*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12678 ***

[Illustration: ROSALIE LE GRANGE]


THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY

AN EPISODE IN THE CAREER OF ROSALIE LE GRANGE, CLAIRVOYANT


By WILL IRWIN


Illustrated by Frederick C. Yohn




1910




CONTENTS

   I. The Unknown Girl

  II. Mr. Norcross Wastes Time

 III. The Light

  IV. His First Call

   V. The Light Wavers

  VI. Enter Rosalie Le Grange

 VII. Rosalie's First Report

VIII. The Fish Nibbles

  XI. Rosalie's Second Report

   X. The Streams Converge

  XI. Through the Wall-Paper

 XII. Annette Lies

XIII. Annette Tells the Truth

 XIV. Mainly from the Papers



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Rosalie le Grange

Annette

"It wasn't the money; it was the game--"

He had taken an impression of mental power as startling as a sudden
blow in the face

"Then it's as good as done"

Norcross's breath came a little faster

"I was looking straight down on the back parlors"

"Stay where you are," he commanded



THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY




I

THE UNKNOWN GIRL


In a Boston and Albany parlor-car, east bound through the Berkshires,
sat a young man respectfully, but intently studying a young woman. Now
and then, from the newspapers heaped in mannish confusion about his
chair, he selected another sheet. Always, he took advantage of this
opportunity to face the chair across the aisle and to sweep a glance
over a piquant little profile, intent on a sober-looking book. Again,
he would gaze out of the window; and he gazed oftenest when a freight
train hid the beauties of outside nature. The dun sides of freight cars
make out of a window a passable mirror. Twice, in those dim and
confused glimpses, he caught just a flicker of her eye across her book,
as though, she, on her part, were studying him.

It was her back hair which had first entangled Dr. Blake's thoughts; it
was the graceful nape of her neck which had served to hold them fast.
When the hair and the neck below dawned on him, he identified her as
that blonde girl whom he had noted at the train gate, waving farewell
to some receding friend--and noted with approval. As a traveler on many
seas and much land, he knew the lonely longing to address the woman in
the next seat. He knew also, as all seasoned travelers in America know,
that such desire is sometimes gratified, and without any surrender of
decency, in the frank and easy West--but never east of Chicago. This
girl, however, exercised somehow, a special pull upon his attention and
his imagination. And he found himself playing a game by which he had
mitigated many a journey of old. He divided his personality into two
parts--man and physician--and tried, by each separate power, to find as
much as he could from surface indications about this travel-mate of
his.

Mr. Walter Huntington Blake perceived, besides the hair like dripping
honey, deep blue eyes--the blue not of a turquoise but of a
sapphire--and an oval face a little too narrow in the jaw, so that the
chin pointed a delicate Gothic arch. He noted a good forehead, which
inclined him to the belief that she "did" something--some subtle
addition which he could not formulate confirmed that observation. He
saw that her hands were long and tipped with nails no larger than a
grain of maize, that when they rested for a moment on her face, in the
shifting attitudes of her reading, they fell as gently as flower-stalks
swaying together in a breeze. He saw that her shoulders had a slight
slope, which combined with hands and eyes to express a being all
feminine--the kind made for a lodestone to a man who has known the hard
spots of the world, like Mr. Walter Huntington Blake.

"A pippin!" pronounced Mr. Blake, the man.

Dr. Blake, the physician, on the other hand, caught a certain languor
in her movements, a physical tenuity which, in a patient, he would have
considered diagnostic. So transparent was her skin that when her
profile dipped forward across a bar of sunshine the light shone through
the bridge of her nose--a little observation charming to Blake, the
man, but a guide to Blake, the physician. She had the look, Dr. Blake
told himself, which old-fashioned country nurses of the herb-doctor
school refer to as "called." He knew that, in about one case out of
three, that look does in fact amount to a real "call"--the outward
expression of an obscure disease.

"Her heart?" queried Blake, the physician. The transparent, porcelain
quality of her skin would indicate that. But he found, as he watched,
no nervous twitching, no look as of an incipient sack under her eyes;
nor did the transparent quality seem waxy. There was, too, a certain
pinkness in the porcelain which showed that her blood ran red and pure.

Then Mr. Blake and Dr. Blake re-fused into one psychology and decided
that her appearance of delicacy was subtly psychological. It haunted
him with an irritating effect of familiarity--as of a symptom which he
ought to recognize. In all ways was it intertwined with the expression
of her mouth. She had never smiled enough; therein lay all the trouble.
She presented a very pretty problem to his imagination. Here she was,
still so very young that little was written on her face, yet the
little, something unusual, baffling. The mouth, too tightly set, too
drooping--that expressed it all. To educate such a one in the ways of
innocent frivolity!

When the porter's "last call for luncheon" brought that flutter of
satisfaction by which a bored parlor-car welcomes even such a trivial
diversion as food, Dr. Blake waited a fair interval for her toilet
preparations, and followed toward the dining-car. He smiled a little at
himself as he realized that he was craftily scheming to find a seat, if
not opposite her, at least within seeing distance. On a long and lonely
day-journey, he told himself, travelers are like invalids--the smallest
incident rolls up into a mountain of adventure. Here he was, playing
for sight of an interesting girl, as another traveler timed the
train-speed by the mile-posts, or counted the telegraph poles along the
way.

So he came out suddenly into the Pullman car ahead--and almost stumbled
over the nucleus of his meditations. She was half-kneeling beside a
seat, clasping in her arms the figure of a little, old woman. He
hesitated, stock still. The blonde girl shifted her position as though
to take better hold of her burden, and glanced backward with a look of
appeal. The doctor came forward on that; and his sight caught the face
of the old woman. Her eyes were closed, her head had dropped to one
side and lay supine upon the girl's shoulder. It appeared to be a plain
case of faint.

[Illustration: ANNETTE]

"I am a physician," he said simply, "Get the porter, will you?" Without
an instant's question or hesitation, the girl permitted him to relieve
her, and turned to the front of the car. Other women and one fussy,
noisy man were coming up now. Dr. Blake waved them aside. "We need air
most of all--open that window, will you?" The girl was back with the
porter. "Is the compartment occupied? Then open it. We must put her on
her back." The porter fumbled for his keys. Dr. Blake gathered up the
little old woman in his arms, and spoke over his shoulder to the blonde
girl:

"You will come with us?" She nodded. Somehow, he felt that he would
have picked her from the whole car to assist in this emergency. She was
like one of those born trained nurses who ask no questions, need no
special directions, and are as reliable as one's instruments.

The old woman was stirring by the time he laid her out on the sofa of
the compartment. He wet a towel in the pitcher at the washstand, wrung
it out, pressed it on her forehead. It needed no more than that to
bring her round.

"Only a faint," said Dr. Blake; "the day's hot and she's not accustomed
to train travel, I suppose. Is she--does she belong to your party?"

The girl spoke for the first time in his hearing. Even before he seized
the meaning of her speech, he noted with a thrill the manner of it.
Such a physique as this should go with the high, silvery tone of a
flute; so one always imagines it. This girl spoke in the voice of a
violin--soft, deep, deliciously resonant. In his mind flashed a picture
for which he was a long time accounting--last winter's ballet of the
New York Hippodrome. Afterward, he found the key to that train of
thought. It, had been a ballet of light, shimmering colors, until
suddenly a troop of birds in royal purple had slashed their way down
the center of the stage. They brought the same glorified thrill of
contrast as this soft but strong contralto voice proceeding from that
delicate blondness.

"Oh, no!" she said, "I never saw her before. She was swaying as I came
down the aisle, and I caught her. She's--she's awake." The old woman
had stirred again.

"Get my bag from seat 12, parlor-car," said Dr. Blake to the porter.
"Tell them outside that it is a simple fainting-spell and we shall need
no assistance." Now his charity patient had recovered voice; she was
moaning and whimpering. The girl, obeying again Dr. Blake's unspoken
thought, took a quick step toward the door. He understood without
further word from her.

"All right," he said; "she may want to discuss symptoms. You're on the
way to the dining-car aren't you? I'll be along in five minutes, and
I'll let you know how she is. Tell them outside that it is nothing
serious and have the porter stand by--please." That last word of
politeness came out on an afterthought--he had been addressing her in
the capacity of a trained nurse. He recognized this with confusion, and
he apologized by a smile which illuminated his rather heavy, dark face.
She answered with the ghost of a smile--it moved her eyes rather than
her mouth--and the door closed.

After five minutes of perfunctory examination and courteous attention
to symptoms, he tore himself away from his patient upon the pretext
that she needed quiet. He wasted three more golden minutes in assuring
his fellow passengers that it was nothing. He escaped to the dining
car, to find that the delay had favored him. Her honey-colored back
hair gleamed from one of the narrow tables to left of the aisle. The
unconsidered man opposite her had just laid a bill on the waiter's
check, and dipped his hands in the fingerbowl. Dr. Blake invented a
short colloquy with the conductor and slipped up just as the waiter
returned with the change. He bent over the girl.

"I have to report," said he, "that the patient is doing nicely; doctor
and nurse are both discharged!"

She returned a grave smile and answered conventionally, "I am very
glad."

At that precise moment, the man across the table, as though recognizing
friendship or familiarity between these two, pocketed his change and
rose. Feeling that he was doing the thing awkwardly, that he would give
a year for a light word to cover up his boldness, Dr. Blake took the
seat. He looked slowly up as he settled himself, and he could feel the
heat of a blush on his temples. He perceived--and for a moment it did
not reassure him--that she on her part neither blushed nor bristled.
Her skin kept its transparent whiteness, and her eyes looked into his
with intent gravity. Indeed, he felt through her whole attitude the
perfect frankness of good breeding--a frankness which discouraged
familiarity while accepting with human simplicity an accidental contact
of the highway. She was the better gentleman of the two. His renewed
confusion set him to talking fast.

"If it weren't that you failed to come in with any superfluous advice,
I should say that you had been a nurse--you seem to have the instinct.
You take hold, somehow, and make no fuss."

"Why should I?" she asked, "with a doctor at hand? I was thinking all
the time how you lean on a doctor. I should never have known what to
do. How is she? What was the matter?"

"She's resting. It isn't every elderly lady who can get a compartment
from the Pullman Company for the price of a seat. She was put on at
Albany by one set of grandchildren and she's to be taken off at
Boston by another set. And she's old and her heart's a little
sluggish--self-sacrifice goes downward not upward, through the
generations, I observe--though I'm a young physician at that!"

Her next words, simply spoken as they were, threw him again into
confusion.

"I don't know your name, I think--mine is Annette Markham."

Dr. Blake drew out a card.

"Dr. W.H. Blake, sometime contract surgeon to the Philippine Army of
Occupation," he supplemented, "now looking for a practice in these
United States!"

"The Philippines--oh, you've been in the East? When we were in the
Orient, I used to hear of them ever so dimly--I didn't think we'd all
be talking of them so soon--"

"Oh, you've been in the Orient--do you know the China Coast--and Nikko
and--"

"No, only India."

"I've never been there--and I've heard it's the kernel of the East," he
said with his lips. But his mind was puzzling something out and finding
a solution. The accent of that deep, resonant voice was neither Eastern
nor Western, Yankee nor Southern--nor yet quite British. It was rather
cosmopolitan--he had dimly placed her as a Californienne. Perhaps this
fragment explained it. She must be a daughter of the English official
class, reared in America. The theory would explain her complexion and
her simple, natural balance between frankness and reserve. He formed
that conclusion, but, "How do you like America after India?" was all he
said.

"How do you like it after the Philippines?" she responded.

"That is a Yankee trick--answering one question with another," he said,
still following his line of conjecture; "it was invented by the
original Yankee philosopher, a person named Socrates. I like it after
everything--I'm an American. I'm one of those rare birds in the Eastern
United States, a native of New York City."

"Well, then,"--her manner had, for the first time, the brightness which
goes with youth, plus the romantic adventure--"I like it not only after
anything but before anything--I'm an American, too."

A sense of irritation rose in him. He had let conjecture grow to
conclusion in the most reckless fashion. And why should he care so much
that he had risked offending a mere passing acquaintance of the road?

"Somehow, I had taken it for granted--your reference to India I
suppose--that you were English."

"Oh, no! Though an English governess made me fond of the English. I'm
another of the rare birds. I was hardly out of New York in my life
until five years ago, when my aunt took me for a stay of two years in
the Orient--in India at least. I've been very happy to be back."

The current of talk drifted then from the coast of confidences to the
open sea of general conversation. He pulled himself up once or twice by
the reflection that he was talking too much about himself. Once--and he
remembered it with blushes afterward--he went so far as to say, "I
didn't really need to be a doctor, any more than I needed to go to the
Philippines--the family income takes care of that. But a man should do
something." Nevertheless, she seemed disposed to encourage him in this
course, seemed most to encourage him when he told his stories about the
Philippine Army of Occupation.

"Oh, tell me another!" she would cry. And once she said, "If there were
a piano here, I venture you'd sing Mandelay." "That would I," he
answered with a half sigh. And at last, when he was running down, she
said, "Oh, please don't stop! It makes me crazy for the Orient!" "And
me!" he confessed. Before luncheon was over, he had dragged out the two
or three best stories in his wanderer's pack, and especially that one,
which he saved for late firesides and the high moments of anecdotal
exchange, about the charge at Caloocon. She drank down these tales of
hike and jungle and firing-line like a seminary girl listening to her
first grownup caller. For his part, youth and the need of male youth to
spread its bright feathers before the female of its species, drove him
on to more tales. He contrived his luncheon so that they finished and
paid simultaneously--and in the middle of his story about Sergeant
Jones, the dynamite and the pack mule. So, when they returned to the
parlor-car, nothing was more simple, natural and necessary than that he
should drop into the vacant chair beside her, and continue where he
left off. He felt, when he had finished, the polite necessity of
leading the talk back to her; besides, he had not finished his Study of
the Unknown Girl. He returned, then, to the last thread which she had
left hanging.

"So you too are glad to be at home!" he said. "I'm so glad that I don't
want to lose sight either of a skyscraper or of apple trees for years
and years. I can't remember when I've ever wanted to stay in one place
before."

She laughed--the first full laugh he had heard from her. It was low and
deep and bubbling, like water flowing from a long-necked bottle.

"Just a moment ago, we were confessing that we were crazy for the
Orient."

"I'm glad to be caught in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been
afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign of
incipient old age."

She looked at him directly, and for a moment her fearless glance played
over him, as in alarm.

"Oh, I shouldn't be afraid of _that_," she said. "I don't know your
age, of course, but if it will reassure you any, I'd put it at
twenty-eight. And that, according to Peter Ibbertson, is quite the
nicest age." Her face, with its unyouthful capacity for sudden
seriousness, grew grave. Her deep blue eyes gazed past him out of the
window.

"I'm only twenty-four, but I know what it is to think that middle age
is near--to dread it--especially when I half suspect I haven't spent
the interest on my youth." She stopped.

Dr. Blake held his very breath. His instincts warned him that she
faltered at one of those instincts when confidence lies close to the
lips. But she did not give it. Instead, she caught herself up with a
perfunctory, "I suppose everyone feels that way at times."

Although he wanted that confidence, he was clever enough not to reach
for it at this point. Instead, he took a wide detour, and returned
slowly, backing and filling to the point. But every time that he
approached a closer intimacy, she veered away with an adroitness which
was consummate art or consummate innocence. His first impression
grew--that she "did" something. She had mentioned "Peter Ibbertson." He
spoke, then, of books. She had read much, especially fiction; but she
treated books as one who does not write. He talked art. Though she
spoke with originality and understanding in response to his second-hand
studio chatter, he could see that she neither painted nor associated
much with those who did. Besides, her hands had none of the
craftswoman's muscle. Of music--beyond ragtime--she knew as little as
he. He invaded business--her ignorance was abysmal. The stage--she
could count on her fingers the late plays which she had seen.

When the trail had grown almost cold, there happened a little incident
which put him on the scent again. He had thought suddenly of his
patient in the compartment and made a visit, only to find her asleep.
Upon his return he said:

"You behaved like a soldier and a nurse toward her--a girl with such a
distinct _flair_ for the game must have had longings to take up
nursing--or perhaps you never read 'Sister Dora'?"

"I did read 'Sister Dora,'" she answered, "and I was crazy about it."

"Most girls are--hence the high death rate in hospitals," he
interrupted.

"But I gave that up--and a lot of other desires which all girls
have--for something else. I had to." Her sapphirine eyes searched the
Berkshire hills again, "Something bigger and nobler--something which
meant the entire sacrifice of self."

And here the brakeman called "Next station is Berkeley Center." Dr.
Blake came to the sudden realization that they had reached his
destination. She started, too.

"Why, I get off here!" she exclaimed.

"And so do I!" He almost laughed it out.

"That's a coincidence."

Dr. Blake refrained from calling her attention to the general flutter
of the parlor-car and the industry of two porters. This being the
high-tide time of the summer migration, and Berkeley Center being the
popular resort on that line, nearly everyone was getting off. However
as he delivered himself over to the porter, he nodded:

"The climax of a series!"

As they waited, bags in hand, "I am on my way to substitute for a month
at the Hill Sanatorium," he said. "The assistant physician is going on
a vacation--I suppose the ambulance will be waiting."

"And I am going to the Mountain House--it's a little place and more the
house of friends than an inn. If your work permits--"

He interrupted with a boyish laugh.

"Oh, it will!" But he said good-bye at the vestibule with a vague idea
that she might have trouble explaining him to any very particular
friends. He saw her mount an old-fashioned carry-all, saw her turn to
wave a farewell. The carry-all disappeared. He started toward the Hill
ambulance, but he was still thinking, "Now what is the thing which a
girl like _that_ would consider more self-sacrificing than nursing?"




II

MR. NORCROSS WASTES TIME


Robert H. Norcross looked up from a sheet of figures, and turned his
vision upon the serrated spire of old Trinity Church, far below. Since
his eyes began to fail, he had cultivated the salutary habit of resting
them every half-hour or so. The action was merely mechanical; his mind
still lingered on the gross earnings of the reorganized L.D. and M.
railroad. It was a sultry afternoon in early fall. The roar of lower
New York came up to him muffled by the haze. The traffic seemed to move
more slowly than usual, as though that haze clogged its wheels and
congealed its oils. The very tugs and barges, on the river beyond,
partook of the season's languor. They crept over the oily waves at a
sluggard pace, their smoke-streamers dropping wearily toward the water.

The eyes of Robert H. Norcross swept this vista for the allotted two
minutes of rest. Presently--and with the very slightest change of
expression--they fixed themselves on a point so far below that he needs
must lean forward and rest his arms on the window sill in order to
look. He wasted thus a minute; and such a wasting, in the case of
Robert H. Norcross, was a considerable matter. The Sunday
newspapers--when in doubt--always played the income of Robert H.
Norcross by periods of months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. Every
minute of his time, their reliable statisticians computed, was worth a
trifle less than forty-seven dollars. Regardless of the waste of time,
he continued to gaze until the watch on his desk had ticked off five
minutes, or two hundred and thirty-five dollars.

The thing which had caught and held his attention was a point in the
churchyard of old Trinity near to the south door.

The Street had been remarking, for a year, that Norcross was growing
old. The change did not show in his operations. His grip on the market
was as firm as ever, his judgment as sure, his imagination as daring,
his habit of keeping his own counsel as settled. Within that year, he
had consummated the series of operations by which the L.D. and M.,
final independent road needed by his system, had "come in"; within that
year, he had closed the last finger of his grip on a whole principality
of our domain. Every laborer in that area would thenceforth do a part
of his day's delving, every merchant a part of his day's bargaining,
for Robert H. Norcross. Thenceforth--until some other robber baron
should wrest it from his hands--Norcross would make laws and unmake
legislatures, dictate judgments and overrule appointments--give the
high justice while courts and assemblies trifled with the middle and
the low. Certainly the history of that year in American finance
indicated no flagging in the powers of Robert H. Norcross.

The change which the Street had marked lay in his face--it had taken on
the subtle imprint of a first frosty day. He had never looked the power
that he was. Short and slight of build, his head was rather small even
for his size, and his features were insignificant--all except the
mouth, whose wide firmness he covered by a drooping mustache, and the
eyes, which betrayed always an inner fire. The trained observer of
faces noticed this, however; every curve of his facial muscles, every
plane of the inner bone-structure, was set by nature definitely and
properly in its place to make a powerful and perfectly coördinated
whole. In this facial manifestation of mental powers, he was like one
of those little athletes who, carrying nothing superfluous, show the
power, force and endurance which is in them by no masses of overlying
muscles, but only by a masterful symmetry.

Now, in a year, the change had come over his face--the jump as abrupt
as that by which a young girl grows up--the transition from middle age
to old age. It was not so much that his full, iron-gray hair and
mustache had bleached and silvered. It was more that the cheeks were
falling from middle-aged masses to old-age creases, more that the skin
was drawing up, most that the inner energy which had vitalized his walk
and gestures was his no longer.

In the mind, too--though no one perceived that, he least of all--had
come a change. Here and there, a cell had disintegrated and collapsed.
They were not the cells which vitalized his business sense. They lay
deeper down; it was as though their very disuse for thirty years had
weakened them. In such a cell his consciousness dwelt while he gazed on
Trinity Churchyard, and especially upon that modest shaft of granite,
three graves from the south entrance. And the watch on his desk clicked
off the valuable seconds, and the electric clock on the wall jumped to
mark the passing minutes. "Click-click" from the desk--seventy-eight
cents--"Click-click"--one dollar and fifty-seven cents--"Clack" from
the wall--forty-seven dollars.

Presently, when watch and clock had chronicled four hundred and seventy
dollars of wasted time, he leaned back, looked for a moment on the
brazen September heavens above, and sighed. He might then have turned
back to his desk and the table of gross earnings, but for his
secretary.

"Mr. Bulger outside, sir," said the secretary.

"All right!" responded Mr. Norcross. In him, those two words spoke
enthusiasm; usually, a gesture or a nod was enough to bar or admit a
visitor to the royal presence. Hard behind the secretary, entered with
a bound and a breeze, Mr. Arthur Bulger. He was a tall man about
forty-five if you studied him carefully, no more than thirty-five if
you studied him casually. Not only his strong shoulders, his firm set
on his feet, his well-conditioned skin, showed the ex-athlete who has
kept up his athletics into middle age, but also that very breeze and
bound of a man whose blood runs quick and orderly through its channels.
His face, a little pudgy, took illumination from a pair of lively eyes.
He was the jester in the court of King Norcross; one of the half-dozen
men whom the bachelor lord of railroads admitted to intimacy. A
measured intimacy it was; and it never trenched on business. Bulger,
like all the rest, owed half of his position to the fact that he never
asked by so much as a hint for tips, never seemed curious about the
operations of Norcross. There was the time on Wall Street when
Norcross, by a lift of his finger, a deflection of his eye, might have
put his cousin and only known relative on the right side of the market.
He withheld the sign, and his cousin lost. The survivors in Norcross's
circle of friends understood this perfectly; it was why they survived.
If they got any financial advantage from the friendship, it was through
the advertising it gave. For example, Bulger, a broker of only moderate
importance, owed something to the general understanding that he was
"thick with the Old Man."

Norcross looked up; his mustache lifted a little, and his eyes lit.

"Drink?" he said. His allowance was two drinks a day; one just before
he left the office, the other before dinner.

"Much obliged," responded Bulger, "but you know where I was last night.
If I took a drink now, I would emit a pale, blue flame."

Norcross laughed a purring laugh, and touched a bell. The secretary
stood in the door; Norcross indicated, by an out-turned hand, the top
of his desk. The secretary had hardly disappeared before the office-boy
entered with a tray and glasses. Simultaneously a clerk, entering from
another door as though by accident, swept up the balance sheets of the
L.D. and M. and bore them away. Bulger's glance followed the papers
hungrily for a second; then turned back on Norcross, carefully mixing a
Scotch highball.

As Norcross finished with the siphon, his eyes wandered downward again.

"Ever been about much down there?" he asked suddenly. Bulger crossed
the room and looked down over his shoulder.

"Where?" he asked, "The Street or--"

"Trinity Churchyard."

"Once I sang my little love lays there in the noon hour," answered
Bulger. "I was a gallant clerk and hers the fairest fingers that ever
caressed a typewriter--" The intent attitude of Norcross, the fact that
he neither turned nor smiled, checked Bulger. With the instinct of the
courtier, he perceived that the wind lay in another tack. He racked the
unused half of his mind for appropriate sentiments.

"Bully old graveyard," he brought out; "lot's of good people buried
there."

"Know any of the graves?"

"Only Alexander Hamilton's. Everyone knows that."

"That one--see--that marble shaft--not one of the old ones."

"If you're curious to know," answered Bulger easily, "I'll find out on
my way down to-morrow. I suppose if you were to go and look, and the
reporters were to see you meditating among the tombs, we'd have a scare
head to-morrow and a drop of ten points in the market." Bulger's shift
to a slight levity was premeditated; he was taking guard against
overplaying his part.

"No, never mind," said Norcross, "it just recalls something." He paused
the fraction of a second, and his eye grew dull. "Wonder if
they're--anywhere--those people down under the tombstones?"

"I suppose we all believe in immortality."

"Seeing and hearing is believing. I believe what I see. Born that way."
Norcross was speaking with a slight, agitated jerk in his voice. He
rose now, and paced the floor, throwing out his feet in quick thrusts.
"I'm getting along, Bulger, and I'd like to know." More pacing. Coming
to the end of his route, he peered shrewdly into the face of the
younger man. "Have you read the Psychical Society's report on Mrs.
Fife?"

Bulger's mind said, "Good God no!" His lips said, "Only some newspaper
stuff about them. Seemed rather remarkable if true. Something in that
stuff, I suppose."

"I've read them," resumed Norcross. "Got the full set. We ought to
inform ourselves on such things, Bulger. Especially when we get older.
That gravestone now. There's one like it--that I know about." Norcross,
with another jerky motion, which seemed to propel him against his will,
crossed to his desk and touched a bell, bringing his secretary
instantly.

"Left hand side of the vault, box marked 'Private 3,'" he said. Then he
resumed:

"If they could come back they would come, Bulger. Especially those we
loved. Not to let us see them, you understand, but to assure us it is
all right--that we'll live again. That's what I want--proof--I can't
take it on faith." His voice lowered. "Thirty years!" he whispered.
"What's thirty years?"

The secretary knocked, entered, set a small, steel box on the glass top
of the desk. Norcross dismissed him with a gesture, drew out his keys,
opened the box. It distilled a faint scent of old roses and old papers.
Norcross looked within for a moment, as though turning the scent into
memories, before he took out a locket. He opened it, hesitated, and
then extended it to Bulger. It enclosed an exquisite miniature--a young
woman, blonde, pretty in a blue-eyed, innocent way, but characterless,
too--a face upon which life had left nothing, so that even the great
painter who made the miniature from a photograph had illuminated it
only with technical skill.

"Don't tell me what you think of her," Norcross said quietly; "I prefer
to keep my own ideas. It was when I was a young freight clerk. She
taught school up there. We were--well, the ring's in the box, too. They
took it off her finger when they buried her. That's why--" to put the
brake on his rapidly running sentiment, he ventured one of his rare
pleasantries at this point--"that's why I'm still a stock newspaper
feature as one of the great matches for ambitious society girls."

Bulger, listening, was observing also. Within the front cover of the
case were two sets of initials in old English letters--"R.H.N." and
"H.W." His mind, a little confused by its wanderings in strange fields,
tried idly to match "H.W." with names. Suddenly he felt the necessity
of expressing sympathy.

"Poor--" he began, but Norcross, by a swift outward gesture of the
hand, stopped and saved him.

[Illustration: "IT WASN'T THE MONEY; IT WAS THE GAME--"]

"Well, I got in after that," Norcross went on, "and I drove 'em! It
wasn't the money; it was the game. She'd have had the spending of
_that_. And it isn't just to see her--it's to know if she is still
waiting--and if we'll make up for thirty years--out there."

As Bulger handed back the locket, the secretary knocked again. Norcross
started; something seemed to snap into place; he was again the silent,
guarded baron of the railroads. He dropped the locket into the box,
closed it. "The automobile," said his secretary. Norcross nodded, and
indicated the box. The secretary bore it away.

"Come up to dinner Tuesday," said Norcross in his normal tone. But his
voice quavered a little for a moment as he added:

"You're good at forgetting?"

"Possessor of the best forgettery you ever saw," responded Bulger.
Forthwith, they turned to speech of the railroad rate bill.

       *       *       *       *       *

When, after a mufti dinner at the club, Bulger reached his bachelor
apartments, he found a telegram. The envelope bore his office address;
by that sign he knew, even before he unfolded the yellow paper, that it
was the important telegram from his partner, the crucial telegram, for
which he had been waiting these two days. It must have come to the
office after he left. He got out the code book from his desk, laid it
open beside the sheet, and began to decipher, his face whitening as he
went on:

    BUTTE, MONT.

    Reports of expert phony. Think Oppendike salted it on him. They
    will finish this vein in a month. Then the show will bust.
    Federated Copper Company will not bite and too late now to unload
    on public. Something must be done. Can't you use your drag with
    Norcross somehow?

    WATSON.

Bulger, twisting the piece of yellow paper, stared out into the street.
His "drag with Norcross!" What had that ever brought, what could it
ever bring, except advertising and vague standing? Yet Norcross by a
word, a wink, could give him information which, rightly used, would
cancel all the losses of this unfortunate plunge in the Mongolia Mine.
But Norcross would never give that word, that wink; and to fish for it
were folly. Norcross never broke the rules of the lone game which he
played.

As Bulger stood there, immovable except for the nervous hands which
still twisted and worried the telegram, he saw a sign on the building
opposite. The first line, bearing the name, doubtless, was illegible;
the second, fully legible, lingered for a long time merely in his
perceptions before it reached and touched his consciousness.

"CLAIRVOYANT," it read.

He started, leaned on a table as though from weakness, and continued to
stare at the sign.

"Who is the cleverest fakir in that business?" he said at length to
himself.

And then, after a few intent minutes:

"When he was a freight clerk--thirty years ago--that was at Farnham
Mills--'H.W.'--granite shaft--sure it can be done!"




III

THE LIGHT


As Dr. Blake tucked his racket under his arm and came down to the net,
the breeze caught a corner of her veil and let the sunlight run clear
across her face. He realized, in that moment, how the burning interest
as a man, which he had developed in these three weeks for Annette
Markham, had quite submerged his interest as a physician. For health,
this was a different creature from the one whom he had studied in the
parlor-car. Her color ran high; the greatest alarmist in the profession
would have wasted no thought on her heart valves; the look as of one
"called" had passed. Though she still appeared a little grave, it was a
healthy, attractive gravity; and take it all in all she had smiled much
during three weeks of daily walks and rides and tennis. Indeed, now
that he remembered it, her tennis measured the gradual change. She
would never be good at tennis; she had no inner strength and no "game
sense." But at first she had played in a kind of stupor; again and
again she would stand at the backline in a brown study until the
passage of the ball woke her with an apologetic start. Now, she
frolicked through the game with all vigor, zest and attention, going
after every shot, smiling and sparkling over her good plays, prettily
put out at her bad ones.

While he helped her on with her sweater--lingering too long over that
little service of courtesy--he expressed this.

"Do you know that for physical condition you're no more the same girl
whom I first met than--than I am!"

She laughed a little at the comparison. "And you are no more the same
man whom I first met--than I am!"

He laughed too at this tribute to his summer coating of bronze over
red. "I feel pretty fit," he admitted.

"My summer always has that effect," she went on. "Do you know that for
all I've been so much out of the active world"--a shadow fell on her
eyes,--"I long for country and farms? How I wish I could live always
out-of-doors! The day might come--" the shadow lifted a little--"when
I'd retire to a farm for good."

"You've one of those constitutions which require air and light and
sunshine," he answered.

"You're quite right. I actually bleach in the shadow--like lettuce.
That's why Aunt Paula always sends me away for a month every now and
then to the quietest place proper for a well-brought-up young person."

His eyes shadowed as though they had caught that blasting shade in
hers. From gossip about the Mountain House, later from her own
admission, he knew who "Aunt Paula" was--"a spirit medium, or
something," said the gossip; "a great teacher of a new philosophy,"
said Annette Markham.

Dr. Blake, partly because adventure had kept him over-young, held still
his basic, youthful ideas about the proper environment for woman.
Whenever the name "Aunt Paula," softened with the accents of affection,
proceeded from that low, contralto voice, it hurt the new thing,
greater than any conventional idea, which was growing up in him. He
even suspected, at such times, what might be the "something nobler than
nursing."

A big apple tree shaded the sidelines of the Mountain House tennis
court. A bench fringed its trunk. Annette threw herself down, back
against the bark. It was late afternoon. The other house-guests droned
over bridge on the piazzas or walked in the far woods; they were alone
out-of-doors. And Annette, always, until now, so chary of confidences,
developed the true patient's weakness and began to talk symptoms.

"It is curious the state I'm in before Aunt Paula sends me away," she
said; "I was a nervous child, and though I've outgrown it, I still have
attacks of nerve fag or something like it. I can feel them coming on
and so can she. You know we've been together so much that it's
like--like two bees in adjoining cells. The cell-wall has worn thin; we
can almost touch. She knows it often before I do. She makes me go to
bed early; often she puts me to sleep holding my hand, as she used to
do when I was a little girl. But even sleep doesn't much help. I come
out of it with a kind of fright and heaviness. I have little memories
of curious dreams and a queer sense, too, that I mustn't remember what
I've dreamed. I grow tired and heavy--I can always see it in my face.
Then Aunt Paula sends me away, and I become all right again--as I am
now."

Blake did not express the impatient thought of his mind. He only said:

"A little sluggishness of the blood and a little congestion of the
brain. I had such sleep once after I'd done too much work and fought
too much heat in the Cavite Hospital. Only with me it took the form of
nightmare--mostly, I was in process of being boloed."

"Yes, perhaps it was that"--her eyes deepened to their most faraway
blue--"and perhaps it is something else. I think it may be. Aunt Paula
thinks so, too, though she never says it."

What was the something? Did she stand again on the edge of revelation?
Events had gone past the time when he could wait patiently for her
confidence, could approach it through tact. It was the moment not for
snipping but for bold charging. And his blood ran hot.

"This something--won't you tell me what it is? Why are you always so
mysterious with me? Why--when I want to know everything about you?"
After he had said this, he knew that there was no going backward.
Doubts, fears, terrors of conventionalities, awe of his conservative,
blood-proud mother in Paris--all flew to the winds.

Perhaps she caught something of this in his face, for she drew away a
trifle and said:

"I might have told you long ago, but I wasn't sure of your sympathy."

"I want you to be sure of my sympathy in all things."

"Ah, but your mind is between!" That phrase brought a shock to Dr.
Blake. At the only spiritualistic seance he had ever attended, a greasy
affair in a hall bedroom, he had heard that very phrase. A picture of
this woman, so clean and windblown of mind and soul, caught like a
trapped fly in the web of the unclean and corrupt--it was that which
quite whirled him off his feet.

"Between our hearts then, between our hearts!" he cried. "Oh, Annette,
I love you!" His voice came out of him low and distinct, but all the
power in the world vibrated behind it. "I have loved you always. You've
been with me everywhere I went, because I was looking for you. I've
seen a part of you in the best of every woman"--he pulled himself up,
for neither by look nor gesture did she respond--"I've no right to be
saying this--"

"If you have not," she answered, and a delicate blush ran over her
skin, "no other man has!" She said it simply, but with a curious kind
of pride.

He would have taken her hand on this, but the grave, direct gaze of her
sapphirine eyes restrained him. It was not the look of a woman who
gives herself, but rather that of a woman who grieves for the
ungivable.

"Ah," she said, "if anyone's to blame, it is I. I've brought it on
myself! I've been weak--weak!"

"No," he said, "I brought it on--God brought it on--but what does that
matter?

"It's _here_. I can no more fight it than I can fight the sea."

Now her head dropped forward and her hands, with that gracefully
uncertain motion which was like flower-stalks swayed by a breeze, had
covered her face.

"I can't speak if I look at you," she said, "and I must before you go
further--I must tell you all about myself so that you will understand."

The confidence, long sought, was coming, he thought; and he thought
also how little he cared for it now that he was pursuing a greater
thing.

"You know so little about me that I must begin far back--you don't even
know about my aunt--"

"I know something--what you've said, what Mrs. Cole at the Mountain
House told me. She's Mrs. Paula Markham--" his mind went on, "the great
fakir of the spook doctors," but his lips stifled the phrase and said
after a pause, "the great medium."

"I don't like to hear her called that," said Annette. "In spite of what
I'm going to tell you, I never saw but once the thing they call a
medium. That was years ago--but the horrible sacrilege of it has never
left me. She had a part of truth, and she was desecrating it by guesses
and catch words--selling it for money! Aunt Paula is broader than I.
'It's part of the truth,' she said, 'that woman is desecrating the
work, but she's serving in her way.' I suppose so--but since then I've
never liked to hear Aunt Paula called a medium."

She paused a second on this.

"If I were only sure of your sympathy!" A note of pleading fluttered in
her voice.

"No thought of yours, however I regard it, but is sure of my
sympathy--because it's yours," he answered.

As though she had not heard, she went on.

"I was an orphan. I never knew my father and mother. The first things I
remember are of the country--perhaps that is why I love the
out-of-doors--the sky through my window, filled with huge, puffy,
ice-cream clouds, a little new-born pig that somebody put in my bed one
morning--daisy-fields like snow--and the darling peep-peep-peep of
little bunches of yellow down that I was always trying to catch and
never succeeding. I couldn't say _chicken_. I always said _shicken_"
She paused. With that tenderness which every woman entertains for her
own little girlhood, she smiled.

"I've told you of the five white birches. I was looking at them and
naming them on my fingers the day that Aunt Paula came. My childhood
ended there. I seemed to grow up all at once."

Blake muttered something inarticulate. But at her look of inquiry, he
merely said. "Go on!"

"She isn't really my aunt by blood,--Aunt Paula isn't. You
understand--my father and her husband were brothers. They all
died--everybody died but just Aunt Paula and me. So she took me away
with her. And after that it was always the dreadful noise and confusion
of New York, with only my one doll--black Dinah--a rag-baby. I
thought," she interrupted herself wistfully, "I'd send Dinah to you
when I got back to New York. Would you like her?"

"Like her--like her! My--my--" But he swallowed his words. "Go on!" He
commanded again.

"Afterwards came London and then India. Such education as I had, I got
from governesses. I didn't have very much as girls go in my--in my
class. I didn't understand that then, any more than I understand why I
wasn't allowed to go to school or to play with other girls. There was a
time when I rebelled frightfully at that. I can tell definitely just
when it began. We were passing a convent in the Bronx, and it was
recess time. The sisters in their starched caps were sewing over by the
fence, and the girls were playing--a ring game, 'Go in and out the
window'--I can hear it now. I crowded my little face against the
pickets to watch, and two little girls who weren't in the game passed
close to me. The nearest one--I 'm sure I'd know her now if I saw her
grown up. She was of about my own age, very dark, with the silkiest
black hair and the longest black eyelashes that I ever saw. She had a
dimple at one corner of her mouth. She wore on her arm a little
bracelet with a gold heart dangling from it. I wasn't allowed any
jewelry; and it came into my mind that I'd like a gold bracelet like
that, before it came that I'd like such a friend for my very ownest and
dearest. The other girl, a red-haired minx who walked with her arm
about _my_ girl's waist--how jealous I was of her! I watched until Aunt
Paula dragged me away. As I went, I shouted over my shoulder, 'Hello,
little girl!' The little dark girl saw me, and shouted back, 'Hello!'
Dear little thing. I hope she's grown up safe and very happy! She'll
never know what she meant to me!"

Her lips quivered again. Looking up into her face, Blake wondered for
an instant at the sudden softness of her eyes. Then he realized that
they were slowly filling with tears. He reached again to seize her
hands.

"Oh, no, no--wait!" she said, weakly. After a pause, she resumed:

"That got up rebellion in me. All children have such periods, I've
heard. I'm docile enough now. But before I was through with this one,
Aunt Paula had to make my destiny clear to me--long before she meant to
do so. And I grew to be resigned, and then glad, because it was a
greater thing."

Here a rapid, inexplicable change crossed her face. From its firmness
of health and strength, it fell toward the look of one "called"--

"I must go back again. Between Aunt Paula and me there was always a
great sympathy. It's hard to describe. Often we do not have to speak
even of the most important things. When I come to know more about other
people, I wondered at first why they needed to do so much talking.
Things have happened--things that I would not expect you to believe--"

She had kindled now, and she looked into his eyes like some sybil,
divinely unconscious, preaching the unbelievable.

"I knew dimly, as a child knows, and accepts, that Aunt Paula had some
wonderful mission and that it had to do with the other world--all
you're taught when they teach you to say your prayers. Little by little
she made me understand. I grew up before I understood fully. The
Guides--Aunt Paula's--I have none as yet--had told her that I was a
Light."

He caught at this word, for his lover's impatience was burning and
beating within him.

"Light!" he said; "my Light!"

She regarded him gravely, and then, as though his fervor had frightened
her, she looked beyond at the apple leaves.

"Don't--you'll know soon why you mustn't. Oh, help me, for I am
unhappy!" She controlled a little upward ripple of her throat. "She,
the Guides say, is a great Light, but I am to be a greater. They sent
her to find me, and they directed her to keep me as she has--away from
the world. When she first told me that, I was terrified. She had to sit
beside me and hold my hand until I went to sleep. It's wonderful how
quickly I do sleep when Aunt Paula's with me--she's the most soothing
person in the world. If it weren't for her, I don't know what I'd do
when I get into my tired times."

"You're never going to have any more tired times, Light," he said.

She went on inflexibly, but he knew that she had heard:

"There was one thing which I did not understand, and neither perhaps
did Aunt Paula. The Guides sometimes seem foolish, but in the end
they're always wise; I suppose they waited until the time should come.
Though I tried to help it along, though I cried with impatience, I
couldn't begin to get voices. I've sat in dark rooms for hours, as Aunt
Paula wished me to do. I've felt many true things, but I could never
say honestly that I heard anything. But the Guides told Aunt Paula
'wait.' And at last she learned what was the matter.

"I don't know quite how to tell you this next. It came on the way back
from India. She had gone there--but perhaps you won't be interested to
know why she went. Though I was more than twenty, I'd never had what
you might call a flirtation. I'd been kept by the Guides away from
men--as I'd once been kept from other children. There was a young
Englishman on the steamer. And I liked him."

Blake gave a sudden start, and rose automatically. So this confidence
led to another man--that was the obstacle! She seemed to catch his
thought.

"Oh, not that!" she cried; "he was only an incident--won't you hear
me?" Blake dropped at her feet again.

"But I liked him, though never any more--he was a friend and girls need
to play. But he wanted to be more than a friend. Aunt Paula passed us
on the deck one evening. After I had gone to bed, she came into my
stateroom. When the power is in her, I know it--and I never saw it so
strong as that night. It shone out of her. But that wasn't the strange
thing. Only twice before, had I heard the voices speak from her
mouth--mostly, she used to tell me what they said to her. But it was
not Aunt Paula talking then--it was Martha, her first and best control.
Shall I tell you all she said?"

Out of the confused impulses running through Dr. Blake, his sense of
humor spurted a moment to the fore. He found himself struggling to keep
back a smile at the picture of some fat old woman in a dressing gown
simulating hysteria that she might ruin a love affair. He was hard put
to make his voice sound sincere, as he answered:

"Yes, all."

"She said: 'Child, you are more influenced by this man than you know.
It is not the great love, but it is dangerous. You are to be the great
Light only after you have put aside a great earthly love. This vessel
from which I am speaking'--she meant Aunt Paula of course--'yielded to
an earthly love. That is why she is less than you will be. Would you
imperil truth?' It was something like that, only more. Ah, do you see
now?"

"I see," said his sense of humor, "that your Aunt Paula is a most
unlimited fakir."

"I see," said his voice, "but do you _believe_ it?"

"I've so much cause to believe that I can never tell you all. After
Aunt Paula came out of it, I told her what Martha had said. She was
dear and sympathetic. She put me to sleep; and when I woke, I was
resigned. I did not see him alone again. Now I understand more clearly.
When I have had that earthly love and put it aside, when I have
_proved_ myself to my Guides--then the voices will come to me. Martha
has repeated it to Aunt Paula whenever I have gone away from home. She
repeated it before I came up here--"

"They had cause to repeat it," he took her up fiercely; "cause to
repeat it!"

"I--I'm afraid so. But how should I know? I looked at you--and it
seemed right, everlastingly right, that I should know you. And then I
did--so suddenly and easily that it made me shudder afterwards for fear
the test had come--the agony which I have been afraid to face. Ah, it's
bold saying this!" She drooped forward, and her porcelain skin turned
to rose.

Blake sat breathless, dumb. Never had she seemed so far away from him
as then; never had she seemed so desirable. He struggled with his
voice, but no word came; and it was she who spoke first.

"Now I know--it is the agony!"

At this admission, all the love and all the irritation in him came up
together into a force which drove him on. They were alone; none other
looked; but had all the world been looking, he might have done what he
did. He rose to his feet, he dropped both his hands on her shoulders,
he devoured her sapphirine eyes with his eyes, and his voice was steel
as he spoke:

"You love me. You have always loved me. In spite of everything, you
will marry me! You will say it before you are done with me!"

He stopped suddenly, for her eyelids were drooping. Had he not been a
physician, he would have said that she was going to faint. But her
color did not change. And suddenly she was speaking in a low tone which
mocked his, but with no expression nor intonations:

"I love you. I have always loved you. In spite of everything, I shall
marry you."

He dropped his hands from her shoulders with a bewildered impulse to
seize her in his arms; then the publicity of the place came to him, and
he drew his hands back. On that motion, her eyes opened and she flashed
a little away from him.

"What did I say?" she exclaimed; "and why--oh, don't touch me--don't
come near--can't you see it makes it harder for me to renounce?"

"But you said--"

"I said before you touched me--ah, don't touch me again--that I
_should_ make it hard--the harder I make it, the more I shall grow--but
I can't bear so much!" She had risen, was moving away.

"Let's walk," he said shortly; and then, "Even if you put me aside,
won't you keep me in your life?"

"The Guides will tell me," she answered simply.

"But I may see you--call on you in the city?"

"Unless the Guides forbid."

They were walking side by side now; they had turned from the sunken
arena, which surrounded the tennis court, toward the house. Blake saw
that the driver of the Mountain House stage was approaching. He waved a
yellow envelope as he came on:

"Been looking for you, Miss Markham. Telegram. Charges paid."

Dr. Blake stepped away as Annette, in the preliminary flutter of fear
with which a woman always receives a telegram, tore open the envelope
and read the enclosure. Without a word, she handed it over to him. It
read:

    ANNETTE MARKHAM:

    Take next train home. Advice of Martha. Wire arrival.

    PAULA MARKHAM.

"Perhaps the Guides know," she said, smiling but quivering, too.
"Perhaps they're going to make it easier for me."




IV

HIS FIRST CALL


    Dear Mr. Blake (read the letter): It was nice to get your note and
    to know that you are back in town so soon. Of course you must come
    to see me. I want Aunt Paula to know that all the complimentary
    things I have said about you are true. We are never at home in the
    conventional sense--but I hope Wednesday evening will do.

    Cordially,

    ANNETTE MARKHAM.

He had greeted this little note with all the private follies of lovers.
Now for the hundredth time, he studied it for significances, signs,
pretty intimacies; and he found positively nothing about it which he
did not like. True, he failed to extract any important information
from the name of the stationer, which he found under the flap of the
envelope; but on the other hand the paper itself distinctly pleased
him. It was note-size and of a thick, unfeminine quality. He approved
of the writing--small, fine, legible, without trace of seminary
affectation. And his spirits actually rose when he observed that it
bore no coat-of-arms--not even a monogram.

At last, with more flourishes of folly, he put the note away in his
desk and inspected himself in the glass. To the credit of his modesty,
he was thinking not of his white tie--fifth that he had ruined in the
process of dressing--nor yet of the set of his coat. He was thinking
of Mrs. Paula Markham and the impression which these gauds and graces
might make upon her.

"What do you suppose she's like?" he asked inaudibly of the correct
vision in the glass.

He had exhausted all the possibilities--a fat, pretentious medium whom
Annette's mind transformed by the alchemy of old affection into a
presentable personage; a masculine and severe old woman with the
"spook" look in her eyes; a fluttering, affected _precieuse_,
concealing her quackery by chatter. Gradually as he thought on her, the
second of these hypotheses came to govern--he saw her as the severe and
masculine type. This being so, what tack should she take?

The correct vision in the glass vouchsafed no answer to this. His mood
persisted as his taxicab whirled him into the region which borders the
western edge of Central Park. The thing assumed the proportions of a
great adventure. No old preparation for battle, no old packings to
break into the unknown dark, had ever given him quite such a sense of
the high, free airs where romance blows. He was going on a mere
conventional call; but he was going also to high and thrilling
possibilities.

The house was like a thousand other houses of the prosperous middle
class, distinguishable only by minor differences of doors and steps and
area rails, from twenty others on the same block. He found himself
making mystery even of this. Separate houses in New York require
incomes.

"Evidently it pays to deal in spooks," he said to himself.

His first glimpse of the interior, his subsequent study of the
drawing-room while the maid carried in his name, made more vivid this
impression. The taste of the whole thing was evident; but the apartment
had besides a special flavor. He searched for the elements which gave
that impression. It was not the old walnut furniture, ample, huge,
upholstered in a wine-colored velours which had faded just enough to
take off the curse; it was not the three or four passable old
paintings. The real cause came first to him upon the contemplation of a
wonderful Buddhist priest-robe which adorned the wall just where the
drawing-room met the curtains of the little rear alcove-library. The
difference lay in the ornaments--Oriental, mostly East Indian and, all
his experience told him, got by intimate association with the
Orientals. That robe, that hanging lantern, those chased swords, that
gem of a carved Buddha--they came not from the seaports nor from the
shops for tourists. Whoever collected them knew the East and its
peoples by intimate living. They appeared like presents, not
purchases--unless they were loot.

And now--his thumping heart flashed the signal--the delicate feminine
flutter that meant Annette, was sounding in the hall. And now at the
entrance stood Annette in a white dress, her neck showing a faint rim
of tan above her girlish decolletage; Annette smiling rather formally
as though this conventional passage after their unconventional meeting
and acquaintance sat in embarrassment on her spirits; Annette saying in
that vibrant boyish contralto which came always as a surprise out of
her exquisite whiteness:

"How do you do, Dr. Blake--you are back in the city rather earlier than
you expected, aren't you?"

He was conscious of shock, emotional and professional--emotional that
they had not taken up their relation exactly where they left it
off--professional because of her appearance. Not only was she pale and
just a little drawn of facial line, but that indefinable look of one
"called" was on her again.

All this he gathered as he made voluble explanation--the attendance at
the sanitorium had fallen off with the approach of autumn--they really
needed no assistant to the resident physician--he thought it best to
hurry his search for an opening in New York before the winter should
set in. Then, put at his ease by his own volubility, and remembering
that it is a lover's policy to hold the advantage gained at the last
battle, he added:

"And of course you may guess another reason."

This she parried with a woman-of-the-world air, quite different from
her old childlike frankness.

"The theatrical season, I suppose. It opens earlier every year."

He pursued that line no further. She took up the reins of the
conversation and drove it along smooth but barren paths. "It's nice
that you could come to-night. Looking for a practice must make so many
calls on your time. I shouldn't have been surprised not to see you at
all this winter. No one seems able to spare much time for acquaintances
in New York."

"Not at all," he said, ruffling a little within, "I shall find plenty
of time for my _friends_ this winter." Deliberately he emphasized the
word. "I hope nothing has happened to change our--friendship. Or does
Berkeley Center seem primitive and far away?"

For the first time that quality which he was calling in his mind her
"society shell" seemed to melt away from her. She had kept her eyelids
half closed; now they opened full.

"I am living on the memory of it," she said.

Here was his opening. A thousand incoherences rushed to his lips--and
stopped there. For another change came over her. Those lids, like
curtains drawn by stealth over what must not be revealed, sank half-way
over her eyes. An impalpable stiffening ran over her figure. She became
as a flower done in glass.

Simultaneously, an uneasiness as definite as a shadow, fell across his
spirit. He became conscious of a presence behind him. Involuntarily he
turned.

A woman was standing in the doorway leading to the hall.

An instant she looked at Blake and an instant he looked at her. What
she gained from her scrutiny showed in no change of expression. What he
gained showed only in a quick flutter of the eyelids. He had, in fact,
taken an impression of mental power as startling as a sudden blow in
the face. She had a magnificent physique, preserved splendidly into the
very heart of middle age; yet her foot had made no sound in her
approach. Her black velvet draperies trailed heavy on the floor, yet
they produced not the ghost of a rustle. Jet-black hair coiled in
ropes, yet wisped white above the temples; light gray eyes, full and
soft, yet with a steady look of power--all this came in the process of
rising, of stepping forward to clasp a warm hand which lingered just
long enough, in hearing Annette say in tones suddenly dead of their
boyish energy:

"Aunt Paula, let me introduce Dr. Blake." With one ample motion, Mrs.
Markham seated herself. She turned her light eyes upon him. He had a
subconscious impression of standing before two searchlights.

"My niece has told me much about Dr. Blake," she said in a voice which,
like Annette's, showed every intonation of culture; "I can't thank you
enough for being kind to my little girl. So good in you to bother about
her when"--Aunt Paula gave the effect of faltering, but her smile was
peculiarly gracious--"when there were no other men nearer her own age."

[Illustration: HE HAD TAKEN AN IMPRESSION OF MENTAL POWER AS STARTLING
AS A SUDDEN BLOW IN THE FACE]

Curiously, there floated into Blake's mind the remark which Annette
made that first day on the train--"I should think you were about
twenty-eight--and that, according to 'Peter Ibbertson,' is about the
nicest age." Well, Annette at least regarded him as a contemporary! He
found himself laughing with perfect composure--"Yes, that's the trouble
with these quiet country towns. There never _are_ any interesting young
men."

"True," Mrs. Markham agreed, "although it makes slight difference in
Annette's case. She is so little interested in men. It really worries
me at times. But it's quite true, is it not so, dear?"

Mrs. Markham had kept her remarkable eyes on Dr. Blake. And Annette, as
though the conversation failed to interest her, had fallen into a
position of extreme lassitude, her elbow on the table, her cheek
resting on her hand.

At her aunt's question, she seemed to rouse herself a little. "What is
it that's quite true, Auntie?" she asked.

Mrs. Markham transferred her light-gray gaze to her niece's face. "I
was saying," she repeated, speaking distinctly as one does for a child,
"that you are very little interested in men."

"It is perfectly true," Annette answered.

Mrs. Markham laughed a purring laugh, strangely at variance with her
size and type. "You'll find this an Adam-less Eden, Dr. Blake. I'll
have to confess that I too am not especially interested in men."

This thrust did not catch Dr. Blake unawares. He laughed a laugh which
rang as true as Mrs. Markham's. He even ventured on a humorous
monologue in which he accused his sex of every possible failing, ending
with a triumphant eulogy of the other half of creation. But Mrs.
Markham, though she listened with outward civility, appeared to take
all his jibes seriously--miscomprehended him purposely, he thought.

Whereupon, he turned to the lady's own affairs.

"Miss Markham told me something about your stay in India. I've never
been there yet. But of course no seasoned orientalist has any idea of
dying without seeing India. I gathered from Miss Markham that you had
some unusual experiences."

"It's the dear child's enthusiasm," Mrs. Markham said. And it came to
Blake at once that she was a little irritated. "I assure you we did not
stir out of the conventional tourist route." Then came a few minutes
about the beauties of the Taj by moonlight.

Blake listened politely. "Your loot is all so interesting," he said,
when she had finished. "Do tell me how you got it? Have you ever
noticed what bully travelers' tales you get out of adventures in
bargaining? Or better--looting? Those Johnnies who came out of Pekin--I
mean the allied armies--tell some stories that are wonders."

"That is true generally," Mrs. Markham agreed. "But I must confess that
I did nothing more wonderful than to walk up to one of the bazaars and
buy everything that I wanted."

"That," Dr. Blake said mentally, "is a lie."

Almost as if Annette had heard his thought--were answering it--she
spoke for the first time with something of the old resiliency in her
tone. "Auntie, do tell Dr. Blake about some of your adventures with
those wonderful Yogis, and that fascinating rajah who was so kind to
us."

"The Yogis!" commented Dr. Blake to himself; "Ha, ha, and ho, ho! I bet
you learned a bag of tricks there, madam."

"Why, Annette, dear." Mrs. Markham laughed her purring laugh--that
laugh could grow, Dr. Blake discovered, until it achieved a singularly
unpleasant quality. "Your romantic ideas are running away with you.
Whenever we arrived anywhere, of course, like anybody else, I called at
Government House and the authorities there always put me in the way of
seeing whatever sights the neighborhood afforded. I met one rajah in
passing and visited one Yogi monastery. Do tell me about the
Philippines!" Annette settled back into her appearance of weariness.

Dr. Blake complied.

He had intended to stay an hour at this first formal call. He had hoped
to be led on, by gentle feminine wiles, to add another hour. He had
even dreamed that Aunt Paula might be so impressed by him as to hold
him until midnight. As a matter of fact, he left the house just
thirty-five minutes after he entered. Just why he retreated so early in
the engagement, he had only the vaguest idea. Even fresh from it as he
was, he could not enumerate the small stings, the myriad minor goads,
by which it became established in his mind that his call was not a
success, that he was boring the two ladies whom he was trying so hard
to entertain. At the end, it was a labored dialogue between him and
Mrs. Markham. Again and again, he tried to drag Annette into the
conversation. She was tongue-tied. The best she did was to give him the
impression that, deep down in her tired psychology, she was trying to
listen. As for Aunt Paula--if his gaze wandered from her to Annette and
then back, he caught her stifling a yawn. Her final shot was to
interrupt his best story a hair's breadth ahead of the point. When he
said good-night, his manner--he flattered himself--betrayed nothing of
his sense of defeat. But no fellow pedestrian, observing the savage
vigor of his swift walk homeward, could have held any doubt as to his
state of mind.




V

THE LIGHT WAVERS


As Blake drove the runabout north through the fine autumn morning, he
perceived suddenly that his subconscious mind was playing him a trick.
He had started out to get light, air, easement of his soul among woods
and fields. And now, instead of turning into Central Park at Columbus
Circle, he was following Upper Broadway, where, in order to reach the
great out-of-doors, he must dodge trucks and cabs between miles of
hotels and apartment houses. In fact, he had been manoeuvering,
half-unconsciously, so that he might turn into the park at the
Eighty-Sixth Street entrance and so pass that most important of all
dwellings in Manhattan, the house where Annette Markham lived. Any
irritation which he had felt against her, after the unpleasant evening
before, was lost in his greater irritation with her aunt. Annette
appeared to him, now, as the prize, the reward, of a battle in which
Mrs. Paula Markham was his antagonist.

As he turned the corner into her street, ten years rolled away from
him; he dreamed the childish, impossible dreams of a very youth. She
might be coming down the steps as he passed. Fate might even send a
drunkard or an obstreperous cabman for him to thrash in her service.
But when he reached the house, nothing happened. The front door
remained firmly shut; no open window gave a delicious glimpse of
Annette. After his machine had gone ahead to such position that he
could no longer scan the house without impolite craning of his neck, he
found that his breath was coming fast. Awakened from his dream, a
little ashamed of it, he opened the control and shot his machine ahead
to the violation of all speed laws. He was crossing Central Park West,
and the smooth opening of the park driveway was before him, when he
looked up and saw--Annette.

Her honey-colored hair, glistening dull in the autumn sunshine,
identified her even before he caught her characteristic walk--graceful
and fast enough, but a little languid, too. She was dressed in a plain
tailor suit, a turban, low, heavy shoes.

He slowed down the automobile to a crawl, that he might enter the park
after her. A boyish embarrassment smote him; if he drove up and spoke
to her, it would look premeditated. So he hesitated between two
courses, knowing well which he would pursue in the end. As he entered
the park, still a dozen yards behind her, he saw that the footpath
which she was following branched out from the automobile drive. Within
a few paces, she would disappear behind a hydrangea bush. On that
perception, he gave all speed to his machine, shot alongside and
stopped.

Even before he reached her, she had turned and faced him. He fancied
that the smile of recognition on her face had started even before she
began to turn; she did not appear surprised, only pleased. Beating
around in his mind for a graceful word of introduction, he accomplished
an abrupt and ungraceful one.

"Will you ride?" he asked.

"With pleasure," she responded simply, and in one light motion she was
in the seat beside him. He turned at low speed north, and as his hands
moved over wheels and levers, she was asking:

"How did you happen to be here?"

He put a bold front on it.

"I drove past your home, by instinct, because I was coming north. And I
saw you. Which of your spirits"--he was bold enough for the moment to
make light of her sacred places--"sent you out-of-doors just before I
passed?"

"The spirit of the night before," she answered, passing from smiles to
gravity. "That long sleep without rest has been troubling me again. I
remembered how exercise set me up in the country, and I started out for
a little air. Aunt Paula is out this morning--something about the
plumbing. Dear Auntie, how I'd love to take those cares off her
shoulders. She'll never let me, though. And next week our housekeeper,
whom we've held for two years, is leaving; she must advertise and
receive applicants--and likely get the wrong one. So that's another
worry for her. I was alone in the house when I awoke, and I could not
waste such autumn weather as this!"

He looked at her with anxiety--the physician again.

"I saw trouble in your face last night. It isn't normal that you should
be tired out so soon after the perfect condition you achieved at
Berkeley Center."

"No, it isn't. I know that perfectly, and I'm resigned to it."

"I won't ask you to let _me_ treat you--but why don't you go to some
physician about it? You know how much this case means to me."

For a time she did not reply. She only kept her eyes on the autumn
tints of the park, streaking past them like a gaudy Roman scarf.

"No," she said at length, "no physician like you can heal me. Greater
physicians, higher ones, for me. And they will not--will not--" She was
silent again.

"Are you coming back again to that queer business of which you told
me--that day on the tennis court?"

"To just that."

"What can such a thing have to do with your physical condition?"

"You will not laugh?"

"At you and yours and anything which touches you--no. You know I could
not laugh now. Little as I respect that obstacle, it is the most
serious fact I know."

His eyes were on the steering of the automobile. He could not see that
her lips pursed up as though to form certain low and tender words, and
that her sapphirine eyes swept him before she controlled herself to go
on.

"Aunt Paula says it is part of the struggle. Some people, when the
power is coming into them, are violent. Men, she says, have smashed
furniture and torn their bodies. I am not strong to do such things, but
only weak to endure. And so it takes me as it does.

"Don't you see?" she added, "that if I'm to give up so many powers of
my mind, so many needs of my soul, to this thing, I can afford to give
up a few powers of my body? Am I to become a Light without sacrificing
all? So I keep away from physicians. It is Aunt Paula's wish, and she
has always known what is best for me."

The automobile was running at an even fifteen miles an hour down a
broad, unobstructed parkway. He could turn his eyes from his business
and let his hands guide. So he looked full at her, as he said:

"She may have a hard time keeping you away from this physician!"

That, it seemed, amused her. The strain in her face gave way to a
smile.

"For yourself, she likes you, I think," said Annette.

"She has a most apt and happy way of showing it," he responded, his
slights rising up in him.

"You mustn't judge her by last night," replied Annette. "Aunt Paula has
many manners. I think she assumes that one when she is studying people.
Then think of the double reason she has for receiving you coldly--my
whole future, as she plans it, hangs on it--and she spoke nicely of
you. She likes your eyes and your wit and your manners. But--"

"But I am an undesirable acquaintance for her niece just the same!"

"Have I not said that you are--the obstacle? Haven't her controls told
her that? If not, why did she telegraph to me when she did?" Then, as
they turned from the park corner and made towards Riverside Drive,
something in her changed.

"Must we talk this out whenever we meet? You said once that you would
teach me to play. Ah, teach me now! I need it!"

And though he turned and twisted back toward the subject, she was pure
girl for the next hour. The river breezes blew sparkle into her eyes;
the morning intoxicated her tongue. She chattered of the trees, the
water, the children on the benches, the gossiping old women. She made
him stop to buy chestnuts of an Italian vendor, she led him toward his
tales of the Philippines. He plunged into the Islands like a white
Othello, charming a super-white Desdemona. It was his story of the
burning of Manila which brought him back to the vexation in his mind.

"That yarn seemed to make a very small hit last night," he said,
turning suddenly upon her.

"I didn't like it so much last night," she answered frankly.

"What was the matter?" he asked. "Why were you so far away? Were you
afraid of Mrs. Markham? I felt like the young man of a summer
flirtation calling in the winter. What was it?"

"I don't know," she answered.

"No--tell me."

"There wasn't any reason. I liked you last night as I always like you.
But we were far away. Shall I tell you how it seemed to me? I was like
an actress on the stage, and you like a man in the audience. I was
speaking to you--a part. In no way could you answer me. In no way could
I answer you directly. We moved near to each other, but in different
worlds. It was something like that."

"I suppose"--bitterly--"your Aunt Paula had nothing to do with that?"

"You must like Aunt Paula if you are to like me," she warned. "Yet that
may have something to do with it. I am wonderfully influenced by what
she thinks--as is right."

"Then it's coming to a fight between me and your Aunt Paula? For I'll
do even that."

"Must we go all over it again? Oh like me, like me, and give me a rest
from it! I think of nothing but this all day--why do you make it
harder? I do not know if I can renounce and still have you in my life.
Won't you wait until I know? It will be time enough then!"

"'Renounce,'" he quoted. "Then you know that there is something to
renounce--and that means you love me!" So giddy had he become with the
surge of his passion that his hands trembled on the steering-wheel.
Afraid of losing all muscular control, he brought the automobile to a
full stop at the roadside. Her sapphirine eyes were shining, her hands
lay inert in her lap, her lips quivered softly.

"Have I ever denied it--can I ever deny it to you?"

The pure accident of location gave him opportunity for what he did
next. For they were in one of those country lanes of Upper Manhattan
which, though enclosed by the greatest city, seem still a part of
remote country. Heavy branches of autumn foliage guarded the road to
right and left; from end to end of the passage was neither vehicle nor
foot-passenger. One faculty, standing unmoved in the storm of emotions
which had overwhelmed him, perceived this.

He reached for the trembling hands which gave themselves to his touch.
She swayed against him. Her hands had snatched themselves away
now--only to clasp his neck. And now her lips had touched his again and
again and somehow between kiss and kiss, she was murmuring, "Oh, I love
you--I love you--I love you. I love you so much that life without you
is a perfect misery. I love you so much that my work now seems stale
and dreary. I love you so much that I don't want ever to go away from
you. I want to stay here forever and feel your arms about me, for that
is the only way that I shall ever know happiness--or peace. I wake in
the morning with your name on my lips. I wander through the day with
you. If I try to read, you come between me and the page. If I try to
play you come between me and the notes. You are my books. You are my
music--my--my--everything. I go to bed early at night often so that I
can lie in the dusk and think of you. And oh, the only nights that rest
me are those filled with dreams of the poem we would make out of
life--if--if--"

Her voice faltered and he felt the exquisite caress of her lips
trembling against his cheek. As though she were utterly spent, she
ended where she had begun, "I love you--I love--I love you."

He was aware now that another car whirred behind them. He managed--it
took all the force in his soul--to put her from him. He turned to see
if they had been observed; the passengers in the other car, intent on
their own chatter, did not look; only the chauffeur regarded their
chassis with a professional eye, as though wondering if they were
stalled. When Blake drew a long breath and looked back at Annette, her
face was buried in her hands. And now, when he touched her, she drew
slowly away.

"Oh, drive on--drive on!" she said.

"Oh, Annette--dearest."

"Don't speak. I beg you--drive on or I shall die!"

And though the car wavered dangerously under his unsteady touch, he
obeyed, managed to gain the highroad without a spill, and to turn
north.

She wept silently. When at last she took her hands away and turned her
face on him, his lover's observation saw how beautifully she wept. Her
eyes were not red, her face was calm. He took heart from her glance,
began to babble foolish love words. But she stopped him.

"You are driving away from home," she said. "Drive back, and don't
speak yet."

After he had turned, her tears ceased. She dried her eyes. Now she
smiled a little, and her voice grew natural.

"I must never be weak again," she said. "But it was sweet. Dear, might
I touch your arm? No, you must not stop again. Just my hand on your
arm."

"Dearest, why do you ask?" She drew off her glove, and all the way a
light, steady pressure made uncertain his wheel-hand. They drove a mile
so--two miles--and neither spoke until they came out into inhabited
Upper Broadway. At the appearance of crowds, trucks and the perils of
the highway, that silver thread of silence broke. She drew her hand
away, and took up the last word of ten minutes ago.

"It was sweet--but no more. How long it is since I kissed you! I am
glad. I shall pay for it heavily--but I am glad!"

He smiled on her as on a child who speaks foolishness.

"You cannot renounce now!" he said.

"I shall renounce. I have stolen this morning--would you rob me in
turn?"

"It will be the first kiss of a million," he said.

"It will be the last forever," she answered. "But remember, if you do
not kiss me, no man ever shall."

He busied himself with guiding the automobile; it was no time to hurl
out the intense things which he had to say. But when they had entered
the smooth park driveway, he came out with it:

"Do you think that I respect that obstacle? Can you think that I
believe such moonshine even if you do? And do you suppose that I am
going to let Aunt Paula keep you now?"

She touched his arm again; let her hand rest there as before.

"Dear," she said, "I have never thought that you believed. I have felt
this always in the bottom of your heart. I only ask you not to spoil
this day for me. I have stolen it. Let me enjoy it. I shall not put you
out of my life--at least not yet. Later, when we are both calm, we will
talk that out. But let it rest now, for I am tired--and happy."

So they drove along, her light hand making warm his arm, and said no
word until they came near the Eighty-Sixth Street entrance. He looked
at her with a question in his eyes.

"Leave me where you found me," she answered; "I shall go in alone."

"But will you tell your Aunt Paula that you met me?"

"I shall tell her--yes. Not all, perhaps, but that I rode with you.
What is the use of concealment? She will know--"

"Her spirits?"

"Dear, do not mock me. They tell her everything she wants to know about
me." They had drawn up at the park entrance now; before he could
assist, she had jumped down.

"Good-by--I must go quickly--you must come soon--I will write."

He stood beside his car, watching her back. Once she turned and waved
to him; when she went on, she walked with a spring, an exultation, as
though from new life. He watched until she was only a blue atom among
the foot-passengers, until a park policeman thumped him on the shoulder
and informed him that this was not an automobile stand.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Dr. Blake woke next morning, it was with a sense of delicious
expectancy. He formulated this as his eyes opened. She had promised to
write; the mail, due for distribution in the Club at a quarter past
eight, might bring a note from her. He timed his dressing carefully,
that he might arrive downstairs neither before nor after the moment of
fulfilment or disappointment. He saw, as he crossed the corridor to his
mail-box, that the clerk was just dropping a square, white envelope. He
peered through the glass before he felt for his keys. It was Annette's
hand.

So, glowing, he tore it open, and read:

    DEAR MR. BLAKE:

    I think it best never to see you again. Aunt Paula approves of
    this; but it is done entirely of my own accord. My decision will
    not change. Please do not call at my house, for I shall not see
    you. Please do not write, for I shall send your letters back
    unopened. Please do not try to see me outside, for I shall not
    recognize you. I thank you for your interest in me; and believe me,
    I remain,

    Your sincere friend,

    ANNETTE MARKHAM.

After a dreadful day, he came back to the Club and found a package,
addressed in her hand. Out fell a little bundle of rags, topped by a
comical black face, and a note. The letter of the morning was in a
firm, correct hand. This was a trembling scrawl, blotted with tears.
And it read:

    Dear, I have something terrible to write you. I must give you up. I
    cannot go into all the reasons now, and after all that would not
    help any, for it all comes to this--we must never see each other
    again. Please do not send me a letter, for though I should cover it
    with my kisses, in the end I would have to send it back unopened. I
    send you Black Dinah as I promised. It's all that's left of me now,
    and I want you to have it. Dearest, dearest, good-by.




VI

ENTER ROSALIE LE GRANGE


"Cut, dearie," said Rosalie Le Grange, trance and test clairvoyant, to
Hattie, the landlady's daughter. "Now keep your wish in your mind,
remember. That's right; a deep cut for luck. U-um. The nine of hearts
is your wish--and right beside it is the ace of hearts. That means your
home, dearie--the spirits don't lie, even when they're manifestin'
themselves just through cards. They guide your hand when you shuffle
and cut. Your wish is about the affections, ain't it, dearie?"

The pretty slattern across the table nodded. She had put down her
dust-pan and leaned her broom across her knees when she sat down to
receive the only tip which Rosalie Le Grange, in the existing state of
her finances, could give.

"I got your wish now, dearie," announced Rosalie Le Grange. "The
spirits sometimes help the cards somethin' wonderful. Here it comes. I
thought so. The three of hearts for gladness an' rejoicin' right next
to the ace, which is your home. Now that might mean a little home of
your own, but the influence I git with it is so weak I don't think it
means anythin' as strong an' big as that. Wait a minute--now it comes
straight an' definite--he'll call--rejoicin' at your home because he'll
call. Do you understand that, dearie?"

"Sure!" Hattie's eyes were big with awe.

"Hat-tie!" came a raucous voice from outside.

"Yes-m!" answered Hattie.

"Are you going to be all day redding up them rooms?" pursued the voice.

"Nearly through!" responded Hattie. Rosalie Le Grange made pantomime of
sweeping; and--

"I'll help you red up, my dear," she whispered. Forthwith, they fell to
sweeping, dusting, shaking sheets.

As she moved about the squeezed little furnished rooms and alcove,
which formed her residence and professional offices in these reduced
days, Rosalie Le Grange appeared the one thing within its walls which
was not common and dingy. A pink wrapper, morning costume of her craft,
enclosed a figure grown thick with forty-five, but marvelously
well-shaped and controlled. Her wrapper was as neat as her figure; even
the lace at the throat was clean. Her long, fair hands, on which the
first approach of age appeared as dimples, not as wrinkles or
corrugations of the flesh, ran to nails whose polish proved daily care.
Her hair, chestnut in the beginning, foamed with white threads. Below
was a face which hardly needed, as yet, the morning dab of powder, so
craftily had middle age faded the skin without deadening it. Except for
a pair of large, gray, long-lashed eyes--too crafty in their corner
glances, too far looking in their direct vision--that skin bounded and
enclosed nothing which was not attractive and engaging. Her chin was
piquantly pointed. Beside a tender, humorous, mobile mouth played two
dimples, which appeared and disappeared as she moved about the room
delivering monologue to Hattie.

"I see a dark gentleman that ain't in your life yet. He's behind a
counter now, I think. He ain't the one that the ace of hearts shows is
goin' to call. I see you all whirled about between 'em, but I sense
nothin' about how it's goin' to turn out--land sakes, child, don't you
ever dust behind the pictures? You'll have to be neater if you expect
to make a good wife to the dark gentleman--"

"Will it be him?" asked Hattie, stopping with a sheet in her hands.

"Now the spirits slipped that right out of me, didn't they?" pursued
Rosalie. "Land sakes, you can't keep 'em back when they want to talk.
Now you just hold that and think over it, dearie. No more for you
to-day." Rosalie busied herself with pinning the faded, dusty pink
ribbon to a gilded rolling pin, and turned her monologue upon herself:

"I ain't sayin' nothin' against this house for the price, dearie, but
my, this is a comedown. The last time I done straight clairvoyant work,
it was in a family hotel with three rooms and a bath and breakfast in
bed. Well, there's ups an' downs in this business. I've been down
before and up again--"

Hattie, her mouth relieved of a pillowcase, spoke boldly the question
in her mind.

"What put you down?"

Rosalie, her head on one side, considered the arrangement of the pink
ribbon, before she answered:

"Jealousy, dearie; perfessional jealousy. The Vango trumpet seances
were doin' too well to suit that lyin', fakin', Spirit Truth outfit in
Brooklyn--wasn't that the bell?"

It was. Hattie patted the pillow into place, and sped for the door.

"If it's for me," whispered Rosalie, "don't say I'm in--say you'll
see." Rosalie bustled about, putting the last touches on the room,
pulling shut the bead portières which curtained alcove and bed.

Hattie poked her head in the door.

"It's a gentleman," she said.

"Well, come inside and shut the door--no use tellin' _him_ all about
himself," said Rosalie. "I'm--I'm kind of expectin' a gentleman visitor
I don't want to see yet. It's a matter of the heart, dearie," she
added. "What sort of a looking gentleman?"

Hattie stood a moment trying to make articulate her observations.

"He's got nice eyes," she said. "And he's dressed quiet but swell. Sort
of tall and distinguished."

"Did you look at his feet?" For the moment, Rosalie had taken it for
granted that all women knew, as she so well knew, the appearance of
police feet.

"No 'm, not specially," said Hattie.

"Well, you'd 'a' noticed," said Rosalie, covering up quickly. "The
gentleman I don't want to see has a club foot--show him up, dearie."

As Madame Le Grange sat down by the wicker center table and composed
her features to professional calm, she was thinking:

"If he's a new sitter, I'll have to stall. There's nothing as hard to
bite into as a young man dope."

The expected knock came. Entered the new sitter--him whom we know as
Dr. Walter Huntington Blake, but a stranger to Rosalie. During the
formal preliminaries--in which Dr. Blake stated simply that he wanted a
sitting and expressed himself as willing to pay two dollars for full
trance control--Rosalie studied him and mapped her plan of action.
There was, indeed, "nothing to bite into." His shapely clothes bore
neither fraternity pin nor society button; his face was comparatively
inexpressive; to her attempts at making him chatter, he returned but
polite nothings. Only one thing did she "get" before she assumed
control. When she made him hold hands to "unite magnetisms," his finger
rested for a moment on the base of her palm. She put that little detail
aside for further reference, and slid gently into "trance," making the
most, as she assumed the slumber pose, of her profile, her plump,
well-formed arms, her slender hands. This sitter was "refined"; not for
him the groans and contortions of approaching control which so
impressed factory girls and shopkeepers.

Peeping through her long eyelashes, she noted that his face, while
turned upon her in close attention, was without visible emotion.

"I must fish," she thought as she began the preliminary gurgles which
heralded the coming of Laughing Eyes, her famous Indian child
control--"I wonder if I've got to tell him that the influence won't
work to-day and I can't get anything? Maybe I'd better."

A long silence, broken here and there by guttural gurglings; then
Laughing Eyes babbled tentatively:

"John--Will--Will--" she choked here, as though trying to add a
syllable which she could not clearly catch. And at this point, Rosalie
took another look through her eyelashes. She had touched something! He
was leaning forward; his mouth had opened. Before she could follow up
her advantage, he had thrown himself wide open.

"Wilfred--is it Wilfred?" he asked.

Laughing Eyes was far too clever a spirit to take immediately an
opening so obvious.

"You wait a minny!" she said. "Laughing Eyes don't see just right now.
Will--Will--he come, he go. Oh--oh--I see a ring--maybe it's on a
finger, maybe it ain't--Laughing Eyes kind of a fool this
morning--Laughing Eyes has got lots to do for a 'itty girl--" Rosalie
had essayed another glance as she spoke of the ring. It brought no
visible change of expression; and from the success of her shot with
Wilfred she knew that this, in spite of first impressions, was a sitter
whose expression betrayed him. "Then it's business troubles," she
thought, "unless he's a psychic researcher. And if he was, he wouldn't
be so easy with his face."

So Laughing Eyes burbled again, and then burst out:

"I see a atmosphere of trouble!" The young man's countenance dropped,
whereupon Laughing Eyes fell to chattering foolishly before she went
on: "Piles of bright 'itty buttons--money--" And then something which
had been gently titillating Rosalie's sense of smell made a sudden
connection with her memory, Iodoform--the faintest suggestion. She
linked this perception with his appearance of having been freshly
tubbed, his immaculate finger nails, shining as though fresh from the
manicure, his perfectly kept teeth and--yes--the pressure of a finger
on her pulse. Upon this perception, Laughing Eyes spoke sharply:

"Wilfred says your sick folks don't always pay like they ought. He says
when they're in danger they can't do too much for the doctor, but when
they're well, he's--he--he--Wilfred is funny--a old sawbones!"

"Ask fa--ask him about the patient," faltered Rosalie's sitter.

"Wilfred says, 'My son, it's comin' out all right if you follow your
own impulses,'" responded Laughing Eyes. "You do the way the influences
guide you. They 're guiding _you_, not them other doctors that you're
askin' advice from." Laughing Eyes shifted to babbling of the bright
spirit plane beyond, and all that the patient was missing by delay in
translation, while Rosalie took another glance of observation, and
thought rapidly. Was this patient a medical or surgical case? Two
chances out of three, surgical; it would take remorse and apprehension
over a mistake with the scalpel to drive a medical man medium-hunting.
Her glance at his hands confirmed her determination to venture. They
were large and heavy, yet fine, the hands of a craftsman, a forger, a
surgeon, anyone who does small and exact work. Rosalie had been in a
hospital in her day, and she had studied doctors, as she studied the
rest of humanity, with an eye always to future uses. Having a pair of
hands like that, a doctor must inevitably choose surgery.

"Trust your papa!" babbled the Control. "Laughing Eyes trusted her
papa--ugh!--he big Chief. He here now! Your papa knows my papa! Your
papa says you didn't cut too deep!"

The young man let out an agitated "didn't I?"

"You was guided," pursued Laughing Eyes. "What you might'a' thought was
a mistake was all for the best. Those in the spirit controlled your
hands. Wilfred says 'three'--oh--oh I know what Wilfred means--ugh--get
out bad spirit--Wilfred means three days--you wait three days--you wait
three days and it will be right."

"And now," thought Rosalie Le Grange, "he's got his money's worth, and
I'll take no more risks for any two dollars!" Forthwith, she let the
voice of Laughing Eyes chuckle lower and lower. "Good-by!" whispered
the control at length, "I'm goin' away from my medie!" Then, with a few
refined convulsions, Rosalie awoke, rubbed her eyes, and said in her
tinkling natural voice:

"Was I out long? I hope the sitting was satisfactory."

No change came over the young man's face as he said:

"From my standpoint--very!"

"Thank you," murmured Rosalie. "I was afraid, when you come in, that
the influences wasn't going to be strong. A medium can sense them."

"Very satisfactory--with modifications," responded the sitter. "For
instance, it is absolutely true that I had a father. His name wasn't
Wilfred, it was James. And he died before I was born. But don't let
that discourage you. I can prove his existence. The other true thing
was the corker. I've been to fifty-seven varieties of mediums in the
course of this experiment, and you're the first to jump at the widest
opening I gave. I am a physician. I've put iodoform on my handkerchief
every morning to prove it. I've been listed six times as a commercial
traveler, twice as a con man, eight times as a clerk, three times as a
policeman, with scattering votes for a reporter, a clergyman, an actor
and an undertaker. But you're the first to roll the little ball into
the little hole. I am a physician, or was. Better than that, you got it
that I specialized on surgery--and I didn't plant _that_. You draw the
capital prize."

"Young man," asked Rosalie with an air of shocked and injured
innocence, "are you accusing me of _fakery_?" But despite her stern
lips, in Rosalie's cheeks played the ghost of a pair of dimples. They
were reflected, so to speak, by twin twinkles in the eyes of her
sitter. And he went straight on:

"In addition, you're the prettiest of them all, and a cross-eyed man
with congenital astigmatism could see that you're a good fellow. Do!
_My_ controls tell _me_ that you're about to be offered a good job."

"My controls tell _me_," responded Rosalie Le Grange, "that if you
don't quit insultin' a lady in her own house and disgracin' her crown
of mediumship, out you go. There's those here that will defend me, I'll
have you know!"

The young man's face sobered. "I beg your pardon, Mme. Le Grange," he
said, "I have been sudden. Would you mind my coming to the point at
once? I'm here to offer you a job."

Rosalie looked him sternly over a moment, but in the end her dimples
triumphed. She lifted her right hand as though to arrange her hair, two
fingers extended--the sign in the Brotherhood of Professional Mediums
to recognize a fellow craftsman. The young man made no response;
Rosalie's eyes flashed back on guard.

"How much is this business worth to you?" pursued the young man.

"Mediums ain't measuring their rewards by earthly gains," responded
Rosalie; and now she made no secret of her dimples. "If we wanted to
water our mediumship, couldn't we get rich out of the tips we give
people on their business?"

"But getting down to the earth plane," the young man continued--and
perhaps the twinkles in his eyes were never more obstreperous--"how
much would you ask to take a nice, easy job of using your eyes for me?"

"Well," said Rosalie, "if there was nothin' unprofessional about it, I
should say fifty dollars a week." She smiled on him now openly. "You're
a doctor. I don't have to say, as one professional person to another,
that there's such a thing as ethics."

The young man smiled back. "Oh, certainly!" he said. "I understand
that!" Quite suddenly he leaned forward and clapped Rosalie's shoulder
with a motion that had nothing offensive about it--only good fellowship
and human understanding--"I want you to help me expose Mrs. Paula
Markham."

The announcement stiffened Rosalie. She sat bolt upright. "There ain't
nothin' to expose!" she said.

"Now let's get on a business basis," said the young man.

"Well, you let me tell you one thing first. If you're pumpin' me for
evidence, it don't go, because you've got no witnesses."

"I'm not pumping you for anything. I'm willing to admit that the
spirits, not you, smelled the iodoform--"

"An' noticed that you was scrubbed clean as a whistle and that when we
held hands to unite our magnetism, you was pawing for my pulse,"
pursued Rosalie, dropping her defences all at once. Thereupon, Roman
haruspex looked into the eyes of Roman haruspex, and they both laughed.
But Rosalie was serious enough a moment later.

"Now when you come to talk about exposing Mrs. Markham, you've got to
show me first why you want her exposed, and you've got to let me tell
you that you're wastin' your money. There's enough that's fake about
this profession, but I know two mediums I'd stake my life on; barring
of course myself"--here Rosalie smiled a smile which might have meant a
confession or a boast, so balanced was it between irony and
sweetness--"Mrs. Markham and Mrs. Anna Fife. They're _real_."

She peered into the face of her investigator. His expression showed
skeptical amusement. She knew that her passion for talking too much was
her greatest professional flaw; though had she thought it over
maturely, she would have realized that she had never got into trouble
through her tongue. Her trained instinct for human values led her
inevitably to those who would appreciate her confidences and keep them.
So the sudden retreat within her defences, which followed, proved
irritation rather than suspicion.

"See here," she pursued, "are you a psychic researcher?"

"Cross my heart," answered the young man, "I never associated with
spooks in my life until this week. I did it then because I wanted a
first-class professional medium to take a good job."

"Investigating Mrs. Markham? What for? Has she got a cinch on a
relative of yours?"

"Well, I'd like her for a relative," started the young man. Then he
hesitated and for the first time faltered. A light blush began at the
roots of his hair and overspread his face.

"I got that you were a physician," said Rosalie, "but there's one place
I got you plumb wrong. I thought it was business troubles. So the
trouble's your heart and affections! It's that big-eyed blonde niece of
Markham's, of course. Well, you ain't the first. The best way to bring
the young men like a flock of blackbirds is to shut a girl away from
'em."

Now the young man showed real surprise.

"How did you know?" he enquired.

"My controls an' guides, of course," responded Rosalie. "They couldn't
find anybody else to fall in love with around the Markham house--ain't
as smart as you thought you was, are you?"

"Beside you," he responded, "I'm Beppo the Missing Link."

Rosalie acknowledged the compliment, and turned to business.

"I ain't asking you how I'm going about it," she said; "probably you've
planted that. I _am_ asking you if you're willing to risk fifty a week
on a pig in a poke? I know about her; we all do. She's just like Mrs.
Fife. The Psychic Researchers have written up Mrs. Fife, but they ain't
got half of her. They miss the big things, just like they get fooled on
the little things. _We_ know. And we know about Mrs. Markham, too,
though she's had sense enough to keep shut up from the professors.

"You're a skeptic," pursued Rosalie, "and I'm blowin' my breath to cool
a house afire when I talk to you. I guess I just talk to hear myself
talk. We start real. I did; we all do. With some of us it's a big
streak an' with some it's a little. I was pretty big--pretty big.
Things happen; voices and faces. Things that are true right out of the
air, and things that ain't true--all mixed up with what you're thinking
yourself. It comes just when it wants to, not when you want it. And the
longer you go on, and the more horse sense you get, the less it comes."

Rosalie stopped a moment, and veiled her eyes with her lashes, as
though speaking out of trance.

"Everyone of us says to herself, 'It won't leave me!' An' we start to
practice. What are we goin' to do then? You git a sitter. She pays her
two dollars. And _they_ don't come perhaps. Not for that sitter, or the
next sitter, or the next. But you have to give the value for the two
dollars or go out of business. So some day, you guess. That's the funny
thing about this business, anyway. Lots of times you ain't quite sure
whether guessing did it, or spirits. I've glimpsed the ring on a girl's
left hand, and right then my voices have said, 'Engaged!' Now was it me
makin' that voice, or the spirit? I don't know. But when you begin to
guess, you find how easy people are--how they swallow fakes and cry for
more. As sitters go, fakin' gets 'em a lot harder than the real stuff.
An' before long--it's easy--you're slipping the slates or bringing
spooks from cabinets--let me tell you no medium ever did that genuine.
But it's funny how long the real thing stays. Now you--I called your
father Wilfred. Maybe I'll wake up to-morrow night, seein' your face,
and a voice will come right out of the air and say a name--and it'll be
yours. It's happened; it will happen again; but generally when I can't
make any use of it.

"I'm goin' a long way round to get home. There's some so big that they
don't have to fake. Sometimes, of course, the controls won't come to
them, but they can afford to tell a sitter they can't sense nothin',
because the next sitter will get the real stuff--the stuff you can't
fake. Mrs. Fife is that way. I've seen her work and I know. I know just
as well about Mrs. Markham, though I haven't seen her. She keeps tight
shut up away from the rest of us. She never mixes. But some of us have
seen her, they've passed it on.

"Mediums," added Rosalie Le Grange, after a pause, "is a set of pipe
dreamers as a class, but there's one place where you can take their
word like it was sworn to on the Bible. It's when they say somebody has
the real thing. Because mediums is knockers, and when they pass out a
bouquet, you can bet they mean it. No, young man, Mrs. Markham, if she
_does_ play a lone hand, is the real thing. But I may help you waste
your money."

The young man had lost his air of cynical levity, he was regarding
Rosalie Le Grange somewhat as a collector regards a new and
unclassified species.

"Why?" he asked.

"Who's the greatest doctor in the world?" asked Mme. Le Grange.

"Watkins, I suppose," responded the young man.

"What'd you give for a chance to stay in his office a month and see him
work? See?"

He nodded his head.

"Of course."

"I was a darned little fool when I was young," pursued Rosalie Le
Grange, "an' now that I'm gettin' on in years I'm just as darned an old
one. I like to take chances. See?"

"Mme. Le Grange," said her sitter, again clapping her rounded shoulder,
"you're a fellow after my heart."

"Just a second before we come to the bouquets," responded Rosalie Le
Grange, "there's another reason. Can you guess it?"

"I've already given up guessing on you."

On the table beside Mme. Le Grange lay an embroidery frame, the needle
set in a puffy red peony. Mme. Le Grange picked it up and took a stitch
or two. Her head bent over her work, so that the playful light made
gold of the white in her chestnut hair, she pursued:

"Maybe you specialize on mendin' people's bones and maybe your
specialty is their insides. I've got a specialty, too. You see, in this
business it's easy to go all to the bad unless you do somethin' for
other people. You have to have a kind of religion to tie to. Mine is
unitin' and reunitin' lovin' hearts. Of course you're saying that this
is a lot of foolishness. Never mind." She paused a moment, and plied
the needle. "What's the trouble between you and that slim little niece
of Mrs. Markham's that you want her aunt exposed? An' can't I fix it
some other way?"

"What do you know about Miss Markham?" asked the sitter.

"I've opened myself up to you like a school-girl in a cosey corner
chat," said Rosalie Le Grange; "ain't it time _you_ was doin' some
confidin'?"

"Did you ever hear that Miss Markham had been brought up to be a
medium? That she mustn't marry because it would destroy her powers?
That she's been taught to believe that she will never develop fully
until she's put aside an earthly love?"

"O-ho!" quoth Rosalie; "so that's the way the wind sets! My! I must say
that's the fakiest thing I ever heard about Mrs. Markham. We all know
that a medium's born. This dark room developin' seance work is bosh to
stall the dopes along. Still, Mrs. Markham has always played a lone
hand. She's never mixed with other mediums, which is why I'll be safe
in goin' into her house--she won't recognize me. Probably she's kept
some fool notions that the rest of us lost long ago. But the poor
little puss!"--her voice sank to a ripple--"the poor little puss!" Her
eyes grew tender, and tenderly they met the softened eyes of the young
man. "Just robbin' her of her girlhood! I wonder"--her voice grew
harder as she turned to practical consideration of the subject--"if
Mrs. Markham got the idea from them Yogis and adepts and things that
she mixed with in India. Just like 'em. They've got the real thing, but
they're little, crawling Dagoes with no more blood in 'em than a swarm
of horseflies."

"It is terrible to think of," said the sitter.

"You poor dear, I should say so!" responded Rosalie. "Of course, I see
what you want done. If I can prove that Mrs. Markham is a fake, then I
prove to the girl that it's all bosh about her not marrying. I can't
give you no encouragement as far as exposin' goes, seem' 's I know Mrs.
Markham is real, but if I'm on the ground, maybe I can fix it some
other way. How are you goin' to git me into the house?"

"This week," responded her co-conspirator, "Mrs. Markham will advertise
for a housekeeper. I suppose you can play housekeeper well enough to
keep the place a month, can't you?"

"If there's anythin' I can do," responded Rosalie, "it's keep house. Is
it a big house?"

"Three stories--three or four servants, I suppose."

"That's good; I'll enjoy it; I never had a chance at _that_!"

"Remember you must get the place from the other applicants."

"If my mediumship hasn't taught me enough to git me a plain job, it
hasn't taught me nothin'," responded Rosalie.

"Then it's as good as done," answered the young man. "Shall I pay you
now or later? Mrs. Markham's salary will be your tip."

"It's a good paymaster that pays when the job's got," answered Rosalie.
Her sitter rose, as though to go.

"Confidences is like love," said Rosalie, "first sight or not for ten
years. Here I've opened my whole bag of tricks, and yours is locked
tight. Don't you think you might tell me your name?"

The young man reached for a card.

"Dr. Blake," he said as he fumbled.

"Walter Huntington Blake, Curfew Club," corrected Rosalie.

His hands dropped, and he stared.

"How--how--"

"Spirits--my kind." Rosalie extended her hand. In it rested his little
card case. "Excuse me. I done it just to show you I wasn't _quite_ a
darn fool, if I do tell everything I know to a stranger. Now don't get
silly an' think from this marvelous demonstration that I've been givin'
you a con talk. It's just a lesson not to take your card case along
when you visit a medium. It's a proof that I can expose Mrs. Markham if
there 's anything to expose. Good-by Dr. Blake, and good luck."

[Illustration: "THEN IT'S AS GOOD AS DONE"]

The following Wednesday, at eight o'clock in the morning, a messenger
boy woke Mme. Le Grange by prolonged knocking. He passed in this note:

    Answer early the third advertisement, third column, sixth page, in
    the _Herald_ Help Wanted column. From the address, I know it is
    Mrs. M.'s.

    W.H. BLAKE.




VII

ROSALIE'S FIRST REPORT


Rosalie Le Grange, upon assuming her position as housekeeper in the
Markham establishment, had written Dr. Blake that Tuesday was her
afternoon out, and suggesting that he meet her every Tuesday afternoon
at three in the ladies' parlor of the old Hotel Greenwich, which lay
far from main lines of traffic and observation. So they sat on the
faded velvets of the Greenwich that fall afternoon, heads together in
close conference.

"You're wastin' your money," began Rosalie.

"Tell me about Miss Markham first," he interrupted; "is she well?"

"As well as she ever is--that girl's far from strong. The more I think
of this job"--she reverted to her subject--"the more meechin' I feel
about it, spyin' on a good woman an' a great medium like her. Git the
girl away from _her_! Let me tell you, Dr. Blake, your girl's the
luckiest girl in the world, and I don't care if I have to say it right
into your face. If _I'd_ had a chance to develop my mediumship straight
from a great vessel of the spirit like that, I wouldn't be fakin' test
books, and robbin' card cases, and givin' demonstrations to store girls
at a dollar a trance. To learn from Mrs. Markham! She ought to thank
God for the chance."

Then, perceiving that she had left his feelings out of
consideration--noticing by the droop of his eyes how much she had
depressed him--she patted his knee and let a tender smile flutter over
her dimples.

"Of course, Boy," she said, with the sweet patronage of woman, "I don't
take no stock in the notion that the girl has got to put aside earthly
love, and that kind of talk. We've all got our notions and our
places--where we don't follow the spirit guides. Perhaps that's just
Mrs. Markham's weak spot. Maybe her own love affairs was ashes in her
mouth. Come to think of it, I never did know who Mr. Markham was. What
I'm tryin' to tell you is that you've got your pig by the wrong ear,
for you can't expose what's genuine. And I'm ashamed of what I'm doin',
and if I hadn't promised to stay a month, I'd leave this very day." Her
companion made an involuntary motion of alarm.

"Don't be afraid--I'm not goin' to yet. Gettin' the place was easy. You
want a housekeeper stupid and respectable; I was all that. I was
bothered, before I got started, to get the letters of recommendation,
but I got 'em--never mind how. And they were good, too. I'm Mrs.
Granger, as I told you, and I'm a widow. So I took the place away from
a Swede, an Irishwoman, and a French ginny. Right at the start, I found
a line on Mrs. Markham. When she was alone with me, after we come to
terms, she was just as kind and good as any lady in the land. I don't
suppose that means anythin' to you, but it did to me. Big fakirs and
crooks just live their lives in terror, afraid of their own shadows.
They've got to be sweet and kind on the outside, and so they take out
their crossness and irritation on the help. I'd rather be keeper in an
asylum than cook to a burglar. But Mrs. Markham was _fine_--and no airs
and no softness. If the spirit ever hallowed a face, it's hers. I know
you don't like her, and you can't be blamed--her keeping your little
girl from you! But you must have noticed her voice, how pretty it is if
she _does_ talk English fashion. Now that was my first sight into her.
Whatever she's done, she's never done materializin', which is just
where pure, proved fakin' begins. It's as soft as a girl's. It wouldn't
be if she'd worked up her voices for men controls. I've been
complimented on my voice myself, but you must have noticed the way it
slides down and gits deep every little while. That's left to show I did
materializin' in St. Paul; and I'm ashamed of it, too. My, how I wander
around in Robin Hood's barn! But I'm full of it."

"Tell me everything," he said, "and in your own way."

"'You know my profession?' says Mrs. Markham.

"'No, Ma'am,' says I.

"'I'm a religious teacher, in a way,' says she. 'A medium if you care
to call it that. I prefer another name.'

"'A medium!' says I. 'My! I was to a medium last week!'

"Perhaps you don't see why I done that. 'T was to give her an opening.
First move, when you're fakin' on a big scale, is to make dopes out of
your servants. Git 'em to swallow the whole thing; then find the yellow
spot, work it, and pull 'em into your fakin'. But she never followed
the lead, even so much as to seem interested. 'Indeed?' says she.
'Well, I see only a few callers, and usually in the evening. I'm a
little particular about bein' disturbed at such times, and I must ask
you not to come below the top floor on such evenings. Ellen, the parlor
maid, always sits by the front door to answer the bell.' That was a
relief. I was afraid I'd have to answer bells, which would have been
risky. Dopes that follow big mediums go to little ones sometimes; there
was a chance that I'd let in one of my own sitters and be recognized.
And the arrangement didn't look faky to me as it may to you; for a
fact, you're just a bundle of nerves when you're coming in and out of
real control.

"'And I hope you'll be comfortable,' says she, 'I'm coming up this
evening to see if your room is all right and if there's anything you
want. You'll like my servants, I think.'

"Right there I began to be ashamed of our game, and it hasn't got any
less, I'll tell _you_.

"It was hard work getting the job to runnin', and I didn't have much
time for pokin' into things. When I did git room to turn around, I went
through that whole house pretendin' to take inventories. I didn't find
a thing that looked out of place, or faky. Not a scrap of notes on
sitters, not a trap, not a slate, not a thread of silk mull, not a
spark of phosphorus. I wasn't fool enough to break the rule about
coming downstairs when she had sitters. Let her catch me spyin', and
the bird's gone. But last Sunday night I had a fair chance. I knew it
would come if I waited. There's three servants under me--Mary the cook,
who's a hussy; and Martin the furnace man, who's a drunk; and Ellen,
who's a fool. I'd listened to 'em talking and I'd pumped 'em gradual,
but I couldn't git a definite thing--and what the help don't know about
the crooked places in their bosses ain't generally worth knowin'.
Ellen, the maid, ought to 'a' been my best card--her sittin' every
night at the door catchin' what comes out of the parlors. She couldn't
tell a thing. All she knew was that she heard a lot of talk in low
tones, and it was something about spirits and the devil, and then she
crossed herself. As help goes, they like Mrs. Markham, which is a good
sign.

"Last Sunday, at supper, Ellen begins to complain of a pain in her
head. It seemed to me that I'd better take, just once, the chance of
being recognized by a sitter, an' 'tend door for the seance. So I begun
with Ellen.

"'You're sick, child,' says I, havin' her alone at the time. 'It looks
to me like neuralgia.'

"Well, you're a doctor--I don't have to tell you how easy it is to make
a person _think_ they're sick. And that's my specialty--makin' people
think things. In half an hour, I had that girl whoop-in' an' Martin
telephonin' for a doctor. Then I broke the news over the house
telephone to Mrs. Markham. She waited ten minutes, and called me down.
It come out just as I figured. She wanted me to 'tend door. I'd been
playin' the genteel stupid, you know, so she trusted me. And I must say
I'd rather she hated me, the way I'm out to do her. She told me that I
was to sit by the door and bring in the names of callers, and if anyone
come after eight o'clock, I was to step into the outside hall and get
rid of 'em as quick as I could. Now let me tell you, that killed
another suspicion. One way, the best way of fakin' in a big house, is
to have the maid rob the pockets of people's wraps for letters an'
calling cards an' such. I'd thought maybe Ellen played that game, she
acted so stupid; but here I was lettin' in the visitors, me only, a
week in the house. I took the coats off her callers myself and I
watched them wraps all the time. Nobody ever approached 'em while I
looked. She had only four sitters, two men and two women--an old
married couple an' a brother an' sister, I took it from their looks an'
the way they acted toward each other. The old couple were rich and
tony. They didn't flash any jewelry, but her shoes and gloves were made
to order and her coat had a Paris mark inside. The brother and sister
must be way up, too; he was dressed quiet but rich, and he had a
Bankers' Association pin in his buttonhole. Yes, they wasn't paupers,
and that's the only fake sign I've seen about Mrs. Markham. But that's
nothin'. Stands to reason the best people go to the best mediums, just
like they go to the best doctors and preachers.

"That sittin', you hear me, was real. I got by the double doors where I
could listen. You just hear me--it was real. You ain't a sensitive.
You've followed knowledge and not influences, and it's going to be hard
for me to git this into you. So I'll tell you first how it would have
looked to you, and then how it looked to me. I'm not sayin' what she
gave wasn't something she got out of test books and memorandums,
because I don't know her people or yet how much she'd had to do with
them. It was the way it come out that impressed me. First place, she
didn't go into trance. That's a fake to impress dopes, nine times out
of ten. If you ever git anything real from me, you'll git it out of
half trance. Then she didn't feel around an' fish, an' neither did she
hit the bull's eye every time. She'd get the truth all tangled up. John
would say a true thing, that only _he_ knew, and she'd think she got it
from James. Her sitters were fine acknowledgers, especially the old
maid, and I could tell. That's how I would 'a' looked to you, and now
let me tell you how it struck me. You don't have to believe it.

"I was sittin' there just takin' it all in, when I began to get
influences. Now laugh; but you won't stop me. It never struck me so
strong in my life as it did right there. And it all come from Mrs.
Markham. It was like a sweet smell radiatin' from that room, and just
makin' me drunk. It was like--maybe you've heard John B. Gough speak.
Remember how he had you while you listened? Remember how you believed
like he did and felt everything was right and you could do anything?
Now that is as near like it as I can tell you and yet that _ain't_ it
by half. You ain't a sensitive. You can't git just what I mean.

"An' then _I_ begun to see. I can't tell you all; I was half out; but
just this for a sample: I had a sitter last week, an old lady; an' the
sittin' was a failure. Yes, I was fishin' and pumpin', but she was
close-mouthed an' suspicious. I got it out of her that she was worried
about her boy. I tried a bad love affair for a lead, an' there was
nothing doing. I tried bad habits and it was just as far away; and I
give it up and was thankful I got fifty cents out of her. Well, while I
sat there listenin' to Mrs. Markham, right into my mind came a
picture--the old lady leanin' over a young man--her pale and shaky and
him surprised an' mad,--and he held a pen in his hand, an' I got the
word 'forgery!' That's one of the things I saw while that influence
come from Mrs. Markham; and if you only knew how seldom I git anything
real nowadays, you'd be as crazy as me about her. I just had to use all
the force I've got to look stupid when the sitters went out."

Rosalie had talked on, oblivious to Dr. Blake's anxieties and feelings.
He sat there, the embodiment of disappointment.

"As perfect a case of auto-suggestion as I ever knew," his professional
mind was thinking. But he expressed in words his deeper thought:

"Then that line fails."

"I'm sorry, boy," responded Rosalie, "but I'm doin' my job straight,
and you wouldn't want it done any other way. And I feel you'll git her
somehow; if not this way, some other. And the longer the wait the
stronger the love, _I_ say. She don't seem any too happy, even if Mrs.
Markham does treat her well."

"Doesn't she?" he asked, his face lighting with a melancholy relief.

"Good symptom for you, ain't it? And I can't think of nothing else that
can be on her mind. But how that girl passes her days, I don't know. It
must be dull for her, poor little bird. She and Mrs. Markham ain't much
apart. She looks at Mrs. Markham like a dog looks at his master, she's
that fond of her. Seems to read a lot, and twice they've been out in
the evening--theater, or so the chauffeur said. We don't have no
private car. We hire one by the month from a garage. An' if I ever
liked a girl and wanted to see her happy, that's the one!"

Rosalie rose. "Must do some shoppin'. Can't say I hope for better news
next week, not the kind of good news you're looking for. But I'm hopin'
for good news in the end."

Dr. Blake remained sitting, his head dropped in depression on his
breast. Rosalie stooped to pat it with a motherly gesture.

"Just remember this," she said, "you love her and she loves you or I
miss my guess, an' there ain't no beatin' that combination. If I was
fakin' with you I wouldn't need no more than that to make me see your
two names in a ring. And remember this, too, boy! There never was
anything that turned out just the way you expected. You figure on it
twenty ways. It always beats you; and yet when you look back, you say,
'Of course; what a fool I was.' Good-by, boy--here next Tuesday at
three unless I tell you different by letter." Rosalie was gone.

Dr. Blake walked in the park that night until dawn broke over the city
roofs. And he drew out a dull and anxious existence,--shot and broken
with whims, fancies, all the irregularities of a lover,--during the
week in which he awaited Rosalie's next report.




VIII

THE FISH NIBBLES


Quietly, naturally, giving a preliminary word of direction to the maid
as she lifted the portières, Mrs. Markham entered the drawing room.
Pricking with a sense of impatience, tinctured by nervousness over his
own folly, Robert H. Norcross awaited her there. She stood a moment
regarding him; in that moment, the quick perception, veiled away by an
expression of thought, to which the railroad baron owed so much, took
her all in. Superficially, he saw a tall woman, approaching fifty, but
still vigorous and free from over-burdening flesh.

"Good evening; I am glad to see you," she said quietly. She had a low
voice and pleasing. He remembered then that he had failed to rise, so
intent had he been on her face; and he got to his feet in some
embarrassment. As she approached him, his mind, going from detail to
detail, noticed her powerful head, her Grecian nose, rising without
indentation from a straight forehead, her firm but pleasant mouth, her
large, light gray eyes which looked a little past him. Here was a
person on his own level of daring mental flight. He remembered only one
other woman who had struck him with the force of this one. That other
was an actress, supreme in her generation not so much for temperament
as for mind. As he looked over a reception crowd at her, intellect had
spoken to intellect; they had known each other. So Paula Markham struck
him on first sight.

He was about to speak, but she put in her word first.

"Do you come personally or professionally? I had an engagement for an
unknown visitor on professional business. Are you he? For if you are,
it would be better for you not to tell me your name--I am Mrs.
Markham."

"I came professionally," he said. He paused. The manner of Norcross, on
all first meetings, was timid and hesitating. It was one of his
unconscious tricks. Because of that timidity, new-comers, in trying to
put him at his ease revealed themselves to his shrewd observation. But
there was a real embarrassment at this meeting. He was approaching the
subject which had lain close to his imagination ever since three days
ago, when Bulger said carelessly that a woman had given him the address
of the best spook medium in the business.

"I want to know," he said, "all about--myself."

She laughed lightly as she seated herself in an old-fashioned
straight-back chair.

"If I should tell you that," she said, "I would give you the sum and
substance of human wisdom. That seems to me the greatest mystery of the
unknowable. No human being ever thoroughly understood any other human
being, I suppose,--and yet no human being knows himself. If you search
yourself, you find mystery. If you ask others, you find double mystery.
Perhaps that is the knowledge which is reserved for the Divine."

"That is true," responded Norcross. "That is true. But your spirits--"

"Not mine," she interrupted. "And perhaps not spirits, either. Though
they speak to me, I cannot say that they are real, any more than I can
tell that this table, these clothes"--her long, expressive, ringless
hand swept across the area of her skirt--"than you yourself, are real.
All reality and unreality may dwell in the mind. Though personally,"
she added, "I prefer to believe that this chair, these clothes, you, I,
are real. And if they are real, so are the Voices. At least, so I
believe."

This philosophy was past any power of Norcross for repartee; the
faculties which deal with such things had wasted in him during thirty
years in Wall Street. But the effect of her voice, her ladyhood, and
her command of this philosophy--those moved him.

"Will your voices tell me anything?" he asked, irrelevantly, yet coming
straight to the point.

"Impatience," she answered, "will not help you. The power bloweth where
it listeth. That impatience is one of the roads to trickery employed by
the frauds of--my profession."

A smile lifted the mustache of Norcross.

"You admit that there _are_ frauds in your profession, then?"

"Oh, dear, yes!" she smiled back at him. "It lends itself so easily to
fraud that the temptation among the little people must be
overwhelming--the more because trickery is often more accurate than
real revelation. I will confess to you that this is the rock upon which
my powers and my mission seem sometimes most likely to split. But I
console myself by thinking that all of us, great as well as small, must
be on the verge of it sometimes. Let me draw you a parallel. Perhaps
you know something of the old alchemists. They had laid hold on the
edge of chemistry. But because that truth came confused, because they
all had things by the wrong handle, a thousand of them confused truth
with error until, in the end, they did not know right from wrong. This
force in which you and I are interested is a little like chemistry--it
may be called mental and spiritual chemistry. But because it deals with
the unseen, not with the seen, it is a thousand times more uncertain
and baffling. We have ears, eyes, touch--a great equipment--to perceive
gold, silver, stones, trees, water. But we have only this mind, a
mystery even to ourselves, to perceive an idea, a concept. I wish that
I could express it better"--she broke off suddenly--"and very likely
I'm boring you--but when your whole soul is full of a thing it _will_
overflow." She smiled upon Norcross, as though for sympathy. If he gave
it, his face did not betray him.

"Then you say," returned Norcross with one of his characteristic shifts
to childlike abruptness, "that you never faked?"

Mrs. Markham, as though daring him to provoke her by his
forthrightness, leaned forward and regarded him with amusement on her
lips. "Men are only boys," she said. "My dear sir--I could almost say
'my dear boy'--if I had, would I admit it? You must take me as I am and
form your own conclusions. I shall not help you with that, even though
I admit to you that I don't care very much what your conclusions are.

"To be serious," she added, "it is not a pleasant suspicion to hear of
one's self. Now take yourself--you are a man of large practical
affairs--"

Norcross leaned forward a trifle, as though expecting revelation to
begin. She caught the motion.

"Don't think I'm telling you _that_ from any supernormal source," she
said. "That's my own intelligence--my woman's intuition if you like to
call it so. Your air, your ineptness to understand philosophy, show
that you are not in one of the learned professions, and it is easy to
see, if I may make so bold"--here she smiled a trifle--"that you are no
ordinary person. You have the air of great things about you. Well, if I
should raise suspicion against your business integrity and your
methods, it would hurt for a moment, even if there were truth in it. In
fairness, that is so, is it not?"

"I have to beg your pardon, of course," said Norcross, grown easier in
his manner. "But you must remember that your profession has to prove
itself--that they're all accused of fraud."

"Now that you have apologized," said she, "I will prove that I have
accepted the apology by answering you direct. I am not a fraud. I have
been able to afford not to be. Still, I have a little sympathy with
those who are. Did you ever consider," she went on, "that no fraud
invents anything; that he is only imitating something genuine? Perhaps
it may shake whatever faith you have in me if I tell you whatever these
people profess to do has been done genuinely and without possibility of
fraud."

"Even bringing spirits from a cabinet?" he asked. Just as he spoke that
question, an electric bell rang somewhere to the rear of the
drawing-room. Mrs. Markham sat unmoving for an instant, as though
considering either the sound or his question. The bell tinkled no more.
After a moment, she smiled again.

"You must know more of all these things before I can answer your
question. Haven't we talked enough? Wouldn't it be better, in your
present condition of suspicion, if I try to see what we can do without
seeming any further to inspect you? For you must know that long
preliminary conversation is a stock method with frauds and fakirs."

Norcross's breath came a little faster, and a curious change passed for
a second over his face--a falling of all the masses and lines. Mrs.
Markham rose, sat by the table, under the reading-lamp, and shaded her
eyes with her hand. She spoke now in a different tone, softer and less
inflected.

[Illustration: NORCROSS'S BREATH CAME A LITTLE FASTER]

"I shall probably not go into trance," she said. "That is rare with me,
rare with anyone, though often assumed for effect. Of you, I ask only
that you remain quiet and passive. I'd like less light."

Norcross shot a glance of quick suspicion at her as he rose, reached
for the old-fashioned gas chandelier, and turned the jets down to tiny
points.

"Oh, dear no!" spoke Mrs. Markham, "not so low as that--this is no dark
seance. I merely meant that the lights are too strong for a pair of
sensitive eyes. I feel everything when I am in this condition. Would
you mind sitting a little further away? Thank you. I think that's
right. Please do not speak to me until I speak, and do not be
disappointed if I tell you nothing."

For five minutes, no sound broke the silence in Mrs. Markham's
drawing-room, except the hiss of a light, quick breath and the intake
and outgo of a heavier, slower one. And so suddenly, with such
smothered intensity, that Norcross started in his seat, Mrs. Markham's
voice emitted the first quaver of a musical note. She held it for a
moment, before she began to hum over and over three bars of an old
tune--"Wild roamed an Indian maid, bright Alfaretta." Thrice she hummed
it, still sitting with her hand over her eyes.--"Wild roamed an Indian
maid--" Then silence. But now, the breath of Norcross was coming more
heavily, and the masses of his face had still further fallen. After an
interval, Mrs. Markham spoke, in a low, even tone:

"It is Lallie."

Another period of heavy silence.

"I cannot see her nor hear her speak. Martha, my control, is speaking
for her. But Martha shows me the picture of a child--a little girl in
an old-fashioned dress. And I think she is saying that name--Lallie."

The silence again, so that when Norcross moistened his dry lips with
his tongue the slight smack seemed like the crackle of a fire.

"I see it more clearly now and I understand. The child gave her that
name, but someone else used it for a love name. It was just between
those two." The rest came in scattered sentences, with long pauses
between--"I hear that song again--it was her favorite--I understand now
why it comes--she was singing it when--Yes, you are the man--when you
told her--She calls you Bobbert--and now I cannot see."

A bead of perspiration had appeared so suddenly on the forehead of
Norcross that it had the effect of bursting from a pore. He was on his
feet, was pacing the floor in his jerky little walk. When, after one
course of the drawing-room, he turned back, Mrs. Markham had taken her
hand from her eyes, and was facing him.

"Oh, why did you do that?" she asked. "It has its effect on me--you do
not know how much!" Her manner spoke a smothered irritation. "I shall
not see Lallie to-night. And she was very near."

As though something had clicked and fallen into place within him,
Norcross straightened and stiffened, controlled the relaxed muscles of
his face, flashed his eyes on Mrs. Markham.

"Might I ask some questions?" he said.

"You must sit quietly," she answered, "and though I can never see so
well after the first contact breaks, Martha may speak for you. Sit as
you did, and wait for me." Norcross walked at his nervous, hurried
little pace back to his seat on the sofa. His face was quite controlled
now, and his sharp eyes held all their native cunning. That grip on
himself grew, as he waited for the inert seeress to speak again.

"Martha says, 'I will try,'" she gave out finally. "Quick--with your
question--with your lips, not your mind--I am not strong enough now."

"What was Lallie's real name?"

"Helen."

"Her other name?"

A pause, then:

"Martha is silent. You are testing me. Tell something you want to
know--even advice."

"Was there ever anyone else?"

A pause again, then:

"Never. She loved you wholly. She was angry over a little thing, just
jealousy, during that last quarrel. She had already forgiven. It was
only a girl's whim. Do you want advice?"

Norcross thrusted obliquely from the corner of his eye at Mrs. Markham
and looked down at the floor.

"Ask her if I shall sell," he said.

The answer came so suddenly that it overlapped the last words of his
sentence.

"Martha says that she is going away." No more for two silent minutes;
no more until Mrs. Markham dropped her hand from her eyes, turned to
Norcross, and said in a normal, sprightly tone:

"It is all over for this evening. I suppose the trouble lay in your
last question. I am sorry--if you came here looking for business
advice--that you got only the things of the affections. To your old
love affairs, I had an unusually quick response to-night." She leaned
heavily back in her chair. "Excuse me if I seem tired. There is a kind
of inner strain about this which you cannot know--a strain at the core.
It does not affect the surface, but it makes you languid." Yet her
manner, as she threw herself back, invited him to linger.

"I shall not ask you," she went on, "whether the things I told you
to-night are true. We all have our human vanities in our work; we like
to hear it praised. That is one reason why I do not ask. Then I know
without your confirmation that what I told you was true. When the
control comes as clearly and strongly as it did for a few minutes
tonight,--before you interrupted by rising--the revelations are always
accurate and true. The details I gave you are trivial. That is
generally a feature of a first sitting. The scholars have found an
explanation of that phenomenon, and I am inclined to agree with them.
If I were talking to you over a telephone and you were not sure of my
voice, how should I identify myself? By some trivial incident of our
common experience. For example, suppose I were to call you up
to-morrow. How should I identify myself? Somewhat like this, probably:
'You tried to turn the gas out completely, when I wanted it only
lowered in order to save my eyes.' Wouldn't that identify me to you?"
she paused as for an answer.

"As nearly as you could over a telephone wire," he answered. "You're a
marvelously clever woman, to think of that," he added. Mrs. Markham
answered, on the wings of a light laugh:

"If I appear at all clever by contrast with what you expected to find,
it is because I have not let my mind dwell in a half-world, as have so
many others of my profession. That is the tendency. I have seen no
reason why I should not combat it. I believe, too, that I am the
stronger for it in my work. What was I saying? Oh, yes--about the first
contact. Probably the last thought of the disembodied, upon assuming
the trance state--for I believe that the sender of these messages, like
the receivers, have to enter an abnormal condition--is to prove their
identity. That is only natural, is it not? Would not you do the same?
Think. And what do they have to offer? One of those intimate memories
of years past which linger so long in the mind. Take me for example.
What should I offer to--well, to that one among the disembodied who
means most to me? An adventure in stealing cream from a dairy house!"
As though she were carried away by this memory, her face grew soft and
serious. With an outward sweep of her hands and a quick "but then!" she
resumed:

"The best judges of character--and you must be such a one--make their
mistakes. Why did you ask that question?"

Norcross, glib and effective as his tongue could be when he directed or
traded, found now no better answer than:

"Because I wanted to know, I suppose."

"Were this Helen in the flesh--young and inexperienced as she
was--would you expect her to give you advice in any large affair of
business--would she be basically interested in it? Interested because
it is yours and she loves you, perhaps--but basically? We have no proof
that natures change out there. I suppose that isn't all, either. Is
she, keeping her soul for you in a life which I hope is better--is she
interested in whether or no you make a little more money and position?
I can conceive only one condition in which she would mention your
business. If you were at a crossroads--if great danger or great
deliverance hung on your decision--she might sense that. I think they
must get it, by some process to which we are blind, from other
disembodied spirits."

"Suppose, then, that--Martha I think you call her--had brought some old
business associate. Would he have answered me?"

"Perhaps. But that does not really explain what is in your mind. If
this business matter which perplexes you were so vital, don't you
suppose that some one of those very associates would have rushed to
speak, instead of a dead love? In that way, I think I can construct an
answer--provided you ask that question in good faith. It is, probably,
not very important whether you sell or no."

Mrs. Markham rose on this. Norcross caught the hint in her manner, and
rose with her. A little "oh!" escaped her, and her face lighted.

"I know who you are, now!" she said. "You are Robert H. Norcross of the
Norcross lines!"

Norcross started.

"Please do not think I got _that_ by any supernormal means!" she added
quickly. "I mention it only to be frank with you. From the moment I saw
you, I was perplexed by a memory and a resemblance. Then, too, I caught
the air of big things about you. That attitude which you have just
taken solved it all. It is the counterpart of your photograph in last
Sunday's _Times_--the full-page snap shot. I must be frank with you or
you will not believe me."

The mustache of Norcross raised just a trifle, and his eyes glittered.

"Passing over what I may think of your revelations," he said, "you're a
remarkable woman."

"If you're coming again," said Mrs. Markham, "perhaps you'd better not
delve into my personality. It interferes. Understand, I'm really
flattered to have a man like you take notice of this work. That's why I
ask that your notice shan't be personal. At least not yet."

"Since this is a--a--professional relation, may I ask how much I owe
you?"

"My price is twenty-five dollars a sitting--for those who can afford
it."

Norcross drew out his wallet, handed Mrs. Markham three bills. Without
looking at them, she dropped them on the table beside her. "You see,"
she went on as though her mind were still following their discussion,
"I don't like to talk much with my--patients. I never can know when I
may unconsciously steal from what they tell me."

At the entrance, Norcross hesitated, as though hoping for something
more than a good-night. No more than that did she give him, however. He
himself was obliged to introduce the subject in his mind. "If I should
come again, would Helen tell me more?"

"Perhaps. From the excellent result to-night I should call it likely."

"Then may I come again?" His voice broke once, as with eagerness.

"Certainly. Will you make an appointment?"

"Tuesday night?"

"I had an engagement for Tuesday. Could you come as well on Friday?"

And though it meant postponing a directors' meeting, he answered
promptly:

"Very well. Say Friday at eight."

And now he was in his automobile. He settled himself against the
cushions and held the attitude, without motion. For five minutes he sat
so, until the chauffeur, who had been throwing nervous backward glances
through the limousine windows, asked:

"I beg your pardon, sir, did you say 'home'?"

"Yes, home," responded Norcross. And even on those words, his voice
broke again.

Mrs. Markham stood beside the table, hardly moving, until she knew by
whir and horn that the Norcross automobile was gone. Then she sent
Ellen to bed, and herself moved quickly to a secretary in the little
alcove library back of the drawing-room. Taking a key from her bosom,
she unlocked a drawer and took out a packet of yellow legal cap paper.
Holding this document concealed in a fold of her waist, she passed
rapidly to an apartment upstairs. She opened the door softly, and
listened. Nothing sounded within but the light, even breathing of a
sleeper. After a moment, she crossed the room, finding her way expertly
in the darkness. Well within, she knelt and began some operation on the
floor.

And her hand made a slip. A crash echoed through the house. Following
the startled, half-articulate cry of a sudden awakening, Mrs. Markham,
still finding her way with marvelous precision in the darkness, passed
through a set of portières and crossed to the bed.

"Hush, dear," she said, "I only came upstairs to borrow a handkerchief.
Go to sleep. I'm sure it won't bother your rest. Don't think of it
again."




IX

ROSALIE'S SECOND REPORT


As though to prove her maxim, "Nothing turns out the way you expect
it," Rosalie, on her second Tuesday off, failed to meet her anxious
young employer in the ladies' parlor of the Hotel Greenwich. Instead
came a page, calling "Dr. Blake!" It was a note--"Stuyvesant Fish Park
as soon as you get this. R. Le G.," it read. Dr. Blake leaped into a
taxicab and hurried to the rendezvous. He spied her on a park bench,
watching with interest the maneuvers of the little Russian girls, as
they swarmed over the rocker swings. Even before he came within
speaking distance of her, he perceived that something must have
happened--read it in her attitude, her manner of one who lulls a
suppressed excitement. When she turned to answer his quick "Mme. Le
Grange!" her cheeks carried a faint color, and her gray eyes were
shining. But her face was serious, too; her dimples, barometer of her
gayer emotions, never once rippled. Before he was fairly seated, she
tumbled out the news in a rush:

"Well! I never was more fooled in my life!"

"She's a fraud!" He jumped joyously to conclusions. "You can prove it!"

Rosalie put a slender finger to her lips.

"Not so loud. Yids have ears. I ain't dead sure of anything now. I
ain't even sure she don't have me followed when I leave the house.
That's why I sent for you to change meeting places. There's nothing as
safe as outdoors, because you can watch the approaches."

"But is she a fake? Can you prove it?" persisted Dr. Blake.

"I'm a woman," responded Rosalie Le Grange, "not a newspaper reporter.
I can't tell my story in a headline before I git to it. I've got to go
my own gait or I can't go at all. Now you listen and don't interrupt,
or I'll explode. It goes back, anyhow, into our last talk.

"I was comin' downstairs in the afternoon a week ago Thursday, and I
saw Ellen let in a man. Good-looking man. Good dresser. Seemed about
thirty-five till you looked over his hands and the creases around his
eyes, when you saw he was risin' forty-five if a day. Stranger, I
guess, for Ellen kept him waiting in the hall. He read the papers while
he waited, and he didn't look at nothing but the financial columns. I
took it from that, he was in Wall Street, though you can't never tell
in New York, where they all play the market or the ponies. I didn't
wait to size him up real careful; that wouldn't do. I just passed on
down to the pantry and then passed back again. He was still there. This
time he had put up his newspapers, and he was looking over some pencil
notes on that yellow legal cap paper. He didn't hear me until I was
close on him, the rugs in the hall are that big and soft. But when I
did get close, he jumped like I had caught him in something crooked and
made like he was goin' to hide the sheets. Of course, I didn't look at
him, but just kept right on upstairs. When I turned into the second
floor, I heard Ellen say, 'Mrs. Markham will receive you.' I didn't pay
no attention to that at the time. It was only one of twenty little
things I remembered. Stayed in the back of my head, waitin' to tie up
with something else.

"Come Tuesday--week ago to-day and my afternoon off. I was comin' home
early, about nine o'clock. I've got front door privileges, but I
generally use the servants' entrance just the same. Right ahead of me,
a green automobile with one of those limousine bodies drove up to the
front door. It's dark down in the area by the servants' entrance. I
stopped like I was huntin' through my skirt for my key, and looked. Out
of the automobile come a man. He turned around to speak to the
chauffeur and I got the light on his face. _Who_ do you suppose it was?
Robert H. Norcross!"

"The railroad king?"

Rosalie pursed her lips and nodded wisely.

"How did you know? You've never seen him before."

"Ain't it my business to know the faces of everybody? What do I read
the personals in the magazines for? You'd know Theodore Roosevelt if
you saw him first time, wouldn't you? But I made surer than that. Next
day I matched the number of his automobile with the automobile
register. That number belongs to Robert H. Norcross."

Dr. Blake whistled.

"Playing for big game!" he said.

"That was what struck me," said Rosalie, "and while it wasn't
impossible that this Mr. Norcross might have a straight interest in the
spirit world--well, when you see big medium and big money together, it
looks like big _fake_. And there was the man with the notes who read
the financial pages--he jumped back into my mind.

"The servants' entrance comes out through the kitchen onto the second
floor. When I come into the hall, Ellen was waiting for me. She was
tiptoeing and whispering.

"'Mrs. Markham,' she says, 'wanted that I should tell you she has
sitters unexpected. There's some of her devil doin's going on
downstairs to-night. She wanted me to catch you when you came in and
ask you to go very quiet to your room.'

"While I went upstairs, I listened hard. Just before I came out on the
landing of the servants' hall, I heard a bell ring, away down below.
Just a little ring--b-r-r. Now, you know if there's one thing more 'n
another that I've got, it's ears--and ears that remember, too. I hadn't
been a day in that house when I knew every bell in it and who was
ringin' besides. This wasn't any of 'em. But that wasn't the funny
thing. _It lasted just about as long as my foot rested on a step of the
stairs_. I didn't make the break of going back and ringin' again; but I
remembered that step--third from the top.

"'T ain't easy to admit you've been fooled, and 't ain't easy to give
up somebody you've believed in. I couldn't have slept that night even
if I'd wanted. I opened the registers in my room, because open
registers help you to hear things, and sat in the darkness. I could
catch that the sitting was over, because the front door slammed. Then
Ellen came upstairs, and the bell rang b-r-r again. I could hear
someone come upstairs to the second floor, where Mrs. Markham and the
girl have their rooms. I listened for that bell when she struck the
stairs. I couldn't hear nothing. The current has been switched off,
thinks I. Maybe it was ten minutes later when I got a faint kind of
thud, like somebody had let down a folding bed, though there ain't a
one of those man-killers in our house. Sort of stirred up a
recollection, that sound. I lay puzzling, and the answer came like a
flash. Worst fake outfit I ever had anything to do with was Vango's
Spirit Thought Institute in St. Paul. I've told you before how ashamed
I am of that. I left because there's some kinds of work I won't stand
for. Well, he used a ceiling trap for his materializin'; though the
wainscot is a sight better and more up-to-date in my experience. When
he let it drop careless, in practicing before the seance, it used to
make a noise like that. I fell asleep by-and-bye; and out of my dreams,
which was troubled and didn't bring nothing definite, I got the general
impression that Mrs. Markham wasn't all right and that I'd been fooled.

"Mrs. Markham and the little girl went to the matinee next afternoon.
Now I'm comin' to her. You let me tell this story _my_ way. The cook
was bakin' in the kitchen, Ellen the parlor maid, who had to stay home
to answer bells, was gossipin' with her. Martin was cleanin' out the
furnace. I had the run of the house. First thing I looked at was the
third step from the top of the stairs. I worked out two tacks in the
carpet--wasn't much trouble; they come out like they was used to it. I
pulled the carpet sideways. Sure enough, there was a wide crack just
below the step, and when I peeked in, I could see the electric
connections. Question was, where was the bell? But I had something to
think of first. Where would Mrs. Markham have a cabinet if she ever
done materializin'? I had thought that all out--a little alcove library
in the rear of the back parlor. Give you plenty of room, when the
folding doors were open, for lights and effects. If there _was_ a
ceiling trap, it must be in the rooms above. I went into--into the
rooms"--here Rosalie paused an infinitesimal second as though making a
mental shift--"into the room above. Just over the alcove library is a
small sittin'-room. The--a bedroom opens off it--but has nothing to do
with the case. It's one of those new-fangled bare floor rooms. Right
over the cabinet space was a big rug. I pulled it aside and pried
around with a hair pin until I found a loose nail."

[Illustration: "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?"




X

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 in _this_ world," 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 of
_that_. 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 the _Evening
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 the _Sun_ insinuated,
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,"
the _Sun_ assured 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 Street _Sun_ into 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.




XI

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 you _are_
caught? 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 got _me_ to 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!"




XII

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 any _man_
ever 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!"

"_We_ was," amended Rosalie Le Grange.




XIII

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, _your_ play 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.

[Illustration: "STAY WHERE YOU ARE," HE COMMANDED]

"Her method is fairly established. In a few minutes, I will permit you
to see the trap between the ceiling of that cabinet room there and the
floor of the room above. The trap is hollow; in it, for safety, she
keeps those phosphorescent robes"--he nodded toward the white heap on
the floor--"all her cabinet paraphernalia, and the notes on such as
you. Full information on your love affair with Helen Whitton has been
in that trap for weeks." Then, seeing how raw was the nerve which he
had touched in the old man, he added:

"I beg your pardon again, sir; but I must speak of this. Mme. Le Grange
there--my agent in this house--is an expert on such matters. She
informs me that those notes are the work of a private detective--that
the information comes from an old aunt of Helen Whitton who must have
been her confidante. Do you see now what happened? Every night of a
seance, Mrs. Markham has prepared for you by sending this girl to bed
early--by sitting beside her and putting her to sleep. That is what
Miss Markham, in her innocence, calls it. It _is_ sleep--the hypnotic
sleep. Miss Markham is in bad condition. Her nerves are those of the
overworked hypnotic horse. Mrs. Markham has used that as a pretext for
putting her to bed early. Shall I particularize? Do I need to go on?"

"Oh, pray do! You are very interesting!" spoke Mrs. Markham from the
piano stool.

"I will--since you wish it," returned Blake with an equal sarcastic
courtesy. "When sleep was established, Mrs. Markham made her rise and
dress herself in those phosphorescent robes"--he pointed to the gauzy
heap on the floor--"put her back on the couch, and gave her directions.
She was to rise at a signal--you know it--'Wild roamed an Indian maid.'
Must I tell you any more?" he burst out. "Do you know that three nights
ago I looked into her sitting-room above that trap and saw her--saw her
go down to you--heard what she said to you!"

Annette was gasping and moaning.

"Oh, did I do that?" she said.

"No, sweet, _she_ did it," he said. He turned to Rosalie. "Take this
revolver and keep order for me. Annette ought not to stand any longer."
Still keeping her head on his shoulder, he seated her beside him on a
couch. "She has never heard this before, Mr. Norcross, and you must
know what a shock she is suffering. This is a desperate case, and it
required a desperate remedy. That accounts for this drama to-night.
Mme. Le Grange there is housekeeper of this place, and my agent.
Putting her in this house was part of the remedy. Fifteen minutes ago,
she and I entered the room where Miss Markham lay in hypnotic trance,
waiting to go down to you. I supplemented Mrs. Markham's suggestion by
a command of my own--you know what it was. I took a risk. One never
knows whether a hypnotic subject--even such a perfect one as this--will
obey a supplementary suggestion. Had it failed, had she started back
toward the ladder, I should have turned on the lights and seized the
spook in the vulgar manner, and Mrs. Markham would have had the
thousand excuses which a professional medium can give in such
circumstances. But Annette obeyed--she even woke on my command before
she had fulfilled the whole of Mrs. Markham's suggestion--because we
love each other. That made the difference." He drew Annette's head
closer on his shoulder. "I'm going to take her away to-night. She's
done with all this." He turned to Mrs. Markham. Her hand still rested
on the keyboard. Her face was pale, but her lips wore a sneering smile.
"It is your turn, Madame," he said.

"I lose gracefully," answered Mrs. Markham, "yet if Mr. Norcross will
think very carefully, he may realize that I am not all a loser."

Rosalie crossed the room to Dr. Blake. "Here, you take this thing," she
said, extending the revolver, "it makes me nervous, an' I told you at
the start there wasn't no use of it."

And now, something had clicked in Norcross again. His mouth had closed
like a vise, light had come back to his eyes; he was again the Norcross
of the street.

"You're a devil," he said, "but you're a marvelously clever woman--"

"So clever," responded Mrs. Markham in dulcet tones, "that I intend
never to worry about finances again--by your leave, Mr. Norcross."

"That means blackmail, I suppose," said Norcross.

"Now, Mr. Norcross, I beg of you," protested Mrs. Markham, "I have
_never_ used harsh names for unpleasant truths with you! Do me the same
courtesy. You will agree, I think, that the Norcross interests would
suffer if people knew that Robert H. Norcross was running to spirit
mediums--my business is little appreciated. The newspapers, Mr.
Norcross--"

"Would any newspaper believe you?" asked Norcross.

"An admirable method," responded Mrs. Markham, "an admirable method of
getting these people before the public as witnesses"--her gesture
indicated Dr. Blake and Rosalie--"would be to sue for custody of my
niece, whom this young man intends, I believe, to take away tonight.
Certain unusual features of this case would charm the newspapers."

Rosalie shook Blake's shoulder.

"Doctor!" she cried, "can't you see what she's aiming at? She's trying
to drag us into her blackmailing. She's tryin' to make this look like a
plant." She whirled on Norcross.

"Listen, Mr. Norcross. I'll tell you what this was done for! Do you
know a youngish lookin' man, smooth-shaven, neat dresser, gray eyes,
about forty-five, got something to do with Wall Street, wears one of
them little twisted-up red and white society buttons in his buttonhole,
has a trick of holding his chin between his fingers--so--when he's
thinkin'? Because _he_ started it. He's the nigger in your woodpile. He
came here a week before you ever saw Mrs. Markham, bringin' the notes
about Helen Whitton--the dope that she's been feedin' you. If you'll
put that together with what the spirit--she--Miss Markham, told you
tonight about declarin' dividends--"

"Mrs. Granger," interrupted Mrs. Markham, "you are a shrewd woman, but
you carry your deductions a little far--"

"Deductions, your grandmother!" retorted Rosalie Le Grange, "To think
how close you come to foolin' even _me_ that's played this game, girl
and woman, for twenty-five years! If I hadn't caught you so anxious to
stop that little girl from seein' that you kept Practical Methods of
Hypnotism' hid behind the bookcase, I'd have gone away from here
believin' that she was deep in the mud as you was in the mire. You
certainly sprung a new one on me!"

The eyes of Norcross lighted, as though with a new idea, and he broke
abruptly into this feminine exchange:

"I do not believe that this is a plant. Mrs. Markham, shall we
bargain?"

"I like the life in London," said Mrs. Markham. "I have been waiting to
retire."

"Twenty-five thousand dollars?"

"Oh dear, no! Fifty."

Norcross drew a check book, flipped it on his knee. Mrs. Markham raised
a protesting hand.

"Yes, you will--you'll take it in a check or not at all," he said. "I
want this transaction recorded. I'll tell you why. It is worth just
that to keep this story out of the papers. I was caught, and I pay. It
is worth no more. I will give you this check to-night. You will cash it
in the morning. I shall have the cancelled check as a voucher. If ever
you ask me for a dollar more, you go to State's Prison for
extortion--on the testimony of these three witnesses. My legal
department is the best in the country. In short, it is worth fifty
thousand dollars to me. It is not worth fifty thousand and one. Also,
you sail to London within a week. Does that go?"

Mrs. Markham drummed a minute with her fingers, and her face went a
shade paler.

"It does," she said in a low voice.

Blake bent over Annette.

"Do you hear that?" he asked. "Do you know what it means? It is called
blackmail!"

"Oh, Aunt Paula, Aunt Paula!" whispered Annette. Her face settled
closer on Blake's shoulder, and she burst into a torrent of weeping.

Rosalie tiptoed to the desk, bringing pen and ink, which she laid on
the table beside Norcross. It was quite evident that one of their
number was by this time enjoying the situation.

"Keep everybody here for three minutes--I'll be back," she said to
Blake, and floated out of the door.

As Norcross handed over the check, Dr. Blake spoke:

"I am taking Miss Markham away. She is not to see this woman
again--taking her to my aunt's house. I, too, want a witness. If I have
done anything for you to-night, will you return it by setting us down
in your automobile?"

"Certainly," responded Norcross. "I suppose I ought to thank you--but
I've got to think this thing out." He scrutinized Blake closely. "How
about you and the papers--I hadn't thought of you--"

Blake, still dropping soft love pats on Annette's hair and shoulders,
looked into the eyes of the railroad king.

"I have earned that opinion, I suppose," he said. "I can't say that I
feel myself greatly superior to--to anyone here--tonight. But I've done
what I started to do. My name is Blake, Mr. Norcross--Dr. Walter H.
Blake--lately army surgeon in the Philippines, if you take my
profession as a voucher. My father was Rear-Admiral Blake, if family
will help establish me. Or, better, I intend to marry this girl as soon
as the license clerk will let me--and it isn't likely that I'll make
public anything that involves my wife and her people. Does that satisfy
you?"

Norcross ran his eye across them. It rested a moment upon Annette; and
a ghost of that late emotion, of which she had been the instrument,
flashed across his face.

"I guess I'm satisfied," he said.

Now Rosalie, in hat and wraps, stood at the door carrying her suit
case.

"Sorry to leave without notice, Mrs. Markham," she said, "but you
remember I haven't drawn no pay as housekeeper for doin' you up. I
guess we'd all better be goin'. Here's your hat, Dr. Blake, and a fur
coat and boots for Miss Markham."

Paula Markham, twirling the fifty thousand dollar check idly in her
fingers, rose from the piano stool.

"I wish you to listen, Dr. Blake," she said, "although you may not
believe it, I am really fond of Annette. The temptation to use her
became too strong. Believe me, I have intended for some time to stop
it. I had stopped it in fact, when this big fish came to my net. You
have seen, no more keenly than I, how hard it was on her nerves. Take
her away and give her a good time--she needs it. Indeed, had you come
into her life a little later, I should have welcomed you--for after I
found that she had no clairvoyance in her, I wanted her to be happy."

"You had an admirable way of showing it," responded Dr. Blake. "What
about putting aside earthly love for strength?"

"It kept off the undesirables," said Mrs. Markham, "and just then--with
this large order in hand--you were an undesirable. I shall not ask you
to let me see her for the present--indeed, I am going away--but years
from now, when you and she have softened--"

"When her will is built up--perhaps."

"May I kiss her?" For the first time in his experience of her, Blake
traced a note of feminine softness in Mrs. Markham's tones.

Blake took the back of the little head firmly in his hand, pressed the
face tightly on his shoulder.

"Her cheek--yes. You must not look into her eyes."

As Mrs. Markham lifted her face from Annette's cheek, the tears showed
under her lids.

"But, oh, Annette," she whispered, "I ask you to believe that I am
real--that once I was all real--but I fell like the rest."

For the first time Annette spoke coherently.

"Oh, Aunt Paula--it breaks my heart--but I will try to remember only
how kind you were."

And now Rosalie had wrapped her for the street; and now the door closed
between Mrs. Markham and her biggest operation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Rosalie was first to quit the automobile--she had asked Norcross to
drive her to a woman's hotel.

"Good-night, people," she said cheerily at the curb, "I hope it ain't
good-by to any of you. Doctor, I'd like to be invited to the weddin',
however private--that's my tip. When I git settled again, I'll send you
my card an' address. Good-night, Mr. Norcross, I'm real pleased to have
met you. I had a cousin who was a conductor on one of your roads an' he
always spoke nicely of the way he was treated. An', oh, yes! Don't you
worry about _me_ givin' any of this away. I'm a medium, all right, but
I ain't in that kind of work. I ain't recommendin' myself, of course,
Mr. Norcross, but if you git over this--they generally do--an' want
some good, straight clairvoyant work done, write Mme. Rosalie Le
Grange, care the _Spirit Truth Bulletin_, an' I'll recommend you to
them that are strangers to graft. Good-night."

After they drove on, Blake, brazenly patting and caressing Annette
toward calm and a right mind, furtively noticed Norcross as the bands
of city light flashed his figure into view. He was huddled in a corner
of the cushioned seat; he looked again the pitiful, broken,
disappointed old man. But when he parted from the lovers at the curb of
an old house in Lexington Avenue, his voice came out of him with
certainty and ring.

"If I can do anything more for you in this matter, I am at your
service," Blake had said.

"I will attend to the rest myself, thank you!" answered Norcross.

"It has occurred to me," continued Blake, "that Mrs. Markham will
communicate at once with whatever confederates she had in this
business. I hope you don't mind my mentioning it."

"Probably," responded Norcross, "she's at the telephone now. That's my
part of it. Good-night."




XIV

MAINLY FROM THE PAPERS


(From the Wall Street _Sun_, Oct. 21, 190-)

    Whatever motive impelled Robert H. Norcross to his mysterious
    operations in L.D. and M. during the past two days, it looks rather
    like stock manipulation than the larger financing which has
    hitherto marked his career. When, on Wednesday, the directors of
    the L.D. and M. adjourned without declaring a dividend, that stock,
    which had advanced somewhat owing to the speculative trading of the
    past three weeks, fell from 56 to 50, and closed weak at 49-1/4.
    Directly after the close of the exchange, Norcross, as though by
    program, reconvened the directors, who declared a dividend of one
    and one-half per cent. The news was about by the time the market
    opened yesterday, and L.D. and M. made the record jump of the year,
    going to 76 and closing strong at 75-1/2. It scarcely went below
    that point to-day, and at two o'clock touched its highest
    notch--76-3/4. Considerable criticism of Norcross was heard on
    the street to-day.

(From the Wall Street _Sun_, Oct. 24, 190-)

    BROKERAGE FIRM ASSIGNS

    The firm of Bulger and Watson, promoters and Stock Exchange
    operators, made an assignment this morning. Liabilities $276,125;
    assets $81,300. This failure followed the collapse of the Mongolia
    Copper Mine in Montana, news of which reached New York last
    Saturday. Bulger and Watson were heavily interested in that
    property. An unusual feature of this failure, according to those on
    the inside, was the action of Arthur Bulger, senior member of the
    firm, in the L.D. and M. flurry of last Wednesday and Thursday.
    Bulger, it is said by those who know his affairs best, had
    speculated heavily in L.D. and M., playing for a rise. On the eve
    of the fluky directors' meeting of last Wednesday--which, it will
    be remembered, adjourned without action only to reconvene after
    market hours and declare a dividend--Bulger began through his
    brokers to unload. It is believed that he was acting upon some
    advance inside information of the directors' action. He was sold
    clean out of this stock when the market closed Wednesday afternoon.
    Had he held on, the firm would doubtless have been able to survive
    the Mongolia crash, for L.D. and M., following the unexpected
    action of the directors in declaring a dividend, jumped on Thursday
    from 50 to the neighborhood of 75. The failure will involve no
    other firms, it is thought.

As the curve of Sandy Hook blotted from sight the last, low glimpse of
the skyscrapers which point Manhattan, Blake touched Annette's arm. She
turned from her reveries; the distance faded from her eyes.

"It's the end of a life for you--that," he said. "We don't see New York
again for two years. We're going back over the girlhood you never
had--you're going to dance and motor and walk--yes and coquette,
too--or as much as you care to with me as a husband. For two years,
you're just going to play!"

Then, noticing the expression of the dog who beholds his master with
which her sapphirine eyes regarded him, he dropped his hand on hers.

"But most of all, dearest," he added, "you're going to do what you want
to do! Not what I or any one else commands, but just as your own sweet
will dictates--Light of me!"







End of Project Gutenberg's The House of Mystery, by William Henry Irwin

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12678 ***