"I WAS LOOKING STRAIGHT DOWN ON THE BACK PARLORS"
"I WAS LOOKING STRAIGHT DOWN ON THE BACK PARLORS"
Rosalie paused for breath before she resumed:
"I went over the house again to be sure I was alone, before I pulled out the nail. Well, sir, what happened like to knocked me over. The minute that nail come out, a trap rose right up—on springs. I just caught it in time to stop it from making a racket. I was looking straight down on the back parlors. It's one of those flossy, ornamented ceilings down there, and a panel of those ceiling ornaments came up with the bottom of the trap. But that wasn't the funny thing about that trap, nice piece of work as it was. It's a regular cupboard. Double, you understand. Space in between—and all the fixings for a materializin' seance, the straight fixings that the dope sees and the crooked ones that only the medium and the spook sees, tucked inside. A shutter lamp, blue glass—a set of gauze robes, phosphorescent stars and crescents, a little rope ladder all curled up—and whole books of notes. Right on top was"—she paused impressively to get suspense for her climax—"was them notes on yellow foolscap that I seen in the hands of the visitor last week. And"—another impressive pause—"they're the dope for Robert H. Norcross!"
"The what?"
"The full information on him—dead sweetheart, passed out thirty years ago up-state. Fine job with good little details—whoever got 'em must 'a' talked with somebody that was right close to her—an old aunt, I'm thinking. But no medium made them notes. Looks like a private detective's work. Not a bit of professional talk. The notes on Robert H. Norcross. See!"
Dr. Blake, whose face had lightened more and more as he listened, jumped up and grasped Rosalie's hand.
"Didn't I tell you!" he cried. "Didn't I tell you!"
But she failed to respond to his enthusiasm. She turned on him a grave face; and her eyes shone.
"What I'm wondering," she said, "is who plays her spook? 'Cause if she has a trap, she uses confederates, and it can't be none of the servants, unless I'm worse fooled on that little Ellen than ever I was on Mrs. Markham. That's the next thing to consider."
"Does look curious," replied Dr. Blake, "but of course you can be trusted to discover that! But about Annette?"
"Something's a little wrong there," responded Rosalie. "Quiet, and dopey, and strange. That,"—her voice fell to soft contemplation,—"is another thing to find out."
"We must get her out of there!" he exploded; "away from that vampire!"
"Well, that's what I'm takin' your money for, ain't it?" responded Rosalie.
After they parted Rosalie Le Grange stood on a corner, among the push-cart peddlers and the bargaining wives, and watched Dr. Blake's taxicab disappear down Stanton Street.
"Ain't it funny?" she said half aloud, "that a smart young man like him never thought to ask whose room it was I found the trap in?"
THE STREAMS CONVERGE
Bulger, trailing whiffs of out-door air, had dropped into the Norcross offices to join the late afternoon drink. He sat now sipping his highball, tilted back with an affectation of ease. Norcross, in his regular place at the glass-covered desk, laid his glass down; and his gaze wandered again to the spire of Old Trinity and then, following down, to the churchyard at its foot. Had he faced about suddenly at that moment, he would have surprised Bulger in a strained attitude of attention. But he did not turn; he spoke with averted glance.
"You never asked me, Bulger, how I was making it with that medium woman."
Bulger took a deep swallow of whiskey and water that he might control his voice. When, finally, he spoke, he showed a fine assumption of indifference.
"Well, no. Can't say I'm heavily interested. When I found for you the best medium that money could buy, I decided that my job was done. Of course," he added, "I was complimented to have you tell me—what I've forgotten. If you want to consult a medium, it's really none of my business. How the Lusitania does loom up at her dock out there!"
Norcross let his eyes wander in search of the Lusitania, but his mind refused to stray from the vital subject.
"You've no business to be indifferent, Bulger. When you come to my age, you won't be. Martha says it's the most important thing. And she's right—she's right. What's the ten or twenty years I've got to live in this world, compared with all that's waiting us out there? Of course," he added, "I don't know much about your private life; I don't know if you have another part of you waiting."
"Who's Martha?" enquired Bulger.
"No one inthisworld," responded Norcross. "She's a control now—Mrs. Markham's best control." Norcross jumped up, and began to pace the floor in his hurried little walk. Bulger did not fail to notice that, within a minute or two, a heavy, beady perspiration came out on his face and forehead. The room was cool; the railroad king was old and spare. Nothing save some struggle of the inner consciousness could produce that effect of mighty labor.
"Bulger," said Norcross, speaking in quick, staccato jerks, "if I told you what I'd seen and heard in the last fortnight, I couldn't make you believe it. Proofs! Proofs! I've wasted thirty years. I might have had her—the best part of her—all this time. You think I'm crazy—" he stopped and peered into Bulger's face. "If anyone had talked this way to me six months ago, I'd have thought so myself. Do you or don't you?" he exploded.
"About as crazy as you ever were," responded Bulger. "Not to sugar coat the pill, people have always said you were crazy—just before you let off your fireworks. You've got there because you dared do things that only a candidate for Bloomingdale would attempt. But you always landed, and we've another name for it now."
"That's it!" exclaimed Norcross. "That's exactly it. I dare to say now that the dead do return! People have believed in ghosts as long as they've believed in a Divine Providence—just as many centuries and ages—every race, every nation. We hear in this generation that certain people have proved it—found! the way—set up the wires—and we laugh, and call it all fraud. I don't laugh! Why, we're on the verge of things which make the railroad and the steamboat and the telegraph seem like toys—if we only dared. I dare—I dare!" He went on pacing the floor; and now the beads had assembled into rivers, so that a tiny stream trickled down and fogged his reading-glasses. He jerked them off, wiped them, wiped his face and forehead. The action calmed him, brought him back to his reasonable grip on himself. At the end of his route across the room, he sat down abruptly.
Bulger did not miss this shift of the new Norcross back toward the old, iron, inscrutable Norcross whom the world knew. The next remark he directed against that aspect of his man.
"It's all right," said Bulger, "if you want to follow that line." During the short pause which ensued, he thought and felt intensely. Working under the direction of a mind infinitely his superior for intrigue and subtlety, he had instruction to play gently upon the Norcross contrariety, the Norcross habit of rejecting advice. This, if ever, seemed the time. With a bold hand, he laid his counter upon the board. "Just one thing to be careful about—of course, it's a mouse trying to steer a lion for me to advise you—but watch those people, when they get on the subject of business. Sometimes they work people, you know."
Norcross's face, fixed on the third monument from the south door of Old Trinity, permitted itself the luxury of a slight smile.
"I'm safe there," he responded. "Don't think I haven't tried her out—put tests of my own. I know what you're thinking about—Marsh and Diss Debar. I tried at my very first seance to make her talk business and I've tried it twice since. I couldn't get a single rise out ofthat. This medium receives from me her regular rate, and no more. I established that in the beginning. Though I suppose the guides could advise on business as well as on anything else. But they think about other things on the other side than this"—his hand swept over Lower Manhattan—"this money grubbing."
Bulger leaned his elbows on his knees.
"It sounds wonderful," he said.
"Not more wonderful than wireless telegraphy," answered Norcross. "And the ancients, she says, dreamed of talking with spirits long before they dreamed of talking to each other across an ocean. We only need an exceptional force to do it. And Mrs. Markham is that force. You know the locket I showed you?"
"I promised to forget it."
"Well, remember for a minute. I"—his voice exploded—"I may see her, Bulger—before the month is over, I may see her!"
Bulger threw himself back in his chair.
"What!" he exclaimed, jumping with an affectation of surprise.
It was as though the sudden motion, the exclamation had touched a spring in the mind of Norcross, had projected his spirit from that disintegrating, anaemic cell in his brain to the sound, full-blooded cells by which he did his daily business. His form, which had seemed relaxed and old, stiffened visibly. He turned his eyes on Bulger.
"Forget that, too," he said. "Some day, when I'm strong enough, you'll go with me and you'll believe too." And now the secretary had signalled the chauffeur, and Norcross had risen to go.
The streams of destiny were converging that afternoon; the lines were drawing close together. Among the towers of Lower Manhattan, Norcross sat baring his soul; on a bench in Stuyvesant Square, Rosalie Le Grange had reported the consummation of her investigations to Dr. Walter Huntington Blake; in a back parlor of the Upper West Side, Paula Markham, with many a sidelong glance at the approaches, sat memorizing the last syllable of a set of notes on yellow legal cap paper. But the master current was flowing elsewhere. In the offices of theEvening Sun, the stereotypers had just shot the front page of the Wall Street edition down to the clanking basement. It carried a "beat"; and that item of news had as much to do with this story as with the ultimate destinies of the L.D. and M. railroad. On October 19, two weeks hence, the directors of the road were to meet and decide whether to pay or pass the dividend. "The directors"—that, as theSuninsinuated, meant none other than Norcross. Holding a majority of the L.D. and M. stock, holding the will of those directors, his creatures, he alone would decide whether to declare the dividend or to pass it. The stock wavered at about fifty, waiting the decision. If Norcross put it on a dividend-paying basis, it was good for eighty. To know which way he would decide, to extract any information from that inscrutable mind—that were to open a steel vault with a pen-knife. "All trading," theSunassured its readers, "will be speculative; it is considered a pure gamble."
As Bulger parted with Norcross on the street and turned south, a newsboy thrust the Wall StreetSuninto his face. The announcement of the L.D. and M. situation jumped out at him from a headline. The inside information, held for two weeks by the group of speculators in which Bulger moved, was out; the public was admitted to the transaction; now was the time, if ever, to strike. He found a sound-proof telephone, and did a few minutes of rapid talking. Then he proceeded to his office.
The force was gone. Alone at his desk, he went over the papers in a complicated calculation which he had made twenty times before. By all devices, Watson could hold back the collapse of the Mongolia Mine until after October 19. By straining his credit to the utmost—liquidating everything—he himself could raise a trifle more than seventy thousand dollars. He hesitated no longer. Methodically, he apportioned out the seventy thousand dollars among a dozen brokers, who to-morrow should buy for him, on a ten point margin, L.D. and M. stock at fifty to fifty-three.
This done, Bulger locked up the papers again, telephoned for a cab, and proceeded to his club, where he dined with his customary hilarity and good humor.
THROUGH THE WALL-PAPER
"You've got to do it!" said Rosalie Le Grange; "no half-way business. I could show better reasons than I'm tellin'."
Blake paused in his slow walk beside her.
"What reasons?" he asked.
"Now listen to the man!" exclaimed Rosalie. "And ain't it man for you! Right off, first meeting, I told you enough to put me in jail and now you won't trust me!"
Blake seemed to see the logic of what she said.
"I have cause to trust you," he said, "and I hope you don't think that I am afraid of the personal danger. It's just that you're asking me to do something which—will, which people like me don't do."
"So anxious to be a gentleman that you forgit to be a man!" remarked Rosalie with asperity. "Now you listen to me. I've told you that she's held two materializing seances for Robert H. Norcross, haven't I? I've told you it is crooked materialization—even if there was such a thing as real cabinet spooks, which there ain't—because I found the ceiling trap an' the apparatus long ago. And if Mrs. Markham is playin' fake materializing with old Norcross as a dope, what does it come to? Obtainin' money, an' big money, under false pretenses! That's enough to put her behind the bars. So what risk do you take even if youarecaught? She'll be more anxious than you to keep it away from the papers and the police. And Norcross! He'll break his collar-bone to shut it up!"
Half persuaded, he clutched at his sense of honor.
"But it's a sneaking trick—Annette would call it that."
"Yes, an' ain't it a sneakin' trick to hire a housekeeper to be a spy?" Rosalie hurled back. "Seems to me you draw a fine line between doin' your own dirty work an' havin' it done!"
At this plain statement of the case, Blake smiled for the first time that morning.
"I suppose you're right," he said. "A good officer never sends a man where he wouldn't go himself. I'm rather sorry I started now."
The dominant thought in all the complex machinery of Rosalie's mind was: "And you'll be sorrier before this night's over, boy." But her voice said:
"I knew you'd see it that way. Now listen and git this carefully: You're to wear a big ulster and old hat and soft-soled shoes—don't forget that. You're to come to the back door at a quarter to nine—exactly. Us servants receive our callers at the back door. Norcross will be in the parlor at half past, Annette will be in her room, the other help will be out, Ellen and all. Mrs. Markham takes no chances—not even with that fool girl—when she's got Norcross. She's given Ellen theater tickets. That's how careful she is about little things. You can see how clear the coast will be. I'm goin' to bring you straight to my room like a visitor. You walk soft!"
"But how about that electric bell?" he asked.
"I disconnected it this morning at the trap with my manicure scissors an' a hairpin," replied Rosalie, triumphantly.
So, at sixteen minutes to nine, Dr. Blake, feeling a cross between a detective and a burglar, stole through the alley which backed the Markham residence, crossed the area, knocked softly at the kitchen door. It opened cautiously and then suddenly to show the kitchen, lighted with one dim lamp, and the ample form of Rosalie. With a finger on her lips, she closed the door behind him. His heart beat fast, less with a sense of impending adventure than with the thought, which struck him as he mounted the servants' staircase, that he was divided but by thin walls from the object of all these strivings and diplomacies—that for the second time in his life he was under her home roof with Annette. It was a firm, old house. Their footsteps made not the slightest creak on the thick-carpeted stairs. At the door of her room, Rosalie stopped and put her mouth to his ear.
"Step careful inside," she said, "my floor is bare." He stood now in the neat, low-ceiled housekeeper's parlor. Rosalie turned up the gas, and indicated by a gesture that he was to stand still. Elaborately, she closed the registers, plugged the keyhole with her key, and set two chairs beside him.
"Now sit down," she whispered. "They can't hear us talkin', though we'd better whisper for safety, but two sets of footsteps might sound suspicious. The halls are carpeted like a padded cell, which ought to have put me wise in the beginning."
"Are you sure Annette's abed?" he asked anxiously.
Rosalie threw him a swift glance, as of suspicion.
"Sure," she said—"saw her go. Now before I let you out, I want to git one promise from you. Whatever happens, you leave this house quiet,—as quiet as you can. You've gotmeto guard in this as well as yourself—you can't leave me alone with trouble."
"I'll promise that," he said. "Won't you tell me what I'm going to see?"
Rosalie, under pretense of consulting her watch, looked away.
"You'll know in ten minutes," she said. "Now don't bother me with any questions. I've got directions for you. You're coming with me to the floor below. I'll let you into a hall closet. It was built into a—into a room, and the back of it is only wood. There's an old gas connection, which they papered over, through that wood. Yesterday I punched through the paper and hung a picture over the hole. This afternoon, I took that picture down. To-morrow morning, the picture goes back. But now, there's a peephole into the room."
Dr. Blake bristled.
"Peep through a hole!" he said.
"Now ain't that just like a fashionable bringin-up," said Rosalie, almost raising her voice. "Things a gentleman can do an' things he can't do! You're tryin' to bust a crook, an' you remember what your French nurse told you about the etiquette of keyholes!"
"You're my master at argument, Mme. Le Grange," responded Blake. "Go ahead."
"And you promise to leave quiet?"
"I promise."
"There's one place I can trust your bringin'-up, I guess. When you're inside, feel about till you find a hassock. Stand on it; 't will bring your eyes up to the hole. Stay there until I knock for you to come out—let's be goin'."
"But what am I to do—why am I here if I am to do nothing?"
"You're to look an' see an' remember what you see—that's all for to-night."
At the door, she looked him full in the eyes again:
"Remember, you've promised."
"I remember."
The dim light of a low gas jet illuminated the upper hall. From below came the faintest murmur of voices. Rosalie led to the hall of the second floor, turned toward the back of the house, opened a door and motioned. He stepped inside; the door closed without noise. He was in black darkness.
His foot found the hassock; he mounted it and adjusted his eye. He was looking into some kind of a living-room or boudoir. On the extreme left of his range of vision he could see a set of dark portières; directly before him was a foolish little white desk, over which burned a gas jet, turned low. That, apparently, was the only illumination in the room. For the rest, he could only see a wall decorated with the tiny frivolities of a boudoir, two chairs, a sewing table. He watched until—his eyes, grown accustomed to the dim light—he discerned every detail. From far below, he heard the subdued hum of a conversation, and made out at length, in the rise and fall of voices, that a man and a woman were speaking. Then even that sound ceased; over the house lay a stillness so heavy that he feared his own breathing.
Gradually, he was aware that someone was playing a piano. It began so gently that he doubted, at first, whether it was not a far echo from one of the houses to right or left. But it increased in volume until he located it definitely in the rooms below. The air, unrecognized at first, called up a memory of old-fashioned parlors and of his grandmother. He found himself struggling for words to fit the tune; and suddenly they sprang into his mind—"Wild roamed an Indian maid, bright Alfaretta." Thrice over the unseen musician played the air, and let it die with a last, lingering chord.
Suddenly his heart gave a great leap. For the first time, something was happening in the room before him. It came first as a slight, padded thump, like bare feet striking the floor. He saw that the portières to left of his range of vision were undulating. They parted—and a pillar of white stood for a moment before them. The thing resolved itself into a human figure, swathed, draped in white, the face concealed by a white veil which fell straight from the head. Now the white figure, with a noiseless, gliding motion, was crossing the room toward the white desk. It stopped, lifted a hand which crept toward the gaslight. With this motion, the veil fell away from the face. The gaslight shone upon it; he could see it in full profile.
It was Annette.
In the space of his long gasp, her hand touched the gas jet. It went out; the room faded into absolute darkness.
And the vision which stood out from the black background made him sway and clutch at the garments in the closet. For her robes radiated dull light, like a coal seen behind ashes. It was as though she were about to burst into flame. On her head gleamed a dull star; from it, the radiance of her robe fell away toward her feet in lesser light, like the tail-streamer of a comet. All emotion of despair, disillusion, rage, were expressed for a moment within him by an emotion of supernatural awe which sent the tremors running from his face to his spine, and his spine to his feet. She stood a perfect phantom of the night, like Annette called back from the dead.
The pillar of dull light was moving now. She had stooped; he heard a faint creak, he imagined that he felt new air. Suddenly, too, a voice which had been droning far away became audible. And now the pillar of light was sinking, sinking through the floor. The feet were gone, the torso; the star of light was level with the floor, was gone. He was looking into darkness.
Mrs. Markham's controlled, vibrant voice rose clearly from below—he caught every word:
"Come, Helen; be strong. He loves you. His love calls you!"
Silence for a quarter of a minute; then a swish as of garments agitated by some swift motion; then Annette's well-remembered contralto voice of a boy—Annette's voice, which had spoken such things to him—
"Robert, dearest, I have come again. Robert, I keep for you out here the little ring. Robert, we will be happy!"
And the voice of a man, sobbing and breaking between the exclamatives:
"My little Lallie—Dear Helen—how long I've waited—sweetheart—how many years!"
And the voice of Annette.
"Only a few more years to wait, dearest—and now that you have faith, I can come to you sometimes—but, oh, dearest, I foresee a danger—a great danger!"
Ten minutes later, Rosalie tiptoed from the library from which she had observed the seance to the last detail of method, and made her way to the closet wherein she had shut Dr. Blake. She opened the door with all precaution, fumbled, found nothing, whispered. No one answered. At last she stepped within, plugged the keyhole with her key, and lit a match.
The closet was empty.
Rosalie crept upstairs to her own room. When she lit the gas, she was crying softly and—as of old habit under emotional stress—talking to herself under her breath.
"I had to do it," she whispered. "He'd believe nothin' but his eyes!"
She sat down then, and surveyed her belongings. "The job's over. What whelps it makes people—just to touch this business!"
ANNETTE LIES
Blake rose from a night of protracted, dull suffering; of quick rages; of hideous, unrelieved despairs. When the day came and the city roared about him again, the habits of life reasserted themselves. He rose, dressed, sent for coffee, gained the pathetic victory of swallowing it. His face, seared by all the inner fires of that night, settled now to a look of steel resolution. He rose from his coffee, opened his desk and wrote this note:
MY DEAR MME. LE GRANGE:
I understand perfectly your motive in asking me to invade a private house and peep through a keyhole. It was the only thing which would have disillusioned me. Had you told me this, I would not have believed you. Though it was harsh treatment, I thank you. I enclose a check for a hundred dollars, payment two weeks in advance for your services, which I shall need no longer. You did your job well. You will understand, I think, that I do not reflect on you when I ask you never to see me again. You would recall something which I shall try for the rest of my life to forget.
WALTER H. BLAKE.
P.S. Do as you please about this—but I should prefer you to give Mrs. Markham the customary notice.
As he sealed the letter and put on his hat that he might go to post it with his own hands, he had the look of a man who has settled everything and for life. But the clanging lid of the letter box had no sooner closed than the look of resolution began to leave his face. For two hours, he paced the streets of Manhattan. He found himself at length apostrophizing a brick wall, "Who could believe it?" And again, to a lamp-post, "I can't believe it!" And again, "She made her!" He wheeled on this, turned into a drug store, shut himself into the telephone booth, and called up the Markham house.
After an eternal minute, he was answered in Annette's own deep, thrilling contralto:
"Hello!"
He paused, controlled his voice, and plunged in:
"Miss Markham, this is Dr. Blake. Please don't go away from the telephone. You owe it to me to listen—"
"I shall listen—"
"Very well. You will remember that I have respected your wishes about keeping away from you. I do not want to make you any trouble. But something has happened in which you are concerned, and which makes it imperative that I should speak to you face to face for five minutes—"
"Something important?" he heard her voice tremble. He remembered then that cheated and humiliated lovers had been known to shoot women; he had raised his voice; perhaps, what with her bad conscience, she was thinking of that.
"Understand me," he added, speaking lower. "I shall be kind. I shall do nothing violent nor disagreeable. I want five minutes, at your house, in the Park—anywhere. Though I would prefer to see you alone, I would consent to the presence of your aunt. But you must see me!"
"I must see you," she repeated—musingly he thought—"Aunt Paula is away."
"Could you come at once to that Eighty-sixth Street entrance of the Park?"
A pause, and—
"I will come," she said.
"Good-by—at once," he answered, and hung up the receiver, without further word. Outside, he hurled himself into a taxicab. Spurred on by an offer of an extra dollar for speed, the chauffeur raced north.
Annette was sitting on a bench by the Park gate. Not until he had paid and dismissed the chauffeur did she look up. She wore a smile, which faded as she caught his expression. With its fading came the old, worn look; he had never, even at that first meeting on the train, seen it more pronounced. A flood of perverse tenderness came over him; he found himself obliged to steel his heart. And so, it was Annette who spoke first:
"What is the matter—oh, what has happened?"
He stood towering over her.
"Miss Markham, I came to ask a simple question. Do not be afraid to tell me the truth. What did you do last night?"
"What did I do last night?" she repeated. "Why do you ask?"
"Answer, please. Where were you last night—what did you do?"
"Why do you ask that?"
"It will be better, I assure you," he replied, "if you do not act with me."
"You have never seemed harsh before—"
"Will you answer me?"
A blush ran over her exquisite whiteness.
"I have to remember," she said, "that perhaps I once gave you the right to ask such things of me. Last night I went to bed just after dinner."
"Exactly when?"
"A little after eight. I have been tired lately. Aunt Paula saw that I went to sleep."
"Is that all?" sharply.
"Why, yes. I slept heavily. The old sleep. The one which leaves me tired."
"You did not get up?"
"I am beginning to question your right to—"
"But answer me—Did you wake?"
"No. I slept until seven this morning. Walter, Walter—" she had never used his Christian name before, and at the moment it struck him only as one of her Circe arts—"you are cruel! What do you mean by this? Why do you trouble me so?"
Now that she had lied in his face, he felt the blood surging scarlet behind his eyes. It came to him that, if he remained a moment longer, he should lose all control. Without another word, without a backward look, he turned and walked away.
"Walter!" she called after him, and again, "Walter! Don't go!"
But he was running top speed down the footpath.
When he stopped, from growing weariness of soul as much as from physical exhaustion, he was on a cross street leading into Sixth Avenue. The tinsel front of a saloon rose before him. He tore through the swinging doors, ordered a drink of whiskey and then another. It might have been so much water, for all it either fed or quenched the fire within him. With some instinct to go back to his own private hole of misery, he took a street car. But he found it impossible to sit still. He got down after three blocks, found another saloon, took another drink. This, too, evaporated in the feverish heat engendered by his sleepless night. But it did afford an idea, a plan. He would get drunk—for the first time in his life, get blind, staggering drunk. When he recovered from that, time would have dimmed the misery a little; he would be able to endure. Just now, he must get drunk or die.
Alone and in broad daylight, he tried it. From, the corner saloons of the Upper West Side to the dives of the Bowery, he poured in whiskey and yet more whiskey. Nothing happened; positively nothing. The fire within burned as fiercely as ever, the misery beat as keenly against his temples. He tried his voice; he was speaking clearly. Once he ran down the open asphalt of a water-front street; all his muscular control remained. The most that liquor did was to spread a slight fog over his senses, so that he seemed to be seeing through a veil, hearing through a partition.
On the approach of night, the effect struck him all at once. It came in a wave of drowsiness, a delicious sense that his trouble, still there, weighed lightly upon him—did not matter. He was sitting in Madison Square when he realized this effect. He could sleep now. Thank God for that! He turned toward the club, walking on the rosy airs of reaction.
As he approached the club door, he was aware that a woman had disengaged herself from the crowd across the street, was hurrying toward him. At that moment, a hall-boy dived from the entrance, and grabbed his arm urgently but respectfully.
"That woman's been asking for you since four—when we chased her away she laid for you—if you want to get inside—"
"Young man," said the voice of Rosalie Le Grange across his shoulder, "young man, Dr. Blake wants to see me as much as I want to see him an' more. Now you jest leave go of him, and you Dr. Blake, come right along with me, or I'll make a scene and scandal right here in front of the club."
The hall-boy, with the exaggerated desire to avoid scandal which marks the perfect club servant, fell away. As for Dr. Blake, this seemed the line of least resistance. Life and death, misery and happiness—all looked equally dim and rosy.
Mme. Le Grange said nothing until they were three doors away. Under the marquee of a restaurant, she stopped, whirled Blake, whom she still held by an arm, within the entrance.
"You've been drinkin'," she said. "Now don't talk back. The question in my mind is whether you're clear enough in your head to understand what I've got to say, because it's something you want to hear straight and quick. See that table over in the corner? Let's see you walk to it and take off your hat and pull out a chair for me an' tell the waiter we won't eat till the rest of our party comes. If you can do that, you can listen to me."
Blake, feeling that someone else was going through these motions, obeyed.
"Legs are straight," commented Rosalie Le Grange as she settled herself and picked at her glove buttons. "How's your head? Are you takin' in what I tell you?"
"Yes. I hear you. Why won't you leave me alone?"
"Tongue's pretty straight, too. Can't have much in you, though you do look like the last whisper of a misspent life. Well, men can't cry just when they want to, though a woman knows they cry oftener than anymanever sees. You have to take it out in booze."
Blake heard his own voice, far away, saying:
"What did you come for?"
"You'll know soon enough. If I didn't have the patience of an angel I'd never have waited. Gee, those gentlemen's clubs is exclusive! Now I want you to remember you're drunk and keep quiet and not hurry me. I've got things to tell you. Miss Markham came in from a walk this morning—"
Dr. Blake saw his own hand lift in a gesture of repulsion, heard his own voice say:
"I don't want to hear about her."
"Will you kindly remember," said Rosalie Le Grange, "that you're supposed to be drunk? She came in from a walk this morning about half past ten, in a worse state than I ever saw her. I didn't much care, way I felt about her then—you know—now let me go my own way. Mrs. Markham was shut in her room all the morning. I was busy packing—I was getting ready to send in my notice but didn't, thank our stars—an' I didn't run onto her but once or twice. She was movin' about the house, and her face was like death.
"Just before lunch, I came down to the library, lookin' for a sewin' basket. Mrs. Markham was at the table, writin' a note. In meanders Annette Markham an' begins to pull out the books in the library, listless. She'd open one, flip the pages, put it back and open another. She kept that up quite some time. I wasn't noticing special until she took out three or four together, reached into the space they left and pulled out a sizable gray book that had fallen down behind the stock—or been put there!
"Mrs. Markham had just looked up, and I saw her git stiff. She spoke quick—'Annette!'—jest like that—sharp, you know. Annette looked at her. Mrs. Markham reached over and took the book away. The girl, never looked down at it again, I can swear to that—she was starin' straight at her aunt. Mrs. Markham dropped the book on the table, but she put her elbows on it, and said: 'I'd been hunting everywhere for that—I'm glad you found it.' Annette never said a word, never tried to get the book back; she jest went on rummaging.
"Well, one thing was clear. Mrs. Markham didn't want her to git as much as a sight of that book. Why? It was about the funniest little thing I'd seen in that house. Better believe I found business in the front parlor where I could keep my eyes on 'em. After a minute or two, Annette walked out, listless as ever. Soon as her back was turned, Mrs. Markham went to the desk an' locked the book in the top drawer.
"It was an hour before the coast was clear for me to git into the parlor and open that lock with a skeleton key an' a hairpin. An' when I seen the title of that book—well it got as clear—"
Blake saw, through the veil above his sight, that Rosalie's face had broken out dimples and sparkles as a yacht breaks out flags. It irritated him remotely.
"What has that to do with the case?" he asked; and then, weakly, "I don't want to hear about it."
"If I was to tell you," persisted Rosalie rolling the sweets of revelation under her tongue, "that jest the name of the book in the secretary showed your girl was all right and you and I was fools, what would you say?"
The veil lifted from Blake. It was he himself who had risen from his chair, was leaning over the table, was asking:
"What do you mean? Tell me—what do you mean?"
Rosalie herself rose, leaned over to meet him, and whispered four words in his ear.
"See!" she added aloud. "See!"
Blake fell back into his chair with a thump.
"I, a doctor and a man of science and I never thought once of that! What a damned fool I was!"
"Wewas," amended Rosalie Le Grange.
ANNETTE TELLS THE TRUTH
It seemed to Blake, waiting in Rosalie's sitting-room for a quarter of nine, that this silent house of mystery vibrated suppressed excitement. He sat with his hands clenched, his body leaning forward, in the attitude of one waiting the signal to strike. Rosalie, sitting opposite him, sent over a smile of reassurance now and then, but neither spoke.
There was no need of words. They had talked out the smallest detail of Rosalie's plot, even to mapping the location of the furniture. Inch by inch, objection after objection, she had conquered his cautions and scruples; had persuaded him that the dramatic method was the best method. When Blake entered the house, nothing was left to chance except the question whether Norcross would miss his engagement to "sit" with Mrs. Markham. Rosalie settled that. From the front windows, she had observed the green limousine automobile waiting by the curbing outside; through her open registers she had caught the murmur of conversation.
So even Rosalie, whose tongue ran by custom in greased grooves, found nothing to say until the little mantel clock tapped three times to announce a quarter to the hour. It brought Blake to his feet with such a jerk that Rosalie shook both her hands at him by way of caution. At the door she stopped a second, put her lips to his ear.
"I don't have to tell you to be brave, boy," she said. "But keep your head and don't git independent. You do what I say!"
She touched his side pocket, which bulged. "An' not too brash with that!" she added. "Revolvers is good for bluffs but bad for real business!"
Blake nodded. And for the second time they crept down the silent, padded halls to those apartments above Mrs. Markham's alcove library. They approached, then, not the closet door, but the door leading to that boudoir which he had seen once before through Rosalie's hole in the wall paper. Rosalie applied a key, turned it with infinite caution, opened the door, motioned him in. The room appeared as before. The light burned low over the white desk; the portières hung close. Rosalie pointed to the rounded, further end of the room—the space where he had seen the ghostly thing which was Annette disappear through the floor. That floor space was bare; a rug, rolled up, rested against the further wainscot. Blake took it in, and smiled at Rosalie as though to say, "everything is ready I see!" Then for a minute they stood immobile, listening. A murmur of conversation came up from below, and in the room behind the portières someone was breathing, lightly, regularly. Rosalie touched his arm and beckoned. Moving without sound, they lifted the portières, stepped within.
No light inside that room, except the low radiance from a prone figure by the outer wall. It seemed at first that this ghost of Annette lay suspended between heaven and earth. Blake's mind put down the awe which was stealing over his senses. His eyes sharpened until he could make out a few details.
At the right, dimly suggested, was a disordered bed. Annette lay on a couch. The robes swathed her from head to foot, but the veil over her face was parted as though to give her air. Her eyes were closed; her arms, with something strained and stretched in their attitude, lay along her sides.
And now Rosalie had her lips at his ear.
"Quick!" she said.
Blake crept to Annette's side and spoke in a low tone.
"Annette, this is I—Walter, your lover. You belong to me. I revoke no other commands, but you are to listen to me also and do as I tell you. Answer me first. You have been commanded to rise when you hear music?"
As by the miracle of one speaking in normal tones out of sleep, Annette answered:
"Yes."
"Speak low. You have been commanded to enter the other room then, turn out the light, lift a trap, let down a rope ladder, descend it, and say certain things?"
"Yes." The tone was less than a whisper.
"Have you been given anything special to say to-night—has anything been impressed upon you?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"After the rest, I am to say: 'Robert, they tell me that the great danger is near. They give me a message which I do not understand—"Declare that dividend tomorrow." You do not know the awful things which will come if you do not.'"
Blake could hear Rosalie catch her breath at this. It came to him, also, that he had intervened at the very climax of Mrs. Markham's operation on Robert H. Norcross. But he went on firmly:
"Obey that. Do as you were told. But do something else. So that you will remember, I am going to whisper it in your ear."
Blake leaned over for a minute, and whispered. Presently he raised himself a little, so that he bent over her face, and said in a low speaking voice:
"Do all that. I command you. I am Walter, and you must obey me. And remember especially—when you have done it all, then wake—wake and do not be alarmed. Do you hear?"
"Yes."
"Will you obey?"
"Yes."
"You will not be frightened?"
"No."
Rosalie touched his arm. Blake, with one last look back, stepped outside and dropped the portières. Rosalie drew him into the hall, softly locked the door, beckoned him to follow to the head of the stairs. And hard upon this movement, the piano downstairs began:
Wild roamed an Indian maid, bright Alfaretta.
"Make no noise—and hurry!" whispered Rosalie. Down the stairs they went, and stationed themselves by the hall door of the drawing-room. There, it was pitch dark. Without risk of being seen, they could look along the dim reaches of Mrs. Markham's parlors. From a point above their heads, a little, shaded cabinet-lamp gave a fan of low light which shone full on the dark curtains of the alcove library. They could make out, by his white hair and collar, the back of a man, and a shadowy figure at the piano. "Wild roamed an Indian maid" was falling away to its dying chord. Silence settled again; the back of the old man swayed. Mrs. Markham spoke from the piano stool:
"I feel your influence, Helen. You are stronger every time, dear, because his love grows stronger. Come, dear—come."
A pillar of light glowed against the cabinet curtains. Norcross rose; Blake could catch a suggestion of his face and collar against the dark draperies. There came the same exchange of love words, of pats, of caressing speeches, which he had heard from the closet; even now, better understood as this thing was, the sound of them drew his finger nails up into his palms.
Rosalie's touch brought him back to his sense of observation. Here, now, came the climax; here the moment upon which everything depended. The low, sweet contralto voice was saying:
"They tell me that the great danger is near. They give me a message which I do not quite understand. They say, 'Declare that dividend to-morrow!' You cannot know what awful things will follow if you do not."
Rosalie's clutch tightened on Blake's arm. For the voice had ceased altogether. A silent moment; then they saw the pillar of light become a crumpled blotch on the floor, heard a sudden shuffle of feet, heard Annette's voice, loud, clear, distinct, crying:
"This is a lie! I am not Helen Whitton! I am Annette Markham. I am not a spirit! I am alive! You are being fooled—fooled!"
There followed a jangle of piano keys, as though something had dropped upon the keyboard.
In that instant, Rosalie Le Grange jerked the string of the cabinet light, throwing the shutter wide open. The details of that group by the curtain blazed into Blake's sight as he jumped forward—Annette, all in black, her white gauze robes a crumpled heap at her feet, swaying in the center of the floor; Norcross a huddle against the wall; Mrs. Markham, stiff as though frozen to stone, leaning against the piano. More light blazed on them; Blake knew that Rosalie, according to program, had lit the gas. He reached the curtains an instant before Mrs. Markham, roused to sudden, cat-like action, threw herself toward Annette. Blake came between; out of his pocket he whipped the revolver.
"I'm talking to you all!" he said. "You, old fool over there, and you, you devil! I'll kill the first that moves!"
Now Rosalie had slipped up beside Mrs. Markham, laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't make any fuss, my dear. I'm a medium myself an' I've been exposed four times. Take it from me,yourplay is to be a lady—and a sport."
Suddenly, Mrs. Markham lifted herself from the piano keys and spoke:
"Annette, my dear, control yourself. Come to me, dear—my poor, insane niece. Mr. Norcross, I will explain these intruders later. Come to me, dear!" She had stepped toward Blake, who stood with his left arm about Annette. Blake felt Annette shrink away from him, felt her sway toward her aunt. He raised the revolver.
"Stay where you are!" he commanded. "Annette, listen to me. I control you now—I! Until I say otherwise, keep your face on my shoulder. Do not look up. Keep your mind on what I am saying."
Annette's first movement away from him ceased. She gave a little inarticulate murmur of obedience. Simply as a child, she settled her face into the hollow of his shoulder.
He turned to Norcross.
"You old fool—" then he caught the face of him who had been king of the American railroads. Norcross had settled into a chair; more, he had shriveled into it. His mouth had fallen open as from senile weakness; his eyes, suddenly grown old, glazed and peering, seemed to struggle with tears. His hands moved uncertainly, feebly.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Norcross," he said, "I came here to-night to take away this girl, whom I intend to marry, and I'm excited. Now listen—Annette, I want you to listen also. Keep your mind upon me alone, dear, and remember I told you not to be frightened. This girl is ward of that she-devil there. Since her childhood, Mrs. Markham has been hypnotizing her—for her own purposes. So good a subject has she become that Mrs. Markham uses her to play ghost for these seances—without her own knowledge—"
"Stop!" cried Mrs. Markham.
"Now, my dear," protested Rosalie, "I've been in the house four weeks jest watchin' you work. Your play is to shut up until you see what we've got in our hand. If you don't, you'll put your foot in it!"
As though aware of her presence for the first time, Mrs. Markham turned and looked Rosalie straight in the face. And as though realizing the common sense in this counsel, she seated herself. Only a gnawing at her under lip indicated her mental disturbance.
Now Annette, as though beginning to realize the situation, was sobbing softly. Blake patted her shoulder; and the passion went out of his voice. But he still held the revolver alert in his free hand.