Part 15

Madam Spoll made a theatrical gesture of surprise. "Lord, Frank, who would have thought of you doing the Sunday-school superintendent act on me! A body would think you'd never faked in your life! My Lord, I'm trying to lead you astray, am I?"

"That's all right. I don't pretend to be very virtuous, but some of this is getting a little raw for me."

Madam Spoll opened her eyes and her mouth. "What's got into you, anyway?"

"Something's got out, perhaps," he said, frowning. "At any rate, I don't care to make use of Miss Payson to help you rob her father."

"Rob her father!" Outraged innocence throbbed in Madam Spoll's voice. "Lord, Frank, you're plumb crazy! Why, he won't spend no money he don't want to, will he? He can afford it well enough! He'll never miss what we get out of him. You might think I was going to pick his pockets, the way you talk." She took him by the arm. "See here! You ain't really stuck on that Payson girl, are you? Why, if I didn't know you so well, I'd be almost ready to suspect you of it! But land, you've had women running after you ever since you went into business! But I notice you don't often stay away from the office more'n two days running."

"I don't know that my private affairs are any of your business," he said curtly. He was rather glad, now, of the chance for an outright quarrel.

But she would not let it come to that, and continued in a wheedling tone: "Well, this happens to be my business, and I speak to you as a friend, Frank, for your own good as well as mine. You can take it or leave it, of course; I ain't a-going to try and put coercion on to you, and there's time enough to decide when we get Payson wired up. Then I'll talk to you just once more. You just think it over a while, and don't do nothing rash."

Granthope arose to leave. He was for a more romantic game, himself. The vulgarity here offended him esthetically rather than ethically, and yet he winced at the insinuations Madam Spoll had made.

"I think I can go it alone," he said; "as for rashness, I won't promise."

He had gone but a few minutes when Professor Vixley entered and shook a long lean claw with Madam Spoll, took off his coat and sat down. "Well," he said affably, "how're they coming, Gert?"

"Oh, so-so; Frank Granthope's just been here."

"Is that so! Did you get anything out of him?"

"No. And he wants his Payson notes back again. What d'you think of that!"

Vixley crossed his legs, and whistled a low, astonished note. "We're goin' to have trouble with Frank, I expect."

Madam Spoll's smooth forehead wrinkled. "Frank's a fool! He's leary of us, and I believe he'll throw us down if we don't look out."

"Most time to put the screws on, ain't it?"

"I don't know; we'll see. We can go it alone for a while. Wait till we really need him and I'll guarantee to make him mind. He's got the society bug so bad I couldn't do anything with him."

"The more he gets into society the more use he is to us," said Vixley. "He's a pretty smooth article."

"Do you know, I have an idea he's getting stuck on that Payson girl."

Vixley cackled.

"You never can tell," said Madam Spoll. "I believe Frank's got good blood in him. Sooner or later it's bound to come out."

"Well, if he's after the girl, it'll be easier for us to bring him around. He won't care to be gave away."

"That's right, and we'll use it. I can see that girl's face when she hears about him crawling through the panel at Harry Wing's to play spook for Bennett."

"Not to speak of Fancy," Vixley added, grinning.

To them, Ringa entered. He slunk into a chair beside Vixley, smoothed down his tow hair, stroked his bristling mustache, and allowed his weak gray eyes to drift about the room.

"Well?" Madam Spoll queried, giving him a glance over her fat shoulder.

"I found him all right, and I've got something. I guess it's worth a dollar, Madam Spoll."

"Let's hear it, first," said Vixley.

"I done the insurance agent act, and I jollied him good." Ringa grinned, showing a hole in his mouth where two front teeth should have been.

"You jollied him," Vixley showed his yellow teeth. "Lord, you don't look it!"

"I did though," the pale youth protested. "I conned him for near an hour."

"You're sure he didn't get on to you?" Madam Spoll asked, regarding her head sidewise in the glass and patting the blue bow on her throat.

"Sure! I was a dead ringer for the real-thing agent, and I had the books to show for it. I worked him for an insurance policy."

"Well? What did he say?" Madam Spoll turned on him like a mighty gun.

"He was caught between two trains once on the Oakland Mole, and I guess he was squeezed pretty bad. He said it was a close call."

"That's all right," said Vixley; "we can trim that up in good shape, can't we, Gert?"

"It'll do for a starter. Give him a dollar."

"Anything more to-day?" Ringa asked, rising slowly.

"No; I'll let you know if I want you," said the Madam.

Ringa slouched out.

"I'd let that cool off a while till he's forgotten it," Vixley suggested.

"I'll make him forget it, all right," Madam Spoll returned. "That's my business. You do your part as well as I do mine and you'll be all right."

"It's only this first part that makes me nervous."

"Oh, he ain't going to catch _me_ in a trap. I got sense enough to put a mouse in first to try it."

She stood in front of the mirror in the folding-bed, arranging her hair, which had been wet and still glistened with moisture, holding her comb, meanwhile, in her mouth. Professor Vixley tilted back in his plush chair, his head resting against the grease-spot on the wall-paper which indicated his habitual pose.

"Now don't you go too fast," he said, pulling out a square of chewing-tobacco and biting off a corner. "This here is a-goin' to be a delicate operation. Payson ain't so easy as Bennett was. Bennett would believe that cows was cucumbers, if we told him so, but this chap is too much on the skeptic. We got to go slow."

"You leave me alone for _that_," Madam Spoll replied easily. "I guess I know how to jolly a good thing along. Has he got the money? That's all I want to know about him."

"He's got money all right. That's a cinch. I'm not in this thing for my health. What's more, he's got the writin' bug, and I can see a good graft in that."

"Well, I'll give it a try."

"No, you better keep your hands off that subject, Gertie. I can work that game better'n you. I got it all framed up how I can string him good. I'm goin' to make that a truly elegant work of art. All you got to do is to get him goin', and then steer him up against me."

The door-bell rang noisily up-stairs and Mr. Spoll's footsteps were heard going to answer the summons.

"I guess that's my cue," said Madam Spoll, smiling affably. "I wish I had more magnetism to-day." She shook her hands and snapped her fingers. "I can't stand so much of this as I used to. I can remember when I could get a name every time without fishing for it. But what I've lost in one way I have learned in another. I'm going to give him a run for his money, and don't you forget it."

Vixley smiled and rubbed his hands. "Go in and win, Gert. I guess I'll take a nap here on the lounge while I'm waitin' for you, and see if the Doc doesn't come in."

"All right," she replied; then marched up-stairs and went into action.

The upper parlor, where she received her patrons for private sittings, was a large room separated from the back part of the house by black walnut double doors. Upon the high-studded walls were draperies of striped oriental stuffs, caught up with tacks and enlivened by colored casts of turbaned Turks' heads, most of which were chipped on cheek and on chin, showing irregular patches of white plaster. Upon the mantel chaos reigned, embodied in a mass of minor decorations of all sorts, such as are affected by those who deem that space is only something to be as closely filled as possible. The furniture was cheaply elaborate and formally arranged, running chiefly to purple stamped plush and heavy woolen fringe. The silk curtains in the windows were severely arranged in multitudinous little pleats, fan shaped, drawn in with a pink ribbon at the center. There was scarcely a thing in the room, from the fret-sawed walnut whatnot in the corner to the painted tapestry Romeo upon the double doors, that an artist would not writhe at and turn backward. A little ineffective bamboo table in the center was made a feature of the place, but supported its function with triviality.

Mr. Payson had just entered, cold and blue from the harsh air outside. He bowed to the seeress.

She began with the weather, referring to it in obvious commonplaces, eliciting his condemnation of the temperature. She offered to light the gas-log and succeeded, during the conversational skirmish, in drawing from him the fact that he suffered from rheumatism, especially when the wind was north.

Madam Spoll allowed the ghost of a smile to haunt her face for a brief moment. "Lucky you ain't got my weight, it gets to you something terrible when you're fat. I ain't quite so slim as I used to be." She looked up from the grate coquettishly, marking the effect of her words.

"Now let's set down and get ready," she said, going over to the frail table and pressing her hands to her forehead. "I ain't in proper condition to-day; I've been working hard and my magnetism's about wore out. But I'll see what I can do."

He took a seat opposite her and waited. His attitude was benignly judicial; his eyes were fixed upon her, through his gold-bowed spectacles.

"Funny thing how different people are," she began. "Now, I get your condition right off. You ain't at all like the rest of the folks that come here. I get a condition of study, like. I see what you might call books around you everywhere--not account-books, but more on the literary. Books and sheep, you understand. Not live ones! I would say they was more on the dead sheep. Flat ones, too, with hair, like--queer, ain't it? Sounds like nonsense I suppose, but that's just what I get. They must be some mistake somehow." She drew her hand across her forehead and snapped the electricity off her finger-tips. Then she rubbed her hands and twisted her mouth. "Do you know what I mean?"

"Why, it might be wool perhaps; I have something to do with wool," he offered.

"Now ain't that strange? It _is_ wool, as sure's you're born! I can see what you might call skins and bales of wool. And I get a condition of business, too--but not what you might call a retail business. Seems like it was more on the wholesale."

"Yes, that's right," he assented, nodding.

"What did I tell you!" she exclaimed. "I do believe I may get something after all, though very often the first time ain't what you might call a success, and sitters are liable to get discouraged. I can tell you only just what my guides give me, you know, and sometimes Luella is pernickerty. She's my chief control. You know how it is yourself, for you'll be a man that knows women right down to the ground, and you've always been a favorite with the ladies, too."

"Oh, I never knew many women," he said modestly.

"It ain't the number I'm speaking of. It's the hold you had over 'em, specially when you was a young man. They was women who would do anything you asked them and be glad of the chance; now, wasn't they? Did you ever know of a party, what you might call a young woman, though not so very young, with the initial C?" She mumbled the letter so that it was not quite distinguishable.

"G?" he said. "Why, yes!--was that the first name or the last?"

"It seems like it was the first name, the way I get it--would it be Grace?"

This was, of course, a random "fishing test," and she got a bite.

"My wife's name was Grace."

She hooked the fact, noticing the tense, and let her line play out to distract his attention temporarily.

"It don't seem quite like your wife. Seems like it was another woman who you was fond of. Maybe it was meant for the last name. Sometimes my control does get things awfully mixed. Or, it might be a middle initial. You wait a minute and maybe I'll get it stronger."

"Oh, if it was the last name, I think I recognize it."

She had another line out and another bite, now, and played to land both, coaxing the truth gently from him.

"Yes, it's a last name, and she was terrible fond of you. She was in love with you for some time, you understand? And there was some trouble between you."

"There was, indeed!" Mr. Payson shook his head solemnly.

The hint now made sure of, she heightened it to make him forget that he himself had given the clue.

"I get a feeling of worry, and what you might call a misunderstanding. You didn't quite get along with each other and it made a good deal of trouble for you. You was what I might call put out, you understand? She's in the spirit now, ain't she?"

"Yes; she died a good many years ago."

Madam Spoll returned to her first fish and began to reel in. "Your wife's passed out, too, and Luella tells me she's here now. She says Grace was worried, too. But she's happy now and wants you to be. You was a young man then, and yet you have never got over it. You wasn't rightly understood, was you?"

Mr. Payson shook his head again. He was listening attentively.

"But it wan't your fault, do you understand? It was something that couldn't be helped. And sometimes when you think of this other lady you say to yourself, 'If she only knew! If she only knew!'"

"Yes, I wish she did. It really wasn't my fault."

Madam Spoll cast more bait into the pool.

"Now, would her given name be Mary, or something like that?"

"No--it was an uncommon name."

The medium persisted stubbornly.

"That's queer. I get the name of Mary very plain."

"My mother's name was Mary; perhaps you mean her?"

"It might be your mother, and yet it seems like it was a younger woman. Now, this lady I spoke of had dark hair, didn't she? or you might call it medium--sort of half-way between light and dark."

"No; she had white hair."

Another fish was on the hook. Madam Spoll had got what she wanted. This admission of Mr. Payson's, coupled with the fact Granthope had discovered, that Clytie had visited the crazy woman, identified the old man's first love, she thought, effectually. She kept this for subsequent use, however. It would not do, as Vixley had said, to go too fast.

"Then this Mary must be some one else," she said. "You may not recognize her now, but you probably will. I can't do your thinking for you, you know. It may possibly be that you'll meet her some day; at any rate, my guides tell me you must be careful and don't sign no papers for Mary. I don't know whether she's in the spirit or not. You may understand it and you may not. All I can do is to give you what I get."

Madam Spoll now became absorbed in a sort of reverie. When at last she emerged it was with this:

"I see your mother and your wife now, and I get the words, 'It's a pity Oliver couldn't marry her.' I don't know what they mean at all."

"I understand. I was intending to marry another woman, the one you spoke of just now, but something prevented."

"That must be it. My guide tells me that something dreadful happened, and it was what you might call hushed up and you separated from her."

"It was not my fault."

"I get a little child, too"--Mr. Payson grew still more absorbed. The medium noticed his instant reaction in eyes, mouth and hands. On the strength of that evidence, she took the risk of saying:

"The child was the lady's with the white hair."

"What about it?" demanded Mr. Payson.

"I see the child standing by a lady who grew gray very young, you understand. And now they're both gone. Was you ever interested in Sacramento or somewhere east of here?"

"Stockton?" he asked. "I lived there for a while."

"That's it. I see a river, and steamboats coming in, and there's the child again."

"A boy or a girl?"

She hesitated for a moment to dart a glance at him as swift as an arrow. Then she risked it. "A girl."

He drew a long breath. "I don't quite understand."

"It certainly is a little girl, and she's with the lady with the gray hair. But wait a minute. Now I get a little boy, and he's crying."

"Where is he?" came eagerly from Payson's lips.

"He's on this side. He's alive. I'll ask my guide." She plunged into another stupor, then shook herself, rubbed her forehead, wrung her hands.

"I can't get it quite strong enough to-day, but I'll find out later. He seems to be mixed up with you, some way, not in what you might call business, but more personally. You're worried about him."

Mr. Payson, with a shrug of his shoulders, appeared to disclaim this.

"Yes, you are! You may not realize it, but you are. The time will come when you understand what I mean. Now you're too much interested in other things. Your mind is way off--toward New York, like, or in that direction."

He looked puzzled.

"Maybe it ain't as far as New York, but it's somewhere around there, and I see books and printing presses. Do you have anything to do with printing?"

This he also disclaimed.

"Funny!" she persisted. "I get you by a printing-press looking at a book and then I see you at a table writing."

"I have done some writing, but it has never been printed."

"Well, it will be! My guide tells me that you have a great talent for literary writing, and it could be developed to a great success.

"Now," she added, "you let me hold your hands a while till I get the magnetism stronger. Just hold them firm--that's right. Lord, you needn't squeeze them _quite_ so hard!" She beamed upon him with obvious coquetry. "Now I'm going into a trance. I don't know whether Luella will come, or maybe little Eva. Eva's the cunningest little tot and as bright as a dollar. She's awful cute. You mustn't mind anything she says or does, though. Sometimes, I admit, she mortifies me, when sitters tell me what she's been up to. I've known her to sit on men's laps and kiss 'em and hug 'em, like she was their own daughter, but Lord, she don't know any better. She's innocent as a baby."

His face grew harder as she said this, but she proceeded, nevertheless, with her experiment, closing her eyes and sitting for a while in silence. Then her muscles twitched violently; she squirmed and wriggled her shoulders. Finally she spoke, in a high, squeaky falsetto, a fair ventriloquistic imitation of a child's voice.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Payson, I'm little Eva! I brought you some flowers, but you can't see 'em, 'cause they're spirit flowers. You don't look very well. Ain't you feelin' well to-day? I'm always well here, and it's lovely on this side."

He made no response. Madam Spoll's soft hand, obviously controlled by her spirit guide, moved up Mr. Payson's arm and patted his cheek. He drew back suddenly.

"My!" little Eva exclaimed. "You frightened me! What a funny man you are! Won't you just let me smoove your hair, once? I'd love to. Oh, I think you're horrid! I'm just doin' to slap your face--there!" Which she did quite briskly.

Mr. Payson loosened his hold with some annoyance.

"Well, I ain't doin' to stay if you don't love me," the shrill voice went on. "I don't _like_ men who don't love me. Good-by, old man, I'm doin'."

There was another wriggle on the part of the medium, after which a lower-toned voice said:

"How do you do! I'm Luella."

He watched the medium's blank, expressionless face as she spoke.

"Say, you ain't well, I can see that. Haven't you got a pain in your leg? Excuse me saying it, but I can feel it right there."

She touched him gently on the thigh.

"Oh, that's only a touch of rheumatism," he replied.

"No, it ain't," she said, "it's more serious than that. It's chronic, and it's growing worse. Sometimes it's so painful that you almost die of it, isn't it? I know where you got it; it come of an accident. I can see you in a big crowded house, like, and there's railroad trains coming and going, and you're crowded and jammed. You got internal injuries and a complication. You didn't realize it at the time, but it's growing worse every day. If you don't look out you'll pass out through it, but if you went right to work, you could be cured of it, before it gets too bad."

"What could I do about it?" he asked. "The doctors don't help me much."

"Of course they don't. You haven't been to the right ones. I was an Indian doctor, and I can see just what's the matter with you. You need a certain kind of herb I used to use when I was on the flesh-plane in Idaho."

"Can't you help me, then?"

"Oh, I've got to go now, they're calling to me. So good-by." Another wriggle and Madam Spoll was herself again.

"Well, what did you get?" she asked when she recovered.

"Why, don't you know?"

"No more'n a babe unborn," she said. "I was in a dead trance, and I never remember anything that happens. I hope little Eva didn't tease you any."

"Who is the other one--Luella?"

"Why, she's an Indian princess that passed out about ten years back. She's got a great gift of diagnosing cases. She's helped my sitters a good deal."

"She told me something about my trouble."

"You mean about the gray-haired lady or the child?"

"Oh, no, about my leg!"

"Did she, now? Well, what did I tell you! Seems to me you _do_ look peaked and pale, like you was enjoying poor health. I noticed it when you first come in. I don't believe your blood's good. Luella don't prescribe ordinarily, but she can diagnose cases something wonderful. If I should tell you how many doctors in this town send their patients to me to be diagnosed before they dare to treat them themselves, you'd be surprised. Why, only the other day a lady come in here that was give up by four doctors for cancer, and Luella found it was only a boil in her kidney. She went to a magnetic healer and was cured in a week. Now she's doing her own work and taking care of her babies, keeping boarders and plans to go camping this very month."

"Who was the doctor?" Mr. Payson asked, much impressed.

"Doctor Masterson. He's up on Market Street somewhere. Perhaps I've got a card of his around. I'll see if I can find it."

She walked over to the mantel and fussed among its dusty ornaments, saying, with apparent concern, as she rummaged:

"I don't know as I ought to send you to Doctor Masterson, after all. You see, he ain't a man I like very much, and few do, I find. He don't stand very well with the Spiritual Society, nor with anybody else that I know of. He ain't quite on the square, do you understand what I mean? To be perfectly frank, I think he's a rascal. He has a bad reputation as a man, but all the same, he's a good medium, nobody denies _that_, and he does accomplish some marvelous cures! If Luella said your complaint was serious, she knows, and it looks to me like you must go to Doctor Masterson or die of it, for if he can't cure you, nobody can. He's certainly a marvelous healer."

She found the card at last, and brought it over to Mr. Payson.

"Here it is, but you better not tell him I give it to you, for we ain't on very good terms, and I wouldn't want him to know that I was sending him business."

As Mr. Payson rose to go, the medium stopped him with a gesture.

"Wait a minute," she said, passing her hand across her forehead. "Grace is here again and she says: Tell him that we're doing all we can on the spirit plane to help him and we want him to cheer up, for conditions are going to be more favorable in a little while, say, by the end of September.'"

She paused a moment and then added:

"Who's Clytie? Would that be the gray-haired lady?"

"What about Clytie?" He was instantly aroused.

"It don't seem to me like she's in the spirit, exactly. She's on the material plane. Let's see if I can get it more definite. Oh, Grace says she's your daughter."

"That's true."