Part 1

Produced by Al Haines.

*THE HEART LINE*

_A DRAMA OF SAN FRANCISCO_

_By_

GELETT BURGESS

Author of The White Cat, Vivette A Little Sister of Destiny, etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

LESTER RALPH

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT 1907 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

OCTOBER

TO MAYSIE WHO KNEW THE PEOPLE AND LOVED THE PLACE

IN MEMORY OF THE CITY THAT WAS

*CONTENTS*

CHAPTER

Prologue

I The Palmist and Fancy Gray II Tuition and Intuition III The Spider's Nest IV The Paysons V The Rise and Fall of Gay P. Summer VI Side Lights VII The Weaving of the Web VIII Illumination IX Coming On X A Look Into the Mirror XI The First Turning to the Left XII The First Turning to the Right XIII The Bloodsucker XIV The Fore-Honeymoon XV The Re-Entrant Angle XVI Tit for Tat XVII The Materializing Seance XVIII A Return to Instinct XIX Fancy Gray Accepts XX Masterson's Manoeuvers XXI The Sunrise

Epilogue

*THE HEART LINE*

*PROLOGUE*

In the year 1877 the Siskiyou House, originally a third-class hotel patronized chiefly by mining men, had fallen into such disrepute that it was scarcely more than a cheap tenement. Its office was now frankly a bar-room; beside it, a narrow hallway plunged into the shabby, shadowy interior; here a steep stairway rose. Above were disconsolate rooms known to the police of San Francisco as the occasional resort of counterfeiters, confidence workers and lesser knaves; to the neighborhood the Siskiyou Hotel had a local reputation as being the home of Madam Grant, who occupied two rooms on the second floor.

Her rooms were slovenly and squalid--almost barbarous in the extremity of their neglect. Upon the floor was a matted carpet of dirt and rubbish inches deep, piled higher at the corners, uneven with lumps of refuse, bizarre with scraps of paper, cloth and tangled strings.

In the rear room an unclean length of burlap was stretched across a string, half concealing a disordered, ramshackle cot, whose coverings were ragged, soiled and moth-eaten. A broken chair or two leaned crazily against the wall. The dusty windows looked point-blank upon the damp wall of an abutting wooden house. There had once been paper upon the walls; it was now torn, scratched and rubbed by grimy shoulders into a harlequin pattern of dun and greasy tones.

The front room, through the open rolling doors, was, if possible, in a still worse state of decay, and here wooden and paper boxes, tin cans, sacks of rags (doing service for cushions), a three-legged table and a smoked, rusty oil-stove, with its complement of unclean pots and dishes, showed the place, abominable as was its aspect, to be a human abode. A print or two, torn from some newspaper or magazine, was pinned to the wall in protest against the sordidness of the interior. The place gave forth a fetid and moldy smell. The air was damp, though the sun struggled in through cracked panes, half lighting the apartment.

There was, however, one piece of furniture, glossily, splendidly new, incongruously set amidst the disorder--an oak bookcase, its shelves well filled with volumes. Seated upon a cracker box in front of its open doors, this afternoon, a boy of eight years sat reading with rapt excitement the story of _Gulliver's Travels_.

He, too, seemed strangely set in that environment, for he was clean and sweet in person and dress. His hair was black and waving, his eyes deep blue, clear and shrewd. His cheeks were pink and gently dimpled, his mouth ample, firm and well-cut, over a square, deeply cleft chin. He was patently a handsome child, virile, graceful, determined in his pose. His natural charm was made more picturesque by a blue flannel suit, with white collar, cuffs and stockings. Oblivious to his extraordinary surroundings, he read on until he had finished the book.

He rose then, yawned and walked to the window in the front room to look out upon the street. Opposite was a row of low buildings--a stable, a Chinese laundry, two dreary rooming-houses and a saloon. The roof-line of the block, where the false wooden fronts, met the sky, held his gaze for a few moments. A horse-car lumbered lazily past, and his eyes fell to the cobble-paved thoroughfare and its passers-by. To the left, Market Street roared bustling a block away and the throngs swept up and down. To the right, a little passage starting from two saloons, one on each corner of the street, penetrated the slums. The warm, mellow California sunlight bathed the whole scene, picking out, here and there, high lights on window-glass that shot forth blinding sparks and flashes.

The boy yawned again, his hands in his pockets, then turned to the sooty oil stove and peered rather disgustedly amongst the frying-pans, tins and pasteboard boxes. There was nothing in the way of food to be found. He sniffed fastidiously at the corrupt odor of cooking, then knelt upon the floor and began a search, crawling gingerly on hands and knees. The ends of three matches projected slightly above the surface of the matted layers of rubbish. Here he scraped the dirt away with a case-knife and came upon a little paper-wrapped parcel which, opened, disclosed three bright twenty-five-cent pieces. He wrapped them up again, tucked them into the hole in the dirt and went on with his quest.

His next find, a foot or so from the base-board of the double doors, was a _cache_ containing a pearl-handled pen-knife. He put it back. Here and there in the subsoil he came upon other treasure trove, each article carefully wrapped in paper or bits of rag--a jet ear-ring, a folded calendar, a silver chain, two watches, a dozen screw-eyes, several five-dollar gold pieces, a roll of corset laces. He returned them one by one as he found them, and smoothed the dirt over the place.

He had nearly exhausted the field in the front room, when he came upon a small paper bag containing a few macaroons. These he sat down to eat, first brushing off feathery bits of green mold. He discovered another bag containing peanuts. He chewed them slowly, throwing the shells upon the floor, his eyes wandering, his air abstracted.

Leading off the front room was a smaller one whose door was shut. He opened it now, and went in somewhat fearfully. Here was another cot drawn up in front of the window, and, upon nails driven in the wall, women's hats and dresses. Upon the inside of the door was pinned a stained, yellowing newspaper cut--the portrait of a man perhaps thirty years old, with mustache and side-whiskers and a wide flowing collar. Beneath it was printed the name, "Oliver Payson." The boy gazed at it curiously for some moments.

From this, he turned to a corner where stood an old trunk covered with cowhide whose hair was rubbed off in mangy spots. Corroded brass-headed nails held a rotting, pinked flap of red leather about the edge of the cover. On the top of the trunk, also in brass-headed nails, were the letters "F.G."

He stooped over and tried the lid. The trunk was locked. He lifted it, testing its weight, and found it too heavy to be budged. He rubbed the hair with his hand, played with the handles and fingered the lock longingly; then, after a last look, he left the room and closed the door.

He had gone back to the bookcase and taken down a volume of Montaigne's _Essays_, when he heard a knock on the door of the back room leading into the hallway. He unlocked the door, opened it a few inches and stood guarding the entrance.

A woman of middle age in a black bonnet, shawl and gown attempted to pass him. He stood stiffly in her way, regarding her harsh, sour visage, thin, cruel lips and pale, humid, bluish eyes. At his resolute defense her attitude weakened.

"Ain't Madam Grant to home?" she said.

"No, she is not. What do you want?"

"Oh, I just wanted to see her; you let me come in and wait a while--she'll be back soon, I s'pose?"

"She doesn't allow me to let anybody in when she's away," the boy protested.

"Oh, that's all right, Frankie; I'm a particular friend of hers. I'll just come in and make myself to home till she comes in. I'm all winded comin' up them steep stairs, and I've got to set down."

"I'm sorry," the boy said more politely, "but I mustn't let you in. I did let a lady in once, and Mamsy scolded me for it. The next day we missed a watch, too."

"My sakes! Does she keep her watches in the dirt on the floor, too?" the woman said, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. "You needn't worry about me, my dear; everybody knows me, and trusts me, too. Besides, my business is important and I've just _got_ to see the Madam, sure."

"You may wait on the stairs, if you like, but you can't come in here. She says that the neighbors are altogether too curious." The remark was made deliberately, as if to aid his defense by its rudeness. But the woman's skin was tough.

"You're a pert one, you be!" she sniffed. "I'd like to know what you do here all day, anyway. You ought to be to school! We'll have to look after you, young man; they's societies that makes a business of seeing to children that's neglected like you, and takes 'em away where they can be taught an education and live decent."

The boy's face changed to dismay. The tears came into his eyes. "I don't _want_ to go away, I want to live here, and I'm going to, too! Besides, I can read and write already, and I learn more things than you can learn at school. I'd just like to see them take me away!"

"What do you learn, now?" said the woman insinuatingly. "Do you learn how to tell fortunes? Can you tell mine, now? I'll give you a nickel if you will!"

"I don't want a nickel. I've got all the money I want!"

"Oh, you have, have you? How much have you got? Say, I hear the Madam's pretty well fixed. How much do you s'pose she's worth, now?"

"You can't work me that way."

She put forth a shaky hand to stroke his dark hair, and he warded her off. "Nor that way either!" he said, beginning to grow angry.

"Say, sonny, do you ever see the spirits here?" she began again.

"No, but I can smell 'em now," he replied.

She burst out into a cackle of laughter. "Say, that's pretty good! You're a likely little feller, you be. I didn't mean no harm, noways."

"You mean that you didn't mean any harm, don't you?" he asked soberly.

"No, I don't mean no harm, sure I don't! What d'you mean?"

"She says one shouldn't use double negatives."

"What's them, then?"

"I mean you don't use good English," said the boy.

"I don't talk English? What do I talk then--Dutch? What's the matter with you?"

"Oh, I'm just studying grammar, that's all. Now you see I don't need to go to school, the way you said. Mamsy teaches me every night."

"Oh, she does, does she? Well, well! I hear she has a fine education; some say she's went to college, even."

"Yes, she has. She went to a woman's college in the East, once."

"Then what's she living in this pigsty for, I'd like to know! It beats all, this room does. Let me come in for a moment and just look round a bit, will you? I won't touch nothing at all, sure."

The boy protested, and it might have come to a physical struggle had not footsteps been heard coming up the narrow stairway. The visitor peered over the railing of the balusters.

"That's her!" she whispered hoarsely.

A head, rising, looked between the balusters, like a wild animal gazing through the bars of its cage. It was the head of a woman of twenty-seven or eight, and though her face had a strange, wild expression, with staring eyes, she was, or had undoubtedly been, a lady. Her hair, prematurely gray, was parted in the center and brought down in waves over her ears. Her eyebrows, in vivid contrast, were black; and between them a single vertical line cleft her forehead. What might have been a rare beauty was now distorted into something fantastic and mysterious, though when at rare intervals she smiled, a veil seemed to be drawn aside and she became an engaging, familiar, warm-hearted woman. She was dressed in a brilliant red gown and dolman of mosaic cloth with a Tyrolean hat of the period. Such striking color was, thirty years ago, uncommon upon the streets, but, even had it been more usual, the severity of her costume with neither a bustle nor the elaborate ruffles and trimmings then in vogue, would have made her conspicuous.

She came up, with a white face, gasping for breath after her climb, one hand to her heart. For a moment she seemed unable to speak. Then suddenly and sharply she said:

"Francis, shut the door!"

The boy obeyed, coming out into the hall, with a hand still holding the knob.

"The lady wanted me to let her in, but I wouldn't do it, Mamsy," he said.

Madam Grant turned her eyes upon the apologetic, cringing figure, whose thin, skinny fingers plucked at her shawl.

"I just called neighborly like, thinkin' maybe you'd give me a settin', Madam Grant," she said.

Madam Grant had come nearer, now, and stood gazing at her visitor. The expression of scorn had faded from her face, her eyes glazed. She spoke slowly in a deliberate monotone.

"Your name is Margaret Riley."

The woman nodded. Her lips had fallen open, and her eyes were fixed in awe.

"Who are the three men I see beside you?" demanded Madam Grant.

"They was only two! I swear to God they was only two!"

"There is a little child, too."

"For the love of Heaven!" Mrs. Riley moaned. "Send 'em away, send 'em away, tell 'em to leave me be!"

Madam Grant's eyes brightened a little, and her color returned.

"Come in the room and I will see what I can do for you."

The three entered, Mrs. Riley, half terrified but curious, darting her eyes about the apartment, sniffing at the foul odor, her furtive glances returning ever to the mad woman. Francis went to the bookcase and resumed his reading without manifesting further interest in the visitor. Madam Grant seated herself upon a wooden box covered with sacking and untied the strings of her hat.

"What do you want to know?" she asked sharply.

"I got three tickets in the lottery, and I want to know which one to keep," Mrs. Riley ventured, somewhat shamefaced.

Madam Grant gave a fierce gesture, and the line between her brows grew deeper. "I'll answer such questions for nobody! That's the devil's work, not mine. How did your three husbands die, Margaret Riley?"

The woman held up her hands in protest. "Two, only two!" she cried; "and they died in their beds regular enough. God knows I wore my fingers out for 'em, too!"

"They died suddenly," Madam Grant replied impassively. "Who's the other one with the smooth face--the one who limps?"

Mrs. Riley coughed into her hands nervously. "It might be my brother."

"It is not your brother. You know who it is, Mrs. Riley; and he tells me that you must give back the papers."

"Oh, I'll give 'em back; I was always meanin' to give 'em back, God knows I was! I'll do it this week."

"In a week it will be too late."

"I'll do it to-morrow."

"You'll do it to-day, Mrs. Riley."

"I will, oh, I will!"

"Now, if you want a sitting, I'll give you one," Madam Grant continued. "That is, if I can get Weenie. I can't promise anything. She comes and she goes like the sun in spring."

"Never mind," said Mrs. Riley, rising abruptly. "I think I'll be going, after all." She started toward the door.

The clairvoyant's face had set again in a vacant, far-away expression and her voice fell to the same dead tone she had used before. She clutched her throat suddenly.

"He's in the water--he's drowning--he's passing out now--he's gone! You are responsible, you! you! You drove him to it with your false tongue and your crafty hands. But you'll regret it. You'll pay for it in misery and pain, Margaret Riley. Your old age will be miserable. You'll escape shame to suffer torment!"

Mrs. Riley's face, haggard and terrified, was working convulsively. Without taking her eyes from the medium, she ran into the front room and shook the boy's shoulder.

"Wake her up, Frankie, I don't want no more of this! Wake her up, dear, and let me go!"

Francis arose lazily and walked over to Madam Grant. He put his arm tenderly about her and whispered in her ear.

"Come back, Mamsy dear! Come back, Mamsy, I want you!" He began stroking her hands firmly.

Mrs. Riley, still gazing, fascinated, at the group, backed out of the room and closed the door. Her steps were heard stumbling down the stairs. Madam Grant's eyes quivered and opened slowly. She shuddered, then shook the blood back into her thin, white hands. Finally she looked up at Francis and smiled. "All right, dear!"

Her smile, however, lasted but for the few moments during which he caressed her; then the veil fell upon her countenance, and her eyes grew strange and hard. She gazed wildly here and there about the room.

"What's that in Boston?" she asked suddenly, the pitch of her voice sharply raised, as she pointed to the shells upon the rubbish of the floor.

"Only some peanuts I was eating, Mamsy," said the boy, guiltily watching her.

"Somebody has been in Toledo, somebody has been in New York! I can see the smoke of the trains!" Her eyes traveled around an invisible path, from mound to mound of dirt and scraps, noticing the slight displacements the boy had made in his quest for food. He watched her sharply, but without fear.

"Oh, the train didn't stop, Mamsy; they were express trains, you know."

"Don't tell me, don't tell me!"

She pointed with her slender forefinger here and there. "New Orleans is safe; New Orleans is always a safe, strait-laced old town; but the place isn't what it was! They've left the French quarter now to the Creoles, but I know a place on Royal Street where the gallery whispers--O God! that gallery with the magnolia trees--and the leper girl across the street in the end room!" Her voice had sunk to a harsh whisper; now it rose again. "Chicago--all right. I wouldn't care if it weren't. Baltimore--_he_ never was in Baltimore. But what's the matter with Denver? Somebody's been to Denver!" She turned her gaze point-blank upon Francis.

He met it fairly.

"Oh, no, Mamsy, nobody ever goes to Denver, Mamsy dear!"

She knelt down and groped tentatively, sensitively, across the layer of dust that sloped toward the corner, by the bay-window. She turned, still on all-fours, to shake her finger at him, and say solemnly: "Don't ever go to Denver, Francis! Denver's a bad place, a very wicked place. They gamble in Denver, they gamble yellow money away." She arose, apparently either satisfied or diverted in her quest, to turn her back to the boy and look inside the bag she had been holding.

"Go outside, Francis!" she commanded, after fumbling with its contents.

He walked to the door and passed into the hall. Here he waited, listening listlessly, drumming softly upon the railing. The room was silent for a while; then he heard a muffled pounding, as of one stamping down the surface of the matted dirt. At last she called him and he went in again. Madam Grant's face was placid and kind.

She proceeded to occupy herself busily at the little oil stove, putting into the greasy frying-pan some chops which she had brought home with her. The spluttering and the pungent odor of the frying fat soon filled the two rooms. She cut a few slices from a loaf of stale bread, and set the meager repast forth upon the top of a wooden box.

"Come and have dinner, Francis!" she said, with a sweet look at him.

That the boy was far older than his years was evident by the way he watched her and took his cue from her, humoring her in her madder moments, restraining her in her moods of mystic exaltation, pathetically affectionate during her lucid intervals. She was in this last phase now, and from time to time, in the course of their meal, his hand stole to hers. Its pressure was softly returned.

"What have you read to-day?"

"I finished _Gulliver_."

"What did you think of it?"

"Why, somehow, it seemed just like it might be true."

"_As if_ it might be true, Francis--what did I tell you?" Her tone grew severe, almost pedagogic. "You must be careful of your talk, my boy! Never forget; it is important. You'll never get on if you're careless and common. You will often be judged by your speech. What else did you read?"

"I tried Montaigne's _Essays_, but I couldn't understand much. It seemed so dull to me. But there's one, _Whether the Governor of a Place Besieged Ought Himself to go out to Parley_. I like that!"

Madam Grant laughed. "I'd like to have known Montaigne; he was a kind of old maid, but he was a modern, after all; common sense will do if you can't get humor."

"Where did you get all these books, Mamsy?"

Her face grew blank again; her eyes wandered. She recited in a sort of croon:

"Heard, have you? what? they have told you he never repented his sin. How do they know it? are they his mother? are you of his kin?"

A frightened look came on the boy's face and his hand went to hers again.

"Mamsy, Mamsy!" he cried. "Come back, Mamsy! I want you!"

She turned to him as if she had never seen him before. "Oh!" she said, and drew aside. Then: "You mustn't ask questions, my boy."

"I won't, Mamsy."

"You're a good little boy and you came out of the dark," she pursued.

"Out of the dark?" he repeated, tempting her on. His curiosity was manifest.

"Don't you remember?"

"I'm not sure. They was a place--"

"There was a place," she corrected.

"There was a place where they beat me, and I ran away, and I found you, and you were good to me."

"No, it is you who have been good--I'm not good; I'm bad, Francis."

"I know you're good, Mamsy, because you teach me to do everything right, and I love you!"

With a quick impulse she clasped him to her, but even as she did so, her face changed again, this time with an expression of pain. She put her hand to her heart suddenly and moaned. He watched her in terror.

"Get the bottle!" she commanded huskily, dropping to the floor, to support herself on her elbow.

He ran to a little bath-room beside the closet, brought a bottle and spoon, poured out a dose of the medicine and put it to her lips. Finally she sat up, listening.

"Somebody's coming. _She_ is coming! Come here, Francis! Quickly!"

Taking him by the hand, she led him to the closet in the back room, pushed him inside, closed the door and locked it.

It was dark in the closet, but he knew its contents as well as if he could see them. Upon a row of shelves were account-books and papers covered with dust. On nails in the wall his own small stock of clothes hung, and in a wooden box on the floor were his playthings--blocks, a wooden horse, several precious bits of twine and leather, a collection of spools and a toy globe. He sat down on this box patiently and waited.

Presently there came a knock at the hall door. Madam Grant opened it and some one entered. He heard his guardian's voice saying:

"Come in, Grace, here I am, such as I am, and here you are, such as you are." Then her voice changed, becoming tremulous and excited. "Ah, but she's beautiful! May I kiss her, Grace? Oh, what eyes! Her father's eyes, aren't they? Don't be afraid, Grace, let her come to me."