"Why?"
"Oh, I'd like to see him, that's all. He must be a pretty clever fakir.
Of course he isn't straight?"
"As a bow-knot," said Fancy, "but if he amuses you, I'll introduce you
to him. I've got a pretty good stand-in with him, yet." She smiled
sadly.
"Suppose you do. I'd like to hear him talk."
"All right," said Fancy. They rose and walked in the medium's
direction, encountering him on the foreward deck. He was holding his
hat against the fresh breeze and gazing at the approaching lights of the
city. The meeting was somewhat constrained at first. Vixley seemed to
be embarrassed at Cayley's aristocratic appearance, and evidently
wondered what his motive was in being introduced. Cayley, however, was
sufficiently a man of the world to be able to put the medium at his
ease. He told stories, he made jokes, and gradually drew Vixley out.
The wolf talked gingerly, making sure of his ground, his little black
eyes shifting from one to the other, whether he spoke or listened.
Cayley held him cleverly until the crowd began to descend, making ready
for the disembarkation. They went down to the lower deck. Here the
crowd had begun to pack together into a close mass, jostling, joking,
singing--all sorts and conditions of men in a common holiday mood.
Cayley managed so that Fancy went ahead, and, with some dexterous
manoeuvering, allowed two or three persons to pass between himself and
her. Vixley was just behind him, when Cayley turned and said quickly:
"Can you meet me at the Hospital Saloon at ten o'clock to-night?"
"What for?" the Professor demanded.
"Important--something about Payson. It is decidedly to your advantage
to see me."
"I'll be there!" A light gleamed behind Vixley's shrewd black eyes.
The two squirmed their way to where Fancy was standing, and accompanied
her off the boat. At the entrance to the ferry building the medium took
his leave. Cayley and Fancy had dinner together, after which, urging an
engagement, he put her aboard her car and walked down Market Street to
the "Hospital."
Vixley was there, waiting for him, sitting at a side table, regarding an
enormous painting of a nude over the bar. His quick eye caught Cayley
as he entered and drew him on. For the rest of the interview they did
not leave the young man's face.
*CHAPTER XII*
*THE FIRST TURNING TO THE RIGHT*
"All I got to say is this," said Madam Spoll, "if you know what's best
for yourself, you won't make no enemies."
"I scarcely think you can hurt me much," said Granthope, losing interest
in the discussion, as he saw he could make no way with her.
"We can't, can't we? We know a whole lot more about you than you'd care
to have told, Frank Granthope. Since I seen you last, things have
developed with Payson, and now we're in a position to say to you, look
out for yourself. Payson's stock has went up some. We've got inside
information that's valuable."
"Then you don't need me, surely."
"We need you to keep your mouth shut, if nothing else."
"You mean not to tell Mr. Payson anything? I would if I thought I could
make him listen."
"Tell _him_? Lord, you can tell him till you're black in the face, and
he wouldn't believe it--not till you tell him where we got our
information. Why, if he caught me at the keyhole of his room, he
wouldn't suspect anything. We've got the goods to deliver this time,
don't you fool yourself. Payson's a ten-to-one shot all right. All we
want to be sure of now is the girl you're trying to marry."
"I'm not trying to marry her," said Granthope bitterly.
"That's lucky for you!"
"Why?" he demanded suspiciously.
Madam Spoll spoke very slowly and deliberately without asperity,
"Because if you _should_ be fool enough to try it on your own hook
without helping us out in our game, why, we'd have to show you up to
her. I know a little too much about you, Frank Granthope, for you to
throw me down as easy as that. You can't exactly set yourself up for a
saint, you know; there's the Bennett affair and one or two more like it.
Then, again, there's Fancy Gray and several others like _that_. It'll
add up to a pretty tidy scandal, if the Payson girl should happen to
hear about it all; and if not her, there's others that it won't do you
any good to have know."
Granthope shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, looking calmly at the
medium. Her face was as placid and unwrinkled as his. She showed not
the slightest trace of vindictiveness, talking as though discussing some
impersonal business arrangement.
"Then I am to understand that you threaten me with blackmail?"
"Black, white or yellow, any color you like." She made a deprecatory
gesture, "But I don't put it that way myself; all I do say is, that it's
for your interest to leave us alone. You know as well as I do that we
can put the kibosh on your business, if we want to. We've got a pretty
good gang to work with, and when we pass the word round and hand you the
double-cross, you won't read many more palms at five per, not in this
town you won't."
He smiled. "That's all a bluff. You can't expose me without giving
yourself away as well."
"What have we got to lose? We could get the old man back any time we
gave him a jolly. You can't bust up our business--too many suckers in
town for that. Lord, I've been exposed till I grew fat on it. But we
can break _you_, Frank Granthope; we can bust your business and queer
you with this swell push, easy, not to speak of Clytie Payson."
"Well, then," said Granthope, rising and taking his hat, "go ahead and
do it! We might just as well settle this thing now. Smash my
business--I don't care; I wish you would! Ruin any social ambition I
may be fool enough to have--it'll serve me right for caring for such
nonsense. Tell Miss Payson all you know--it'll save me the shame of
telling her myself. God knows I wish she did know it! I'm getting sick
of the whole dirty game."
Madam Spoll, completely taken aback by his unexpected change of base,
stood with a sneer on her face, watching him. "You ought to go on the
stage, Frank Granthope--you almost fooled me for a minute," she said
with an ironic smile. "I fully expected you to say you had joined the
Salvation Army next, and had come around here to save me from hell. So
you've got religion, have you? You'd look well in a white necktie, you
would! And your inside pocket full of mash notes!"
"Well," he said, walking to the door, "you've had your say and I've had
mine. You can believe what you please, but when you do think it over,
you may recall the fact that I usually mean what I say."
This was the end of the interview. Madam Spoll, at Vixley's
instigation, had sent for Granthope and had "put on the screws."
Granthope walked back to his rooms in a brown study. He was at bay now,
and there seemed to be no escape for him.
The red-headed office boy was whistling and whittling a pencil lazily at
Fancy's desk as the palmist entered. There was no one else in the room.
"Has anybody been here, Jim?" Granthope asked.
Jim looked up carelessly and replied, "Dere was a lady what blew in
about a half an hour ago and she told me she might float back."
"Who was she?"
"She wouldn't leave no name, but she was a kissamaroot from Peachville
Center all right. She looked like she was just graduated from a French
laundry. She left dese gloves here."
He handed over a pair of long, immaculately white gloves, which were
lying on a chair. Granthope looked at them carefully, blew one out till
it took the form of a hand and then inspected the wrinkles.
"Oh," he said. "Tell Miss Payson to come into my studio when she comes
back."
"Say, Mr. Granthope, who's Miss Gray? De lady wanted to know where was
Miss Gray, and I told her she could search me, for I wasn't on. She
looked like she took me for a shine to be holdin' down de desk here;
dat's right."
Granthope walked quickly into his studio without answering.
He seated himself thoughtfully and looked about him, still holding the
white glove caressingly in his hand. His eye traveled from the
electric-lighted table, round the black velvet arras, to the panel where
the signs of the zodiac were embroidered in gold: then his eyes closed.
He sat silent for ten minutes or so, then he drew his hand through his
heavy black hair and across his brow. His eyes opened; he arose; a
faint whimsical smile shone on his face.
Then, still smiling, he strode deliberately across the room, grasped the
black velvet hanging and gave it a violent tug, wrenching it from the
cornice. It fell in a soft, dark mass upon the floor. He seized the
next breadth of drapery, and the next, tearing them from the wall. So
he went calmly round the room in his work of destruction, disclosing a
widening space of horribly-patterned wall-paper--pink and yellow roses
writhing up a violently blue background. On the last side of the room
two windows appeared, the glass almost opaque with dust.
He threw up a sash; a shaft of sunshine shot in, and, falling upon the
velvet waves upon the floor, changed them to dull purple. In that ray a
universe of tiny motes danced radiantly. A current of air set them in
motion and swept them from the room through the window into the world
outside.
And, as he stood there, his face like that of a child who had released a
toy balloon, watching that beam of yellow light, Clytie Payson opened
the door of the studio and looked in at him. She appeared suddenly,
like a picture thrown vividly upon a screen. She saw Granthope before
he saw her, and, for a moment, she stood gazing. His pose was eloquent;
he was, in his setting, almost symbolistic--she needed no explanation of
what had happened. Then, it was as if some tense cord snapped in her
mind, and she threw herself forward, no longer the dreamer, but the
actor, giving free rein to her emotion.
[Illustration: His pose was eloquent]
He turned and caught sight of her. Her hands were outstretched, her
eyes were burning with a new fire, as if her smoldering had burst into
flame.
"Oh! You have done it! I knew you would!"
He gave her his two hands in hers, nodding his head slowly; his smile
was that of one who viewed himself impersonally, looking on at his own
actions. He did not speak. A quaint humor struggled in his mind with
the intensity of the situation. Something in him, also, had snapped,
and he was self-conscious in his new role.
She clutched his hands excitedly, and lifted her eyes up to his, with a
new, unabashed fondness burning in them. She had thrown away all her
reserves.
"It's magnificent!" she said. "Oh, how I have longed for this! How I
have waited for it! And now, how I admire--and love you for it!"
Her face was so near his that, like an electric spark, the flash of
eagerness darted from one to the other. He felt the shock of emotion
tingling his blood. It swept his mind from control and flooded his will
with an irresistible desire for her. He saw that she was ready for him,
willing to be won. He took her in his arms and kissed her softly, but
gripping her almost savagely in his embrace.
"Do you mean it?" he cried. "Do you love me, really? I can't believe
it! It's too much for me. Tell me!"
She released herself gently, still looking up at him and smiling
frankly. "Didn't you know? You, who know so much of women? I thought
you understood me as I have understood you."
He still held her, as if he feared he could never get her again so
close, and she went on:
"Oh, I would never have told you, if you had gone on as you were going,
though I should always have loved you--I could never have helped that.
But now, after this crisis, this victory--I know what it all means--I
_must_ tell you! Why shouldn't I? It is true, and I am not ashamed to
be the first to speak. Yes, I love you!"
The reaction came, his sight grew dark at the thought of his
unworthiness, and he freed her, putting her away slowly. Then, as if to
resist any temptation, he clasped his hands behind his back.
"I can't stand it!" he exclaimed. "It isn't fair for me to let you say
that. Don't say it yet. Wait till I have told you what I am. Then you
will despise me, and hate me."
"Never!" she said firmly. "Do you think I don't know you? I am sure.
It is impossible for you to surprise me. Whatever you have been or
done, it will make no difference--for better or for worse. Of course, I
can't know all the circumstances of your life, but I feel that I am sure
of your motives--I may know an ideal 'you,' but, if that is not what you
are now, it is what you are to be. It is that 'you' that I love--all
the rest is dead, I hope." She swept her eyes about the barren room,
and her hand went out in comprehensive gesture. "Surely all this can't
mean anything less than that? You are not one for compromise or
half-measures. You have burned your bridges, haven't you?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "I don't intend to do things half-way. But it's
not a pretty story I have to tell. It's selfish, sordid, vulgar."
"Oh, I know something of it, already. Mr. Cayley has told me about that
Bennett affair, for he suspected, somehow, that you were implicated in
it. And I have guessed more. You needn't be afraid. But you had
better tell me as much as you can--not for my sake, but for your own.
Then it will all be over, and we can begin fresh."
She dropped to a seat on the couch and leaned languidly against the
cushions, clasping her hands in her lap. He scarcely dared look at her,
and walked nervously up and down the room, dreading the inevitable
ordeal. For a while he did not speak, then he turned swiftly to say:
"Positively, I don't know where to begin!"
"You would better begin at the beginning, then--with Madam Grant."
"You suspected that, then?"
"It was that suspicion that has drawn me to you. I should never have
begun to love you without that, perhaps. It seemed to justify my
growing feeling for you. Haven't I hinted at that often enough? I mean
that in some way we had been connected before. You _were_ the little
boy who disappeared when she died, weren't you?"
"Yes, of course."
"But I can't make it out! There was never any child there when I went,
though I was conscious of some secret presence--some one invisible."
"I was locked in the closet--I watched you through a crack in the door."
"Oh!" Her eyes widened with a full direct stare; her breath came
quickly at the revelation. He watched her, as her expression was
transmuted from bewilderment to the beginning of an agonized
disillusion. He could not bear it, as he saw that her mind was
hastening to the explanation, and he forestalled her next question by
his ruthless confession.
"Of course, that's the way I was able to give you that very wonderful
clairvoyant reading--the picture of you in Madam Grant's room."
She took the blow bravely, but it was evident that she had not been
quite ready for it. "Then you are really not clairvoyant at all? You
were simply imposing on my credulity? I want to know the exact truth,
so that we can straighten matters out." She spoke slowly, hesitatingly.
"I told you it was a ghastly story--this is the least of it," he said,
wincing.
The smile fluttered back to her quivering lips, and with a quick impulse
she rose, went to him again and clasped his hand.
"Oh, I'm not making it easy for you!" she cried. "Forgive me, please. I
can bear anything you say--be sure of that, won't you? Come here!"
She drew him down to the couch beside her, still keeping his hand in
hers. "This is better," she said softly. "Don't think of me as an
inquisitor, but as a friend. What you have been can not matter any
longer. But let us have no more deceit or reserve between us. You see,
I don't quite understand yet about that day. How did you know who I
was? How did you get my name?"
He summoned his courage as for an operation desperately necessary, and
looked her straight in the eye.
"That was a trick. I read 'Clytie' inside your ring."