Madame Rosalie was setting her stage for a caller. It was evidently to
be an important client, for cards, crystal, horoscope, ouija-board, and
other handmaidens to divination were set forth upon the table in the dim
back parlor. The priestess herself, in her garnet-colored robe, moved
about the room with the noiselessness of a shadow. Although it was
barely dusk she drew the shades and swung the electric bulb over the end
of the table. Then she stood surveying her work with the critical
scrutiny of an artist experimenting for the best light upon his picture.
Her too-brilliant eyes roved restlessly from one carefully arranged
detail to another.
Suddenly a footstep sounded outside, and there was a buzz of the
electric bell. Madame Rosalie waited exactly the correct length of time
before responding to its summons. The interval was expressive neither of
eagerness nor indifference. When she returned to her sanctum it was to
usher into it a man who moved hurriedly, drew off a pair of heavy
driving-gloves, and tossed them into the Morris-chair. The astrologist
removed them quietly to a settee in a far corner of the apartment and
seated herself in the chair.
"They say you're the eighth wonder of the world." Her visitor spoke with
a thinly veiled sarcasm as he took his place under the light. "I might
as well tell you at the outset that I don't go in much for this sort of
thing. I'm here upon the suggestion of somebody else. I've known a good
many of you trance mediums and my experience has been that you're strong
on the future and weak on the past. You play safer that way. But it
happens that I want help with the past more than with the future. What's
the idea now? Are you going to hypnotize me?"
His voice was not antagonistic, only briskly businesslike. He might have
been suggesting that he try on the suit of clothes which a salesman was
proffering for his favor.
Madame Rosalie answered in the low, slightly indifferent voice that had
surprised Roger Kenwick. "Hypnotism is a coöperative measure. I couldn't
hypnotize you unless you were willing and would help me."
He laughed. "That's a good deal for you to admit. Most of you people
claim to be able to do anything."
"Do you wish me to try to hypnotize you?"
"No, I don't care about it especially. It takes a lot of time, doesn't
it? Get busy on something that comes right down to brass tacks."
She turned the crystal sphere slowly in her hand. "You are obsessed by a
fear, and you have reason to be. There is a very serious problem
confronting you, and you need help in solving it. I can't help you, but
perhaps I can find some one else who can."
She gathered up a bundle of cards. At first glance he had thought they
were playing-cards, but he saw now that the reverse sides were all
blanks. "On each of these I am going to write a word," she explained.
"I'll hold it for an instant before your eyes. Read it, close your eyes,
and then look at those maroon-colored curtains over there."
Without comment he followed these instructions. Ten minutes passed while
the client glanced at the cards and then at the curtains. Sometimes his
gaze strayed back to the bit of pasteboard before the medium had another
one ready. By the end of the hour she had cast his horoscope, read his
palm, and performed other mystic rites. Then she settled back in the
deep chair and announced herself ready to "project the astral body." A
few moments passed in absolute silence. The medium appeared to fall into
a light slumber, and the man on the other side of the table was prepared
to see her face contorted by the writhing pains of the trance victim.
But it remained calm, almost deathlike. His shrewd eyes were sizing her
up as she slept. He seemed almost to forget that he had come for
spiritual counsel, and his gaze was calculating, speculative, as though
he were considering her possibilities as an ally. Suddenly a voice came
from the depths of the chair. It made him jump. It was not the voice of
Madame Rosalie, but one that seemed vaguely familiar.
"Marstan is dead." The words died away in a kind of moan. After an
interval of silence came the message, "He says to tell you that you have
found the criminal, and now is the time to act." She seemed to sink
deeper into oblivion. The client waited a full minute. Then he leaned
over and whispered through the stillness two words--"Rest Hollow."
The medium's head rolled from side to side on the cushions of the
chair, like that of a surgical patient who is trying to escape the ether
sponge. "Gone!" she muttered. "All gone!"
He swept aside the cards and ouija-board and leaned closer, his hands
almost touching hers. The amused skepticism had died out of his amber
eyes, and the question that he asked came in a tense whisper. "Where is
Ralph Regan?"
A frown drew the woman's heavy black brows together. "Gone!" she
murmured again. "Gone!"
It was not possible for him to determine from her tone whether she was
answering his last question or merely repeating her response to "Rest
Hollow." He tried again.
And after a moment the reply came slowly through stiff lips. "The way
leads over a curving road. Follow that road to a place with a high stone
fence where the gates stand always open. There you will find him."
He settled back in his chair, his eyes resting, fascinated, upon the
graven face.
"Marstan is here." She spoke in her own voice now and there was in it a
note of infinite weariness. "He has something to say to you."
The man smiled grimly. "I should think he would. Tell him to go ahead;
I'm listening."
"He says you must give up the first plan----" She frowned in the effort
of transmission. "And the second plan--and try the third. He says there
is a woman working in the plan too: she has just begun to work in it.
You must get her aid or she might----"
He leaned forward eagerly. "Yes? She might what?"
"I don't quite get it. It's a difficult control. But he seems to be
afraid of that woman. He wants very much to warn you against----"
She shivered slightly and opened her eyes. The man had left his seat and
was standing close to her side. "I hope you got what you want," she said
wearily. "I don't know when I've had a sitting that has cost so much."
He crossed to the settee and picked up his gloves. "It must get on your
nerves. Suppose we go out somewhere and have a little bite of supper. I
know a place down on Dupont; no style about it, but they give you a
great little meal. What do you say?"
She glanced at the nickel clock upon the mantel. "It's almost seven,"
she demurred, "and I expect another client at seven-thirty."
"No more sittings to-night," he decreed. There was an almost insolent
authority in his tone. "Time to call a halt. It's dinner-time in
heaven, and spirits must live. You're coming out with me. Get on your
street togs, little witch."
Without further protest she obeyed while her escort waited in the shabby
entrance-hall. At the curb he helped her into the roadster, and five
minutes later they were seated at a small bare table in one of the
popular bohemian restaurants of the downtown district.
"No Martinis any more," he sighed, as he helped her out of her cheap
coat with its imitation-fur collar. "Life isn't what it used to be, is
it?" His own hat and expensive-looking overcoat he hung upon the peg in
a diamond-shaped mirror bearing the soap-written injunction, "Try Our
Tamales." "But they serve a placid little near-beer in this place that
helps some. Bring two, waiter."
When the attendant returned with the glasses, he tossed off the contents
of his at a gulp, but the woman sipped hers with the leisurely enjoyment
of the epicure. Then she set it down and stabbed with her fork at the
dish of green olives in the center of the table.
The soup came, a rich bean chowder, which she ate almost in silence,
while her companion commented casually upon the service and furnishings
of the café. They had a rear table near the swinging doors that led into
the kitchen. It was not more or less conspicuous than any of the others.
The atmosphere of unconventionality which pervaded the place seemed to
envelop all its habitués in a sort of mystic veil that was in itself a
guarantee of privacy. At the table nearest them a girl was talking
earnestly to a man who sat with his arm about her. Madame Rosalie,
raising her eyes from her soup-plate, encountered the bold, appraising
stare of her escort. She returned it impersonally and with the flicker
of a smile, taking in the "freckled" eyes and the large thin hands. And
when she smiled her face re-gained something of a former beauty. The man
leaned toward her with a consciously confiding manner. "You call
yourself Madame Rosalie," he said. "But isn't it really Mademoiselle?"
Her smile deepened but she gave him no answer. In the delicate, lacy
waist and white skirt which she had donned, she looked years younger.
There was a ruby pendant at her throat but she wore no other jewel. The
garish light of the café, shining upon her straight black hair, gave it
a luster that was like the dull gleam of jet.
"Not Mademoiselle?" he queried again, and his smile was like the
password between two brother lodge-members.
And then Madame Rosalie lost some of her inscrutable reserve. "Not
_Rosalie_," she corrected. "But it's a good name; as good as any other
for my trade, don't you think?"
He turned one of the clumsy glass salt-shakers between his fingers. "The
name is all right," he admitted. "But--why do you do--that sort of
thing? You admit yourself that it's hard on your nerves. Why do you do
it--when you could do other things?"
The waiter reappeared and littered the table with an army of small oval
platters. Odors of highly seasoned macaroni and ragout steamed from
them. Madame Rosalie dipped daintily into the nearest dish. But in spite
of her restraint, it would have been apparent to a close observer that
her enjoyment of the meal was the keen avidity of one who has been long
denied. When the waiter was out of hearing, she caught up the last words
sharply.
"What do you mean by 'other things'?" For the first time her voice was
eager, as though seeking counsel.
He shrugged. "_I_ don't pretend to be a clairvoyant. Yet I know that
there are other things that you could do--have done."
"How do you know it?"
"Well, in the first place, if you had been a medium for very long, the
clever medium that you undoubtedly are, you would have made more money
at it."
"I have made money at it."
"Not as much as you should have made. You wouldn't live as you do if you
had money."
If she resented this assertion, she gave no sign of it, and he went on
with the cool assurance of a physician who is certain of his diagnosis.
"You may persuade yourself that you are in that business because you are
interested in it or because you know that you have an unaccountable
power. But you are doing it chiefly for the same reason that most of us
ply our trades; because you want to make money."
"Well?" She commented, "It does supply me with a living, and you know
there's a theory that we must live."
He laughed. "You don't have to live the way you do. There are much
easier ways for you to accomplish that end. Have you got anybody
dependent on you?"
"No, but I am horribly in debt." The admission seemed to slip from her
without her permission, and when the words were out a little frown
puckered her forehead. The eyes of her escort were fixed upon the ruby
pendant, so obviously a genuine and costly stone. She toyed absently
with it, putting a cruel strain upon its slender thread-like chain of
gold. "Do you know," she said slowly, "I believe you would make a
wonderful hypnotist. I believe that you could even hypnotize me."
The bold amber eyes gazed straight into hers. "But you told me, didn't
you, that hypnotism had to be a coöperative measure? You said, I
remember, that nobody could hypnotize anybody else unless--unless the
victim were willing."
One of his hands closed over hers as it reached for the sugar-bowl. She
made no effort to draw it away.
"Perhaps," she answered softly, "perhaps the victim _is_ willing."
He stacked up a little pile of the oval platters and pushed them
impatiently to one side. "I guess we understand each other all right,"
he said. "You need me and I need you. We've each come to the place where
we need help. Now let's not waste any more time about it. Let's get down
to brass tacks."