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.