Part 11

“I feel it. Just now, as you were looking, and many times when we were arranging the room I had the feeling--a strange feeling--almost as though there were some one else here with us--that all this--well, how shall I say--that you had been here before----”

“Why do you say that?” she said, after a moment’s hesitation. “I haven’t asked any questions, have I?”

“You can--and besides, you won’t need to, soon,” he said, his curiosity aroused by the answer her evasion implied.

“No, no,” she said emphatically; “what has happened has nothing to do with it. We are what we are to each other. All the rest--what’s happened before--we want to be free of that. What right has that to come into your life again? That’s what’s rare in a friendship, to begin all fresh--isn’t it?”

“You _are_ queer!” he said, gazing at her profoundly, with a growing personal curiosity awakened by the intensity which she had put into this unusually long speech.

“Why?”

“So I am not to know anything about you?”

She faced him a long moment, and, despite all his curiosity, he could not divine what was passing behind her eyes.

“Wonder if I shall ever see into those eyes?” he said, wandering from his question. His gaze rested a moment on the sensitive nostrils and the delicate mouth with its poised upper lip; and, suddenly, he said, as though noticing it for the first time:

“You can be beautiful when you want to--why don’t you?” Then he laughed and said in a lighter tone, “Inga, if I were ten years younger, I’d be madly in love with those eyes of yours.”

“Would that help?” she said, her eyes filling with a sudden compassionate gentleness.

This frank question threw him into a turmoil. He seemed suddenly recalled to himself--to the imminence of some crisis dominating his freedom of decision. He went from her brusquely, turning about the studio with restless, nervous step, snapping his fingers with quick, irritated gesture, until, as she waited, he came as suddenly back and seized her in his big hands.

“Inga, whatever you do, don’t get to caring for me--do you hear?” he said vehemently, with the stricken intensity of his disordered moods. Then each seemed struck with the strangeness and the significance of what they had been saying. He repeated: “Do you hear--do you understand--not that!”

She looked at him, yet across her eyes, as across her soul, the same misty curtain seemed to intervene. Then she shrugged her shoulders, as much as to lay the decision on the lap of fate.

“It will only bring you suffering,” he said roughly, almost angrily.

“Yes, perhaps.”

She nodded, admitting its truth, and her face clouded before a vision starting out of the shadows. Her arms drew closer about her body, while a shiver ran through it--a premonition perhaps. She repeated:

“Yes, perhaps.”

XVI

Tootles had progressed along the arduous road to masterpieces to the extent that he felt a need of realistic detail. Flick, of course, was but a substitute, the center of the stage, as well as Wimpfheimer & Goldfinch’s perfection dress suit, being now occupied by Belle Shaler, who gave a satisfactory rendering of the new hothouse variety of young man. Sassafras (when he could put the elevator out of commission) represented Primitive Man with impressive ferocity, but there was something lacking in the Sphinx of King O’Leary. O’Leary suggested many things, but he did not suggest the feminine mystery of that historic lady. Tootles felt this, and felt it acutely, when it suddenly occurred to him that, with a little diplomacy, relief might be at hand. Accordingly, one day at high noon, he went tripping down the stone stairway to the floor below and over to the door which was inscribed:

MME. THEODORA PROBASCO SPIRITUALISTIC SÉANCES

He rapped gently once, and then once more firmly, with an uneasy glance at the darkened glass, that seemed to him of an unearthly obscurity.

“Who knocks at this door?” said a solemn voice.

“The one above,” said Tootles, in an equally mysterious whisper.

The door was opened cautiously, and Madame Probasco’s streaked curls appeared. From inside came the unmistakable scent of a pork chop frying.

“How do you do?” said Tootles, affably, with a radiating smile. “And how are all the little spirits?”

“Oh, it’s you?” said Madame Probasco, descending to a conversational tone.

“Only me; and in distress--oh, nothing for the spirits to do, but I need a sphinx. Thought you might have one on the premises?”

“A sphinx? I have a sphinx,” said Madame Probasco, ceremoniously.

“May I enter?”

Madame Probasco was still hesitating, considering the advisability of introducing such a visitor behind the scenes, when the memory of the pork chop decided her. She hurried back, followed by Tootles, who witnessed the rescue with an expression of sympathy, while seeking among the black-curtained partitions for the abode of ghostly aids.

“I hope we have done nothing to disturb the spirits,” he said genially, at the first opportunity.

“It’s not you--it’s that Dutch yodler!” said Madame Probasco, taken strategically on flank. “He broke up a see-ance only last night and sent me into a fit of hysterics. It’s an outrage!”

“Madame, have I your permission to speak to Mr. Schneibel?” said Tootles majestically.

“’Deed you’ll save my life if you do,” said Madame Probasco, with a fleshy sigh. “What was it you wanted--oh, yes, a sphinx,” she added, turning toward the mantelpiece, where underneath gleaming death-masks and plastered hands was a collection of scarabs, elephants, and a bronze fragment representing the sphinx in the shadow of the Pyramid.

“One moment--don’t move!” said Tootles, in an excited voice. “Hold that position--by Jove, that is marvelous now!”

“Heavens! what is the matter?” said Madame Probasco, startled.

“Madame Probasco, have you ever posed--has any one ever done your portrait?”

“There’s Mooney, down on the second floor, did a colored photo that wasn’t bad--”

“No, no; I mean did you ever have your portrait painted? By jove, just that moment--then I caught an expression--I say, do you know you _would_ make a remarkable symbolic study of the Sphinx?”

“Really?” said Madame Probasco, smiling and fastening the brooch at her neck, which had become undone, with a reawakening of coquetry.

“’Pon my word! Tell you what I’ll do: If you’ll sit for the Sphinx, for a monumental decoration I’m doing, I’ll make a special sketch and present it to you. Think of the publicity!”

On this basis, the bargain was completed immediately, and King O’Leary, vastly relieved, was promoted to the rôle of Paris, who, with one arm about Helen of Troy (Millie Brewster) a glave brandished in the air, was represented hesitating in his passionate flight to glance back at the symbolic vision of the modern ravisher of hearts in the person of the Well-dressed Man. Madame Probasco entered, in fact, so completely into the spirit of the conception, that the brooding realism of her frown brought cold shivers to the impressionable imaginations of Pansy Hartmann and Millie Brewster. The work went on gaily, as all great works of inspiration carry happiness.

The girls, since the night of the farewell dinner, had heaped coals of fire upon the heads of their admirers by an unlooked-for loyalty. Myrtle Popper had brought Mr. Pomello to the studio, a lonely little old man in loose clothes, who conveyed the idea of a shy species of cockatoo behind black-rimmed spectacles, and who accepted the introduction to “cousin” O’Leary with meek obedience. It was evident that he was all eyes for the brimming youth of the girl, and hurriedly seconded her suggestion that O’Leary should preside over the orchestra of one piano in the “continuous” below, from eight until eleven P. M. Belle Shaler, in her turn, succeeded in inviting the three friends to one banquet and two dances, which considerably improved their household account; while Pansy, as though realizing for the first time the heights to which Tootles might ascend, became almost docile, and if she still listened to the assiduous compliments of Drinkwater and others, at least she concealed the evidence with skill. The larder was not exactly overcrowded, but with O’Leary’s salary and three mother-in-law jokes which Flick obtained in translation from Mr. Cornelius and modernized for _Puck_, the wolf was kept at a respectable distance, while Flick planned the killing on Tootles’ masterpiece which would revolutionize the commercial arts.

Dangerfield came in twice again for a flitting visit and a few words of advice, but the first enthusiasm had vanished, or rather, he seemed obsessed by some distant preoccupation. A week had now passed since the episode of the interrupted boxing-match, and the heated discussions as to who Dangerfield really was and what were the mysterious complications in which he was involved had been going on with unabated excitement, when, one Sunday evening, without warning, he appeared at the door of the studio dressed to go out.

“O’Leary, are you free for about half an hour?” he said, without notice of the fact that Tootles and Flick were tidying up the supper-dishes; though by now they had grown accustomed to his abstractions.

“What can I do for you?”

“Can you come with me--now?”

“Going out?” said O’Leary, surprised, while the others looked up, for this in itself was in abrupt contrast to his late habit of never setting foot outside of the Arcade.

“Yes.”

O’Leary slipped into his things and joined him in the hall.

“Where away?”

“I prefer not to go out of the Arcade--I have reasons,” said Dangerfield, his voice pitched just above the normal. “We will go down a couple of flights and out through the apartment-house.”

They descended, and by a bridge (one of the many mysterious byways of the Arcade) passed into an apartment-house that set upon the side street. Down this they went without word of explanation, O’Leary more and more intrigued by the behavior of his companion, who stopped at each landing to read the cards upon the door-plates, talking to himself the while. At the entrance below, as O’Leary was passing curiously out, he caught him with a sudden restraining clutch and a low admonition. Then he lit a match and studied the row of mail-boxes in the vestibule.

“No, no; that’s all right,” he said at last. “Old cards, all of them. No changes here.” He blew out the match and looked back at the stairs lost in the dimness of the hall light. “Uncanny, isn’t it? Anything might happen there. All right, now. Out, and turn straight toward Amsterdam Avenue.”

“As you say,” said O’Leary, struck by the restrained excitement in the other’s voice and gesture.

They went down the block and up the avenue two streets, then eastward to Columbus Avenue, and prepared to descend. Opposite Healy’s, Dangerfield stopped and said abruptly:

“Now, O’Leary, keep your eyes open and if you see any one you have seen before--” He stopped short, and his eyes set suspiciously on the other’s face.

“Any one I’ve seen before?” said O’Leary, frowning.

“Exactly--any one--who was downstairs the night you saw the car. Oh, it’s all right; you didn’t deceive me then--I know. That’s not the point. I must know if any one’s around.”

“All right; but I don’t understand a word,” said O’Leary helplessly. “Just what are you driving at?”

But for all answer his companion smiled knowingly, shrugged his shoulders and said:

“You understand? Touch my arm if you see him. Come.”

They crossed Lincoln Square after a careful reconnoitering of the surrounding spaces, and descending briskly on the Arcade, passed along the Broadway front and around the corner to the lower street, going in by the side entrance, past the stuffy halls of the animal fancier. The inner arcade, deserted in the barren calm of Sunday night, showed only the lingering figures of a group of newsboys and the half-lights of the telegraph office.

“All right; that’s enough,” said Dangerfield, looking apparently satisfied. “Mighty decent of you. Thanks.”

“Don’t see that I’ve done anything in particular,” said O’Leary, following him into the elevator, “but at your service any time.”

Nevertheless, mystified as he was, he concealed the details of their trip under an evasive answer when he returned to his room. However, the experience remained fixed in his mind, and he divined that Inga, by now, must have told Dangerfield in detail of his discoveries. The precautions taken to bar the door, the voluntary self-imprisonment, the brooding suspicion in the man himself, had spread an uncanny feeling of suspense in the upper hall, where, from day to day, each awaited some dramatic explanation. How near it was at hand no one, not even King O’Leary, had any suspicion.

On the following night, Madame Probasco gave a party “to meet the spooks,” as Tootles expressed it. Just how it came to take place, or who may have put the suggestion into her mind, was never clearly defined. The fact of Drinkwater’s participation left a certain suspicion in the minds of some, especially considering what happened later. At a quarter before midnight, being the witching hour, they came down, expectant and a little awestruck, to Madame Probasco’s rooms. The black-draped passage, which had an aroma of heavy incense, was faintly revealed by a solitary green lamp, which cast uncanny hues over their faces and caused Pansy to take a desperate clutch of Tootles’ hand.

“I can feel them spirits already,” said Myrtle Popper, with a nervous laugh.

“Sh! sh! Silence!” said Flick, in a voice which caused Belle Shaler to stumble with a smothered cry.

Mr. Cornelius, Miss Quirley, and Schneibel, the last in the charge of O’Leary, who had given his word to restrain his volubility, pressed forward eagerly, while Millie Brewster, at the sight of the coffinlike passage, the green light, and the black-draped curtains, billowing as though with the passage of unseen shapes, gave a scream and fled precipitately. Inga and Dangerfield were likewise absentees.

At the door of the salon, a surprise awaited them. Madame Probasco was still behind the scenes, but in the center of the misty room was no other than Drinkwater, gaunter and taller than ever, in the midst of the death-masks and plastered hands which set against the walls. A great white collar flashed about his neck against the somber hue of his face and his coal-black eyes.

“Madame Probasco will come on as soon as every one is seated,” he said suavely, yet with a queer little break of excitement in his voice. “She particularly wished me to caution you that there must be the most absolute quiet. Any sudden noise might prove almost fatal to her in the intense mental concentration into which she must go for these experiments.”

This revelation of Drinkwater’s connection with the spiritualistic parlors came as a disagreeable introduction. Tootles gazed at O’Leary, rather undecided, with a vague sense of something ominous impending. O’Leary, for a moment, seemed on the point of breaking out into an objection, but before he could take a decision, from the other room the voice of Madame Probasco came floating in, in querulous complaint.

“Too much noise--hush!”

The wavering passed. They grouped themselves in a circle on the chairs which had already been placed. In the center of the room a great armchair was waiting beside a table on which were displayed two gray-and-white elephants and a plaster skull. Drinkwater passed to the door by which they had entered and drew it shut, and going to the window, flung across a second curtain. In the circle the bodies seemed to recede into a mist, leaving only the white faces distinct, faces white as the chalky death-masks that spotted the walls.

“Remember, silence; absolute silence,” said Drinkwater, with his finger on his lips. He took a last precautionary glance and then stepped gingerly and softly to the door of the inner room, knocked three times, and announced,

“Everything is ready!”

Madame Probasco delayed her appearance for an interminable, creepy interval, and then, when they were least expecting her, came floating in, clad in long, fluttering garments of slatish blue, her hair bound with Greek fillets, her arms and neck laden with shining ornaments, her eyes half closed, hands extended in groping gestures. Drinkwater went to her side and piloted her to the armchair, amid a heavy craning-forward of her tense audience. She gazed fixedly ahead a moment, with blank, glassy eyes, her lips parted in short, troubled breaths. Then she bent her head suddenly and covered her eyes with one hand, while the other stretched across the dark table until it found the gray-and-white elephant that, in the dim light, seemed to have come into a grotesque distortion of life. At the end of a full ten minutes, during which Drinkwater, at her back with warning finger, cautioned all to immovability and silence, her hand jerked up rapidly in three commanding gestures, and she began babbling in a deep, guttural tone, a jargon without relevance or resemblance to any language they knew.

Drinkwater, as though he had waited for this stage, moved toward the expectant circle, hesitated a moment, and selecting Myrtle Popper, whispered:

“A handkerchief--anything--of your own. Yes; a glove--that will do. You’ve worn it? All right.”

Madame Probasco immediately transferred the glove to her forehead, and the jargon increased in rapidity. Another interval, and all at once she swayed in her seat and began to talk intelligibly.

“Rivers--trees--a house on a hill--much snow--children, many children in sleighs--a great fireplace with a copper kettle boiling--a holiday--a holiday party of some sort. Who’s that? A man--two men--a widower and a young man--a quarrel. I see discord--many quarrels--a journey to a church in a sleigh with the young man--no, no; something’s wrong--I don’t understand--it’s turned back.”

Here Myrtle Popper’s voice was heard exclaiming:

“My God, it’s true!”

The medium ran on more confidently.

“Discord--more quarrels--railroads--crowds, people--so many people--”

For a while, what she said continued broken and mystifying. Suddenly she seemed to pick up the thread again.

“Some one close to you will die within the year--a relative--no, not a relative--perhaps the old man--” She lapsed into the mysterious jargon and again came out: “Changes, marvelous changes--wealth by death, beyond your dreams; and yet your dream, the real dream, will not be realized--a woman--two other women--stand between you and that. This year--everything seems to come in this year--all the changes in your life--great fortune and great disappointments--journeys--new conditions--everything will be changed. That’s all I can see--the rest is blurred.”

With which, she flung the glove from her and sank her head in her arms.

Drinkwater selected Miss Quirley next, and after her Schneibel. Whether Madame Probasco was feigning or not, the outstanding fact was that the next experiments varied greatly in effectiveness. With some she began to prophesy immediately, and with others she refused to go on absolutely, declaring she could do nothing. The séance had been going on thus with alternate success and failure, when Drinkwater selected Mr. Cornelius. Now, several of those present, reviewing these events at a later date, believed that it had all been a carefully laid plan of the lawyer’s to ferret into the baron’s past and that the scene had been agreed upon with Madame Probasco. Yet others insisted that what she had said had startled Drinkwater almost as much as any one, and that indeed he had gone white and leaned against the wall. However that may be, as soon as Madame Probasco had received into her hands a watch-chain which Mr. Cornelius had given with the greatest reluctance, she cried, in excellent French, in a voice shrill and quite different from her own,

“_Cinq mille louis sur la bande!_”

The effect on the Frenchman was amazing. He half rose from his seat with a gasp of astonishment, and only the firm hold of his companions in the chain of hands kept him down. The next moment, Madame Probasco was running on in her usual guttural voice:

“I see a great house--oh, but a great, great house--tapestries--a great marble fireplace--and a woman--not there--no--not there--somewhere else--can’t quite make out--only she is tall and her hair is like a flame--and there are lights, lots of lights all around her, at her feet, in the air--people are applauding her--flowers--I smell the scent of roses, always roses--yellow, pink. Why, I can’t see her distinctly any more--what has happened? Why, she is not young--she is not beautiful at all--there’s no one around her, and the room is dark--she leans on a cane.” All at once her hands began to clutch nervously in the air, and she cried in more excited voice: “What’s this? Blows are struck--high words--some one is choking him--some one has him by the throat, forcing him over a table, a green table--and now all the lights are back--oh, so many lights, my head is turned with the lights.... _Le numéro quatre!_” she cried suddenly, or rather, the same shrill nasal voice cried from her. Then she began to tremble as she had at no time before. “No, no, I can’t--don’t make me tell what I see!”

“What do you see?” said Drinkwater suddenly, in a voice that made them start. “Tell us what you see.”

The medium moaned and wrung her hands hysterically, her breath coming in quick gasps.

“No, no, I can’t; I can’t tell that.”

“Tell it, _madame_, tell it--I command you!”

It was the baron, who, quite beside himself, had broken out into a shrill command.

“_He_ wishes it! _He_ does!”

“Yes, yes.”

“I see--I see--blood,” said Madame Probasco, shuddering.

Drinkwater started back against the wall, though Mr. Cornelius seemed, if anything, relieved, whatever it may have been he was afraid to hear, for he said rather indifferently:

“Now, or in ze future?”

“In the future; but near, very near. Not your blood--no; it’s not on you, the blood--and yet, why it’s--”

Whatever she might have said was destined to remain a closed secret, for, at this moment, the outer door was flung open with a crash that shook the room and Inga’s voice was heard calling:

“O’Leary! Wilder! Quick--quick! They’re kidnaping him! For God’s sake, help!”

Instantly the room broke up into a seething mass. Madame Probasco was screaming and rolling on the floor, but no one noticed her. Drinkwater sprang to the lights, but O’Leary was too quick for him, and, with a sudden clutch at his shoulder, sent him rolling across the floor. The door was locked, and Inga’s voice still screaming from the other side, as O’Leary flung his body against the frail supports and went crashing into the hall. Flick, Schneibel, the baron, Tootles came piling after him and up the stairs on the heels of the fleeing girl. In the corner studio, Dangerfield was struggling in the hands of four men, who had him wrapped around with cords and were trying to pass him out of the window over the roof.

XVII

At the moment when the rescuing party broke tumultuously through the door, the kidnapers had so far succeeded in their attempt that the helpless body of Dangerfield had been borne to the window for the route over the roofs. Two of the assailants were in the room; the rest had passed outside. The sudden interruption changed everything. The two within the room turned hastily to make front to the unexpected attack. The body of Dangerfield, thus released, fell heavily near the window-sill, while the assailants on the roof, alarmed at the hue and cry, hesitated but a second before breaking for safety. Inside, the struggle was of short duration. One man, the shorter of the two, succeeded in breaking through the crowd and escaping down the halls; the other, of more aggressive stuff, fought furiously against the odds until a grip of King O’Leary’s flung him to the ground, where he lay stunned by a blow on the head.