himself, shuddered and opened his eyes, to find Miss Payson gazing upon him, her hand to her heart.
"It's strange!" she said.
"It sounds nonsensical, I suppose," he said, "but that's just what I get. Can you make anything of it?"'
"It's all true!" said Clytie. "That very thing happened to me when I was a little girl—so long ago, that I had almost forgotten it."
"You remember it, then?"
"Yes, it all comes back to me—though I have wondered vaguely about it often enough. It was when I was four years old and I went with my mother to call on this strange, crazy woman—if she were crazy! I never knew. I never dared speak to father about it. He never knew that we went, I think. I had an idea that he wouldn't have liked it, had he known."
"And your mother?"
"She died—the same year, I think. We left San Francisco, father and I, soon after, and we lived abroad for several years. I didn't even remember the scene until long afterward, when something brought it up. Then it was like a dream or a vision."
"Do you know, Miss Payson, I feel that you have very strong mediumistic powers; I can feel your magnetism. I think that you might develop yourself so as to be able to use your psychic force."
She took it seriously.
"Yes, I think I do have a certain amount of capacity that way. I can never depend upon it, though, but my intuitions are very strong and occasionally rather strange things have happened to me."
It amused him to see how quickly she had fallen into the trap he had set for her. Experience had taught him it was a common enough assertion for women to make, and he was cynically incredulous. He was a little disappointed, too; as, in his opinion, it discounted her intelligence. Nevertheless, he found in it a way to manipulate her.
"Perhaps I might help you to develop it," he suggested, "although I'm not much of a clairvoyant myself; I claim only to be a scientific palmist."
"I think you are wonderful," Clytie asserted, giving him a glance of frank admiration. "This test alone would prove it. You see, having some slight power myself, I'm more ready to believe that others have it."
He waived her compliment with apparent modesty.
"Women are more apt to be gifted that way—it isn't often I attempt a psychic reading. What is written in the palm I can read; as a physician diagnoses a case from symptoms in the pulse and tongue and temperature, so I read a person's character from what I see in the hand. I have been particularly interested in yours, Miss Payson, and perhaps I have been able to give you more than usual. I hope I may have the opportunity of seeing you again; I'm quite sure I can help you, or put you in the way of assistance."
She arose and slowly drew on her gloves, her mind full of the revelation. He watched every motion with delight. Her brief mood of irradiation had given place to her customary languor, and her fragile loveliness, emphasizing the opposite to every one of his virile, ardent traits, allured him with the appeal of one extreme to another. Most of all, her mouth, wayward with its ravishing smile, enchanted him. It was controlled by no coquetry, he knew, and it moved him the more for that reason. Yet she seemed loath to go and moved slowly about the room. She stopped to point with a sweeping gesture at one side of the velvet-hung wall.
"It's rather too bad to hide the windows, isn't it?"
He smiled at her divination, doubtful of its origin.
"You have a very good sense of direction, haven't you?"
She appeared to notice his incredulity, but not to resent it.
"Indeed, I have very little," she said; then, giving him her hand with a quick impulse of cordiality, she smiled, nodded and turned to the anteroom.
He glanced at the table, saw her ring, and made a motion toward it. Then it occurred to him that it might be used as an excuse for seeing her again and he followed her out.
In the reception-room, Fancy was yawning; seeing them, she brought her hand quickly to her mouth and raised her eyebrows at Granthope. He made no sign in reply. Clytie walked up to her impulsively and held out her hand.
"I do hope I'll see you again, sometime," she said.
Fancy laughed. "I do, too. You're the only one who's ever really appreciated me. You make me almost wish I was a lady." By her tone, there was some old wound that bled.
"You're that, and better, I'm sure," Clytie answered softly; "you're yourself!"
She turned to leave. Granthope, who had watched the two women, amused, opened the door for her, received her long, steady glance, her quiet, low "Good morning," and bowed her out.
As soon as she had fairly left, he turned quickly to Fancy. "Where's Philip?"
"In the back room, I suppose." Fancy looked surprised.
"Go and get him, please; tell him to find out where this girl lives, and all he can about her."
"Say, Frank—" Fancy began, rising.
"Hurry, please! I don't want him to miss her. She's a good thing!"
"She'stoogood, Frank, that's just it!"
"That's why I want her. I don't catch one like that every day. Why, she's worth all the rest put together." He looked impatiently at her.
Fancy shrugged her shoulders and sailed airily out of the room.
Granthope stood for some time, his hands thrust into the pockets of his velvet coat, gazing abstractedly at the red wall of his reception-room. Then he took up the telephone and called for Madam Spoll's number.
He made himself known and then said, "I'll be round to-night before your séance. I want to talk something over."
CHAPTER III
THE SPIDER'S NEST
The architecture of San Francisco was, in early days, simple and unpretentious, befitting the modest aspirations of a trading and mining town. Builders accepted their constructive limitations and did their honest best. False fronts, indeed, there were, making one-story houses appear to be two stories high, but redwood made no attempts in those days to masquerade as marble or granite.
During the sixties, a few French architects imported a taste for classic art, and for a time, within demure limits, their exotic taste prevailed. The simple, flat, front wall of houses, now grown to three honest stories high, they embellished with dentil cornice, egg-and-dart moldings and chaste consoles; they added to the second story a little Greek portico with Corinthian columns accurately designed, led up to by a flight of wooden steps; the façade was broken by a single bay-window, ornamented with conventional severity. Block after block of such dwelling-houses were built. They had a sort of restful regularity, they broke no artistic hearts.
In later days, when San Francisco had begun to take its place in the world, a greater degree of sophistication ensued. Capitals of columns became more fanciful, ornament more grotesquely original, till ambitious turners and wood-carvers gave full play to their morbific imagination. Then was the day of scrolls and finials, bosses, rosettes, brackets, grille-work and comic balusters. Conical towers became the rage, wild windows, odd porches and decorations nailed on, regardless of design, made San Francisco's nightmare architecture the jest of tourists. Lastly, after an interregnum of Queen Anne vagaries, came the Renaissance and the Age of Stone, heralded by concrete imitations and plaster walls of bogus granite.
Madam Spoll's house was of that commonplace, anemically classic style which, after all, was then the least offensive type of residence. It was painted appropriately in lead color—for the house, with the rest of the block, seemed to have been cast in a mold—a tone which did its best to make Eddy Street prosaic. It had been long abandoned by fashion and was now hardly on speaking terms with respectability. It occupied a place in a row of boarding-houses, cheap millinery establishments and unpretentious domiciles. There was a dreary little unkempt yard in front, with a passage leading to an entrance under the front steps; above, the sign "Madam Spoll, Clairvoyant and Medium," was displayed on ground glass, and below, hanging on a nail against the wall, was a transparency. When the lamp was lighted inside this, one read the words: "Circle To-night. Admittance ten cents."
This Thursday the lamp was lighted. It was half-past seven o'clock.
Devotees had begun to arrive, and, entering by the lower door, they paid their dimes to Mr. Spoll, who stood beside the little table at the entrance, left their "tests"—envelopes, flowers, jewelry or what not—and passed into the audience-room.
This had once been a dining-room and its walls were covered with a figured paper, above which was a bright red border decorated with Japanese fans and parasols. A few gaudy paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, and here and there were hung framed mottoes: "There Is No Death"—"We Shall Meet Again"—"There Is a Land that is Fairer than Day." This room was filled with chairs set in rows, and would hold some forty or fifty persons. It was separated by an arch from a smaller room beyond, where, upon a platform, stood a table with an open Bible, an organ, two chairs and a folding screen.
Only the front seats were at present occupied, these by habitués of the place, all firm believers, a picturesque group showing at a glance the stigmata of eccentricity or mental aberration. For the most part they were women in black; they bowed to one another as they sat down, then waited in stolid patience for the séance to open. The others were pale, blue-eyed men with drooping mustaches and carefully parted hair, and a whiskered, bald-headed old gentleman or two who sat in silence. The room was dimly illuminated by side lights.
Farther down the hallway, opposite the foot of a flight of stairs leading upward to her living-rooms, was Madam Spoll's "study," and here she was, this evening, preparing for business.
This room was small and crowded with furniture. The marble mantel held an assortment of bisque bric-à-brac, sea-shells, paper knives and cheap curiosities. The walls were covered with photographs, a placque or two, fans and picture cards. A huge folding bed, foolishly imitating a mirrored sideboard, occupied one corner of the room. A couch covered with fancy cushions and tidies ran beside it. A table, heavily draped, a three-legged tea-stand, an easel with a satin sash bearing the portrait, photographically enlarged in crayon, of a bold, smirking, overdressed little girl, a ragged trunk and several plush-covered chairs were huddled, higgledy-piggledy, along the other side of the room.
Upon the couch Madam Spoll sat, spraying envelopes with alcohol from an atomizer on a small bamboo stand before her.
She was an enormous woman of masculine type, with short, briskly curling, iron-gray hair and a triple chin. Heavy eyebrows, heavy lips, heavy ears and cheeks had Madam Spoll, but her forehead was unlined with wrinkles; her expression was serene, and, when she smiled, engaging and conciliating. She was dressed in black satin with wing-like sleeves, the front of her waist being covered with a triangular decoration of bead-work.
Watching her with roving, black eyes was Professor Vixley, smoking a vile cigar. His face was sallow, of a predatory mold with a pointed, mangy beard, and sharp, yellow teeth. He wore a soft, striped flannel shirt with a flowing pink tie. From the sleeves of his shiny, cutaway coat, faded to a purplish hue, his thin, tanned, muscular hands showed like the claws of a vulture.
"You seem to be doin' a pretty good business," he remarked, dropping his ashes carelessly upon the floor.
"So-so," Madam Spoll answered. "If things go well we hope to get a new hall up on Post Street, but there ain't nothing in tests. Straight clairvoyance is the future ofthisbusiness. Of course, we have to give cheap circles to draw the crowd, but it's a lot of bother and expense and it does tire me all out. Then there's always the trouble from the newspapers likely to come up."
"Pshaw! I wouldn't mind gettin' into the newspapers occasionally, it's good advertisin'. The more you're exposed the better you get along, I believe."
"'Lay low and set on your eggs' is my motto," said the Madam. "I don't like too much talk. I prefer to work in the dark—there's more money in it in the long run. I don't care if I only have a few customers; if they're good and easy I can make all I want."
"What do you bother with sealed messages for, Gert?" Professor Vixley asked.
"Oh, I got to fix a lot of skeptics to-night. I can usually open the ballots right on the table easy enough behind the flowers, but I want to read a few sealed messages besides. It may help along with Payson, too." She took up an envelope numbered "275." It was saturated with alcohol. She held it to the light, and squinting at the transparent paper, she read: "'When is Susie coming home?' Now, ain't that a fool question? I'll take a rise out ofher, see if I don't! That's that woman who got into trouble in that poisoning case."
"Say, the alcohol trick's a pretty good stunt when you get a chance to use it! But I don't have time for it in my business."
"Yes, it's easy enough if you use good, grain alcohol, but I wish I had an egg-tester. They save a lot of time, and you can read through four or five thicknesses of paper with 'em. Spoll, he has plenty of chance to hold out the ballots and bring 'em in to me; his coming and going ain't noticed, because he has to fetch 'em up to the table, anyway. By the time I go on, all the smell's faded out. If it ain't, my handkerchief is so full of perfumery that you can't notice anything else. I'm going to fit up my table with one o' them glass plates with an electric flash-light underneath that I can turn on with a switch. You can read right through the envelope then. But I don't often consent to tests like that. It deteriorates your powers. And my regular customers are usually contented to send their ballots up open and glad of the chance to get an answer.Theydon't want to give the spirits no trouble! Lord, I wish I had the power I had when I begun." She smiled pleasantly at her companion.
"I see old Mrs. Purinton on the front row as I come in," Vixley observed, shifting his cigar labially from one corner of his mouth to the other.
"Say, there's a grafter for fair!" she exclaimed. "She's been coming here to the publics for two years and never once has she gave me a private setting. That's what I call close. She's as near as matches! And always the same old song—little Willie's croup or when's Henry going to write, and woozly rubbish like that. I got a good mind to hand her a dig. I could make a laughing-stock out of her, and scare her away easy. Folks do like a laugh at a public séance; you know that, Professor."
"Sure! It don't do no harm as long as you hit the right one."
"Oh, I ain't out for nothing but paper-sports and grafters. I know a good thing when I see it. I hope there'll be something doing worth while in this Payson business. He may show up to-night. Lulu claims she conned him good."
"I hope I'll have a slice off him," said Professor Vixley, his beady, black eyes shining. "We got to get up a new game for him before we pass him down the line."
"Oh, if anybody can I guess we can; there's more'n one way to kill a cat, besides a-kissing of it to death."
"Yes, smotherin' it in hot air, for instance!" Vixley grinned.
"They's one thing I wish," said Madam Spoll, "and that is that we had a regular blue-book like they have in the East. Why, they tell me there's six thousand names printed for Boston alone. If we had some way of getting a lead with this Payson it would be lots easier. But I expect the San Francisco mediums will get better organized some day and coöperate more shipshape."
Here Mr. Spoll entered, a tall, thin, bony, wild-eyed individual with a rolling pompadour of red hair, his face spattered with freckles. He walked on tiptoe, as if at a funeral, bowed to the Professor, coughed into his hand, and took up the letters Madam Spoll had been investigating, putting down some new ones.
"Oh, here's that 'S.F.B.' that Ringa told me about," she said, glancing at an envelope. "Is Ringa come in yet?"
"I ain't seen him; but it's early," said Spoll. "He'll show up all right. I'll send him right in."
"Is Mr. Perry in front?"
"You bet!" Spoll was still tiptoeing about the room on some mysterious errand. "Perry ain't likely to lose a chance to make a dollar, not him!"
"He's a good one!" Madam Spoll smiled at the Professor. "I don't hardly know what I'd do without him. I can always depend upon him to make good. He ain't too willing, and sometimes, I declare, he almost fools me, even. I've known him to stand up and denounce me something fierce, especially when there was newspaper men in the audience, and then just gradually calm down and admit everything I wanted him to. He looks the part, too. Why, I sent him round to Mrs. Stepson's circle one night, when she first come to town, and she was fooled good. I've seen him cry at a materializing séance so hard it would almost break your heart."
"Does he play spook?"
"No, he's best in the audience. He's a good capper, but I don't believe he could play spook—besides, he's getting too fleshy."
"Who else have you got regular?" asked Professor Vixley.
"Only two or three. I don't need so many touts as most. I pride myself on doing my own work without much help. Of course, you got to give a name sometimes when a fishing test won't work, and a friend in the audience helps. Miss French, she's pretty good, but she's tricky. I'm afraid of her. I was gave away once to theChronicleand I lost a whole lot of business. Men are safer. Harry Debert is straight enough, but he's stupid. He's the too-willing kind, and you don't have a chance to get any effect.
"Say, Spoll," she added to her husband, "be sure and don't take no combs nor gloves! I ain't going to do no diagnosing in public—not for ten cents. Them that want it can pay for it and take a private setting."
"They're mostly flowers to-night," said Spoll as he crept out of the room.
"Lord, I do hate a flower test!" she groaned. "It's too hard work. Of course, they're apt to bring roses if their name's Rose, or lilies and daisies the same way, but you can't never be sure, and you have to fish. Lockets is what I like, lockets and ballots."
At this moment Mr. Ringa entered. He was a bleached, tow-headed youth, long and lanky, with mild gray eyes and a stubbly, straw-colored mustache. Two front teeth were missing from his upper jaw. His clothes seemed to have shrunk and tightened upon his frame. He bowed respectfully to Madam Spoll and Professor Vixley, who represented to him the top of the profession.
"Did you get that 'S.F.B.' letter, all right?" he asked.
"Yes, what about it?"
"She's easy!"
Vixley grinned. "If she's easy for you she must be a cinch for us!"
Ringa persevered. "Well, I got the dope, anyway. She's a Mrs. Brindon and she's worried about her husband—he's gone dotty on some fluzie up North. I read her hand last week. I told her they was trouble coming to her along of a dark woman—she's one of these beer-haired blondes—what I call a Würzburger blonde—then I showed it to her in the heart-streak. 'Go ahead and tell me how it will come out,' she says. I says: 'There's a peculiar condition in your hand that I ain't quite on to,' I says. She says: 'Why, can't you read it?' Says I: 'Madam, if I could read that well, I wouldn't be doing palms for no two bits a shot; I'd be where Granthope is, with a fly-away studio and crowding it at five plunks, per.' Then I says: 'Say, I hear Madam Spoll has great gifts in predicting at all affairs of the heart. I ain't never been to any of her circles, but why don't you shoot around next Thursday night and try her out?' 'What'll I do?' she says. Then I told her to write on a paper, 'Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me, and how will it come out?' She done it and sealed it up into an envelope I give her."
[image]"I told her they was trouble coming to her"
[image]
[image]
"I told her they was trouble coming to her"
"Good work!" said Madam Spoll. "I'll give you a rake-off if I land her. I've got her ballot right here. I won't need to open it."
"Ain't that job worth a dollar to you as it stands?" Ringa asked nervously. "I'll call it square and take my chances on the percentage."
"All right. It's a good sporting chance! Only I wish it was a man. Women are too close." Madam Spoll opened her purse and paid him.
As Ringa left, Vixley asked: "By the way, how about this fellow Payson? Do you think Lulu roped him?"
"I guess so. Lulu's done pretty well lately, and she's brought me considerable business. She ought to be here by this time."
"I should think she'd be able to handle him alone."
"Don't you go and tell her so! The thing for her to do is to get a manager, but I don't intend to queer my own game."
"What line is she workin' now? She's failed at about everything ever since she begun with cards."
"Oh, she's doing the 'Egyptian egg' reading. Wouldn't that freeze you? Lord, that was out of date twenty years go; but everything goes in San Francisco."
"Say, ain't this town the penultimate limit!" Vixley ejaculated, grinning. "Why, the dopes will stand in line all night for a chance to be trimmed, and send their money by express, prepaid, if you let 'em. Gert, sometimes I'm ashamed of myself for keepin' 'em waitin' so long! Talk about takin' a gumdrop away from a sick baby; that's hard labor to what we did for Bennett. What I want to know is, how do these damn fools ever get all the money we take away from 'em? It don't look like they had sense enough to cash a check."
"If I had one or two more decoys as good as Ringa and Lulu Ellis, I'd be fixed all right. I could stake out all the dopes in town. Say, Granthope could cut up a lot of easy cash if he'd agree to stand in. I tried to tap him about this here Payson, and he wouldn't give me a tip."
"Perhaps he didn't know anything. You can't loosen up when you're wide open, can you?"
"He generally knows all there is to know. The trouble is he's getting too high-toned. Since he fitted up his new studio and butted into society you can't get near him with nothing like a business proposition. I believe he thinks he's too good for this place and will go East. He's a nice boy, though. I ain't got nothing against him, only I wish he'd help us out. Hello, here's Lulu. Good evening, Lulu, how's Egyptian eggs to-day?"
Lulu Ellis was a dumpy, roly-poly, soft-eyed, soft-haired, pink-cheeked young woman, as innocent appearing a person as ever lived on her wits. Not that she had many of them, but a limited sagacity is enough to dupe victims as willing to be cajoled as those who appeal to the Egyptian egg for a sign of the future. Lulu's large, brown eyes were enough to distract one's attention from her rule-of-thumb methods. Her fat little hand was soft and white, her plump little body full of extravagant curves.
"Say, Mr. Payson has come!" she exclaimed immediately, with considerable excitement. "He's on the third row at the far end."
Madam Spoll became alert. "Did you see his test?"
"No, he was here when I come," Lulu replied.
"Go out and get Spoll." Madam Spoll spoke sharply. "We've got to fix this thing up right now."
Lulu returned to say: "There's such a crowd coming in he can't leave, but he says it was a gold watch with a seal fob."
"All right, so far," said the Madam. "Now, Lulu, are you sure of what you told me?"
Lulu's reply was interrupted by the entrance of Francis Granthope, in opera hat and Inverness cape, making a vivid contrast to the disreputable aspect of Professor Vixley. He greeted the three conspirators with his customary elegance.
"I'm sorry I had nothing about Payson when you rang me up, Madam Spoll, but just afterward his daughter came in for a reading. Queer, wasn't it?"
"God, that's a stroke of luck!" said Vixley eagerly. "I say, Frank, you can work her while we handle the old man, and we'll clean up a fortune. They say he's a millionaire." Vixley's little eyes gleamed.
"Let's hear what Lulu has to say, first," said Madam Spoll.
"Why, I didn't get much," Lulu confessed. "He said he dropped in by accident as he was passing by, to see what Egyptian egg astrology was. I got his name off of some letters he had in his overcoat pocket. I made him hang it on the hall hat-rack. I did all I could for him——"
"Did he get gay with you?" Professor Vixley interrupted. He had been overtly enjoying Lulu's plump charms with his rapacious eyes.
Granthope smiled; Lulu Ellis colored slightly.
"No, he didn't! I don't do none of that kind of work!"
"The more fool you!" Madam Spoll retorted. "He's an old man, ain't he?"
"Sixty," said Vixley, "I looked him up."
"Then he ought to be easy as chewing gum," said Madam Spoll.
Granthope lighted a cigarette and listened with a mildly cynical expression.
"He ain't that kind, though," Lulu insisted. "I ain't altogether a fool, after all. Why, he don't even go to church!"
Her three auditors laughed aloud, the Professor raucously, Madam Spoll with a bubbling chuckle, Granthope with scarcely more than an audible smile.
"That settles it, then. You're coming on, Lulu! What else do you know?" said Madam Spoll.
"Well, he has a daughter——"
"Yes, Granthope knows all about that," from the Madam.
"Her name is Clytie," said Granthope. "Twenty-seven."
"Is she a looker?" asked Vixley.
Granthope turned to him and gave him a patronizing glance. "Youwouldn't think so, Professor. She's hardly your style. But she's good enough for me!" He languidly flipped the ash from his cigarette and took his pose again.
Lulu went on: "I think he had a love affair before he was married, but I couldn't quite get it. I didn't dare to fish very much. And that's about all I got."
"That's plenty, Lulu. You can go now. Here's a dollar for you and much obliged for passing him up."
"Oh, thank you," said Lulu. "I'm afraid it ain't worth that much. He gave me a dollar himself, though I don't charge but four bits, usually."
"Lord, what a fool!" said Vixley, watching her go out. "That girl won't ever get nowhere, she's too innocent. She knows no more about real life than a boiled egg."
"She's all right for me, though," Madam Spoll replied. "That's just the kind I need in my business. She fools 'em every time. They ain't nothing like a good blusher for a stool-pigeon, you take my word for it. Lulu's all right in her place." She turned to wash her hands at a bowl in the corner.
"Well," said Vixley, crossing his legs, "are you coming in with us, Frank?"
"It looks pretty good to me, so far. But it depends. What have you got about Payson, anyway?" Granthope's tone was languid.
Madam Spoll winked at Vixley, as she wiped her hands behind the palmist's back.
"Why," Vixley replied, "Payson's in wool and is director of a bank, besides. He's a square-head with a high forehead, and them are easy. Gertie, here, can get him into a private sittin', and when she does, you leave him to her—she'll find a way all right. She don't do no lumpy work, Gertie don't, you know that, all right! When she passes him along to me, I'll manage him like the way we worked Bennett with the real estate. I'd like another chance as good as him."
"You just wait," said Madam Spoll. "I got a hunch that this Payson is going to be pretty good pie; and we got a good strong combination, Frank, if you want to do your share."
"It's a pity Spoll ain't got some of Gertie's gumption," said Vixley, smiling with approval at his partner.
"Don't you make no mistake about Spoll—he's done some good work on Payson already." The Madam was adjusting her waist before the glass and coquetting with her hair. "The trouble with you, Vixley, is that you ain't got no executive ability—I'm going to organize this game myself. I can see a way to use Spoll and Ringa, and Flora, too. We want to go into this thing big. Payson's a keener bird than Bennett was, but they's more in him."
"So Spoll has begun, has he?" Granthope asked.
"Yes. He located the Paysons over on North Beach."
"I know that much already. The mother's dead. Mr. and Miss Payson have traveled abroad. What else do you know about her?"
"Why, it seems she's the sole heir. Good news for you, eh? High society, too—Flower Mission, Kitchen Garden, Friday Cotillions, Burlingame, everything. She could help you, Frank, if you got on the right side of her."
Here Mr. Spoll tiptoed in, bowed to Granthope, and said:
"Eight o'clock, Gertie."
Madam Spoll arose cumbrously, took a last peep in the mirror of the folding bed and turned into the hall, saying, "You take my advice, Frank. We depend upon you. See what you can do with the girl." She paused to bend a keen glance upon him. "What did you do with her, anyway?"
"Why, I did happen on something," he answered. "Do you remember Madam Grant, who used to live down on Fifth Street, twenty-odd years ago?"
Madam Spoll came back into the room eagerly.
"The crazy woman who lived so queer and yet had lots of money? Yes! She did clairvoyance, didn't she? I remember. She had a kid with her, too. Let's see—he ran away with the money, didn't he? And nobody ever knew what become of him. What about her?"
There was a duel of astute glances between them. Granthope had his own reasons for not wanting to say too much. He guarded his secret carefully, as he had guarded it from her for years.
"Miss Payson used to go down to see Madam Grant with her mother, when she was a little girl."
"No!didshe, though? With her mother? That's queer! Hold on, Vixley. What did Lulu say about a love affair before Payson was married? Do you get that? Here's his wife visiting Madam Grant; you remember her, don't you? There's something in that I believe we got a good starter already."
Spoll appeared again, anxiously beckoning, and she went with him down the hall.
Vixley took up the scent. "Say, Frank," he asked, "how did you happen to get on to that, anyway? That was slick work."
Granthope turned to him and replied patronizingly, "Oh, I ought to know something about women by this time. I got her to talking."
Vixley frowned, intent in thought, stroking his scant, pointed beard and biting his mustache; then he slapped his knee with his claw-like hand. "Say, you got a grand chance there," he exclaimed. "See here, you can get in with the swells and be in a position to help out lots. It's the chance of a lifetime, and we'll make it worth your while."
"How?" Granthope inquired contemptuously.
"By a fair exchange of information. You put us wise, and we'll put you wise. I'll trust you to find ways of using what help we give you." He cackled.
"Yes—you can trust me. I think I might have some fun out of it. I don't mind helping you out, but all I need myself is a little imagination, some common-sense and a frock coat."
Vixley looked at him admiringly. "I wish't I had your chance, Frank; that's what I do. Say, you just light 'em and throw 'em away, don't you! I s'pose if I had your looks I could do it myself."
Granthope looked him over calmly. "There's no knowing what a bath and a manicure and a suit of clothes would do for you, Professor."
"You can't make brains out o' soap," retorted the medium.
"And you can't make money out of dirt.
"We'll see who has the money six months from now."
"It's a fair enough bargain. I take the girl, you take the money. I'm satisfied." Granthope arose and yawned. "Oh," he added, "did you know Payson had a partner named Riley? He was drowned in seventy-seven."
"That's funny. Queer how things come our way! Mrs. Riley is here in the front room with a test. She was tried for the murder of one of her husbands. Gert's goin' to shoot her up with it to-night. You better go in and see the fun. She'll give it to her good."
"I think I will," said the palmist.
He left Vixley plunged in thought, and walked out.
Turning into the audience-room he sat down on a chair in the rear. The place was almost filled. His eyes scanned the assembly carefully, roving from one spectator to another. On a side seat near him, a party of four, young girls and men, sat giggling and chewing gum. The rest of the company showed a placid vacancy of expression or lukewarm expectancy.
Madam Spoll at the organ and her husband with his violin, had, meanwhile, been playing a dreary piece of music, "to induce the proper conditions," as she had announced from the platform. They stopped, retarding a minor chord, and the medium went to the table and began to handle the tests, rearranging them, putting some aside, bringing others forward, in an abstracted manner. Then, looking up with a self-satisfied smile, she spoke:
"I want to say something to the new-comers and skeptics here to-night in explanation of these tests. Them who have thoroughly investigated the subject and are familiar with every phase of mediumship, understand, of course, that these objects are placed here merely to attract magnetism to the sitter and induce the proper conditions, so that your spirit friends will be able to communicate with you. This phase of mediumship is called psychometry, but if I'd stop to explain just what that means, I wouldn't have time to give any readings. Now, it won't be possible to get any messages unless you come here in the proper mood to receive them. You must send out your best thought and do all you can to assist, or else my guides won't be able to establish communication on the spirit plane. If you merely come here only to laugh and to make a scoff of the proceedings, I'll have to ask you to leave before I begin, for they's many here to-night who are honestly in search of the truth, seeking to communicate with the dear, loved ones beyond on the other side."
She passed her hand across her eyes, sighed, and fingered her chin nervously. She poked the articles on the table again.
"As I come on to this platform, I see an old man over there, in that direction, what you might call a middle-aged man, perhaps, of a medium height, and whiskers, like. I feel a condition of going on a journey, you might say, somewhere east of here, though maybe not very far, and I get the name John. The light goes over in your direction, lady, that one with the red hat. Yes, you. Would that be your father, possibly?"
The lady, straightening herself upon being thus addressed, said timidly, "I think perhaps you mean my uncle. His name was John."
"Maybe it is an uncle, though I get the influence of a father very strong, too. Has your father passed out?"
The lady in the red hat nodded.
"Then itisyour father, do you see? Yes, I get an uncle, too, who wishes to communicate, only his influence ain't strong enough. That shows it ain't mind reading, as the newspaper folks say, don't it?" She smiled, as if she had made a point, and the audience appeared to be impressed.
"About this journey, now: maybe you ain't had no idea of traveling, but John says you will. I don't think it's liable to be very far, though. It'll be before the last of September or the first of October and John says it'll be successful. Do you understand what I mean?"
The lady, frightened at the terrible import of this question, did not speak.
"Did you send up an article?"
"It's that purse with the chain."
Madam Spoll fingered it and weighed it reflectively.
"I get a condition of what you might call inharmony. Seems to me like in your home something is worrying you and you ain't satisfied, you understand, with the way things are going and sometimes you feel as if, well, you just couldn't stand it!" Her smile, now, bathed her dupe with sympathy.
The lady nodded vigorously, with tightly shut lips.
"You kind of wonder if it does any good for you to go to all the trouble you do to sacrifice yourself and try to do your duty, when it ain't what you might call appreciated. And you're worried about money, too. Ain't that so?"
She received a ready assent. The woman's eyes were fixed upon her. Every one in the room watched the stripping naked of a soul.
"Well, John says that your father and him are helping you all they can on the spirit plane, and he thinks conditions will be more favorable and will take a turn for the better by the first of the year."
A question fluttered on the woman's lips, but before it had time to escape, Madam Spoll suddenly turned in the other direction.
"While I was talking to that lady," she said, "I felt an influence leading me to that corner over there by the clock, and I get the initials 'S.F.B.' Is there anybody of that name over there?"
A flashily dressed woman, with tinted yellow hair and rhinestone ear-rings, raised her hand.
"Those are my initials," she announced.
Madam Spoll grew impressive. "Your name is Brindon, ain't it?"
The woman gasped out a "Yes."
"Did I ever see you before?"
"No," said the blonde, "not to my knowledge, you didn't."
Madam Spoll made a comprehensive gesture with both hands, calling attention to the miracle. "You sent up a sealed ballot, didn't you?"
The woman nodded. She was obviously excited, looking as if she feared her skeleton was to be dragged forth from its closet; as indeed it was.
Madam Spoll took up the envelope with her delicate thumb and forefinger and displayed it to the audience.
"You see, it's still sealed," she announced, then, shutting her eyes, she continued: "My guides tell me that he's what you might call infatuated, but he'll come back to you and say he's sorry. Do you understand that?"
The woman was now painfully embarrassed and shrank into her seat. The medium, however, did not spare her. It was too good a chance for a dramatic sensation. She tore the envelope open and read its contents boldly: "Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me?" It was a psychological moment. The old women stared at Mrs. Brindon with morbid delight. There was a little buzzing of whispers through the room. Then the audience prepared itself for the next sensation.
The medium picked up another envelope. "This is marked '275,'" she said, then she clutched her throat. "Oh," she cried, "I'm strangling! They's somebody here who passed out very sudden, like they was poisoned. It's terrible. I can't answer the question the party has written because there's an evil influence here, a wicked woman. She had three husbands and two of 'em died suspicious. Her name is Riley. Would that be you?" She pointed forcefully at a dried-up, old woman in a shawl, with bleared eyes and a veined nose.
There was no response.
"Was this question something about your daughter?" Madam Spoll asked.
The woman coughed and bowed, shrinking into herself.
"I guess you better go somewhere else for your readings," Madam Spoll declared cruelly. "Your aura don't seem to me to be very harmonious. I don't know what's the matter to-night," she went on, passing her hand across her forehead in apparent distress. "The conditions around me are something horrid." Her voice rose. "There's somebody in this very room here who has committed murder. I can't do a thing until I get that off my mind. My guides tell me who it is, and that they'll be satisfied if he'll acknowledge it and say he's sorry. Otherwise, this séance can't go on."
She stopped and glared about the hall. By this time she had worked her audience up to an intense excitement. Every one looked at his neighbor, wondering what was to come, but no one offered to confess to a crime. Madam Spoll raged up and down the platform in a frenzy. Then she stopped like an elephant at bay.
"I know who this person is. It's a man, and if he don't rise and acknowledge it, I shall point him out!"
No one stirred. On the fourth seat, a clean-shaven man of thirty-five, with sharp, aquiline features and wide-spread ears, sat, transfixed with horror, his two hands clenched. It was Mr. Perry, the cleverest actor in the medium's support.
She advanced toward him as if drawn by a secret power, stared into his eyes, and putting her hand upon his shoulder, said:
"Thou art the man!"
Mr. Perry wriggled out of her grasp. "See here," he cried, "you mind your own business, will you. You're a fake! You got no right to make a fool of me." His voice trembled, his face was a convincing mask of guilt arraigned.
The medium shook a warning finger at him. "You either acknowledge what I say is true, or you leave the hall! I can't go on with you here."
Mr. Spoll came in to stand beside her valiantly; spectators stood up to watch the drama. Mr. Perry's eyes were wild, his face distorted; suddenly he arose and rushed out of the room. Madam Spoll snapped her fingers two or three times, shook herself and went back to the platform. The murmurs died down and the séance was resumed.
Madam Spoll waited a while in silence, then she picked up a gold watch with a seal fob from the table. "I'm glad to feel a more peaceful influence," she said. "I'm directed toward this watch. I don't know who brought it up, for I was out of the room at the time, but I get the name 'Oliver.'" She looked up expectantly.
A gentleman arose from an end seat in the third row. He had a high domed head, partly bald, and a gray chin-beard with a shaven upper lip; under shaggy overhanging eyebrows, cold gray eyes looked through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. His air was benevolently judicial and bespoke culture and ease. He had, moreover, a well-marked presence, as of one used to being considered influential and prominent. A row of false teeth glittered when he opened his mouth.
"That's my name," he acknowledged in a deep, fluent voice that was heard all over the room, "and that is my watch."
Madam Spoll fixed him in the eye. "I'd like to know if I can't get your other name. My guides are very strong to-night." After a few moments of self-absorption, she smiled sweetly upon him. "I think I can get it clairaudiently. Would it be Pearson?"
"No, but that's pretty near it, though."
"It sounds like Pearson to me, Pearson. Payson, oh, yes, it's Payson, isn't it?"
"That's right," he said, and sat down.
"Did I ever see you before?"
"Not to my knowledge, Madam."
She looked triumphantly at her audience and smiled.
"If they's any skeptics here to-night, I hope they'll go away satisfied." A number of old ladies nodded emphatically. "Of course, newspaper men never come on a night like this, when my guides are strong. Funny what you see when you ain't got a gun, ain't it? The next time I'm half sick and tired out, they'll be plenty of them here to say I'm a fake, like our friend here who left so sudden, white as a sheet. Now, when I was directed to that watch, I was conscious of a spirit standing beside this gentleman," she pointed at him benevolently, "influencing me to take it up. It's a woman, and she must have been about thirty when she passed out, and remarkably handsome, too. She was sort of fair-complected, between dark and light. I get a feeling here in my throat and down here," she touched her breast, lightly, curving her arm gracefully inward, "as if she went out sudden, like, with heart disease. Do you know what I mean?"
Mr. Payson had bent forward now. "Yes," he said, "I think I do. Has she any message for me?"
"Yes, she has; but—well, you see, it ain't one I'd exactly care to give in public, and I don't think you'd want me to, either. If you come up after the séance is over, I'll see if I can get it for you. Or you might do still better to have a private setting and then I'll have time to tell you more. She brings me a condition of what you might call worry or anxiety, as if you had something on your mind."
She turned to a bunch of flowers, and, taking them up, smelled them thoughtfully, for a while. Mr. Payson settled back in his seat.
As the medium commenced again, Granthope arose with his faint, cynical smile and walked quietly out. He found Mr. Spoll at the table by the door.
"Well, I guess he's on the hook." The palmist buttoned his cape and lighted a cigarette.
"Trust Gertie for that," said Spoll; "she'll land him all right, see if she don't. Good night!"
Granthope turned up his collar and walked out into the street.