It was on the morning after his conversation with Jarvis that Boyer, of the "Clarion," summoned Kenwick into his office. "Got a story here that I'd like to have you hunt down," he said, and pushed a clipping across the table. Kenwick read it with an interest that was painfully forced. It was cut from one of the local evening papers and was a rather colorless account of the spectacular achievements of one of the city's trance mediums. He noted down the address and rose with a hint of weariness.
"The thing that makes her different from the others and worth a trip out there," his employer explained, "is that Professor Drew of the psychology department over at the university has set himself the task of showing her up. She has done some rather dramatic things that have got on his nerves and the other day he gave a lecture on her methods before his abnormal psychology class and had the place packed. She has just written a book too; bizarre sort of thing called the 'Rent Veil' or the 'Torn Scarf' or something like that. It ran in the 'Record' about two months ago and they made a big hit with it."
He leaned back in his chair and surveyed Kenwick speculatively. "What do you make of it?" he asked. "This stupendous revival of interest in the supernatural? Some of our greatest writers devoting themselves to spirit-writing; some of our best citizens declaring that they get comfort and inspiration out of the ouija-board and planchette?"
"I think," Kenwick answered slowly, "that it is one of the inevitable results of the war. It has caused a big upheaval in the spiritual as well as the economic world. And one of the things that it has brought to the surface is death. Of course death has always been with us but unless it came right into our own lives we have persistently ignored it, as we have ignored the industrial problems and immigration and a lot of other things. But during the last few years death has been rampant. Everybody has had to look at it from a greater or less distance. For awhile we'll have to go on looking at it. And human nature is so constituted that it has only two alternatives. It must either ignore things or try to account for them. I don't think this renaissance of the supernatural is anything unusual. Every great war must have been followed by a frenzied season of accounting for death."
The other man glanced at him with eyes in which there was no longer impersonal speculation. "You've been touched by it too, Kenwick?" he ventured.
"Yes. My brother."
"I'm sorry." He stretched out a hand. "Well, to get back to this Madame Rosalie; get an interview with her and also with Drew. We'll give 'em each a column on Sunday. We might be able to start a controversy that would be worth while."
And so, half an hour later, Kenwick was ringing the door-bell at a shabby old house on Fillmore Street. As he stood there waiting he was convinced that his only motive for the errand was a journalistic interest. But if there is any season of life when the sane well-balanced man or woman may be tempted into the region of the occult it is during that interval between the shock of bereavement and readjustment to an altered order of existence when the soul quivers upon the brink of two worlds. The lapse of time between shock and readjustment varies with every temperament, but in that period of helpless groping we all stand close to the psychic, the unexplainable, the supernatural.
If Kenwick had expected to find Madame Rosalie's domain extraordinary in any particular, he was distinctly disappointed. It was one of those ugly old frame houses with protruding bay-windows which still weather competition with the concrete and stucco residences in every part of the city. In the front basement window was the hideous sign of a dry-cleaning establishment, and in the neighboring flat the windows were placarded with the promise to supply "Costumes for All Occasions."
In response to his summons a petite dark woman in a loose-flowing garnet robe opened the door and voiced the professional query, "You have an appointment?"
When the visitor had admitted that his call was impromptu, she considered for a moment. "I have a client just now," she explained, "and you may not want to wait until his sitting is over."
"I'll wait," Kenwick assured her. "How long does it take?" It was instantly apparent from Madame Rosalie's expression that this query was a violation of professional etiquette. As well inquire of a doctor how long it will take to perform a major operation.
Ignoring his query the medium opened the door wider and ushered her caller into the front room. It was a dim commonplace apartment furnished with flowered cretonne-covered chairs, a defiant-looking piano, and gilt-framed pictures. "You will find some magazines here," she promised. "Just make yourself at home, please."
It would be a difficult achievement, the reporter decided, as he settled himself in one of the rigid-looking chairs. And Madame Rosalie's tone, though courteous, had not been eager or placating. It was apparent that she had plenty of business. Her manner of greeting had been more like that of an experienced and self-possessed hostess taken unawares by a guest, than of an exponent of the supernatural. She was obviously an educated woman. Her voice alone betrayed that fact, and she moved with a grace that seemed somehow incongruous in those sordid surroundings. As he sat beside the bow-windows, gazing out into the fog, Kenwick smiled grimly. "I don't know Drew yet," he murmured, "but whoever he is, I'll bet she can give him a run for his money."
Within twenty minutes he heard low voices at the far end of the hall, and then the sound of approaching footsteps. He rose and went to the door. Madame Rosalie and her client were emerging from a shadowy chamber whose door was draped with maroon-colored portières. The caller had reached the hat-rack and was jerking himself into his overcoat when all at once he stopped with words of astonished greeting. "Why, hello, Kenwick!" He strode forward with extended hand. And Kenwick gripped it with an equal astonishment. It was one of the men whom he had known well at college. "Going it strong now that you are back in civilization again?" On his face was genuine pleasure and the shamefaced expression that it would have worn if the newspaper reporter had suddenly encountered him tobogganing down one of San Francisco's hills on a child's coaster.
When he was gone the reporter followed his hostess into the room with the maroon-colored curtains. It was as shabby as the waiting-room but more comfortable and somehow expressive of a strong personality. Over a felt-covered table, strewn with cards and stubs of pencils and other aids to occult communication, was an electric bulb held in place by a loop of white cotton string. Madame Rosalie motioned him to a seat beside this table and sank into a deep chair on the opposite side.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Madame Rosalie's eyes rested upon her client with a scrutiny that was not inquisitive but almost uncomfortably searching. They were dark eyes and brilliant with the unnatural shining that is often caused by chronic insomnia. At first glance he had thought that her hair was confined under a net; now at close range he saw that it was cut short and waved alluringly over the lobes of her ears. She had been a beautiful woman once, he reflected, but life had given her brutal treatment.
He picked up a crystal sphere that was lying upon the table. "Tell me what you see for me in that?" he commanded.
She turned it slowly under the light. Kenwick watching her, felt a little cheated by the unspectacular quality of her technic. For all the thrill which she seemed likely to give him, he might as well be opening an interview with the census-taker.
"You came," the medium said at last, still gazing into the depths of the crystal, "to consult me, not about the future but the past."
He made no response.
"You are in trouble," she went on in the same unhurried voice. "You are in great trouble—but you are not taking the right way out."
"What is the right way out?"
"You must have help."
An expression of annoyance crossed his face. She would follow up that statement, of course, with the suggestion that he enlist for a prolonged course of "readings." He was preparing a curt dismissal of this plan when suddenly she set the crystal down upon the table and looked at him with compassionate eyes. "You must have help," she repeated. "But it must be the help of some one who is dear to you—or was dear to you."
"Can you evoke such a spirit?"
"I don't know. I never can promise, but I'll try."
She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. The man, looking at her from across the table, was startled at the change in her face. For hers was that type of face which is dominated by the eyes. Without their too brilliant light it suffered a complete loss of personality. Words came at last through her slightly parted lips. "There is some one who wishes to speak to you. I think it is a woman."
"A woman!" Kenwick was not conscious that his tone held a note of disappointment. "Who is she?"
"I can't quite get the name. It's a difficult control. But she wants very much to talk to you. She says——It will be hard to forgive at first, but you must come back."
"Back where?"
The voice went on, unheeding. "She says——that she was influenced by some one else—some one stronger. You must look for that man. You must never stop looking for him——in crowds and everywhere you go you must look. And when you see his face you will know at once that he is the one, the only one who can help you. He is your missing link."
There was a long pause. "Anything else?" Kenwick inquired at last. His voice was guarded but he was strangely moved.
"There is some one calling to you. He seems to be in a prison and he is looking out through iron bars. They might be the bars of a gate. I can't see the face, but some one is calling your name."
"Shall I answer the call?"
"No. There would be no use. It is too late now."
Her eyes opened suddenly and met Kenwick's fixed upon them intent but inscrutable. He stretched his hand across the table.
"Read my palm."
She held it only a moment but her eyes seemed to take in its every line at a glance. "There is a perpetual conflict raging in your soul," she said.
He smiled. "That's true of most people, isn't it?"
Madame Rosalie had a superb disregard for irrelevancies. "Part of you is eager to plunge gallantly into the tasks of the present, but the other part is holding you back. You have the drooping head-line with the introspective fingers. It's a bad sign on the hand of the creative temperament. And you are some kind of a creative artist; painter, musician, or writer. But your head-line didn't always droop. It's a recent tendency, so you have a good chance to overcome it."
"How can I overcome it?"
"In the first place, give up all idea of trying to reconcile yourself with the past. You can't possibly do it and the effort may—wreck you."
He got to his feet and stood looking down at her. "There doesn't seem to be much ahead for me, does there?" he said.
"There is everything ahead; all the tragedy is behind you." She was still looking at him compassionately. "You are too young," she said at last.
"Too young for what?"
"To have lost so much out of your life." Her voice was like red coals leaping into sudden flame. It startled Kenwick. "And you are choosing just the wrong way to wrestle with such a loss. You had originally a splendid initiative, an impatient desire for action. But the artistic side of your nature has assumed control of you. And the artistic temperament is long on endurance and short on combativeness. If you spent one-third of the time fighting this specter in your past that you spend trying to reconcile yourself to it, you would win gloriously."
For a few moments they stood beside the table talking of commonplaces. Once Kenwick mentioned Professor Drew, and Madame Rosalie smiled.
"I'm not afraid of him," she said. "And neither do I care to enter into a public debate with him."
She followed her client to the door. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to help you more. But you are not ready for my help yet."
Kenwick walked back to the "Clarion" office with these words ringing in his ears. The messages from the other world may have been guess-work, but at least she was a shrewd reader of character. And contrary to all his expectations she had not made any effort to win him for a permanent client.
His Sunday story, featuring her and Professor Drew, was all that Boyer had hoped for it. The astrologist was sketched with a few vivid strokes, the room with the maroon-colored curtains more in detail, and an interview reported which thrilled the souls of the credulous and held even the attention of the skeptical. There was neither ridicule nor championship in the story, and the caustic comments of Professor Drew were bare of journalistic comment. Altogether, the thing worked up well and made a hit. After reading it during his late breakfast at the St. Germaine, Kenwick suddenly decided to go around to the Hartshire Building and keep his promise to Jarvis. He found the photographer enveloped in a long black apron and rubber gloves. "Good boy!" he cried slapping his visitor on the back. "I've been thinking about you and that cursed story you told me: can't get the blame thing out of my head. That was good stuff about the clairvoyant in the 'Clarion' this morning. Where on earth do you dig up those oddities? I recognized your pen-name."
He hung Kenwick's coat in a shallow closet as he talked. "You are in the nick of time to help me with an experiment if you will," he went on. "I want to do some research work on the human eye and I've got to have a subject. I've got a lot of cards here—featuring optical illusions and that sort of thing. Do you mind helping me for, say, half an hour? You see, the human eye and brain are the ideal apparatus for perfecting the camera and I'm working on an invention."
Kenwick complied with alacrity, glad of the opportunity to get his mind off of himself. For almost an hour Jarvis worked under the black hood of the tripod while Kenwick reported on the images printed upon the cards. When the tests were finished and he rose to go, the photographer pushed aside his paraphernalia and wiped his forehead. "Hot as Hades under that thing!" he cried. "Say, I was wondering the other day if you play golf."
"I used to go out and play with my brother at his club," Kenwick replied. "But it's been some time ago; I'd be a duffer at it now."
"Well, I've got a card that will let us into the club over in Claremont," Jarvis explained. "If you haven't got anything better to do, what do you say that we meet at the ferry building about two o'clock this afternoon and play a few holes over on the course? It's a great day to be outside. Can you make it?"
"Yes, I think so." For a moment Kenwick stood looking at his host with an expression that puzzled Jarvis. Then abruptly he turned and went away. Up the steep California street hills he strode, scarcely conscious of the effort it cost. For a horrible dread was tearing at his heart. It was not a new sensation to him, and its very familiarity made it the more hideous; that persistent dread known only to those who are struggling back over the hard road of mental prostration. The seed of it had sprouted on the morning when he had bought that fatal newspaper at the Third and Townsend Depot. And during the weeks that followed its tendrils had wrapped a strangle-hold about his life. Sometimes it almost stopped his breathing. And as yet he had never seen the thing that he dreaded. It was not yet upon any one's face. But he assured himself desperately that some day he would see it. Some day, when perhaps he wasn't thinking about it at all, it would suddenly leap out at him. In the eyes of some man or woman, or perhaps even some little child, he would see suspicion or fear or morbid curiosity. Without being told, they would know suddenly that here was a man who had once lost his mental grip. They would be afraid that he might suddenly lose it again, and that shuddering fear would send him reeling backward into the land of shadows and specters.
He stumbled on blindly, and through the blackness of his anguish there came to him again the curious sensation that he had experienced on his second night at Mont-Mer; the sensation of having lost some material prop that could restore his courage.
The genial suggestion of Jarvis that they play golf together over in Claremont was like a cool hand laid upon his forehead. To Jarvis he must seem sane and normal, capable at least of acquitting himself creditably in the sport of sane and normal men. He ate a hasty and solitary lunch and at two o'clock met the photographer in front of the flower-booth in the ferry building for an afternoon at the country club.
It was Sunday afternoon, and Marcreta was expecting a caller. "How long do you think he'll stay?" Clinton demanded as they rose from their two o'clock dinner.
"As long as I'll let him, I suppose."
"Well, call a time-limit, Crete." And then recalled suddenly to the realization that he must begin making the best of a situation that gave every evidence of forcing itself upon him for life, he added hastily, "What's the use of trying that new cure if you're going to pull against it all the time?"
"Do you call this 'pulling against it'?"
"I do, decidedly. Every time that man comes here you're strung about an octave higher than normal."
She looked at him, astonished. "Why, Clinton, I don't feel it myself. I'm not conscious that he affects me that way."
"He does, though. We all know people who affect us that way. And it is not a question of attraction or aversion. Liking or disliking them doesn't alter the fact that they have the power to screw us up. Sometimes, of course, it's a beneficial stimulant, but you shouldn't be taking anything like that just now. Give Dr. Reynolds a chance."
"I will give him a chance. But to-day——Well, I promised Mr. Glover that I'd listen to something that he has written."
"Help! Then he'll probably be here to supper. I didn't know he'd broken into the writing game."
"I didn't either until the other day. But I think it is some advertising for the new springs. He is very versatile. He does a number of things and does them well."
Her brother glanced at her sharply without replying. That note of championship in her voice put an edge on his nerves.
But she was mistaken in her guess concerning advertising matter for the American Carlsbad. For when she and Richard Glover were alone in the living-room he produced a copy of one of the popular magazines. "You remember you said I might read you something to-day?" he began, drawing his chair into a better light.
"Yes. I have been looking forward to it with pleasure. But I thought it would be in manuscript. It is something you have had published?"
"My first attempt at anything in this line. It's a serial story and this is the initial instalment. You see, I had a good deal of leisure time on my hands when I was down at Mont-Mer and I've always wanted to try my luck with a pen. I call this 'A Brother of Bluebeard.'"
"That's a gruesome title, but excellently chosen if it's a mystery-story. I'm shivering already."
He settled himself with his back to the light and his profile toward her. "I may as well tell you at first that I am not bringing this out under my own name."
"Why not?"
"Because I wouldn't have felt quite free about writing it if I were standing out in the open."
"Oh, it's a true story?"
"No, I can hardly claim that for it. It's rather a fantastic plot as you will see. But every writer knows this, that when you first break into print whatever you write is supposed to be transcribed almost verbatim from actual experience, preferably your own experience. No matter how at variance with your own life-plot the story may be, the people who know you will leap to the conclusion that it is rooted in autobiography. Imagination is the very last thing that our friends are willing to allow us."
"What nom-de-plume do you use?"
"Ralph Regan. It's short and snappy and sounds as if it might be genuine, don't you think?"
He found the place and began to read in a resonant, well-modulated voice. The opening paragraph was a little stilted, a bit amateurish, but after that the story swung into bold and breathless action. It gripped its hearer with a compelling force that held her tense and motionless in her chair. Only the sound of the reader's voice and the crisp crackle of paper when he turned a page broke the quiet of the room. Outside, a gray January mist engulfed the city, and electric bulbs from the houses across the street cut bleary patches in the mantle of fog. For almost an hour Richard Glover read in his clear, unhurried voice, and Marcreta listened, her wide eyes fastened upon his face.
When he had finished, with the irritating promise, "To Be Continued," he laid the periodical face-down upon the library-table and turned toward her. In his amber eyes was a new light. A railroad switchman who faces the company's president after saving a train from destruction might wear just that expression.
Marcreta seemed bereft of speech. She was staring at one of the lights in the house across the street as though it had hypnotized her. One of the delicate white hands was clasped tight upon the arm of her chair. Richard Glover told himself that he had never seen her look so beautiful. And for the first time since he had known her, there was not a suggestion of invalidism in her tall, regal figure. She was wearing a filmy gray dress with a touch of pink that seemed to give a heightened flush to her cheeks. He allowed several seconds to pass. Was it possible, he was wondering, that this "first story" had won that tribute most coveted by all authors—the tribute of breathless silence?
"Well?" he ventured at last. "What do you think of it?"
She brought her eyes back to the room, to the magazine lying face-down upon the table, but not to him. "I think," she said with a long sigh, "that you are a wonderfully clever man."
The light flickered out of his eyes. He leaned toward her with a pleading gesture. "Is that all you are going to say to me?"
"Isn't that enough? Wouldn't you rather have me say that than anything else?"
"You know I wouldn't. You know that there are many other things that I would far rather have you say." He came over and stood beside her chair. "Marcreta," he begged, "say just one of them. Say this—that you are glad to have me come here. I wrote that story for you; because I know that you value creative power more than anything else in the world. Are you glad that I did it? Are you glad that I brought it to you?"
She was looking at him now, all her ardent soul in her eyes. "I am glad," she breathed. "I can't tell you how glad."
"Then I think you ought to give me some reward. I ought to have at least——"
She put out her hand with the imperious little gesture that he had come to know well. "Not just now. Please, not just now. You see, you have rather—swept me off my feet. Isn't that enough for one day?"
"It is enough," he assured her exultantly. And when, a few moments later, he climbed into the roadster that was waiting at the curb, he was repeating the three words over and over to himself like a hilarious refrain.
Just at dusk Clinton came home and found his sister still sitting in front of the gas logs where Richard Glover had left her. His step startled her out of a reverie. "Oh, it's you, Clint! I'm so glad you've come. The house has been full of ghosts."
"I suppose so. Glover come?"
"Yes. He has come and gone."
He reached down swiftly and felt one of her hands. It was icy. "Something has happened, Crete." The words were not a question, but they demanded a reply. And she gave it without hesitation.
"Yes, something has happened. I've got to take some action about it too, but I haven't decided yet what it shall be."
He stood on the hearth-rug looking down at her with a curious mixture of annoyance and admiration in his eyes. It had always been so, he reflected. About the trivial things of life she was willing to abide by his judgment, but in every vital issue she took the initiative and pushed her own convictions through. In the moment of large emergency she had always stood superbly alone. As he looked at her a half-audible sigh escaped him. After all, this semblance of vitality was but the ephemeral stimulation of excitement. And he dreaded the bleak reaction from it; that sudden ebbing away of hope, known to all of those who have kept long vigils beside sick beds.
"Let me manage it, whatever it is," he commanded. "I've told you before that you're not strong enough for these emotional scenes. It isn't as if you were a well woman."
She lapsed into silence, and he felt a sharp twinge of self-reproach. It was that double-edged remorse that chivalrous strength always feels when it reminds frailty of its weakness.
"Whatever it is, Crete," he hurried on, "can't you defer the action until a more propitious time? Can't it wait until you are stronger?"
A little choking sound came from her. He stopped short in swift alarm. Never before in all the long years of her semi-invalidism had she let him see her give way to tears. He went to her, moving uncertainly as though through unfamiliar territory. She had covered her face with her hands as though she could shut out with them the sounds of passionate sobbing.
"I'll never be any stronger, Clint. You know it; I know it. Why do we drag on with this miserable pretense? Oh, it is killing me, but it takes so long. Why can't I die?"
He recoiled before that cry, before the havoc that it revealed to him. Inwardly he cursed himself and then he remembered Glover, as he might have remembered a gun which he had accidentally discharged, believing it to be unloaded. He couldn't endure the thought that he had hurt her and, manlike, seized upon the first scapegoat that offered itself. But he carefully refrained from a mention of the late caller. And when he spoke his voice was harsh with feeling. "Crete, how selfish of you. If you should die, what would become of me?"
The promptness of her reply struck him like a blow. "You'd marry. You're over thirty, Clint, and if it hadn't been for me you would have been married years ago and would be living a normal life in a home of your own. You think——" She was sitting upright now, facing him with a terrible courage. "You think I don't realize what you have sacrificed. Oh, if you only knew how I've lain awake at night, staring into the dark, praying to die so that I could set you free. You promised mother. I've always known that you did. But even if you hadn't, you would have promised yourself. And that's what has 'keyed me up,' as you express it. That's what is making me live an octave higher than I can stand. It isn't—any other man who is doing it. It's you."
He sat down on the broad arm of her chair as though overcome by sudden weakness. "Well, thank God you have told me this, Crete, before it eats any deeper into your soul. Sacrifice you call it. But sacrifice involves renunciation, and I have never renounced any woman for your sake. I have never been engaged—nor wanted to be."
"But you ought to," she told him violently. "You ought to, and you would if you hadn't unconsciously put the idea away from you so many times. You ought to have a home and wife and children. Oh, I know that you should, and the knowledge has made me desperate."
A dawning suspicion showed in his eyes and then they grew hard. "It must have," he said coldly. "It must have made you very desperate indeed—if you have been considering Glover as a way out."
She met the charge without resentment. "What other way is there for me? You see, there wouldn't be any danger of my—caring more for somebody else afterward. That is quite beyond the range of possibility now, so it would be safer for me than for some women. And physical disability, the thing that made me—that would have made me refuse a man of a different type, wouldn't count at all with him. His ambitions are purely material, and I could capitalize them. That's all he wants. It would really be quite a fair bargain."
Clinton Morgan rose slowly and stood looking down at his sister as though she were a stranger to whom he had just been introduced. "Well, by Gad!" he breathed, and for a moment was bereft of further speech. And then his words came slowly, and more as the detached fragments of a soliloquy than a response to her own.
"Crete, of all women in the world! You, with your temperament! With an idealism that I and most other men couldn't touch with a ten-foot pole—and yet you'd work out a proposition like that! I didn't know that you saw through Glover. I made that excuse for you, that you were too unsophisticated to see through him. But sizing him up for an adventurer, you frame up a contract that——Why, I'll be hanged if I can believe it, Crete. I simply can't believe it."
She made no defense, and he went on in the same dazed tone.
"Go out on the street and pick up the first girl you meet and bring her in here. If I should make love to her and try to get her to marry me, and succeed, I'd have a much better chance of happiness than this adventure would ever give you. For, at least, I'd be swimming with both hands free. Now listen." He seemed to become suddenly aware of her presence again. "When I fall in love, I'll begin to think about getting married. But I'm not going to be hurried into it by you or anybody else. And when I decide to marry, not you nor anybody else shall stand in my way."
She reached for him with a convulsive gesture. "Clinton, do you mean that? Do you mean that nobody should?"
"I pledge you my word. But this has got to be a bargain. You have demonstrated that you know how to make one. Now don't you ever let that man cross this threshold again."
"I've got to, Clint. After what happened this afternoon, I've got to let him come—for a while."
"Why?"
"Sit down and let me tell you about it. I'll have to tell you, or it will eat up my heart. But the thing will seem incredible."
"Not to me. I think after what I've just heard that I can believe anything."
"Well, you remember that I told you he had promised to read me something that he had written?"
"Yes, advertising matter for the new Carlsbad."
"I thought it was going to be that but I was mistaken. It was advertising matter, but not for Carlsbad."
"For what, then?"
"For Richard Glover."
Clinton grunted. "I see. He is trying to win you by doing the Othello stunt on paper."
Marcreta appeared to weigh the suggestion. "I don't think it is entirely that. He wants money very badly. He has to have money, a lot of it, for this hotel venture, and he is trying every means of getting it."
"I've always been led to believe," Clinton interposed, "my friends who write have always led me to believe that story-writing (and I assume that this was some sort of story) is rather an uncertain means of capitalization for a novice."
"But this story was not written by a novice, Clint." Marcreta's voice had sunk suddenly almost to a whisper. "It was written by——"
"By whom?"
"Roger Kenwick."
Clinton Morgan stiffened in his chair. "What?" he cried. "You mean to say that he had the nerve to steal the thing and bring it out under his own name?"
"He is too clever to bring it out under his own name. He chose a fictitious name, and he changed the opening paragraph. But except for that and the alteration of the title, I pledge you my word, Clint, that that story is exactly as Roger Kenwick read it to me, before he went into the service."
There was a moment of silence. Clinton was recalling what she had said when he came in about ghosts. He scanned her face uneasily. And he saw in it the new expression which had startled Richard Glover. For the first time in his life he began to think of her as she might be if she were unhampered by physical infirmity. And then he fell to wondering what had passed between her and Kenwick; just how far the tragedy of his life had affected her. The Morgan reserve had kept her completely silent upon this subject and he had never had any wish to intrude himself into her confidence. He picked up the thread of the story where she had dropped it. "How could it have happened? And how did he dare?"
"I can't even make a guess at how it happened, but so far as daring goes——Well, as I said, he is desperate for money. And the thing, as looked at from his point of view, was not so very risky. Why should it be? He must have discovered in some way that the—the author was not a possible source of trouble. And who else could care about it? Never in his wildest dreams would any one conjure up the possibility that I might know. He doesn't have the least idea, of course, that I ever knew the real author. What a nemesis! That he should have chosen me, of all the people in the world, for his audience! It's so impossible that he will never suspect it."
"But what happened after he had finished? What did you do?"
"Nothing, except to compliment him on his cleverness and try to hide every emotion that I've ever had. It was hard; I think it's the hardest test I've ever had to meet. But it has given me something that I never have had before." Her voice grew husky with sudden embarrassment. "O Clint, you were right about him. I've known for quite a long time that you were right about him, but I couldn't admit it to myself; not with the course that I had decided to take. But, Clint, although I knew he was calculating and sordid and insincere, I didn't know this about him. I didn't think he hadn't a sense of honor. If I had suspected that, it would have made everything different. But you can see," she went on eagerly, "you can see now why I must let him go on coming here for a while? Why I can't let him get beyond my sight?"
Her brother nodded. "Give him enough rope and he'll hang himself, that's the idea, isn't it?"
"I've got to be very careful, you see. He has told me a good many things about himself of late, and I'm trying to fit them all together. Some of them don't match at all. And now that he has revealed himself, I'm beginning to doubt everything. That Mont-Mer secretaryship, for instance, looks very improbable to me now. I've questioned him about several prominent people down there, and he doesn't seem to have heard of any of them."
"Well, don't worry any more about it just now, Crete. Let's hustle something to eat and call it a day."
When his sister had gone to bed that night Clinton sat for a long time in the library, staring into the fireplace. The little scene which had been enacted there a few hours earlier had stirred him to the depths of his being. It brought him perplexity and a poignant self-reproach. The fact that she was not the crying type of woman made her emotional abandon a particularly haunting thing.
"I've been an awful ass," he muttered. "I can't see just now where it is exactly that I failed. But it's evident that somewhere along the line I've acted like one of the early Christian martyrs."
He picked up a little volume that was lying at his elbow. It was a dainty thing bound in gold and ivory. He remembered that Roger Kenwick had given it to his sister on that last night when he had come to bid her good-by. He had never looked into it before. Now he turned the pages idly. It was modern verse, and he read intermittently here and there. Among the leaves he came at last upon a folded bit of paper. It was in Marcreta's handwriting; evidently something that she had copied. He tilted it under the light and read the trio of stanzas.
Clinton Morgan folded the bit of paper with reverent fingers. For he knew, all at once, that this was not a copy of anything, but that he had unwittingly torn aside the veil of his sister's secret soul. He felt all of the honorable man's repugnance against outraged decency. The scrap of paper seemed to scorch his fingers. With a punctilious regard for detail, which he knew to be absurd, he tried to find the exact page where it had been concealed. Then he put the volume back upon the table and went over to the window. His conjectures concerning this romance had come to an end. Now he knew, and knowing felt suddenly weighted with guilt.
He could imagine now how she must have felt as she had sat, a few hours before, listening to the paragraphs of Kenwick's masterpiece as they fell from the glib tongue of Richard Glover. There was an expression almost of awe upon his face. She could write all that, feel all that for one man, and then deliberately plan to marry another, to set him free! The thing seemed preposterous, and yet he knew it to be true.
And then his thoughts reverted to Kenwick, and the days that now seemed almost like the unreal days of a dream, when he had first known him over at the fraternity-house in Berkeley. He recalled the night when he had brought him home to dinner and introduced him to Marcreta and tried to make him show off for her like a trained puppy. Perhaps it would have been better if he had never brought him. But these things were in the hands of fate and fate has an infinite number of tools. Standing there at the window, gazing at the reflection of the gas logs mirrored against the black pane, he found himself growing suddenly resentful of the casual emergencies of life. Mere cobweb threads they were but upon them hung the destinies of human souls. You turned the first corner instead of the second in an hour of aimless wandering, and the circulation of your life current was completely changed. It was folly to believe that all the corners were posted with signs to be read and heeded by that secret autocrat, the subconscious mind. The intricacies of such a universe made the brain reel. It was better to believe that we played the game blind, and that the stakes were to the courageous.
He went back to the table and turned out the reading-lamp, blotting out the sight of the white and gold book.
"Lord! What a pity!" he murmured. "She would have been such an inspiration to him. It was the devil's own luck. Poor Kenwick! Poor little Crete!"
Madame Rosalie was setting her stage for a caller. It was evidently to be an important client, for cards, crystal, horoscope, ouija-board, and other handmaidens to divination were set forth upon the table in the dim back parlor. The priestess herself, in her garnet-colored robe, moved about the room with the noiselessness of a shadow. Although it was barely dusk she drew the shades and swung the electric bulb over the end of the table. Then she stood surveying her work with the critical scrutiny of an artist experimenting for the best light upon his picture. Her too-brilliant eyes roved restlessly from one carefully arranged detail to another.
Suddenly a footstep sounded outside, and there was a buzz of the electric bell. Madame Rosalie waited exactly the correct length of time before responding to its summons. The interval was expressive neither of eagerness nor indifference. When she returned to her sanctum it was to usher into it a man who moved hurriedly, drew off a pair of heavy driving-gloves, and tossed them into the Morris-chair. The astrologist removed them quietly to a settee in a far corner of the apartment and seated herself in the chair.
"They say you're the eighth wonder of the world." Her visitor spoke with a thinly veiled sarcasm as he took his place under the light. "I might as well tell you at the outset that I don't go in much for this sort of thing. I'm here upon the suggestion of somebody else. I've known a good many of you trance mediums and my experience has been that you're strong on the future and weak on the past. You play safer that way. But it happens that I want help with the past more than with the future. What's the idea now? Are you going to hypnotize me?"
His voice was not antagonistic, only briskly businesslike. He might have been suggesting that he try on the suit of clothes which a salesman was proffering for his favor.
Madame Rosalie answered in the low, slightly indifferent voice that had surprised Roger Kenwick. "Hypnotism is a coöperative measure. I couldn't hypnotize you unless you were willing and would help me."
He laughed. "That's a good deal for you to admit. Most of you people claim to be able to do anything."
"Do you wish me to try to hypnotize you?"
"No, I don't care about it especially. It takes a lot of time, doesn't it? Get busy on something that comes right down to brass tacks."
She turned the crystal sphere slowly in her hand. "You are obsessed by a fear, and you have reason to be. There is a very serious problem confronting you, and you need help in solving it. I can't help you, but perhaps I can find some one else who can."
She gathered up a bundle of cards. At first glance he had thought they were playing-cards, but he saw now that the reverse sides were all blanks. "On each of these I am going to write a word," she explained. "I'll hold it for an instant before your eyes. Read it, close your eyes, and then look at those maroon-colored curtains over there."
Without comment he followed these instructions. Ten minutes passed while the client glanced at the cards and then at the curtains. Sometimes his gaze strayed back to the bit of pasteboard before the medium had another one ready. By the end of the hour she had cast his horoscope, read his palm, and performed other mystic rites. Then she settled back in the deep chair and announced herself ready to "project the astral body." A few moments passed in absolute silence. The medium appeared to fall into a light slumber, and the man on the other side of the table was prepared to see her face contorted by the writhing pains of the trance victim. But it remained calm, almost deathlike. His shrewd eyes were sizing her up as she slept. He seemed almost to forget that he had come for spiritual counsel, and his gaze was calculating, speculative, as though he were considering her possibilities as an ally. Suddenly a voice came from the depths of the chair. It made him jump. It was not the voice of Madame Rosalie, but one that seemed vaguely familiar.
"Marstan is dead." The words died away in a kind of moan. After an interval of silence came the message, "He says to tell you that you have found the criminal, and now is the time to act." She seemed to sink deeper into oblivion. The client waited a full minute. Then he leaned over and whispered through the stillness two words—"Rest Hollow."
The medium's head rolled from side to side on the cushions of the chair, like that of a surgical patient who is trying to escape the ether sponge. "Gone!" she muttered. "All gone!"
He swept aside the cards and ouija-board and leaned closer, his hands almost touching hers. The amused skepticism had died out of his amber eyes, and the question that he asked came in a tense whisper. "Where is Ralph Regan?"
A frown drew the woman's heavy black brows together. "Gone!" she murmured again. "Gone!"
It was not possible for him to determine from her tone whether she was answering his last question or merely repeating her response to "Rest Hollow." He tried again.
And after a moment the reply came slowly through stiff lips. "The way leads over a curving road. Follow that road to a place with a high stone fence where the gates stand always open. There you will find him."
He settled back in his chair, his eyes resting, fascinated, upon the graven face.
"Marstan is here." She spoke in her own voice now and there was in it a note of infinite weariness. "He has something to say to you."
The man smiled grimly. "I should think he would. Tell him to go ahead; I'm listening."
"He says you must give up the first plan——" She frowned in the effort of transmission. "And the second plan—and try the third. He says there is a woman working in the plan too: she has just begun to work in it. You must get her aid or she might——"
He leaned forward eagerly. "Yes? She might what?"
"I don't quite get it. It's a difficult control. But he seems to be afraid of that woman. He wants very much to warn you against——"
She shivered slightly and opened her eyes. The man had left his seat and was standing close to her side. "I hope you got what you want," she said wearily. "I don't know when I've had a sitting that has cost so much."
He crossed to the settee and picked up his gloves. "It must get on your nerves. Suppose we go out somewhere and have a little bite of supper. I know a place down on Dupont; no style about it, but they give you a great little meal. What do you say?"
She glanced at the nickel clock upon the mantel. "It's almost seven," she demurred, "and I expect another client at seven-thirty."
"No more sittings to-night," he decreed. There was an almost insolent authority in his tone. "Time to call a halt. It's dinner-time in heaven, and spirits must live. You're coming out with me. Get on your street togs, little witch."
Without further protest she obeyed while her escort waited in the shabby entrance-hall. At the curb he helped her into the roadster, and five minutes later they were seated at a small bare table in one of the popular bohemian restaurants of the downtown district.
"No Martinis any more," he sighed, as he helped her out of her cheap coat with its imitation-fur collar. "Life isn't what it used to be, is it?" His own hat and expensive-looking overcoat he hung upon the peg in a diamond-shaped mirror bearing the soap-written injunction, "Try Our Tamales." "But they serve a placid little near-beer in this place that helps some. Bring two, waiter."
When the attendant returned with the glasses, he tossed off the contents of his at a gulp, but the woman sipped hers with the leisurely enjoyment of the epicure. Then she set it down and stabbed with her fork at the dish of green olives in the center of the table.
The soup came, a rich bean chowder, which she ate almost in silence, while her companion commented casually upon the service and furnishings of the café. They had a rear table near the swinging doors that led into the kitchen. It was not more or less conspicuous than any of the others. The atmosphere of unconventionality which pervaded the place seemed to envelop all its habitués in a sort of mystic veil that was in itself a guarantee of privacy. At the table nearest them a girl was talking earnestly to a man who sat with his arm about her. Madame Rosalie, raising her eyes from her soup-plate, encountered the bold, appraising stare of her escort. She returned it impersonally and with the flicker of a smile, taking in the "freckled" eyes and the large thin hands. And when she smiled her face re-gained something of a former beauty. The man leaned toward her with a consciously confiding manner. "You call yourself Madame Rosalie," he said. "But isn't it really Mademoiselle?"
Her smile deepened but she gave him no answer. In the delicate, lacy waist and white skirt which she had donned, she looked years younger. There was a ruby pendant at her throat but she wore no other jewel. The garish light of the café, shining upon her straight black hair, gave it a luster that was like the dull gleam of jet.
"Not Mademoiselle?" he queried again, and his smile was like the password between two brother lodge-members.
And then Madame Rosalie lost some of her inscrutable reserve. "Not Rosalie," she corrected. "But it's a good name; as good as any other for my trade, don't you think?"
He turned one of the clumsy glass salt-shakers between his fingers. "The name is all right," he admitted. "But—why do you do—that sort of thing? You admit yourself that it's hard on your nerves. Why do you do it—when you could do other things?"
The waiter reappeared and littered the table with an army of small oval platters. Odors of highly seasoned macaroni and ragout steamed from them. Madame Rosalie dipped daintily into the nearest dish. But in spite of her restraint, it would have been apparent to a close observer that her enjoyment of the meal was the keen avidity of one who has been long denied. When the waiter was out of hearing, she caught up the last words sharply.
"What do you mean by 'other things'?" For the first time her voice was eager, as though seeking counsel.
He shrugged. "I don't pretend to be a clairvoyant. Yet I know that there are other things that you could do—have done."
"How do you know it?"
"Well, in the first place, if you had been a medium for very long, the clever medium that you undoubtedly are, you would have made more money at it."
"I have made money at it."
"Not as much as you should have made. You wouldn't live as you do if you had money."
If she resented this assertion, she gave no sign of it, and he went on with the cool assurance of a physician who is certain of his diagnosis. "You may persuade yourself that you are in that business because you are interested in it or because you know that you have an unaccountable power. But you are doing it chiefly for the same reason that most of us ply our trades; because you want to make money."
"Well?" She commented, "It does supply me with a living, and you know there's a theory that we must live."
He laughed. "You don't have to live the way you do. There are much easier ways for you to accomplish that end. Have you got anybody dependent on you?"
"No, but I am horribly in debt." The admission seemed to slip from her without her permission, and when the words were out a little frown puckered her forehead. The eyes of her escort were fixed upon the ruby pendant, so obviously a genuine and costly stone. She toyed absently with it, putting a cruel strain upon its slender thread-like chain of gold. "Do you know," she said slowly, "I believe you would make a wonderful hypnotist. I believe that you could even hypnotize me."
The bold amber eyes gazed straight into hers. "But you told me, didn't you, that hypnotism had to be a coöperative measure? You said, I remember, that nobody could hypnotize anybody else unless—unless the victim were willing."
One of his hands closed over hers as it reached for the sugar-bowl. She made no effort to draw it away.
"Perhaps," she answered softly, "perhaps the victim is willing."
He stacked up a little pile of the oval platters and pushed them impatiently to one side. "I guess we understand each other all right," he said. "You need me and I need you. We've each come to the place where we need help. Now let's not waste any more time about it. Let's get down to brass tacks."
It was seven o'clock on a rainy evening, and Kenwick turned up the collar of his coat as he left the St. Germaine. Inside the Hartshire Building there was a cheerful warmth that promised well for the evening. He ignored the elevator and walked up the three flights of stairs to the floor where the photographer had his rooms. On the way, he tried to persuade himself that he was not doing this in order to gain time. But there was a good hour intervening between now and time to start for the theater, and at the end of that hour, he reflected Jarvis might not care to keep the engagement.
As he toiled upward Kenwick considered every possible detail of the scene that was before him, and then wearily discarded them all. "Why do I do it?" he challenged himself, as he reached the last landing. "How do I dare to do it? My God! I can't afford to do it; I've got to have one friend left!"
But as he had once told Jarvis, those scenes of life whose settings are scrupulously ordered usually lack dramatic climax. At the end of what he was pleased to characterize as his "confession," the photographer surveyed him with sympathetic but unastonished eyes.
"I'd begun to think that there might be something personal in it," he commented. "I could see that there was something lying heavy on your chest. It's a devilish mess, isn't it?"
The other man was looking at him with a disconcerting sharpness. But the thing for which he probed was not in Granville Jarvis's eyes.
"I seem to be such a helpless sort of brute," his host went on, and pushed a box of cigars across the table as though in an unconscious effort to make up with tobacco what he lacked in counsel. "I never can think of the right thing to do just on the spur of the minute. Inspiration has an uncomfortable habit of failing to keep her engagements with me."
"I didn't expect any advice," Kenwick told him. "But it's a relief to tell you and get it off my mind; to tell you and yet not have you think that I ought to be locked up."
"Somebody ought to be locked up," Jarvis remarked grimly. "And it's your job to find that person. Why don't you go East?"
"I am going East. I've decided to go next week. It would be hard to make you understand why I haven't done it before, but——Well, this sort of an—illness does a terrible thing to a man's soul, Jarvis. It paralyzes his initiative. It gives him the most deadly thing in this world; the patience of despair. I'm constantly waiting for things to clear up instead of going at them hammer and tongs."
His companion nodded. "I think I understand. It would be the hell of a situation for you back there among people you've always known, and who presumably know all about you, and not being able to bridge the gap. I can see why you wanted to get a line on yourself first, and you're right, too. After all, a man owes something to his nervous system. But since you've decided to go and brave it out back there I think I'd let things rest the way they are till you go. Sometimes life works itself out better if we don't interfere too much. Somebody is bound to make a foolish play if you let them all manage their own hands."
"And yet somebody told me the other day, Jarvis, that I was too passive in the crutches of fate; that I ought to be more combative, more aggressive."
Jarvis laughed. "I'd be willing to bet that it was a woman who told you that."
"Yes, a woman did tell me. It was that trance medium."
"I might have guessed it. By the way, I went to see her myself the other day. Your story got me interested. She ought to have paid you a liberal commission for that yarn. But I suppose she doesn't even know you wrote it. She struck me as being a mighty clever little woman. Well, it's after eight o'clock. Let's go."
They found their seats in the first row of the balcony. The house was brilliantly lighted and filling up rapidly. But although Jarvis had urged his companion to forget for a time the tangle in which he was enmeshed, it was he who returned to the theme while they sat waiting for the curtain to rise.
"The trouble is, there's a missing link in the chain somewhere. I don't mean an event, but a person. Somebody dealt those cards, of course, and whoever did it knows where the marked one is. The New York trip may be a wild goose chase after all. Did you ever think of hiring a detective to help you out?"
"Yes, I've thought of it a lot. But somehow I don't want to do it. I don't want to have anybody mixed up in my affairs as intimately as that. I can't explain my feeling about it. But there is so much noise about this sort of thing if it once rises to the surface, and if there's any graft connected with my name, I'd like to keep the scandal private. Besides," he laughed with a tolerant self-indulgence, "I don't suppose the person lives, Jarvis, who doesn't believe that way down inside of him somewhere, sleeping but never dead, is the genius of the detective. I've made a sort of a covenant with myself that I and no other shall run this thing to cover, and do it without kicking up a noise."
Jarvis was staring speculatively at the foot-lights. "It's one of the most curious cases I ever knew. I'll tell you what, Kenwick. You're the original 'Wise Man from Our Town.' Remember him?