"Can Madame d'Elphis receive a client this evening?"
There was a pause. Then he heard a question asked, a murmured answer of
which the sense evaded him, and then a refusal,--not, he fancied, a very
decided refusal,--followed by a discreet attempt to discover his name,
his nationality, his address, with a suggestion that Madame d'Elphis
would be at his disposal the next morning.
A touch of doubt in the quick, hesitating accents of the unseen woman
emboldened Vanderlyn. He conveyed, civilly and clearly, that he was
quite prepared to offer a very special fee for the favour he was asking;
and he indicated that, though he had been told the usual price of a
séance was fifty francs, he--the mysterious stranger who was speaking to
Madame d'Elphis through the telephone--was so exceedingly anxious to be
received by her that evening that he would pay a fancy fee,--in fact as
much as a thousand francs,--for the privilege of consulting the famous
fortune-teller.
To Vanderlyn's vexation and surprise, there followed a long pause.
At last came the answer, the expected assent; but it was couched in
words which surprised and vaguely disquieted him.
"Very well, sir, my sister will be ready to receive you at eight o'clock
to-night; but she is going out, so she will not be able to give you a
prolonged séance."
Then he had not been speaking to the soothsayer herself? Vanderlyn felt
vaguely disquieted and discomfited. He had counted on having to take but
one person into his half-confidence; and then--well, he had told himself
while at the telephone that he would not find it difficult to conclude
the bargain he desired to make with the woman whose highly-pitched,
affected voice had given him, or so he had thought, the clue to a venal
personality.
* * * * *
It was with a feeling of considerable excitement and curiosity that the
diplomatist, that same evening, walked up the quiet, now deserted,
streets where dwelt the most famous of Parisian fortune-tellers.
Madame d'Elphis had chosen a prosaic setting for the scene of her
mysteries, for the large white house looked very new, a huge wedge of
modern ugliness in the pretty old street, its ugliness made the more
apparent by its proximity to one of those leafy gardens which form oases
of fragrant stillness in the more ancient quarters of the town.
A curt answer was given by the concierge in reply to Vanderlyn's enquiry
for Madame d'Elphis. "Walk through the courtyard; the person you seek
occupies the entresol of the house you will see there."
And then he saw that lying back, quite concealed from the street, was
another and very different type of dwelling, and one far more suited to
the requirements of even a latter-day soothsayer.
As he made his way over the dimly-lighted, ill-paved court which
separated the new building, that giving onto the street, from the
seventeenth-century mansion, Vanderlyn realised that his first
impression had been quite erroneous. Madame d'Elphis had evidently
gauged, and that very closely, the effect she desired to produce on her
patrons. Even in the daytime the mansarded house which now gloomed
before him must look secret, mysterious. Behind such narrow latticed
windows might well have dwelt Cagliostro, or, further back, the more
sinister figure of La Voison.
But something of this feeling left him as he passed through the door
which gave access to the old house; and, as he began to walk up the
shabby gas-lit staircase, he felt that his repugnant task would be an
easy one. The woman who, living here, allowed herself the luxury of such
a lover as was the Marquis de Florac, would not--nay, could
not--hesitate before such an offer as ten thousand francs.
There was but one door on the entresol, and on its panel was inscribed
in small gold letters the word "d'Elphis." As Vanderlyn rang the bell,
the odd name gleamed at him in the gas-light.
There followed a considerable delay, but at last he saw a face peering
at him through the little grating--significantly styled a _Judas_, and
doubtless dating from the Revolution,--still to be found in many an
old-fashioned Parisian front-door.
The inspection having apparently proved satisfactory, the door opened,
and Vanderlyn was admitted, by a young _bonne à tout faire_, into a hall
filled with a strong smell of cooking, a smell that made it clear that
Madame d'Elphis and her family--her _smalah_, as Jacques de Léra had
called them--had the true Southern love of garlic.
Without asking his name or business, the servant showed him straight
into a square, gold-and-white salon. Standing there, forgetful for a
moment of his distasteful errand, Vanderlyn looked about him with
mingled contempt and disgust, for his eyes, trained to observe, had at
once become aware that the note of this room was showy vulgarity. The
furniture was a mixture of imitation Louis XV. and sham Empire. On the
woven tapestry sofa lay a child's toy, once costly, but now broken.
How amazing the fact that here, amid these pretentiously ugly and
commonplace surroundings, innumerable human beings had stood, and would
stand, trembling with fear, suspense, and hope! Vanderlyn reminded
himself that here also Tom Pargeter, a man accustomed to measure
everything by the money standard, had waited many a time in the sure
belief that this was the ante-chamber to august and awe-inspiring
mysteries; here, all unknowing of what the future held, he would come
to-morrow morning, to learn, for once, the truth--the terrible
truth--from the charlatan to whom he, poor fool, pinned his faith.
Suddenly a door opened, and Vanderlyn turned round with eager curiosity,
a curiosity which became merged in astonishment. The woman advancing
towards him made her vulgar surroundings sink into blurred
insignificance; for Madame d'Elphis, with her slight, sinuous figure,
draped in a red peplum, her pale face lit by dark tragic eyes, looked
the sybil to the life....
Vanderlyn bowed, with voluntary deference. "Monsieur," she said, in a
low, deep voice, "I must ask you to follow me; this is my sister's
_appartement_. I live next door."
She preceding him, they walked through an untidy dining-room of which
the furniture--the sham Renaissance chairs and walnut-wood
buffet--looked strangely alien to Vanderlyn's guide, into a short,
ill-lighted passage, which terminated in a locked, handleless door.
The woman whom he now knew to be Madame d'Elphis turned, and, facing
Vanderlyn, for the first time allowed her melancholy eyes to rest full
on her unknown visitor.
"You have your stick, your hat?" she asked. "Yes?--that is well; for
when our séance is over, you will leave by another way, a way which
leads into the garden, and so into the street."
She unlocked the door, and he followed her into a large book-lined
study--masculine in its sober colouring and simple furnishings. Above
the mantelpiece was arranged a trophy of swords and fencing-sticks;
opposite hung a superb painting by Henner. Vanderlyn remembered having
seen this picture exhibited in the Salon some five years before. It had
been shown under the title "The Crystal-Gazer," and it was even now an
admirable portrait of his hostess, for so, unconsciously, had Vanderlyn
begun to regard the woman who was so little like what he had expected to
find her.
Madame d'Elphis beckoned to him to follow her into yet another, and a
much smaller, room. Ah! This was evidently the place where she pursued
her strange calling; for here--so Vanderlyn, trying to combat the eerie
impression she produced on him, sardonically told himself--were the
stage properties of her singular craft.
The high walls were hung with red cloth, against which gleamed
innumerable plaster casts of hands. The only furniture consisted of a
round, polished table, which took up a good deal of the space in the
room; on the table stood an old-fashioned lamp, and in the middle of the
circle of light cast by the lamp on its shining surface, a round crystal
ball. Two chairs were drawn up to the table.
An extraordinary sensation of awe--of vague disquiet--crept over
Laurence Vanderlyn; he suddenly remembered the tragic story of Jeanne de
Léra. Was it here that the sinister interview with the doomed girl had
taken place?