CHAPTER IV

THE “TIGER WOMAN”

For Florence fortune telling had always held a certain fascination, not unmixed with fear. Very early in life she had lived for some time with an aunt. Always now, as she closed her eyes, she could see that aunt, straight-lipped, diligent, at times friendly, but always holding close to what she believed was “duty.” Often, too, she seemed to hear her say, “Cards, all playing cards, belong to the Devil. They are of very ancient origin, almost as old as Satan himself. The first cards were made for the purpose of fortune telling. Fortune telling, when it is not pure fraud, belongs to the Devil. Remember Saul. Think how, when he was going to battle he slipped away to that wicked witch. He asked her to tell him how the battle would go. Well, he found out, but little pleasure it brought him! He lost his throne and his head the very next day!”

Florence did not believe all this, nor did she entirely disbelieve it. She tried to look at things calmly and clearly, then decide for herself. All the same, she shuddered as next day she tapped lightly at the door behind which a room was shrouded in midnight blue, and where a crystal ball shone dully.

She smiled in spite of herself as the door opened only a crack and a pair of suspicious inquiring eyes peered out.

“Something to hide,” was the thought that came to her. But was this quite fair? There were policemen always loitering about in the hallway of her own newspaper office. Perhaps all of life was a little dangerous these days.

“Marian Stanley sent me,” she hastened to say before the door might close. “She is the night clerk at the Dunbar Hotel. She told me about you, how—”

“Won’t you come in?” The door was wide open now. Before her stood a short, stout woman with strangely tawny hair. “Like a tiger’s,” Florence thought, “and I believe it’s a genuine shade.”

“I—I’d like to learn about crystal gazing,” she said as she entered the room of midnight blue. “Is—is it frightfully difficult?”

“To learn?” The Tiger Lady, as Florence was to call her, elevated her eyebrows. “A certain way, it is not difficult. But to go far, very far, as I have done—” the Tiger Woman sighed. “Ah, that is a matter of years. Then, too, there are secrets, deep secrets.” Her voice took on an air of mystery. “Secrets regarding the meaning of light, sound, and feelings; secrets regarding the moon and the stars, which we who have journeyed far could not afford to share.

“But if you care to go a little way—” she spread out her hand. “Then I am here to show you for—let me see—” She pretended to consider. “Oh, you shall pay me two dollars. Huh? Will that be O. K.?” Her voice took on a playful note.

“Two dollars will be all right. And may I begin at once?” There was in Florence’s words a note of eagerness that was genuine.

“This,” she was thinking, “is a fresh way of approach. Perhaps there _is_ something to this crystal gazing. I may become a famous gazer. How grand that will be!

“Besides,” came as an afterthought, “I may be able to discover some worthwhile facts about that girl who saw those pictures in the crystal ball. Surely those pictures were real enough. But how did they come there? Could her imagination produce them? If so, would I too be able to see them?” She had a feeling that they had been produced by some strange magic—or was it magic? She could not be sure.

“Now—” Madame Zaran, the crystal-gazer, took on a manner quite professional as she hid Florence’s two dollars on her person. “Now we shall proceed.”

She motioned the girl to the ebony chair beside the table where the crystal ball rested. Then with nervous, active fingers she began arranging articles on that table.

Florence was interested in these few objects. A raven carved from black marble, a bronze dragon with fiery eyes, and a god of some sort with an ugly countenance and a prodigious mouth, all these were on that table. Madame arranged them about the crystal ball, but some distance away from it. Then, as if the ball were a sacred thing, she lifted it with great care to place it in a saucer-like receptacle over which a bronze eagle perpetually hovered.

The girl was much interested in the gazer’s hands. In her wanderings about the city in search of fortune telling facts, she had picked up interesting bits about hands. She was convinced that long slender fingers belonged to a person of a nervous and artistic temperament and that a very broad hand told of force coupled with great determination. Madame’s hand was fairly broad, but her fingers were not long. Instead they were short and curved. “Like the claws of some great cat,” the girl thought with a shudder. Never had she seen fingers that seemed better suited to clawing in hoards of gold.

“And she would not care how she came by it,” Florence thought. And yet, how could she be sure of that?

“Now,” Madame said in a changed tone, “look at the crystal. Concentrate. There is no spirit moving in the crystal. You need not draw one out. The pictures of past and future you are to see by gazing in the crystal are to come from within your own mind, or shall come to you from the spirit world outside the crystal.

“Do not stare. Relax. Look quietly at the crystal. In this room there is nothing to disturb you, no radio with its noise, no ticking clock, nothing. The light is subdued. I myself shall retire. You have only to gaze in the crystal. This time you may see much. Then again, you may see nothing. It is not given to all, this great gift of looking into the future.

“If it is given you to see, you will find first that the crystal begins to look dull and cloudy, with pin points of light glittering out of that fog. When this appears, you shall know that you are beginning to have crystalline vision. In time this shall vanish. In its stead will come a sort of blindness wherein you shall appear to float through great spaces of blue. It is against this background of blue that your vision must appear.

“Ready? Concentrate. Gaze.

“I am gone,” came in a tone that sounded faint and far away. Florence was alone—alone in the room of midnight blue and the faintly gleaming crystal ball.