THE ART OF PROPHESYING
They walked on, side by side, to the house in Grosvenor Gardens. Florian
let himself in with a latch-key, and rang the bell for his servant.
While he waited, he wrote a name on the back of a card, carelessly.
“Look here, Barnes,” the butterfly of Society said, as his eminently
respectable man-of-all-work entered; “this is Mr Joaquin Holmes,”—and
he handed him the card—“you can read the name there. He comes from
America. I particularly desire you to remark Mr Joaquin Holmes’s
appearance and features. You may be called upon to identify him.” Then
he turned with his bland smile to the discomfited Seer, and observed, in
that unfailingly honeyed voice of his, “You must excuse me, Mr Holmes,
but as a gentleman from out West, addicted to the frequent use of the
six-shooter, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the delicacy of my motives for
this little precaution. You can go now, Barnes. A mere matter of form,
so that, in case your evidence should be needed in court, you’ll be able
to swear to Mr Holmes’s identity, and give evidence that he was here, in
my company, this evening.”
Barnes glanced at the card, and retired to the door, discreetly. The
Seer flung himself down in an easy-chair with true Western _sangfroid_.
He knew he was detected; but he wasn’t going to give up the game so
soon, without seeing how much Florian really understood of his secret
and his methods. Meanwhile, Florian produced a couple of pretty little
old-fashioned stoneware jugs and some Venetian glasses from a dainty
corner cupboard. A siphon stood on a Moorish tray at his side by the
carved Bombay black-wood fireplace. “Caledonian or Hibernian?” Florian
asked, turning to his visitor, with his most charming smile—“I mean,
Scotch or Irish?”
“Thanks, Scotch,” the Coloradan answered, relaxing his muscles a little,
as he began to enter into the spirit of his entertainer’s humour.
Florian poured it out gracefully, and touched the knob of the siphon.
Then he handed it, foaming, still bland as ever, to the hesitating
American. “Now, let’s be frank with one another, Mr Holmes,” he said,
with cheerful promptitude. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re a very
smart man, and I admire your smartness. I lay low to-night, as you
justly observed, and I’m game to lie low—if you’ll take my terms—in
future. I’m not going to blow upon you, and I’m not going to stand in
the way of your success in life; but I just want to know—how did you
manage those envelopes?”
“If you think it’s a trick, why, the envelopes would be a long chalk the
easiest part of it,” the Seer responded, with a dry little cough. “The
real difficulty, of course, would be to read in the dark what folks had
written. And that’s the part, I claim, that I do myself by pure force of
thought—in short, by psychic transference.”
He stared hard at his host. Their eyes met searchingly. It was seldom
that Florian did a vulgar or ungraceful thing; but, as Mr Joaquin Holmes
uttered those high-sounding words, and looked him straight in the face
with great solemnity, Florian gravely winked at him. Then he raised that
priceless Venetian glass goblet to his curling lips, took a long pull at
the whiskey without speaking a word, and went over to a desk by the big
front window. From it he took out a pack of cards, and returned with
them in his hand. “Shuffle them,” he said, briefly, to the uneasy Seer,
in his own very tone. And the American shuffled them.
Florian picked one out at random, and held it before him, face down, for
some seconds in silence. “Now, I can’t do this trick like you,” he said,
in a very business-like voice; “but I can do it a little. Only, I’m
obliged to feel the card all over with my fingers like this; and I’m
often not right as to the names of the suits, though I can generally
make a good shot at the pips and numbers. This is a three that I’ve
drawn—I think, the three of spades; but it may be clubs—I don’t feel
quite certain.”
He turned it up. Sure enough, it was a three, but of clubs not spades.
“I’ll try another,” he said, unabashed. And he drew one and felt it.
“This is a nine of diamonds,” he continued, more confidently, after a
moment’s pause. The American took it from him, without turning up its
face, drew his forefinger almost imperceptibly over the unexposed side,
and answered without hesitation, “Yes; you’re right—that’s it—the nine
of diamonds.”
Florian pulled out a third, and felt it again carefully with the tips of
his fingers. “It’s a picture card this time,” he went on: “King, Queen,
or Knave of Hearts, I’m not sure which. I’m no good at picture cards.
They’re all a blur to me. I can tell them only by the single pips in the
corners.”
The Seer took it from him, hardly touching it perceptibly. “That’s not a
heart!” he answered in a sharp voice, without a second’s hesitation;
“that’s the Jack of Spades! You’re right as to the general shape, but
you’ve neglected the handle.”
He turned it up as he spoke. The Knave of Spades indeed it was. Florian
corrected him solemnly.
“In good English society,” he murmured, still polite and still
inscrutable, “we say Knave, not Jack. Remember that in future. To call
it a Jack’s an odious vulgarism. I merely mention this fact because I
notice how cleverly you’ve managed to acquire the exact little tricks of
accent and manner which are sure to take with an English audience. I
should be sorry to think a man of your brains, and a man of your moral
character—positive or negative—should be thought the less of in this
town of London for so very unimportant a matter of detail.”
“Thank you,” the Seer responded quietly, with another searching look. “I
believe, Mr Florian Wood, we two understand each other. But mind
you”—and he looked very wise and cunning—“I didn’t pass my finger over
the cards at Mrs Palmer’s.”
“So I saw,” Florian replied, with unabated good-humour. “But I looked at
them close—and I noticed they were squeezers. What’s more, I observed
you took them always by the left-hand corner (which was the right hand,
upside down) whenever they were passed to you. That gave me the clue. I
saw you could read, with one touch of your finger, the number and suit
marked small in the corner. I recognised how you did it, though I
couldn’t come near it myself. Your sense of touch must be something
simply exquisite.”
The American’s mouth curled gently at the corners. Those words restored
his confidence. He took up a casual book from the table at his
side—’twas the first edition of Andrew Lang’s “Ballades in Blue
China”—for Florian, as a man of taste, adored first editions. “Look
here,” the Seer said, carelessly. He turned it face downwards and opened
it at random. Then, passing one finger almost imperceptibly over the
face of a page, he began to read, as fast as the human voice can go, the
very first verses he chanced to light upon.
“BALLADE OF PRIMITIVE MAN.”
“He lived in a cave by the seas;
He lived upon oysters and foes;
But his list of forbidden degrees
An extensive morality shews.
Geological evidence goes
To prove he had never a pan,
But he shaved with a shell when he chose.
’Twas the manner of Primitive Man.”
He read it like print. Florian leaned back in his chair, clasped his
dainty hands on his small breast before him, and stared at the Seer in
unaffected astonishment. “I knew you did it that way,” he said, after a
pause, nodding his head once or twice; “I felt sure that was the trick
of it; but now I see you do it, why, it’s more wonderful, almost, than
if it were nothing more than a mere ordinary miracle. Miracles are
cheap; but sleight of hand like this—well, it’s priceless, priceless!”
“Now, _you’re_ a man of honour,” the Seer said, leaning forward
anxiously. “You’ve found me out, fair and square, and I don’t deny it.
But you’re not going to round on me and spoil my business, are you? It’s
taken me years and years to work up this sense by constant practice; and
if I thought you were going to cut in right now, and peach upon me—why,
hanged if I don’t think, witness or no witness, I’d settle this thing
still, straight off, with a six-shooter. Yes, sir—r—r, I’d settle it
straight off, I would, and let ’em scrag me if they would for it!”
Florian stirred the fire languidly with a contemplative poker (a poker’s
a very good weapon to fall back upon, one knows, in case of necessity).
“That’d be a pity,” he drawled out calmly, in an unconcerned voice. “I
wouldn’t like you to make such a nasty mess on my Damascus carpet. This
is a real old Damascus, observe, and I paid fifty guineas for it. It’s a
nice one, isn’t it? Good colour, good pattern! Besides, as you say, I’m
a man of honour. And I’ve a fellow-feeling, too—being clever
myself—for all other clever fellows. I’ve promised you not to peach, if
only you’ll tell me how you managed those envelopes. That’s a mere bit
of ordinary everyday conjuring; it’s nothing to the skill and practice
required to read, as you do, with the tips of your fingers.”
The Seer drew a long breath, and passed his dark hand wearily across his
high brown forehead.
“That’s so!” he answered, with a sigh. “You may well say that.” Then he
dropped spontaneously into his own Western manner. “See here, stranger,”
he said, eyeing Florian hard, and laying one heavy hand on his
entertainer’s arm; “it’s bred in the bone with me to some extent; but
all the same, it’s cost me fifteen years of practice to develop it. I
come of a blind family, I do; father was blind, and mother as well; made
their match up at the Indiana State Asylum. Grandfather was blind in
mother’s family, and two aunts in father’s. _I_ was born sighted; but at
five year old I was taken with the cataract. They weren’t any great
shakes at the cataract in Colorado where I was raised; I was fifteen
year old before they tried to couch it. So I learned to read first with
embossed print on Grandfather’s old blind Boston Bible. I learned to
read first-rate; that was as easy as A.B.C., for the tips of my fingers
were always sensitive. I learnt to make mats a bit, too, and to weave in
colours. Weaving in colours develops the sensitiveness of the nerves in
the hand; you get to distinguish the different strands by the feel, and
to know whereabouts you’re up to in the pattern.”
“And at fifteen you recovered your sight?” Florian murmured
reflectively, still grasping the poker.
“Yes, sir—r—r; at fifteen they took me to New York and got my eyes
couched there. As soon as ever I could see, I began to learn more things
still with the tips of my fingers; my eyes sort of helped me to
interpret what I felt with them. Pretty soon I saw there was money in
this thing. People in Colorado didn’t care to play poker with me; they
found out I’d a wonderful notion what was printed on a card by just
drawing my finger, like this, over the face of it. I see you’re a
straight man, and haven’t got many prejudices; so I don’t mind telling
you now my first idea was to go in for handling the cards as a
profession. However, I soon caught on that that wasn’t a good game;
people in our section observed how I worked it, and it was apt to lead
in the end to bowies and other unpleasantness. Several unpleasantnesses
occurred, in fact, in Denver City, before I retired from that branch of
the business. So then I began to reflect this thought-reading trick
would come in more handy; one might do a bit at the cards now and again
for a change; but if one tried it too often, it might land one at last
in free quarters at the public expense; and the thought-reading’s safer
and more gentlemanly any way. So I worked at learning to read, as time
afforded, till I could read a printed book as easy with my fingers as I
could read it with my eyes. It took me ten years, I guess, to bring that
trick to perfection.”
“You made us write with a pencil, I noticed,” Florian interposed, with a
knowing smile. “That’s easier to read, of course, for a pencil digs in
so.”
The Seer regarded him with no small admiration. “You’re a smart man, and
no mistake, sir,” he answered, emphatically. “That’s just how I do it. I
read it from the back, where it’s raised into furrows, in relief as it
were, by the digging-in; I read it backwards. I gave ’em each a pad with
the paper, you may have noticed. That pad supplies just the right amount
of resistance. I had to stop once or twice to-night, where I couldn’t
read a sentence, and fill in the space meanwhile with a little bit of
patter about concentrating their thoughts upon it, and that sort of
nonsense. Mrs Sartoris’s hand was precious hard to decipher, and there
was one young lady who pressed so light, she almost licked me.”
“And the envelopes?” Florian asked once more.
The Seer smiled disdainfully. “Why, that’s nothing,” he answered, with a
contemptuous curl of the lip. “Any fool could do that; it’s as easy as
lying. The lower side-flap of the envelopes is hardly fastened at all,
with just a pin’s head of gum,”—he drew one from his pocket—“See
here,” he said; “it’s got a bit left dry to wet and fasten afterwards. I
draw out the paper, so, and read it with my finger; then I push it back,
gum down again, and pull out the next one. It’s the rapidity that tells,
and it’s that that takes so many years of practice.”
“But Browning’s _Cleon_?” Florian exclaimed. “And Sir Henry Martindale’s
having learnt the Russian character in the Crimea? He told me it was
there he picked it up himself. How on earth did you get at those, now?”
The Seer stretched out his legs with a self-satisfied smirk, and took a
pull at his whiskey. “See here, my dear sir,” he said, stroking his
smooth chin placidly; “a man don’t succeed in these walks of life unless
he’s got some _nous_ in him to start with. He’s bound to observe, and
remember, and infer, a good deal; he’s bound to have an eye for
character, and be a reader of faces. Now, it happens you wrote those
self-same lines in Mrs Palmer’s album; and I chanced to read them there
while I waited for her in the drawing-room this very morning. A man’s
got to be smart, you bet, and look out for coincidences, if he’s going
to do much in occult science to astonish the public. Well, I’ve noticed
every one has certain pet quotations of his own, which he uses
frequently; and you’d be surprised to find how often the same quotation
turns up, time after time, in these psychical experiments. ‘The curfew
tolls the knell,’ or, ‘Not a drum was heard,’ are pretty sure to be
given six times out of seven that one holds a _séance_. But yours was a
new one; so I learnt it by heart, and observed you set it down to
Browning’s _Cleon_. As for the Russian character—well, where was an
English officer likely to learn it except in the Crimea? That was risky,
of course; I might have been mistaken; but one bad shot don’t count
against you, while a good one carries conviction straight off to the
mind of your subject.”
Florian paused, and considered. Before the end of the evening, indeed,
he had learnt a good many things about the trade of prophet; and Mr
Joaquin Holmes had taken, incidentally, every drop as much whiskey as
was good for his constitution. When at last he rose to go, he clasped
Florian’s delicate hand hard. “You’re a straight man, I believe,
stranger,” he said, significantly, “and I’m sure you’re a smart one. But
mind this from me, Mr Florian Wood, if ever you round on me, Colorado or
London, the six-shooter’ll settle it.”
Florian smiled, and pressed his hand. “I don’t care _that_ for your
six-shooter,” he answered, calmly, with a resonant snap of his tiny left
forefinger. “But I don’t want to spoil a man’s prospects in life, when
he’s taken fifteen years to make a consummate rogue of himself. You’re
perfect in your way, Mr Holmes, and I adore perfection. If ever I
breathe a single word of this to my dearest friend—well, I give you
free leave to whip out that six-shooter you’re so fond of bragging
about.”