Читать книгу The Heart Line - Gelett Burgess - Страница 10

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The architecture of San Francisco was, in early days, simple and unpretentious, befitting the modest aspirations of a trading and mining town. Builders accepted their constructive limitations and did their honest best. False fronts, indeed, there were, making one-story houses appear to be two stories high, but redwood made no attempts in those days to masquerade as marble or granite.

During the sixties, a few French architects imported a taste for classic art, and for a time, within demure limits, their exotic taste prevailed. The simple, flat, front wall of houses, now grown to three honest stories high, they embellished with dentil cornice, egg-and-dart moldings and chaste consoles; they added to the second story a little Greek portico with Corinthian columns accurately designed, led up to by a flight of wooden steps; the façade was broken by a single bay-window, ornamented with conventional severity. Block after block of such dwelling-houses were built. They had a sort of restful regularity, they broke no artistic hearts.

In later days, when San Francisco had begun to take its place in the world, a greater degree of sophistication ensued. Capitals of columns became more fanciful, ornament more grotesquely original, till ambitious turners and wood-carvers gave full play to their morbific imagination. Then was the day of scrolls and finials, bosses, rosettes, brackets, grille-work and comic balusters. Conical towers became the rage, wild windows, odd porches and decorations nailed on, regardless of design, made San Francisco's nightmare architecture the jest of tourists. Lastly, after an interregnum of Queen Anne vagaries, came the Renaissance and the Age of Stone, heralded by concrete imitations and plaster walls of bogus granite.

Madam Spoll's house was of that commonplace, anemically classic style which, after all, was then the least offensive type of residence. It was painted appropriately in lead color—for the house, with the rest of the block, seemed to have been cast in a mold—a tone which did its best to make Eddy Street prosaic. It had been long abandoned by fashion and was now hardly on speaking terms with respectability. It occupied a place in a row of boarding-houses, cheap millinery establishments and unpretentious domiciles. There was a dreary little unkempt yard in front, with a passage leading to an entrance under the front steps; above, the sign "Madam Spoll, Clairvoyant and Medium," was displayed on ground glass, and below, hanging on a nail against the wall, was a transparency. When the lamp was lighted inside this, one read the words: "Circle To-night. Admittance ten cents."

This Thursday the lamp was lighted. It was half-past seven o'clock.

Devotees had begun to arrive, and, entering by the lower door, they paid their dimes to Mr. Spoll, who stood beside the little table at the entrance, left their "tests"—envelopes, flowers, jewelry or what not—and passed into the audience-room.

This had once been a dining-room and its walls were covered with a figured paper, above which was a bright red border decorated with Japanese fans and parasols. A few gaudy paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, and here and there were hung framed mottoes: "There Is No Death"—"We Shall Meet Again"—"There Is a Land that is Fairer than Day." This room was filled with chairs set in rows, and would hold some forty or fifty persons. It was separated by an arch from a smaller room beyond, where, upon a platform, stood a table with an open Bible, an organ, two chairs and a folding screen.

Only the front seats were at present occupied, these by habitués of the place, all firm believers, a picturesque group showing at a glance the stigmata of eccentricity or mental aberration. For the most part they were women in black; they bowed to one another as they sat down, then waited in stolid patience for the séance to open. The others were pale, blue-eyed men with drooping mustaches and carefully parted hair, and a whiskered, bald-headed old gentleman or two who sat in silence. The room was dimly illuminated by side lights.

Farther down the hallway, opposite the foot of a flight of stairs leading upward to her living-rooms, was Madam Spoll's "study," and here she was, this evening, preparing for business.

This room was small and crowded with furniture. The marble mantel held an assortment of bisque bric-à-brac, sea-shells, paper knives and cheap curiosities. The walls were covered with photographs, a placque or two, fans and picture cards. A huge folding bed, foolishly imitating a mirrored sideboard, occupied one corner of the room. A couch covered with fancy cushions and tidies ran beside it. A table, heavily draped, a three-legged tea-stand, an easel with a satin sash bearing the portrait, photographically enlarged in crayon, of a bold, smirking, overdressed little girl, a ragged trunk and several plush-covered chairs were huddled, higgledy-piggledy, along the other side of the room.

Upon the couch Madam Spoll sat, spraying envelopes with alcohol from an atomizer on a small bamboo stand before her.

She was an enormous woman of masculine type, with short, briskly curling, iron-gray hair and a triple chin. Heavy eyebrows, heavy lips, heavy ears and cheeks had Madam Spoll, but her forehead was unlined with wrinkles; her expression was serene, and, when she smiled, engaging and conciliating. She was dressed in black satin with wing-like sleeves, the front of her waist being covered with a triangular decoration of bead-work.

Watching her with roving, black eyes was Professor Vixley, smoking a vile cigar. His face was sallow, of a predatory mold with a pointed, mangy beard, and sharp, yellow teeth. He wore a soft, striped flannel shirt with a flowing pink tie. From the sleeves of his shiny, cutaway coat, faded to a purplish hue, his thin, tanned, muscular hands showed like the claws of a vulture.

"You seem to be doin' a pretty good business," he remarked, dropping his ashes carelessly upon the floor.

"So-so," Madam Spoll answered. "If things go well we hope to get a new hall up on Post Street, but there ain't nothing in tests. Straight clairvoyance is the future of this business. Of course, we have to give cheap circles to draw the crowd, but it's a lot of bother and expense and it does tire me all out. Then there's always the trouble from the newspapers likely to come up."

"Pshaw! I wouldn't mind gettin' into the newspapers occasionally, it's good advertisin'. The more you're exposed the better you get along, I believe."

"'Lay low and set on your eggs' is my motto," said the Madam. "I don't like too much talk. I prefer to work in the dark—there's more money in it in the long run. I don't care if I only have a few customers; if they're good and easy I can make all I want."

"What do you bother with sealed messages for, Gert?" Professor Vixley asked.

"Oh, I got to fix a lot of skeptics to-night. I can usually open the ballots right on the table easy enough behind the flowers, but I want to read a few sealed messages besides. It may help along with Payson, too." She took up an envelope numbered "275." It was saturated with alcohol. She held it to the light, and squinting at the transparent paper, she read: "'When is Susie coming home?' Now, ain't that a fool question? I'll take a rise out of her, see if I don't! That's that woman who got into trouble in that poisoning case."

"Say, the alcohol trick's a pretty good stunt when you get a chance to use it! But I don't have time for it in my business."

"Yes, it's easy enough if you use good, grain alcohol, but I wish I had an egg-tester. They save a lot of time, and you can read through four or five thicknesses of paper with 'em. Spoll, he has plenty of chance to hold out the ballots and bring 'em in to me; his coming and going ain't noticed, because he has to fetch 'em up to the table, anyway. By the time I go on, all the smell's faded out. If it ain't, my handkerchief is so full of perfumery that you can't notice anything else. I'm going to fit up my table with one o' them glass plates with an electric flash-light underneath that I can turn on with a switch. You can read right through the envelope then. But I don't often consent to tests like that. It deteriorates your powers. And my regular customers are usually contented to send their ballots up open and glad of the chance to get an answer. They don't want to give the spirits no trouble! Lord, I wish I had the power I had when I begun." She smiled pleasantly at her companion.

"I see old Mrs. Purinton on the front row as I come in," Vixley observed, shifting his cigar labially from one corner of his mouth to the other.

"Say, there's a grafter for fair!" she exclaimed. "She's been coming here to the publics for two years and never once has she gave me a private setting. That's what I call close. She's as near as matches! And always the same old song—little Willie's croup or when's Henry going to write, and woozly rubbish like that. I got a good mind to hand her a dig. I could make a laughing-stock out of her, and scare her away easy. Folks do like a laugh at a public séance; you know that, Professor."

"Sure! It don't do no harm as long as you hit the right one."

"Oh, I ain't out for nothing but paper-sports and grafters. I know a good thing when I see it. I hope there'll be something doing worth while in this Payson business. He may show up to-night. Lulu claims she conned him good."

"I hope I'll have a slice off him," said Professor Vixley, his beady, black eyes shining. "We got to get up a new game for him before we pass him down the line."

"Oh, if anybody can I guess we can; there's more'n one way to kill a cat, besides a-kissing of it to death."

"Yes, smotherin' it in hot air, for instance!" Vixley grinned.

"They's one thing I wish," said Madam Spoll, "and that is that we had a regular blue-book like they have in the East. Why, they tell me there's six thousand names printed for Boston alone. If we had some way of getting a lead with this Payson it would be lots easier. But I expect the San Francisco mediums will get better organized some day and coöperate more shipshape."

Here Mr. Spoll entered, a tall, thin, bony, wild-eyed individual with a rolling pompadour of red hair, his face spattered with freckles. He walked on tiptoe, as if at a funeral, bowed to the Professor, coughed into his hand, and took up the letters Madam Spoll had been investigating, putting down some new ones.

"Oh, here's that 'S.F.B.' that Ringa told me about," she said, glancing at an envelope. "Is Ringa come in yet?"

"I ain't seen him; but it's early," said Spoll. "He'll show up all right. I'll send him right in."

"Is Mr. Perry in front?"

"You bet!" Spoll was still tiptoeing about the room on some mysterious errand. "Perry ain't likely to lose a chance to make a dollar, not him!"

"He's a good one!" Madam Spoll smiled at the Professor. "I don't hardly know what I'd do without him. I can always depend upon him to make good. He ain't too willing, and sometimes, I declare, he almost fools me, even. I've known him to stand up and denounce me something fierce, especially when there was newspaper men in the audience, and then just gradually calm down and admit everything I wanted him to. He looks the part, too. Why, I sent him round to Mrs. Stepson's circle one night, when she first come to town, and she was fooled good. I've seen him cry at a materializing séance so hard it would almost break your heart."

"Does he play spook?"

"No, he's best in the audience. He's a good capper, but I don't believe he could play spook—besides, he's getting too fleshy."

"Who else have you got regular?" asked Professor Vixley.

"Only two or three. I don't need so many touts as most. I pride myself on doing my own work without much help. Of course, you got to give a name sometimes when a fishing test won't work, and a friend in the audience helps. Miss French, she's pretty good, but she's tricky. I'm afraid of her. I was gave away once to the Chronicle and I lost a whole lot of business. Men are safer. Harry Debert is straight enough, but he's stupid. He's the too-willing kind, and you don't have a chance to get any effect.

"Say, Spoll," she added to her husband, "be sure and don't take no combs nor gloves! I ain't going to do no diagnosing in public—not for ten cents. Them that want it can pay for it and take a private setting."

"They're mostly flowers to-night," said Spoll as he crept out of the room.

"Lord, I do hate a flower test!" she groaned. "It's too hard work. Of course, they're apt to bring roses if their name's Rose, or lilies and daisies the same way, but you can't never be sure, and you have to fish. Lockets is what I like, lockets and ballots."

At this moment Mr. Ringa entered. He was a bleached, tow-headed youth, long and lanky, with mild gray eyes and a stubbly, straw-colored mustache. Two front teeth were missing from his upper jaw. His clothes seemed to have shrunk and tightened upon his frame. He bowed respectfully to Madam Spoll and Professor Vixley, who represented to him the top of the profession.

"Did you get that 'S.F.B.' letter, all right?" he asked.

"Yes, what about it?"

"She's easy!"

Vixley grinned. "If she's easy for you she must be a cinch for us!"

Ringa persevered. "Well, I got the dope, anyway. She's a Mrs. Brindon and she's worried about her husband—he's gone dotty on some fluzie up North. I read her hand last week. I told her they was trouble coming to her along of a dark woman—she's one of these beer-haired blondes—what I call a Würzburger blonde—then I showed it to her in the heart-streak. 'Go ahead and tell me how it will come out,' she says. I says: 'There's a peculiar condition in your hand that I ain't quite on to,' I says. She says: 'Why, can't you read it?' Says I: 'Madam, if I could read that well, I wouldn't be doing palms for no two bits a shot; I'd be where Granthope is, with a fly-away studio and crowding it at five plunks, per.' Then I says: 'Say, I hear Madam Spoll has great gifts in predicting at all affairs of the heart. I ain't never been to any of her circles, but why don't you shoot around next Thursday night and try her out?' 'What'll I do?' she says. Then I told her to write on a paper, 'Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me, and how will it come out?' She done it and sealed it up into an envelope I give her."

"I told her they was trouble coming to her"

"Good work!" said Madam Spoll. "I'll give you a rake-off if I land her. I've got her ballot right here. I won't need to open it."

"Ain't that job worth a dollar to you as it stands?" Ringa asked nervously. "I'll call it square and take my chances on the percentage."

"All right. It's a good sporting chance! Only I wish it was a man. Women are too close." Madam Spoll opened her purse and paid him.

As Ringa left, Vixley asked: "By the way, how about this fellow Payson? Do you think Lulu roped him?"

"I guess so. Lulu's done pretty well lately, and she's brought me considerable business. She ought to be here by this time."

"I should think she'd be able to handle him alone."

"Don't you go and tell her so! The thing for her to do is to get a manager, but I don't intend to queer my own game."

"What line is she workin' now? She's failed at about everything ever since she begun with cards."

"Oh, she's doing the 'Egyptian egg' reading. Wouldn't that freeze you? Lord, that was out of date twenty years go; but everything goes in San Francisco."

"Say, ain't this town the penultimate limit!" Vixley ejaculated, grinning. "Why, the dopes will stand in line all night for a chance to be trimmed, and send their money by express, prepaid, if you let 'em. Gert, sometimes I'm ashamed of myself for keepin' 'em waitin' so long! Talk about takin' a gumdrop away from a sick baby; that's hard labor to what we did for Bennett. What I want to know is, how do these damn fools ever get all the money we take away from 'em? It don't look like they had sense enough to cash a check."

"If I had one or two more decoys as good as Ringa and Lulu Ellis, I'd be fixed all right. I could stake out all the dopes in town. Say, Granthope could cut up a lot of easy cash if he'd agree to stand in. I tried to tap him about this here Payson, and he wouldn't give me a tip."

"Perhaps he didn't know anything. You can't loosen up when you're wide open, can you?"

"He generally knows all there is to know. The trouble is he's getting too high-toned. Since he fitted up his new studio and butted into society you can't get near him with nothing like a business proposition. I believe he thinks he's too good for this place and will go East. He's a nice boy, though. I ain't got nothing against him, only I wish he'd help us out. Hello, here's Lulu. Good evening, Lulu, how's Egyptian eggs to-day?"

Lulu Ellis was a dumpy, roly-poly, soft-eyed, soft-haired, pink-cheeked young woman, as innocent appearing a person as ever lived on her wits. Not that she had many of them, but a limited sagacity is enough to dupe victims as willing to be cajoled as those who appeal to the Egyptian egg for a sign of the future. Lulu's large, brown eyes were enough to distract one's attention from her rule-of-thumb methods. Her fat little hand was soft and white, her plump little body full of extravagant curves.

"Say, Mr. Payson has come!" she exclaimed immediately, with considerable excitement. "He's on the third row at the far end."

Madam Spoll became alert. "Did you see his test?"

"No, he was here when I come," Lulu replied.

"Go out and get Spoll." Madam Spoll spoke sharply. "We've got to fix this thing up right now."

Lulu returned to say: "There's such a crowd coming in he can't leave, but he says it was a gold watch with a seal fob."

"All right, so far," said the Madam. "Now, Lulu, are you sure of what you told me?"

Lulu's reply was interrupted by the entrance of Francis Granthope, in opera hat and Inverness cape, making a vivid contrast to the disreputable aspect of Professor Vixley. He greeted the three conspirators with his customary elegance.

"I'm sorry I had nothing about Payson when you rang me up, Madam Spoll, but just afterward his daughter came in for a reading. Queer, wasn't it?"

"God, that's a stroke of luck!" said Vixley eagerly. "I say, Frank, you can work her while we handle the old man, and we'll clean up a fortune. They say he's a millionaire." Vixley's little eyes gleamed.

"Let's hear what Lulu has to say, first," said Madam Spoll.

"Why, I didn't get much," Lulu confessed. "He said he dropped in by accident as he was passing by, to see what Egyptian egg astrology was. I got his name off of some letters he had in his overcoat pocket. I made him hang it on the hall hat-rack. I did all I could for him——"

"Did he get gay with you?" Professor Vixley interrupted. He had been overtly enjoying Lulu's plump charms with his rapacious eyes.

Granthope smiled; Lulu Ellis colored slightly.

"No, he didn't! I don't do none of that kind of work!"

"The more fool you!" Madam Spoll retorted. "He's an old man, ain't he?"

"Sixty," said Vixley, "I looked him up."

"Then he ought to be easy as chewing gum," said Madam Spoll.

Granthope lighted a cigarette and listened with a mildly cynical expression.

"He ain't that kind, though," Lulu insisted. "I ain't altogether a fool, after all. Why, he don't even go to church!"

Her three auditors laughed aloud, the Professor raucously, Madam Spoll with a bubbling chuckle, Granthope with scarcely more than an audible smile.

"That settles it, then. You're coming on, Lulu! What else do you know?" said Madam Spoll.

"Well, he has a daughter——"

"Yes, Granthope knows all about that," from the Madam.

"Her name is Clytie," said Granthope. "Twenty-seven."

"Is she a looker?" asked Vixley.

Granthope turned to him and gave him a patronizing glance. "You wouldn't think so, Professor. She's hardly your style. But she's good enough for me!" He languidly flipped the ash from his cigarette and took his pose again.

Lulu went on: "I think he had a love affair before he was married, but I couldn't quite get it. I didn't dare to fish very much. And that's about all I got."

"That's plenty, Lulu. You can go now. Here's a dollar for you and much obliged for passing him up."

"Oh, thank you," said Lulu. "I'm afraid it ain't worth that much. He gave me a dollar himself, though I don't charge but four bits, usually."

"Lord, what a fool!" said Vixley, watching her go out. "That girl won't ever get nowhere, she's too innocent. She knows no more about real life than a boiled egg."

"She's all right for me, though," Madam Spoll replied. "That's just the kind I need in my business. She fools 'em every time. They ain't nothing like a good blusher for a stool-pigeon, you take my word for it. Lulu's all right in her place." She turned to wash her hands at a bowl in the corner.

"Well," said Vixley, crossing his legs, "are you coming in with us, Frank?"

"It looks pretty good to me, so far. But it depends. What have you got about Payson, anyway?" Granthope's tone was languid.

Madam Spoll winked at Vixley, as she wiped her hands behind the palmist's back.

"Why," Vixley replied, "Payson's in wool and is director of a bank, besides. He's a square-head with a high forehead, and them are easy. Gertie, here, can get him into a private sittin', and when she does, you leave him to her—she'll find a way all right. She don't do no lumpy work, Gertie don't, you know that, all right! When she passes him along to me, I'll manage him like the way we worked Bennett with the real estate. I'd like another chance as good as him."

"You just wait," said Madam Spoll. "I got a hunch that this Payson is going to be pretty good pie; and we got a good strong combination, Frank, if you want to do your share."

"It's a pity Spoll ain't got some of Gertie's gumption," said Vixley, smiling with approval at his partner.

"Don't you make no mistake about Spoll—he's done some good work on Payson already." The Madam was adjusting her waist before the glass and coquetting with her hair. "The trouble with you, Vixley, is that you ain't got no executive ability—I'm going to organize this game myself. I can see a way to use Spoll and Ringa, and Flora, too. We want to go into this thing big. Payson's a keener bird than Bennett was, but they's more in him."

"So Spoll has begun, has he?" Granthope asked.

"Yes. He located the Paysons over on North Beach."

"I know that much already. The mother's dead. Mr. and Miss Payson have traveled abroad. What else do you know about her?"

"Why, it seems she's the sole heir. Good news for you, eh? High society, too—Flower Mission, Kitchen Garden, Friday Cotillions, Burlingame, everything. She could help you, Frank, if you got on the right side of her."

Here Mr. Spoll tiptoed in, bowed to Granthope, and said:

"Eight o'clock, Gertie."

Madam Spoll arose cumbrously, took a last peep in the mirror of the folding bed and turned into the hall, saying, "You take my advice, Frank. We depend upon you. See what you can do with the girl." She paused to bend a keen glance upon him. "What did you do with her, anyway?"

"Why, I did happen on something," he answered. "Do you remember Madam Grant, who used to live down on Fifth Street, twenty-odd years ago?"

Madam Spoll came back into the room eagerly.

"The crazy woman who lived so queer and yet had lots of money? Yes! She did clairvoyance, didn't she? I remember. She had a kid with her, too. Let's see—he ran away with the money, didn't he? And nobody ever knew what become of him. What about her?"

There was a duel of astute glances between them. Granthope had his own reasons for not wanting to say too much. He guarded his secret carefully, as he had guarded it from her for years.

"Miss Payson used to go down to see Madam Grant with her mother, when she was a little girl."

"No! did she, though? With her mother? That's queer! Hold on, Vixley. What did Lulu say about a love affair before Payson was married? Do you get that? Here's his wife visiting Madam Grant; you remember her, don't you? There's something in that I believe we got a good starter already."

Spoll appeared again, anxiously beckoning, and she went with him down the hall.

Vixley took up the scent. "Say, Frank," he asked, "how did you happen to get on to that, anyway? That was slick work."

Granthope turned to him and replied patronizingly, "Oh, I ought to know something about women by this time. I got her to talking."

Vixley frowned, intent in thought, stroking his scant, pointed beard and biting his mustache; then he slapped his knee with his claw-like hand. "Say, you got a grand chance there," he exclaimed. "See here, you can get in with the swells and be in a position to help out lots. It's the chance of a lifetime, and we'll make it worth your while."

"How?" Granthope inquired contemptuously.

"By a fair exchange of information. You put us wise, and we'll put you wise. I'll trust you to find ways of using what help we give you." He cackled.

"Yes—you can trust me. I think I might have some fun out of it. I don't mind helping you out, but all I need myself is a little imagination, some common-sense and a frock coat."

Vixley looked at him admiringly. "I wish't I had your chance, Frank; that's what I do. Say, you just light 'em and throw 'em away, don't you! I s'pose if I had your looks I could do it myself."

Granthope looked him over calmly. "There's no knowing what a bath and a manicure and a suit of clothes would do for you, Professor."

"You can't make brains out o' soap," retorted the medium.

"And you can't make money out of dirt.

"We'll see who has the money six months from now."

"It's a fair enough bargain. I take the girl, you take the money. I'm satisfied." Granthope arose and yawned. "Oh," he added, "did you know Payson had a partner named Riley? He was drowned in seventy-seven."

"That's funny. Queer how things come our way! Mrs. Riley is here in the front room with a test. She was tried for the murder of one of her husbands. Gert's goin' to shoot her up with it to-night. You better go in and see the fun. She'll give it to her good."

"I think I will," said the palmist.

He left Vixley plunged in thought, and walked out.

Turning into the audience-room he sat down on a chair in the rear. The place was almost filled. His eyes scanned the assembly carefully, roving from one spectator to another. On a side seat near him, a party of four, young girls and men, sat giggling and chewing gum. The rest of the company showed a placid vacancy of expression or lukewarm expectancy.

Madam Spoll at the organ and her husband with his violin, had, meanwhile, been playing a dreary piece of music, "to induce the proper conditions," as she had announced from the platform. They stopped, retarding a minor chord, and the medium went to the table and began to handle the tests, rearranging them, putting some aside, bringing others forward, in an abstracted manner. Then, looking up with a self-satisfied smile, she spoke:

"I want to say something to the new-comers and skeptics here to-night in explanation of these tests. Them who have thoroughly investigated the subject and are familiar with every phase of mediumship, understand, of course, that these objects are placed here merely to attract magnetism to the sitter and induce the proper conditions, so that your spirit friends will be able to communicate with you. This phase of mediumship is called psychometry, but if I'd stop to explain just what that means, I wouldn't have time to give any readings. Now, it won't be possible to get any messages unless you come here in the proper mood to receive them. You must send out your best thought and do all you can to assist, or else my guides won't be able to establish communication on the spirit plane. If you merely come here only to laugh and to make a scoff of the proceedings, I'll have to ask you to leave before I begin, for they's many here to-night who are honestly in search of the truth, seeking to communicate with the dear, loved ones beyond on the other side."

She passed her hand across her eyes, sighed, and fingered her chin nervously. She poked the articles on the table again.

"As I come on to this platform, I see an old man over there, in that direction, what you might call a middle-aged man, perhaps, of a medium height, and whiskers, like. I feel a condition of going on a journey, you might say, somewhere east of here, though maybe not very far, and I get the name John. The light goes over in your direction, lady, that one with the red hat. Yes, you. Would that be your father, possibly?"

The lady, straightening herself upon being thus addressed, said timidly, "I think perhaps you mean my uncle. His name was John."

"Maybe it is an uncle, though I get the influence of a father very strong, too. Has your father passed out?"

The lady in the red hat nodded.

"Then it is your father, do you see? Yes, I get an uncle, too, who wishes to communicate, only his influence ain't strong enough. That shows it ain't mind reading, as the newspaper folks say, don't it?" She smiled, as if she had made a point, and the audience appeared to be impressed.

"About this journey, now: maybe you ain't had no idea of traveling, but John says you will. I don't think it's liable to be very far, though. It'll be before the last of September or the first of October and John says it'll be successful. Do you understand what I mean?"

The lady, frightened at the terrible import of this question, did not speak.

"Did you send up an article?"

"It's that purse with the chain."

Madam Spoll fingered it and weighed it reflectively.

"I get a condition of what you might call inharmony. Seems to me like in your home something is worrying you and you ain't satisfied, you understand, with the way things are going and sometimes you feel as if, well, you just couldn't stand it!" Her smile, now, bathed her dupe with sympathy.

The lady nodded vigorously, with tightly shut lips.

"You kind of wonder if it does any good for you to go to all the trouble you do to sacrifice yourself and try to do your duty, when it ain't what you might call appreciated. And you're worried about money, too. Ain't that so?"

She received a ready assent. The woman's eyes were fixed upon her. Every one in the room watched the stripping naked of a soul.

"Well, John says that your father and him are helping you all they can on the spirit plane, and he thinks conditions will be more favorable and will take a turn for the better by the first of the year."

A question fluttered on the woman's lips, but before it had time to escape, Madam Spoll suddenly turned in the other direction.

"While I was talking to that lady," she said, "I felt an influence leading me to that corner over there by the clock, and I get the initials 'S.F.B.' Is there anybody of that name over there?"

A flashily dressed woman, with tinted yellow hair and rhinestone ear-rings, raised her hand.

"Those are my initials," she announced.

Madam Spoll grew impressive. "Your name is Brindon, ain't it?"

The woman gasped out a "Yes."

"Did I ever see you before?"

"No," said the blonde, "not to my knowledge, you didn't."

Madam Spoll made a comprehensive gesture with both hands, calling attention to the miracle. "You sent up a sealed ballot, didn't you?"

The woman nodded. She was obviously excited, looking as if she feared her skeleton was to be dragged forth from its closet; as indeed it was.

Madam Spoll took up the envelope with her delicate thumb and forefinger and displayed it to the audience.

"You see, it's still sealed," she announced, then, shutting her eyes, she continued: "My guides tell me that he's what you might call infatuated, but he'll come back to you and say he's sorry. Do you understand that?"

The woman was now painfully embarrassed and shrank into her seat. The medium, however, did not spare her. It was too good a chance for a dramatic sensation. She tore the envelope open and read its contents boldly: "Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me?" It was a psychological moment. The old women stared at Mrs. Brindon with morbid delight. There was a little buzzing of whispers through the room. Then the audience prepared itself for the next sensation.

The medium picked up another envelope. "This is marked '275,'" she said, then she clutched her throat. "Oh," she cried, "I'm strangling! They's somebody here who passed out very sudden, like they was poisoned. It's terrible. I can't answer the question the party has written because there's an evil influence here, a wicked woman. She had three husbands and two of 'em died suspicious. Her name is Riley. Would that be you?" She pointed forcefully at a dried-up, old woman in a shawl, with bleared eyes and a veined nose.

There was no response.

"Was this question something about your daughter?" Madam Spoll asked.

The woman coughed and bowed, shrinking into herself.

"I guess you better go somewhere else for your readings," Madam Spoll declared cruelly. "Your aura don't seem to me to be very harmonious. I don't know what's the matter to-night," she went on, passing her hand across her forehead in apparent distress. "The conditions around me are something horrid." Her voice rose. "There's somebody in this very room here who has committed murder. I can't do a thing until I get that off my mind. My guides tell me who it is, and that they'll be satisfied if he'll acknowledge it and say he's sorry. Otherwise, this séance can't go on."

She stopped and glared about the hall. By this time she had worked her audience up to an intense excitement. Every one looked at his neighbor, wondering what was to come, but no one offered to confess to a crime. Madam Spoll raged up and down the platform in a frenzy. Then she stopped like an elephant at bay.

"I know who this person is. It's a man, and if he don't rise and acknowledge it, I shall point him out!"

No one stirred. On the fourth seat, a clean-shaven man of thirty-five, with sharp, aquiline features and wide-spread ears, sat, transfixed with horror, his two hands clenched. It was Mr. Perry, the cleverest actor in the medium's support.

She advanced toward him as if drawn by a secret power, stared into his eyes, and putting her hand upon his shoulder, said:

"Thou art the man!"

Mr. Perry wriggled out of her grasp. "See here," he cried, "you mind your own business, will you. You're a fake! You got no right to make a fool of me." His voice trembled, his face was a convincing mask of guilt arraigned.

The medium shook a warning finger at him. "You either acknowledge what I say is true, or you leave the hall! I can't go on with you here."

Mr. Spoll came in to stand beside her valiantly; spectators stood up to watch the drama. Mr. Perry's eyes were wild, his face distorted; suddenly he arose and rushed out of the room. Madam Spoll snapped her fingers two or three times, shook herself and went back to the platform. The murmurs died down and the séance was resumed.

Madam Spoll waited a while in silence, then she picked up a gold watch with a seal fob from the table. "I'm glad to feel a more peaceful influence," she said. "I'm directed toward this watch. I don't know who brought it up, for I was out of the room at the time, but I get the name 'Oliver.'" She looked up expectantly.

A gentleman arose from an end seat in the third row. He had a high domed head, partly bald, and a gray chin-beard with a shaven upper lip; under shaggy overhanging eyebrows, cold gray eyes looked through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. His air was benevolently judicial and bespoke culture and ease. He had, moreover, a well-marked presence, as of one used to being considered influential and prominent. A row of false teeth glittered when he opened his mouth.

"That's my name," he acknowledged in a deep, fluent voice that was heard all over the room, "and that is my watch."

Madam Spoll fixed him in the eye. "I'd like to know if I can't get your other name. My guides are very strong to-night." After a few moments of self-absorption, she smiled sweetly upon him. "I think I can get it clairaudiently. Would it be Pearson?"

"No, but that's pretty near it, though."

"It sounds like Pearson to me, Pearson. Payson, oh, yes, it's Payson, isn't it?"

"That's right," he said, and sat down.

"Did I ever see you before?"

"Not to my knowledge, Madam."

She looked triumphantly at her audience and smiled.

"If they's any skeptics here to-night, I hope they'll go away satisfied." A number of old ladies nodded emphatically. "Of course, newspaper men never come on a night like this, when my guides are strong. Funny what you see when you ain't got a gun, ain't it? The next time I'm half sick and tired out, they'll be plenty of them here to say I'm a fake, like our friend here who left so sudden, white as a sheet. Now, when I was directed to that watch, I was conscious of a spirit standing beside this gentleman," she pointed at him benevolently, "influencing me to take it up. It's a woman, and she must have been about thirty when she passed out, and remarkably handsome, too. She was sort of fair-complected, between dark and light. I get a feeling here in my throat and down here," she touched her breast, lightly, curving her arm gracefully inward, "as if she went out sudden, like, with heart disease. Do you know what I mean?"

Mr. Payson had bent forward now. "Yes," he said, "I think I do. Has she any message for me?"