"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 seance 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 seance 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?"
"Yes, she has; but--well, you see, it ain't one I'd exactly care to give
in public, and I don't think you'd want me to, either. If you come up
after the seance is over, I'll see if I can get it for you. Or you
might do still better to have a private setting and then I'll have time
to tell you more. She brings me a condition of what you might call
worry or anxiety, as if you had something on your mind."
She turned to a bunch of flowers, and, taking them up, smelled them
thoughtfully, for a while. Mr. Payson settled back in his seat.
As the medium commenced again, Granthope arose with his faint, cynical
smile and walked quietly out. He found Mr. Spoll at the table by the
door.
"Well, I guess he's on the hook." The palmist buttoned his cape and
lighted a cigarette.
"Trust Gertie for that," said Spoll; "she'll land him all right, see if
she don't. Good night!"
Granthope turned up his collar and walked out into the street.
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE PAYSONS*
Mr. Oliver Payson lived on a half-deserted street on the northerly slope
of Russian Hill, in a quarter of the town which, at one time, promised
to become a favored, if not an aristocratic residential district. But
the whim of fashion had fancied in succession Stockton Street, Rincon
Hill, Van Ness Avenue, Nob Hill, and had now settled upon the Western
Addition and the Presidio Heights. The old North Beach, with its
wonderful water and mountain view, nearer the harbor and nearer the
business part of the city, had long been neglected. The few old
families, who in early days settled on this site, still remained; and,
with the opening of new cable-car lines, found themselves, not only
within a short distance of down-town, but at the same time almost as
isolated as if they had dwelt in the country, for this part of the city
is upon none of the main routes--few frequent the locality except upon
some special errand.
One side of the street was still unbuilt upon; on the southern side
stood three houses, each upon its fifty-vara lot, comfortably filling
the short block. That occupied by the Paysons was an old frame
structure of two stories, without attempt at ornamentation, except for
its quaint, Tudoresque pointed windows and a machicolated wooden
battlement round the flat roof. It stood on a gentle slope, surrounded
by an old-fashioned garden, which was hedged in, on either side, by rows
of cypress and eucalyptus trees, protecting it from the trade winds,
which here blow unhampered across the water.
In front, a scene ever-changing in color as the atmospheric conditions
changed, was ranged in a semi-circular pageant, the wild panorama of San
Francisco Bay, from Point Bonita and Golden Gate in the west, past the
Marin County shore with Sausalito twinkling under the long, beautiful
profile of Mount Tamalpais, past Belvedere with its white villas,
Alcatraz and Goat Island floating in the harbor, to the foot-hills
behind Oakland and Berkeley, where, in the east, Mount Diablo's pointed
peak shimmered in the blue distance.
In the second story of this house Clytie had a bookbinding room, where
she spent most of her spare time. It was large, bare, sunny,
impregnated with the odor of leather skins, clean and orderly. A sewing
frame and a heavy press stood behind her bench and upon a table were
neatly arranged the pages of a book upon which she was working.
Carefully placed in workmanlike precision were her knives, shears, glue
pot and gas heater and a case of stamping irons in pigeonholes.
She was, this afternoon, in a brown gingham pinafore, with her sleeves
rolled up, seated before the table, her sensitive hands moving deftly at
the most delicate operation connected with her craft. Upon a square of
heavy plate glass, she laid a torn, ragged page, and, from several old
fly leaves, selected one that matched it in color. She cut a piece of
paper slightly larger than the missing portion, skived the edges, and
pasted it over the hole or along the frayed margin. The work was
absorbing and exacting to her eyes; to rest them, she went, from time to
time, to the window and looked out upon the bay.
The water was gray-green streaked with a deeper blue. In the "north
harbor" two barks lay at anchor in the stream and ferry-boats plied the
fairway. In and out of the Gate there passed, at intervals, tugs with
sailing ships bound out with lumber or in with nitrates, steamers to
coast ports, or liners from overseas, rusty, weather-beaten tramps,
strings of heavy-going barges, lusty little tugs, lumber schooners
wallowing through the tide rip, Italian fishing smacks, lateen-rigged
with russet sails, saucy launches, and, at last, the magnificent bulk of
a white battleship sliding imperiously into the roadstead along the
waterfront.
At four o'clock Clytie's mind seemed to wander from her occupation, and
now, when she ceased and looked out of the window, her abstracted gaze
was evidently not directed at what she saw. Her mental vision, rather,
seemed alert. Her slender golden eyebrows drew closer together, her
narrow, sharp nostrils dilated; her lips, half open, inhaled deep,
unconscious breaths. The pupils of her eyes contracted like a cat's in
the light. Then she shook herself, passed her hand over her forehead,
shrugged her shoulders and resumed her work.
A little later this performance was repeated; this time, after her
momentary preoccupation, she rose more briskly, put her tools away, laid
her book carefully aside and took off her pinafore. After washing her
hands she went into her own room on the same floor. She went
down-stairs ten minutes after, in a fresh frock, her hair nicely
arranged, radiating a faint perfume of violet water. She opened the
front door and walked slowly down the path to the gate where the wall,
though but waist-high on the garden side, stood high above the sidewalk.
Here she waited, touching the balustrade delicately with her
outstretched fingers, as if playing upon a piano. The breeze loosened
the severity of her coiffure, which relaxed into slight touches of
curling frivolity about her ears and neck. Her pink frock billowed out
into flowing, statuesque folds as she stood, like a figurehead, gazing
off at the mountains. Her mouth was set into a shape not quite a smile,
a queer, tremulously subtle expression of suspense. She kept her eyes
in the direction of Hyde Street.
It was not long before a man turned the corner and walked briskly toward
her. He looked up at the first house on the block, searching for the
number; then, as his eyes traveled along to the next gate, he caught
sight of her. Instantly his soft felt hat swung off with a quick
flourish and he sent her a pleased smile.
"Here I am, Mr. Granthope!" Clytie called down to him, and on the
instant her face was suffused with pink. She had evidently expected
him, but now she appeared as agitated as if his coming had surprised
her.
He ran up the flight of wooden steps, his eyes holding hers all the way.
His dark, handsome face glowed; he abounded with life and spirit as he
stood before her, hand outstretched. In the other, he held a small
leather-bound book.
"Good afternoon, Miss Payson!" he said heartily. He shook hands eagerly,
his touch, even in that conventional greeting, consciously managed; the
grasp was sensitive and he delayed its withdrawal a suggestive second,
his dark eyes already at work upon hers. "How lucky I was to catch you
out here!" he added, as he dropped her hand.
"Oh, I've been expecting you for some time," Clytie replied, retreating
imperceptibly, as from an emotional attack, and turning away her eyes.
He noticed her susceptibility, and modified his manner slightly.
"Why! You couldn't possibly have known I was coming?"
"But I did! Does that surprise you? I told you I had intuitions, you
know. You came to bring my ring, didn't you?"
"Yes, of course. You really have second-sight, then?" He looked at her
as one might look at a fairy, in amusement mingled with admiration.
"Yes--haven't _you_?" She put it to him soberly.
"Haven't I already proved it?" His eyes, well-schooled, kept to hers
boldly, seeking for the first sign of her incredulity. Into his manner
he had tried to infuse a temperamental sympathy, establishing a personal
relation.
She did not answer for a moment, gazing at him disconcertingly; then her
eyes wandered, as she remarked: "You certainly proved something, I don't
quite know what."
He laughed it off, saying: "Well, I've proved at least that I wanted to
see you again, and made the most of this excuse."
"Yes, I'm glad I forgot the ring. I'm really very glad to see you,
too--I half hoped I might. Won't you come up to my summer-house? It's
not so windy there, and we can talk better."
He accepted, pleased at the invitation and the implied promise it held,
and followed her up the path and off toward the line of trees. The
place was now visited by belated sunshine which compensated for the
sharp afternoon breeze. In the shelter of the cypress hedge the air was
warm and fragrant. Here was an arbor built of withe crockery crates
overgrown with climbing nasturtiums; it contained a seat looking
eastward, towards Telegraph Hill. In front stood a sun-dial mounted on
a terra cotta column, beneath a clump of small Lombardy poplars.
As she seated herself she pointed to it. "Did you know that this is a
sort of cemetery? That sun-dial is really a gravestone. When I was a
little girl I buried my doll underneath it. She had broken open,
letting the sawdust all out, and I thought she must be dead. It may be
there now, for all I know; I never dug her up."
He looked over at the shaft, saying, "A very pretty piece of symbolism.
I suppose I have buried illusions, myself, somewhere."
She thought it over for a moment, and apparently was pleased. "I'd like
to dig some of them up," she said at last, turning to him, with the slow
movement of her head that was characteristic of her.
"Haven't you enough left?"
She started to reply, but evidently decided not to say what she had
intended, and let it drop there, her thought passing in a puzzling smile
as she looked away again.
He had laid his book beside him upon the bench, and, when her eyes came
back, she took it up and looked at it. A glance inside showed it to be
an old edition of Montaigne. She smiled, her eyes drifted to him with a
hint of approval for his taste, then she turned her interest to the
binding. As she fingered the leather, touching the tooled surfaces
sensitively, her curiosity did not escape his sharp eyes, watching for
anything that should be revelatory.
She explained: "I have a technical interest in bindings. I do some of
that work myself. It's curious that I happened to be at work to-day on
an old copy of Montaigne. I'm rebinding it for my father's birthday.
You'd never think my hands were of any practical use, would you?"
He laughed. "Inconsistencies like that are what baffles one most,
especially when one knows that most characters are inconsistent. But we
professionals have to go by general rules. I should expect you to be an
exception to all of them, though."
He watched her surreptitiously, noting her diminishing color, the
evasion of her glance, and the air of self-consciousness with which she
spoke, as they talked for a while of obvious things--the weather, the
view, and the picturesque, old-fashioned garden. She had taken the ring
and had put it upon her finger, keeping her eyes on its turquoises. Her
whole demeanor ministered to his vanity, already pleased by her frank
welcome. He was used enough to women's interest and admiration for him
to expect it and play upon it, but this was of a shyer and more elusive
sort; it seemed to hold something more seriously considered, it baffled
him, even as he enjoyed its unction. Besides all this, too, there was a
secret romantic charm in the fact that they had shared together that
vivid experience of the past. He came back for another draught of
flattery.
"It was odd that you expected me, wasn't it?" he said. "I can't help
wondering about it."
She had her eyes upon the Sausalito boat, which was weaving a trailing
web of foam past Alcatraz Island. At his words, she turned to him with
the same slow seriousness as before and replied:
"I shouldn't think it would seem so remarkable to you, your own power is
so much more wonderful."
"Perhaps so in that one case, but you know I don't, ordinarily, claim
clairvoyance. It's only occasionally, as the other day with you, that I
attempt it."
Her eyes awakened; she said earnestly, "Was I really able to bring that
out in you?"
He caught at the hint. "Why, what else could it be but your magnetism?
It was the more strange because I had never seen you before."
The glow faded, and she relaxed her nervous energy. "Ah, hadn't you? I
wonder!"
"Why, had you ever seen me before that day?"
"I think so. At least you seem, somehow, familiar."
"When was it, and where, then?"
She seemed too puzzled to answer, or fatigued with following an
intangible thread of thought. As she spoke, slowly, intensely, her
hands made large, vague gestures, often pausing in mid air, as her voice
paused, waiting for the proper word to come. "I don't know. It only
seems as if I had been with you--or near you, or something--I don't know
what. It's like a dream--or a story I can't quite recall, only--" she
did not finish the sentence.
He wondered what her game could be. Fundamentally cynical, though he
never permitted it to show in his manner, he distrusted her claims to
prevision. There was, after all, nothing in Miss Payson's words that
might not be accounted for by what he knew of the wiles of feminine
psychology. His training had taught him how much a baseless hint,
injected at the proper moment, could accomplish in the masquerade of
emotions and the crafty warfare of the sexes. That he and she had been
actors together in a past uncomprehended scene, he regarded as a mere
coincidence of which he had already made good use; he refused to connect
it with her suggestive remark, for he was sure that she must have been
unaware of his presence in Madam Grant's room that day, so long ago. It
seemed to him more likely that, woman-fashion, she had shot into the air
and had brought down an unsuspected quarry. And yet, even as a
coincidence, he could not quite dismiss the strangeness of it from his
mind.
He was preparing to turn it to a sentimental advantage, when Clytie, who
had relapsed into silence, suddenly aroused herself with one of those
impulsive outbursts which were characteristic of her.
"There is something about it all that is stranger still, I think!"
Her golden brows had drawn together, separated by two vertical lines, as
she gazed at him. Then with a little jet of fervor, she added:
"I'm afraid I know too much about you, Mr. Granthope! It's somewhat
embarrassing, really. It doesn't seem quite fair, you know."
"I'm not quite sure that I understand."
"Oh, you know! You must know!"