CONTENTS

CHAPTER

Prologue

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

Epilogue

THE HEART LINE

PROLOGUE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You can't work me that way."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's them, then?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's her!" she whispered hoarsely.

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

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

"Francis, shut the door!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Your name is Margaret Riley."

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

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

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

"There is a little child, too."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In a week it will be too late."

"I'll do it to-morrow."

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

"I will, oh, I will!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He met it fairly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What have you read to-day?"

"I finished Gulliver."

"What did you think of it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I won't, Mamsy."

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

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

"Don't you remember?"

"I'm not sure. They was a place—"

"There was a place," she corrected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a reply in a soft voice which Francis could not make out, as they passed into the front room. He tried to peep through the keyhole, but as the key had been left in, he could see nothing. He sat down upon the box again to wait, playing with his toy globe. After a while he noticed a thin streak of light admitted by a crack in the panel of the door, and rose to see if he could see through it. At the height of his eye it was too narrow to show him anything in the room, but farther up it widened. He pulled down several account-books from the shelves and piled them upon the box. Standing tiptoe upon these, he found that he could get a clear though limited view of the bay-window.

Here a little girl sat quietly, vividly illuminated in the sunshine. She was scarcely more than four years of age and was dressed in a navy blue silk frock whose collar and pockets were elaborately trimmed with ruffles of white satin and bows of ribbon. She wore a white muslin cap decorated with ribbon, lace and rosebuds; white stockings showed above her high buttoned boots; her hair was a truant mass of fine-spun threads, curling, tawny yellow. Her face was round, her eyes extraordinarily wide apart under level, straight brows. What caught and held his attention, however, as he watched, was a velvety mole upon her left cheek, so placed as to be a piquant ornament rather than a disfigurement to her countenance. She sat listening, tightly holding a woolly lamb in her plump little arms. The two women were out of his range of vision.

The steady low sound of voices came to him, but he made no attempt to listen—his attention was riveted upon the figure of the little girl who was sharply focused, as in an opera-glass, directly in his field of view. Occasionally, as she was spoken to, she smiled, and her cheek dimpled; but she seemed to be looking at him, through the door. She scarcely moved her eyes, but kept them fixed in his direction, as if conscious of an invisible presence.

The women talked on. Occasionally Madam Grant's voice rose to a more excited note, and a few words came to him, betraying to his knowledge of her that her mood had been interrupted by her customary vagaries. At such times the little girl would withdraw her glance to gaze solemnly in Madam Grant's direction; she showed, however, no signs of alarm. It seemed, indeed, as if the little girl understood, even as he understood, the temporary aberration. Then her eyes would return to his, as if drawn back by his gaze.

So the scene lasted for a half-hour, during which time he caught no glimpse of the other visitor. At last a hand was outstretched and the little girl rose. Francis stepped down for a moment to rest himself from his strained position; when he had put his eye again to the crack she had passed out of his line of sight.

He was to catch a few words more, however, before the callers left.

"I'm glad you came to-day," Madam Grant said. "You were just in time."

"Why, are you going to leave here?"

"Yes, I'm going away."

"Felicia," the visitor said earnestly, "why won't you let us take care of you? This is no place for you—it is dreadful to think of you here! Now, while you are able to talk to me, do let me do something for you!"

"No; it's too late. Besides, there is Francis," said Madam Grant.

"Let Francis come, too. This is a terrible place for a child. Look at this room—look at the filth and disorder!"

Madam Grant's voice rose again. "Take her away, take her away!" she cried raucously. "She'll go to New York, she'll go to Toledo—I don't want her in Toledo meddling! She'll be in New Orleans the first thing you know; there she goes now! Take her away, take her away!"

The door closed. Francis heard the key turn in the lock. Then there was the jarring sound of a fall and finally all was still. He waited for some moments, then he called out:

"Mamsy, let me out! let me out!"

There was no reply.

"Mamsy!" he called out again. "Where are you? Come and let me out, please let me out!"

There was still no answer to his pleadings. In terror now, he pounded the panels, shook the handle of the door, and then began to cry. Climbing upon the box again, he caught sight of Madam Grant's skirt. She was lying prone upon the floor. As he wept on, she moved and began to crawl slowly toward him. At last her hand groped to the door and the key was turned in the lock. He burst out into her arms.

The blood was gone from her tense, anguished face; one hand clutched at her heart. She did not speak, but gasped horribly for breath. There was no need now for her to direct him. He poured out a dose of medicine and forced it between her lips. He gave her another spoonful; the drops trickled from her mouth and stained the front of her crimson gown. Then, with his assistance, she crept to his couch, pulled herself upon it and lay down, groaning. He sat on the floor beside her, stroking her hand.

For some time she was too weak to speak. Her black eyebrows were drawn down, the cleft between them was deep, like the gash of a knife. Her white hair fell about her head in disorder. She drew a ragged coverlid over her chest, as if suffering from the cold, though the sun shone in upon her as she lay and mercilessly illumined her desperate face. The spasm of agony abated, and after some minutes she breathed more freely. Then, with a sigh, her muscles relaxed and her voice came clear and calm.

"You must be a good boy, Francis," she began, "for I am going away. It's all over now with the worry and the puzzle and the pain. What will you do, I wonder? Oliver might help, perhaps. Oliver isn't so bad, down in his heart. He was fair enough. There's money enough. Francis, when I fall asleep, look in the trunk and hide the money, if you can—don't let them get it away from you! Wait till I'm asleep, though—the key is in my bag. What a fool I was! I might have known. There was my grandmother, she was mad, too. It may stop with me—oh, she was a dear little thing, though!"

"Who was the little girl, Mamsy?" Francis inquired, his curiosity overcoming his fear for her.

"Born with a veil, born with a veil! I was a seventh daughter, too—much good it did me! I could tell others—who could tell me? Bosh! it's all rubbish—we'll never know! fol-de-rol, Francis, it's all gammon—all but Weenie. Weenie knows. Yellow hair, too; it will grow gray soon enough!" Then, as if she had just heard his question she broke our querulously, "Where did you see her?"

"I looked through a crack in the door, Mamsy."

She pulled herself up in a frenzy of anger and shook her finger at him. "Oh, you did, did you? You snooping, sniping monkey! I'll tell you what you were looking at, you were watching the train to New York! You'll go to Toledo, will you? You won't find anything there. Go to New Orleans; there's plenty to find out in New Orleans! In Denver, too, and way stations, but be careful, be careful! I was born in Toledo." She sank back exhausted.

"Don't be worried, Mamsy," said Francis, attempting to calm her. "I won't never go to Toledo, Mamsy!"

"'Won't never'!" She glared at him. "What did I say about double negatives, boy? Two negatives make a positive, two pints make a quart, two fools make a quarrel, two quarrels make a fool. What language! I was at Vassar, too—I was secretary of my class! Oh, I want to see Victoria! She would understand, I'm sure! Oh, Francis!" Her voice dwindled away and her eyes closed.

For a moment she seemed to be asleep. Then a sudden convulsion frightened him. She spoke again without raising her lids.

"Why, there's mother! Come and kiss me, mother! Did Weenie send for you, mother? Oh, Weenie! Who's the old man? Father? I never saw father on this side, did I, Weenie? He passed out when I was very little, didn't he? So many people! Why, the room is full of them! Yes, I'm coming—"

The boy was tugging frantically at her hand, calling to her without ceasing, sobbing in his fright. He succeeded at last in bringing her out of her trance and she opened her eyes to stare at him. Her breath was coming harder. With a great effort she reached for the boy's head and pulled it nearer, gazing into his frightened eyes.

"Poor Francis!" she gasped. "You've been so good, dear—you've been my hope! Felicia Grant's hope! You have no name, dear; take that one, instead of mine—Francis Granthope—oh, this pain!"

"Shan't I get you the medicine?" he asked, sobbing.

"No, it's no use." She pushed him gently away. "I'm going—to sleep—now— Don't call me back, Francis; I want rest. Remember the trunk—good-by!"

She closed her eyes and rolled over on her side, turning her face away from him.

He waited half an hour in silence. Then he put his hands to her arms softly.

"Mamsy!" he said quietly but insistently. "Are you asleep, Mamsy?" There was no answer.

He arose and looked for her leather bag. He found it on the floor where she had fallen. Opening it, he found inside a heterogeneous collection—strings, hair-pins, peppermints, papers, a lock of hair in an envelope, a photograph, several gold pieces, and the key—he took it and tiptoed into the little side room with excited interest. He had never looked inside the trunk before and his eagerness made his hands tremble as he unlocked it.

On top was a tray filled with account-books and papers, letters, folded newspapers and a mahogany box. It was all he could do to lift it to get at what was beneath. He struggled with it until he had tilted it up and slid it down to the floor.

Below was a mass of white satin and lace. He lifted this piece by piece, disclosing a heavy wedding gown, silk-lined, wrapped in tissue paper, and many accessories of an elaborate trousseau—a half-dozen pairs of silk stockings, a pair of exquisite white satin slippers, a box of long white gloves, another of lace handkerchiefs, dozens of mysterious articles of lingerie, embroidered and lace-trimmed. In a lower corner was a little, white vellum, gold-clasped prayer-book.

Lastly he found a package securely wrapped in brown paper; opening this, he discovered six crisp, green packages of bank-notes. These he rewrapped and slid them inside his full blue blouse. Then he put everything back in order, replaced the tray and locked the trunk.

Finally he stole back to the form upon the couch. "Mamsy, are you awake?" he whispered.

There was no answer, and he shook her shoulder slightly. Then, as she made no reply, he leaned over and looked at her face. Her eyes were open, fearfully open, but they did not turn to his. They were set and glazed with film.

A horror came over him now, and he shook her with all his strength.

"Mamsy, Mamsy!" he cried. "Look at me, Mamsy! What's the matter?"

Still she did not look at him, or speak, or move. He noticed that she was not breathing, and his fear overcame him. He dropped her cold hand and ran screaming out into the hall.

CHAPTER I

THE PALMIST AND FANCY GRAY

Fancy Gray was the lady's name and the lady's hair was red. Both were characteristic of her daringly original character, for, as Fancy's name had once been Fanny, Fanny's hair had once been brown. Further indication of Miss Gray's disposition was to be found in her eyebrows, which were whimsically arched, and her mouth, which was scarlet-lipped and tightly held. Another detail of significance was her green silk stockings, rather artfully displayed to lend a harmony to her dark green cloth tailor-made suit, which fitted like a kid glove over Miss Gray's cunningly rounded little body. Her eyes were brown and bright; they were as quick as heliograph flashes, but could, when she willed, burn as softly as glowing coals of fire. Her face seemed freshly washed, her complexion was translucently clear, modified only by the violet shadows under her eyes and an imperceptible tint of fine down on her upper lip. Her hands, well beringed and well kept, were fully worth the admiration which, by her willingness to display them to advantage, she seemed to expect on their account.

In New York, a good guesser would have put her age at twenty-three; but, taking into account the precocious effect of the California climate, nineteen might be nearer the mark. She was, at all events, a finished product; there was no evidence of diffidence or gaucherie about Fancy Gray. She appeared to be very well satisfied with herself. If, as she evidently did, she considered herself beautiful, her claim would undoubtedly be acknowledged by most men who met her for the first time. On those more fastidious, she had but to smile and her mouth grew still more generous, showing a double line of white teeth, those in the lower jaw being set slightly zigzag, as if they were so pretty that it had been wished to put in as many as possible—her cheeks dimpled, her eyes half closed—and she triumphed over her critic. For there was something more dangerous than beauty in that smile; there was an elfin humor that captured and bewildered—there was warmth and welcome in it. It made one feel happy.

As she sat at her desk in the waiting-room she could look across the corner of Geary and Powell Streets to catch the errant eye of passing cable-car conductors, or gaze, in abstraction, at pedestrians crossing Union Square, or at the oriental towers of the Synagogue beyond. With the bait of a promising smile, she caught many an upward glance. Fancy Gray was not in the habit of hiding her charms, and she levied tribute to her beauty on all mankind. She gazed upon women, however, far less indulgently than upon men; never was there a more captious observer of her sex. A glance up and a glance down she gave; and the specimen was classified, appraised, appreciated, condemned, condoned or complimented. Not a pin missed her scrutiny, not a variation of the mode escaped her quest for revealing evidence. A woman could hardly pass from contact with Fancy's swift glance without being robbed, mentally, of everything worth while that she possessed in the matter of novelty in fashion or deportment. Fancy appropriated the ideas thus gained, and made use of them at the earliest opportunity. The waiting-room bore, upon the outside, the legend:

Inside, where Fancy sat daily from ten to four, the apartment was walled and carpeted in red. Upon the walls, painted wooden Chinese grotesque masks, grinning or scowling against the fire-cracker paper, hung, at intervals, from black stained woodwork. Between the two windows was a plaster column bearing the winged head of Hypnos; at the other end of the room was a row of casts of hands hanging on hooks against a black panel. The desk in the corner was Fancy's station, and here she murmured into the telephone, scribbled appointments in a blank-book, read The Second Wife, gazed out into the green square, or manicured her nails—according as the waiting-room chairs were empty, or occupied with men or with women. Whatever company she had, she was never careless of the light upon her or the condition of her tinted hair.

It was a cool, blustering afternoon in August. San Francisco was at its worst phase. The wind was high and harsh, harassing the city with its burden of dust. Over the mountains, on the Marin shore, a high fog hung, its advance guard scudding in through the Golden Gate, piling over the hills by the Twin Peaks and preparing its line of battle for a general assault upon the peninsula at nightfall. In the streets men and women clung to their hats savagely as they passed gusty corners, and coat collars were turned up against the raw air. Summer had, so far, spent its effort in four violently hot days, when the humid atmosphere made the temperature unbearable. Now the weather had flung back to an extreme as unpleasant; open fires were in order. There was one now burning in Granthope's reception-room, to which Fancy Gray made frequent excursions. She was there, making a picture of herself beside the hearth, having resolutely held her pose for some time in anticipation of his coming, when Francis Granthope arrived.

Tall, erect and able-bodied, with the physique of an athlete, and a strong, leonine head covered with crisp, waving, black hair, Francis Granthope had the complement of the actor's type of looks; but his alertness of carriage and his swift, searching glance distinguished him from the professional male beauty. Fine eyes of deep, rich blue, fine teeth often exposed in compelling smiles, a resolute mouth and a firm, deeply cleft chin he had; and all these attractions were set off by his precise dress—gloves, bell-tailed overcoat, sharply creased trousers, varnished boots and silk hat. A short mustache, curling upward slightly at the ends, and a small, triangular tuft of hair on his lower lip gave him a somewhat foreign aspect. He had an air, a manner, that kept up the illusion. Men would perhaps have distrusted him as too obviously handsome; women would talk about him as soon as he had left the room. Stage managers would have complimented his "presence"; children would have watched him, fascinated, reserving their judgment. He seemed to fill the room with electricity.

He sent a smile to Fancy, half of welcome, half of amusement at her picturesque posture, and, with cordial "Good morning!" in a mellow barytone, removed his overcoat and hat, putting them into a closet near the hall door. He reappeared in morning coat, white waistcoat and pin-checked trousers, with a red carnation in his buttonhole. He held his hands for a moment before the fire, then looked indulgently at his blithe assistant.

Now, one of Fancy's charms was a slender, pointed tongue. This she was wont to exhibit, on occasion, by sticking it out of her mouth coquettishly, and shaking it saucily in the direction of her nostrils—a joyous exploit which was vouchsafed only upon rare and intimate occasions. This, now, she did, tilting her head backward to give piquancy to the performance.

Granthope laughed, and went over to where she sat.

"You're a saucy bird, Fancy," he commented, leaning over her, both hands upon the desk. "Do you know I rather like you!"

Her face grew drolly sober; her whimsical eyebrows lifted.

"I don't know as I blame you," she replied. "You always did have good taste, though."

"I believe that I might go so far as to imprint a salute upon your chaste brow!"

"I accept!" said Fancy Gray.

He stooped over and kissed her. She was graciously resigned.

"Thank you, Frank," she said demurely. "Small contributions gratefully received." She tucked her head into the corner of his arm, and he looked down upon her kindly.

"Poor little Fancy!" he said softly.

"Have you missed me, Frank?"

"Horribly!"

"Don't laugh at me!"

"How can I help it, O toy queen?"

"Am I so awfully young?"

"You're pretty juvenile, Fancy, but you'll grow up, I think."

She was quite sober now. "Oh, there's an awful lot of time wasted in growing up," she said. Then she squirmed her head so that she could look upward at him. "You've been awfully good to me, Frank!" Her tone was wistful.

"You deserve more than you will ever get, I'm afraid," was his answer as he patted her hair.

"I think you do like me a little."

He shook his finger at her. "No fair falling in love!"

She laughed. "I believe you're afraid, Frank!"

"I don't know what I'd do without you, Fancy. We've been through a good deal together, first and last, haven't we?"

"Yes, we've had a good time. I'd like to do it all over again."

"Heavens, no!" he exclaimed. "I wouldn't! There's enough ahead. From what I've seen of life, things don't really begin to happen till you're thirty, at least. All this will seem like a dream."

"Sometimes I hope it will." Fancy was looking away, now. Her gaze returned to him after a moment of silence. "Don't you ever think of getting out of this, Frank? You're too good for these fakirs, really you are! Why, you could mix with millionaires, easy! And you've got a good start, now. They like you. You've got the style and the education and the 'know' for it."

He went back to the fireplace, standing there with his hands behind his back.

"Oh, this is amusing enough. What does it matter, anyway? There are as big fools and shams in society as there are in my business. Look at the women that come down here, and the things they tell me! Why, I know them a good deal better now than I should if I were on their calling-lists and took tea with them! But you are right, in a way. I suppose some day I must quit this and take to honest theft."

"Don't say that, Frank! I hate you when you're cynical."

"What else can I be, in my profession?"

"Oh, I do want you to quit, Frank, really I do, and yet, I hate to think of it. What should I do? I'd lose you sure! I could never make good with the swells. I'm only a drifter."

"Oh, you can't lose me, Fan; we've pulled together too long. You could make good all right. You've got a pose and a poise that some ladies would give their teeth for. I don't believe you've ever really been surprised in your life, have you?"

"I guess not." Fancy shook her head thoughtfully. "When I am surprised, it'll be a woman who'll do it. No man can, that's sure."

"No. I fancy you know all there is to know about men. I wish I did. You'll do, Fancy Gray!" He approached her and playfully chucked her under the chin. Then he looked at her gravely. "I wonder why you're willing to drudge along here with me, anyway. You could get a much better position easily—with your face—and brains."

"And figure. Don't forget that!" Fancy shook her finger at him.

"Yes." He looked her over approvingly.

"No woman ought to be blue with a figure like mine, ought she?"

He laughed. "I can't imagine your ever being blue, Fancy!"

Fancy opened her eyes very wide.

"There's a whole lot you don't know about women yet," she said sagely.

"That's likely."

"Am I to understand that I'm fired, then?" She tried to appear demure.

"Not yet. I'm only too afraid you'll resign. It's queer you don't get married. You must have had lots of chances. Why don't you, Fancy?"

"I never explain," said Fancy. "It only wastes time."

He went over to her again and very affectionately boxed her ears.

She freed herself, and turned her face up to him. "Frank," she said, "do you think I'm pretty?"

"You're too pretty—that's the trouble!" he answered, smiling, as at a familiar trait.

"No, but really—do you honestly think so?" Her face had again grown plaintive.

"Yes, Fancy. Far be it from me to flatter or cajole with the compliments of a five-dollar reading, but as between friends, and with my hand on my heart, I assert that you are beautiful."

"I don't mean that at all," said Fancy. "I want to be pretty. That's what men like—pretty girls. Beautiful women never get anywhere except into the divorce courts. Do say I'm pretty!"

"Fancy, you know I'm a connoisseur of women. You are actually and absolutely pretty."

"Well, that's a great relief, if I can only believe you. I have to hear it once a day, at least, to keep up my courage. Now that's settled, let's go to work."

He went back to the fireplace and yawned. "All right. What's doing to-day?"

"Full up, except from eleven to twelve."

"Who are they?"

Fancy jauntily flipped open the appointment book and ran her forefinger down the page.

"Ten o'clock, stranger, Fleurette Heller. Telephone appointment. Girl with a nice voice."

"Be sure and look at her," Granthope remarked; "I may want a tip."

"Ten-thirty, Mrs. Page."

Granthope smiled and Fancy smiled.

"Do you remember what I told her?"

Fancy looked puzzled. "What do you mean? About her husband?"

"No, not that. The last time she came I tried a psychological experiment with her. I told her that normally she was a quiet, restrained, modest, discreet woman, but that at times her emotional nature would get the better of her; that she couldn't help breaking out and would suddenly let go. I thought she was about due this week. There's been something doing and she wants to tell me about it to appease her conscience. Give them what they want, and anything goes!"

Fancy listened, frowning, the point of her pencil between her lips. "You don't need any of my tips on Mrs. Page," she said with sarcasm. "At eleven, Mr. Summer, whoever he is."

"I don't care, if he's got the price."

"It bores you to read for men, doesn't it, Frank? I wish you'd let me do it."

As she spoke, the telephone bell on the desk rang, and she took up the receiver, drooping her head coquettishly.

"Yes?" she said dreamily, her eyes on Granthope, who had lighted a cigarette.

"Yes, half-past eleven o'clock, if that would be convenient. What name, please? ... No, any name will do..... Miss Smith? All right—good-by."

She entered the appointment in her book, and then remarked decidedly, "She's pretty!"

"No objections; they're my specialty," Granthope replied; "only I doubt it."

"Never failed yet," said Fancy.

Granthope looked at his watch, then passed through a red anteroom to his studio beyond. Fancy began to draw little squares and circles and fuzzy heads of men with mustaches upon a sheet of paper. In a few moments the palmist returned, his morning coat replaced by a black velvet jacket tight-fitting and buttoned close.

"Oh, Fancy, take a few notes, please; you didn't get that last one yesterday, I believe."

She reached for a lacquered tin box, containing a card catalogue, withdrew a blank slip and dipped her pen in the ink. Then, as he stopped to think, she remarked:

"I don't see why you go to all this trouble, Frank. Nobody else does. You've a good enough memory, and I think it's silly. I feel as if I were a bookkeeper in a business house."

"One might as well be systematic," he returned. "There's no knowing when all this will come in handy. I don't intend to give five-dollar readings all my life. I'm going to develop this thing till it's a fine art. I've got to do something to dignify the trade. This doesn't use nearly all that's in me. I wish I had something to do that would take all my intellect—it's all too easy! I don't half try. But it's a living. God knows I don't care for the money—nor for fame either, for that matter. Fame's a gold brick; you always pay more for it than it's worth. I suppose it's the sheer love of the game. I have a scientific delight in doing my stunt better than it has ever been done before. Some play on fiddles, I play on women—and make 'em dance, too! Some love machinery, some study electricity—but the wireless, wheel-less mechanics of psychology for mine. Practical psychology with a human laboratory. Pour the acid of flattery, and human litmus turns red with delight. Try the alkali of disapproval, and it grows blue with disappointment. I give 'em a run for their money, too. I make life wonderful for poor fools who haven't the wit to do it for themselves. I peddle imagination, Fancy."

"You get good prices," Fancy said, smiling a bit sadly. "There are perquisites. There aren't many men who have the chances you do, Frank. Women are certainly crazy about you, and now that you're taken up by the smart set, I expect you will be spoiled pretty quick." She shook her head coquettishly and dropped her eyes.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I should think you would be almost ashamed of being a woman, Fan, sometimes," he said. "They are all alike, I believe."

Fancy bridled. Then she bit her lip. "You'll meet your match some day!"

"God, I hope so! It'll make things interesting. Nothing matters now. I haven't really wanted anything for years; and when you don't want anything, Fancy, the garlands are hung for you in every house."

"Did you ever have a conscience, Frank?"

"Not I. I shouldn't know what to do with it, if I had one. I don't see much difference between right and wrong. We give them what they want, as clergymen do. It may be true and it may be false. So may religion. There are a hundred different kinds—some of them teach that you ought to kill your grandmother when she gets to be fifty years old. Some teach clothing and some teach nakedness. Some preach chastity—and some the other thing. Who's going to tell what's right? My readings are scientific; my predictions may be true, for all I know. Some I help and some I harm, no doubt. But from all I can see, God Himself does that. Take that Bennett affair! He lost his money, but didn't he have a good taste of life? We'll never know the truth, anyway. Why not fool fools who think there's an answer to everything, and make 'em happy? Do you remember that first time we played for Harry Wing? I was new at it then. When I crawled through the panel and put on the robe, the tears were streaming down my face to think I was going to fool an old man into believing I was his dead son. What was the result? He was so happy that he gave me his gold watch to be dematerialized for identification. He got more solid satisfaction and comfort out of that trick than he had out of a year of sermons. I only wish I could fool myself as easily as I can fool others—then I could be happy myself."

"Why, aren't you happy, Frank?" Fancy asked, her eyes full of him. "I wish I could do something to make you happy—I'd do anything!"

"Oh, I'm not unhappy," he said lightly, neglecting her appeal. "I can't seem to suffer any more than I can really enjoy. I suppose I haven't any soul. I need ambition—inspiration. But we must get to work. Are you ready?"

Fancy nodded.

"August 5th," he dictated. "Mrs. Riley. Age sixty-five. Spatulate, extreme type. Wrist, B. Fingers, B, X, 5. Life 27. Head 18. Heart 4. Fate 12. 3 girdles. Venus B. Mars A. Thumb phalange over-developed. Right, ditto. Now:—married three times, arm broken in '94, one daughter, takes cocaine, interested in mines. Last husband knew General Custer and Lew Wallace. Accidentally drowned, 1877. Accused of murder and acquitted in 1878. Very poor.

"Don't forget to look up Lew Wallace, Fancy! Go down to the library to-night, will you?" he said, laying down his note-book.

"Where did you ever get that old dame?"

"Madam Spoll sent her here. She's easy, but no money in her. Still, I like to be thorough, even with charity cases; you never know what may come of them."

The telephone bell prevented Fancy's reply. She took up the receiver and said "Yes" in a languishing drawl.

"Yes. Number 15? .... Payson? Spell it .... Hold the line a minute." She turned to Granthope, her ear still to the receiver, her hand muffling the mouth-piece.

"Funny. Speak of angels—here's Madam Spoll now! She wants to know if you've got anything about Oliver Payson?"

"Payson?" he repeated. "Oliver Payson? No, I don't think so, have we?"

"I don't remember the name, but I'll run over the cards. Talk about method! I wish Madam Spoll had some! P., Packard, Page—no; no Payson here." She returned to the telephone. "No, we have nothing at all. Good-by." Then she hung up the receiver.

Granthope, meanwhile, had been walking up and down the room, frowning.

"It's queer—that name is somehow familiar; I've heard of it somewhere. Oliver Payson—Oliver Payson."

"Funny how you never can think of a thing when you want to," said Fancy, sharpening her pencil.

"I know something about Oliver Payson," Granthope insisted. "But it's no use, I can't get it. Perhaps it will come to me."

"You never know what you can do till you stop trying," Fancy offered sagely.

Granthope spoke abstractedly, gazing at the ceiling. "It's something about a picture, it seems to me."

He walked into his studio, still puzzling with blurred memories. Fancy took up The Second Wife.

At ten o'clock the door opened, and Fancy's hand flew to her back hair. A girl of perhaps twenty years with intense eyes entered timidly. Her hair was distracted by the wind and her color was high, increasing the charm of her pretty, earnest, finely freckled face. She wore a jacket a little too small for her, with frayed cuffs. Her shoes were badly worn; her hat was cheap, but effective.

"I called to see Mr. Granthope; I think I have an appointment at ten," she said.

"Miss Heller?" Fancy asked. The girl nodded. Fancy took inventory of the girl's points, looking her up and down before she replied, "All right; just be seated for a moment, please."

She walked to the studio and met Granthope coming out. They spoke in whispers.

"Let her down easy," Fancy suggested. "It's a love affair. She has a letter in her coat pocket, all folded up; you can see the wrinkles where it bulges out. Hat pin made of an army button, and she doesn't know enough to paint. Make her take off her coat and see if her right sleeve isn't soiled above where she usually wears a paper cuff to protect it. She is half frightened to death and she has been crying."

"All right," said Granthope. "I'll give her five dollars' worth of optimism."

Fancy put her hand in his softly. "Say, Frank, just charge this to me and be good to her, will you?"

"All right. If you like her, I'll do my best. She'll be smiling when she comes out, you see if she isn't."

As the girl went in for her reading, Mrs. Page walked into the reception-room, and nodded condescendingly. She was a dashing woman of thirty-five, full of the exuberance and flamboyant color of California. Her hair was jet black and glossy, massively coiled upon her head; her features were large, but regular and well formed; her figure somewhat voluptuous in its tightly fitting tailor suit of black. She was a vivid creature, with impellent animal life and temperament linked, apparently, to a rather silly, feminine brain. Her mouth was large, and in it white teeth shone. She was all shadows and flashes, high lights and depths of velvety black. From her ears, two spots of diamond radiance twinkled as she shook her head. When she drew off her gloves, with a manner, more twinkles illuminated her hands. Still others shone from the cut steel buckles of her shoes. She was somewhat overgrown, flavorless and gaudy, like California fruit, and her ways were kittenish. Her movements were all intense. When she looked at anything, she opened her eyes very wide; when she spoke she pursed her lips a bit too much. Altogether she seemed to have a superfluous ounce of blood in her veins that infused her with useless energy.

Fancy eyed her pragmatically, added her up, extracted her square root and greatest common divisor. The result she reached was evident only by the imperious way in which she invited her to be seated and the nonchalant manner in which, after that, she gazed out upon Geary Street.

Mrs. Page, however, would be loquacious.

"Shall I have to wait long?" she asked. "I have an engagement at eleven and I simply must see Mr. Granthope first! It's very important."

"I don't know," said Fancy coolly. "It depends upon whether he has an interesting sitter or not. Sometimes he's an hour, and sometimes he's only fifteen minutes." She spoke with a slightly stinging emphasis, examining, meanwhile, the spots on her own finger-nails.

"Oh," said Mrs. Page, and it was evident that the remark gave her an idea as to her own personal powers of attraction. "I thought Mr. Granthope treated all his patrons alike."

"Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't," was Fancy's cryptic retort. She watched the effect under drooped lashes.

The effect was to make Mrs. Page squirm uneasily, as if she didn't know whether she had been hit or not. She took refuge in the remark: "Well, I hope he will give me a good reading this time."

"It all depends on what's in your hand," Fancy followed her up, smiling amiably.

Mrs. Page minced and simpered: "Do you know, somehow I hate to have him look at my hand, after what he said before. He told me such dreadful things, I'm afraid he'll discover more."

"Why do you give him a chance, then?" said Fancy coldly.

"Oh, I hope he'll find something better, this time!"

"Weren't you satisfied with what he gave you?" Fancy asked. "I have found Mr. Granthope usually strikes it about right."

"Oh, of course, I'm satisfied," Mrs. Page admitted. "In fact, I trust him so implicitly that I have acted on his advice. But it's rather dreadful to know the truth, don't you think?"

Fancy nodded her head soberly. "Sometimes it is." She accented the adverb mischievously.

"Oh, I don't mean what you mean at all!"

"I know. You mean it's dreadful to have other people know the truth?"

"No; but I can't help my character, can I? It's not my fault if I have faults. It's all written in my palm and I can't alter it. Only, I mean it's awful to know exactly what's going to happen and not be able to prevent it."

"It's worse not to want to." Fancy waved her hand to some one in the street.

Mrs. Page withdrew from the conversation, routed, and devoted herself to a study of the Chinese masks, casting an occasional impatient glance into the anteroom. Fancy polished her rings with her handkerchief.

Granthope's voice was now heard, talking pleasantly with Fleurette, who was smiling, as he had promised. As she left, flushed and happy, Granthope greeted Mrs. Page, and escorted her, bubbling with talk, into the studio. The door closed upon a pervading odor of sandalwood, Mrs. Page's legacy to Fancy, who sniffed at it scornfully.

Many cable-cars had passed without Fancy's having recognized any one worth bowing to, before the next client appeared; but, at that visitor's entry, she became a different creature. Her eyes never really left him, although she seemed, as he waited, to be busy about many things.

He was a smart young man, a sort of a bank-clerk person, dressed neatly, with evidence of considerable premeditation. His hair was parted in the middle, his face was cleanly shaven. His sparkling, laughing eyes, devilishly audacious, his pink cheeks and his cool self-assured manner gave him an appearance of juvenile, immaculate freshness, which rendered an acquaintance with such a San Francisco girl as Fancy Gray, easy and agreeable. He laid his hat and stick against his hip jauntily, and asked:

"Could I get a reading from Mr. Granthope without waiting all day for it?" As he spoke he loosed a frivolous, engaging glance at her.

"He'll be out in just a moment," Fancy replied with more interest than she had heretofore shown. "Won't you sit down and wait, please?"

He withdrew his eyes long enough to gallop round the room with them, but they returned to her like horses making for a stable. He took a seat, pulled up his trousers over his knees, drew down his cuffs, felt the knot in his tie and smoothed his hair, all with the quick, accurate motion due to long habit. "Horrible weather," he volunteered debonairly.

"It's something fierce, isn't it?" said Fancy, opening and shutting drawers, searching for nothing. "It gets on my nerves. I wish we'd have one good warm day for a change."

"Been out to the beach lately?" he asked, eying her with undisguised approval. He breathed on the crown of his derby hat and then smelt of it.

"No," she replied. "I don't have much time to myself. I hate to go alone, anyway." Fancy looked aimlessly into the top drawer of her desk.

"That's too bad! But I shouldn't think you'd ever have to go alone. You don't look it."

"Really?" Fancy's tone was arch.

"That's right! I know some one who'd be willing to chase out there with you at the drop of the hat."

Fancy, appearing to feel that the acquaintance was making too rapid progress, said, "I don't care much for the beach; it's too crowded."

"That depends upon when you go. I've got a car out there where we could get lost easy enough. Then you can have a quiet little dinner at the Cliff House almost any night."

"Can you? I never tried it."

"It's time you did. Suppose you try it with me?"

Fancy opened her eyes very wide at him and let him have the full benefit of her stare. "Isn't this rather sudden? You're rushing it a little too fast, seems to me."

"Not for me. I'm sorry you can't keep up. You don't look slow."

Fancy turned to her engagement book.

"You must have known some pretty easy ones," she said sarcastically.

The snub did not silence him for long. He recrossed his legs, drummed on the brim of his hat, and began:

"Say, did you ever go to Carminetti's?"

"No, where is it?"

"Down on Davis Street. They have a pretty lively time there on Sunday nights. Everybody goes, you know—gay old crowd. They sing and everything. It's the only really Bohemian place in town now."

"I'm never hungry on Sundays," Fancy said coolly.

"Nor thirsty, either?"

"Sir?" she said in mock reproof, and then burst into a laugh.

"Say, you scared me all right, that time!"

"You don't look like you would be scared easy. I guess it's kind of hard to call you down."

He folded his arms and squared his shoulders. "I don't know," he said. "I don't seem to make much of a hit with you!"

"Oh, you may improve!"

"Upon acquaintance?"

"Perhaps. You're not in a hurry, are you?"

"That's what I am!" He went at her now with more vigor. "I say, would you mind telling me your name? Here's my card."

He rose, and, walking over to the desk, laid down a card upon which was printed, "Mr. Gay P. Summer." Fancy examined it deliberately. Then she looked up and said:

"My name is Miss Gray, if you must know. What are you going to do about it?"

"I'll show you!" he laughed, drawing nearer. What might possibly have happened (for things do happen in San Francisco) was interrupted by sounds predicting Mrs. Page's return.

"Say, Miss Gray, I'll ring you up later and make a date," he said under his breath. Then he turned to Mrs. Page and stared her out of the room with undisguised curiosity.

"You can see Mr. Granthope now," said Fancy, unruffled by the competition.

He made an airy gesture and followed the palmist into the anteroom.

Fancy grew listless and abstracted. After a while she went to the closet, examined herself in the glass on the door, adjusted the back of her belt, fluffed her hair over her ears and reseated herself. Then she took her book languidly and began to read.

There came a knock on the door.

"Come in," Fancy called out, arousing herself again. The new-comer was one who, though at least twenty-seven, was still graciously modeled with the lines of youth. Her head was poised with spirit on her neck, but, like a flower on its stem, ready to move with her varying moods, from languor to vivacity. Her hair was a light, tawny grayish-brown, almost yellow, undulant and fine as gossamer. In the pure oval of her face, under level, golden brows, her eyes were now questioning, now peremptory, but usually smoldering with dreams, hiding their color. Their customary quiescence, however, was contradicted by the responsiveness of her perfectly drawn mouth—a springing bow, like those of Du Maurier's most beautiful women. The upper lip, narrow, scarlet, so short that it seldom touched the lower, showed, beneath its lively curve, a row of well-cut teeth. With such charm and delicacy of person her small, flat ears and her proud, sensitive nostrils fell into lovely accord. She wore a veil, and was dressed in a concord of cool grays, modishly accented with black. Her movements were slow and graceful, as if she had never to hurry.

"I believe I have an appointment with Mr. Granthope for half-past eleven," she said in a smooth, low, rather monotonous voice.

"Miss Smith?" Fancy asked briskly, but with a more respectful manner than she had shown Mrs. Page.

The lady blushed an unnecessary pink, and blushed again to find herself blushing. She admitted the pseudonym with a nod.

"Take a seat, please," Fancy said. "Mr. Granthope will be ready for you in a few minutes." Then her eyes fluttered over the visitor's costume, rested for a second upon her long black gloves, darted to her little, patent-leather shoes, mounted to her black, picturesque hat, and sought here and there, but without success, for jewelry.

The lady took a seat in silence. She repaired the mischief the wind had done to her hair, raising her hand abstractedly, as she looked about the room. The Chinese masks did not entertain her long, but the head of Hypnos she appeared to recognize with interest. From that to Fancy, and from Fancy to the row of casts, her glance went, slowly, deliberately. Then she took a large bunch of violets from her corsage, and smelled them thoughtfully.

Fancy began to play with one of her bracelets, clasping and unclasping it. The lock caught in a bangle-chain, and, frowning, she bent to unfasten it. In an instant the lady noticed her dilemma, smiled frankly, and walked over to the desk, drawing off her long glove as she did so.

"Let me do it for you!" she said, and, taking Fancy's hand, she busied herself with the clasp.

Fancy watched her amusedly. The lady was so close that she could enjoy the odor of the violets and a fainter, more exquisite perfume that came from the diaphanous embroidered linen blouse, whose cost Fancy might have reckoned in terms of her week's salary. With careful, skilful movements the chain was unfastened, but the lady still held Fancy's hand in her own.

"Oh, what beautiful hands you have!" she exclaimed. "I never saw anything so lovely in my life! Let me see them both! I wonder if you know how pretty they are!"

She looked questioningly into Fancy's face and the twinkle in Fancy's eyes answered her.

"Oh, of course you do! Mr. Granthope must have told you! He has never seen a prettier pair, I'm sure!" She laid them carefully down, palms to the table, and smiled at Fancy.

"I see you've got the right idea about hands," said Fancy Gray archly. "That second finger's pretty good; did you notice it?"

Both laughed.

"I hope you don't think I'm rude," said the lady.

"You don't worry me a bit, so long as you can keep it up. I'm only afraid you're going to stop! But it seems to me you've got a pretty small pair of hands yourself! No wonder you noticed mine!" Fancy gazed at them, as if she were surprised to find any one who could compete with her own specialty.

For answer, Miss Smith, as she had called herself, drew her violets from her coat, kissed them and handed them to Fancy. Fancy played up; kissed them too, nodded, as if drinking a health, and tucked them safely away on her own breast. Then she treated Miss Smith to the by-play of her delicious dimples, as she said, "Come in as often as you like, especially when you have flowers!"

"Miss Smith's" face had become wonderfully alive, and she gazed at Fancy so frankly admiring that now Fancy had to drop her own eyes in embarrassment. At this moment Granthope's voice was heard as he came out of his studio with Gay P. Summer. A kind of shyness seemed to envelop the visitor and she drew back, her color mounting, her lids drooping.

"I'm all ready for you, Miss Smith," said Granthope, coming into the room and bowing suavely. "Come in, please."

Leaving Mr. Summer in conversational dalliance with Fancy Gray, the lady followed the palmist into his studio. As she walked, her graceful, long-limbed tread, with its easy swing, seemed almost leopard-like in its unconscious freedom, her head was carried somewhat forward, questing, her arms were slightly extended tentatively from her side, as if she almost expected to touch something she could not see.

CHAPTER II

TUITION AND INTUITION

It was a large room, unfurnished except for a couch in a recess of the wall and a table with two chairs drawn up under an electric-light bulb which hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered from floor to cornice by an arras of black velvet, falling in full, vertical folds, sequestering the apartment in soft gloom. Over the couch, this drapery was embroidered with the signs of the zodiac in a circle—all else was shadowy and mysterious.

The young woman walked into the place with her leisurely stride—her chin a little up-tilted, her eyes curious. In the center of the room she stopped and looked slowly and deliberately about her. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly with amusement, evidently at the obvious picturesqueness of the studio.

Granthope watched her keenly. With his eyes and ears full of Fancy Gray's ardent, dramatic youth, sparkling with the sophistication of the city, slangy, audacious, gay, this girl seemed almost unreal in her delicacy and exquisite virginity, a creature of dreams and faery, the personification of an ideal too fine and fragile for every-day. Her face showed caste in every line. He was a little afraid of her. Her bearing compelled not only respect, but, in a way, reverence—a tribute he seldom had felt inclined to pay to the mondaines who visited him.

His confidence, however, soon asserted itself. He had found that all women were alike—there were, as in chess, several openings to his game, but, once started, the strategy was simple.

"Well, how do you like my studio?"

"It's like dreams I've had," she said. "I like it. It's so simple."

"Most people think it too somber."

"It is somber; but that purple-black is wonderful in the way it takes the light. And it's all so different!"

"Yes, I flatter myself it is that. But I'm 'different' myself."

"Are you?" She turned her eyes steadfastly upon him for the first time, as if mentally appraising him, as he stood, six feet of virility, handsome, vivid and nonchalant. The color which had risen to her cheeks still remained.

"You are, too," he went on, examining her as deliberately.

She smiled faintly and took a seat by the table and removed her veil. Her face was now clearly illuminated, and Granthope's eyes, traveling from feature to feature in quest of significant details, fell upon her left cheek. His look was arrested at the sight of a brown velvety mole, a veritable beauty-spot, heightening the color of her skin. It was charming, making her face piquant and human. His hand went to his forehead thoughtfully.

At the sight of this mark upon her cheek, something troubled him. His mind, always alert to suggestive influences, registered the faintest impression of a thought at first too elusive to be called an idea. It was like the ultimate, dying ripple from some far-off shock to his consciousness. The impact died almost as it reached him—a flash, vaguely stimulating to his imagination, and then it was gone, its mysterious message uncomprehended.

She watched him a little impatiently, seeming to resent his scrutiny. Noticing this, he summoned his distracted attention and seated himself at the table. But, from time to time, now, his glance darted to her cheek surreptitiously, searching for the lost clue. He had learned the value of such subtle intuitions and would not give up his efforts to take advantage of this one.

She laid her bare hand upon the black velvet cushion beneath the light, saying, "I'm sorry that something has disturbed you." She looked at him, and then away.

"Why, nothing has disturbed me," he said. "Why should you think so?" Even as he pulled himself together for this denial her quick perception gave him another cause for wonder.

"I'm rather sensitive to other people's moods sometimes. That's one reason why I came. I didn't know but you might tell me something about it—how far to trust it, perhaps—though I came, I confess, more from curiosity."

Her air was still so detached that her conversational approaches seemed almost experimental. She spoke with pauses between her phrases, while her eyes, now showing full and clear gray, lit upon him only to rove off, returned and departed again, but never rapidly, as if she sought for her words here and there in the room, and brought them calmly back to him. She did not shun a direct gaze, but her look wandered as her thought wandered in its logical course, for the time seeming to forget his presence.

He took her hand and felt of it, testing its quality and texture, preparing himself for his speech. Her hand was long and slim, with scarcely a fiber more flesh upon the bones than was necessary to cover them admirably. He had no thought at first except to give his ordinary routine of reading, but his study of her showed her to be an exceptional character. She was beautiful, with the loveliness of an aristocratic and slightly bewildering spiritual type. Her hand in his was magnetic, delicious of contact, subtly alive even though not consciously responsive. Other women with more obvious charm had left him cold. She, aided by no suggestion of coquetry or complaisance, allured him. She awakened in him a desire not wholly physical, although he could not fail to regard her primarily in the sex relation that, so far, had been his chief interest in women. She, as a woman, answered, in some secret way, him, as a man. This was his first wave of feeling. Her hint amused him, true as her intuition had been; she had stumbled upon his embarrassment, no doubt, and had claimed prescience, a common enough form of feminine conceit. There he had a valuable suggestion as to the direction of her line of least resistance to his wiles.

Following upon this, as the first feeling of her unreality faded, upon contact, came the thought of her as a wealthy and credulous girl, who might minister to his ambitions. He was without real social aspirations, except in so far as his success in the fashionable world favored the game he was playing. Years of contact with credulity and hypocrisy had carried him, mentally, too far to value the lionizing and the hero-worship he had tasted from his smarter clients. But the patronage of such a fair and finished creature as this girl, especially if he could establish a more intimate relation, might secure the permanence of his position and his opportunities. He saw vistas of delight and satisfaction in such an acquaintance. He had had his fill of silly women whose favors were paid for in ministrations to their vanity. Such tribute, easy as it was for him with his facility, irked him. Here, perhaps, was one who might hold his interest by her fineness and her mentality, and by the very difficulty he might find in impressing her. There would be zest to the pursuit.

Beneath these waves of feeling, however, and beneath his active intelligence, there was an inchoate disturbance in some subconscious stratum of his mind. He felt it only as the slight mental perplexity the mole upon her cheek had caused; he had no time, now, to pursue that incipient idea. His impression of her as a desirable, pleasurable quarry incited him to devise the psychological method necessary for her capture. He knew to a hair, usually, what he could do with women; but now he was forced to gain time by a preamble in the conventional patter of the palmist's cult.

Her hand, it appeared, was of a mixed type, neither square nor conic, with long fingers, inclined to be psychic. He remarked the extraordinary sensitiveness denoted by their cushioned tips. Nails, healthy and oval; knuckles indicating a good sense of order in mental and physical life. She was, in short, of strong, vigorous mentality, well-balanced, artistic, generous, liberal; but (he referred to the Mount of Jupiter) with a tendency to be a looker-on rather than a sharer in the ordinary social pleasures of life. Saturn, developed more toward the finger, gave her a slightly melancholy temperament; Apollo showed a great appreciation of the beautiful in nature, with no little critical knowledge of art; Mercury was less developed, and implied a lack of humor; Venus betrayed a well-controlled but warm feeling; it was soft—she was, consequently, easily moved. Her thumb was wilful rather than logical, her fingers suggested respectively, pride, perception, self-respect, morbidity, love of the beautiful as distinguished from the ornamental, tact.

He had thrown himself into a pose so habitual as to become almost unconscious, though it was keyed to the theatrical pitch of his picturesque appearance and surroundings. The girl's expression showed, to his alert eye, a slight disappointment at the conventionality of his remarks. This spurred him to more originality and definiteness. He tossed his hair back with one hand in a quick gesture and turned to the lines in her palm, examining them first with a magnifying glass and then tracing them with an ivory stylus. Her eyes were fixed upon his, as if she were more interested in the manner than the matter of his task.

"You are the sort of person," he said, "who is, in a certain sense, egoistic. That is, after a criticism of any one, you would immediately ask yourself, 'Would I not have done the same thing, under the same circumstances?' You're stupendously frank—you'd own up to anything, any faults you thought you possessed; you'd even exaggerate a jestingly ignoble confession of motives because you hate hypocrisy so much in others. You are eminently fair and just, as you are generous. You have none of the ordinary feminine arts of coquetry. If you liked a man you would say so frankly."

It was typical of Granthope's enthusiasm for his game that he dared thus play it so boldly with his cards face up upon the table. His visitor began to show more interest; it was evident that she appreciated the ingeniousness of his phrasing. Her lip curved into a dainty smile. Her eyes gleamed slyly, then withdrew their fire.

He continued: "You are slow in action, but when the time comes, you can act swiftly without regard of the consequences. You are not prudish. You are willing to look upon anything that can be regarded as evidence as to the facts of life, even though you may not care to go into things purely for the sake of experience. You are faithful and loyal, but you are not of the type that believes 'the king can do no wrong'—you see your friends' faults and love them in spite of those faults, yet you are absolutely indifferent to most persons who make no special appeal. You are lazy, but physically, not mentally—there is no effort you will spare yourself to think things out and get to the final solution of a psychological or moral problem. You love modernness, complexity of living, the wonderful adjustments that money and culture effect, but not enough to endure the conventionality that sort of life demands. You are not particularly economical—you'd never go all over your town for a bargain or to 'pick up' antiques—you would prefer to go to a good shop and pay a fair price. You are fond of children—not of all children, however, only bright and interesting ones. You are fond of dress in a sensuous sort of way; that is, you like silk stockings, because they feel cool and smooth; silk skirts, because they fall gracefully and make a pleasant swish against your heels; furs, on account of the color and softness, but none of these merely because of their richness or splendor."

His face was intent, almost scowling, two vertical lines persisting between his brows; his mouth was fixed. His concentration seemed to hold no personal element; there was nothing to resent in the contact of his fingers or the absorption of his gaze. Suddenly, however, he looked up and smiled—he knew how to smile, did Granthope—and the relation between them became so personal and intimate that she involuntarily drew away her hand. He was instantly sensitive to this and by his attitude reassured her. Not, however, before she had blushed furiously, in spite of evident efforts to control herself.

His eyes glanced again at the mole on her cheek. Then, as if electrified by the sudden kindling and intensification of her personality, his subconscious mind finished its work without the aid of reason. As a bubble might separate itself from the bottom of the sea and ascend, quivering, to the surface, his memory unloosed its secret, and it rose, to break in his mind. The mole—he had seen it before—where? Like a tiny explosion the answer came—upon the cheek of the little girl who visited them that day, twenty-three years ago, at Madam Grant's—the day she died. It reached him with the certainty of truth. It did not even occur to him to doubt its verity. In a flash, he saw what sensational use he could make of the intelligence. Another idea followed it—an old trick—perhaps it would work again.

"Would you mind taking off that ring?" he asked.

She drew off a simple gold band set with three turquoises. He laid it upon the cushion, turning it between his fingers as he did so. In a single glance he had read the inscription engraved inside. His ruse was undetected; her eyes had roved about the room. He turned to her again.

"You are twenty-seven years old. You have a lover, or, rather, a man is making love to you. I do not advise you to marry him. You have traveled a good deal and will take another journey within a year. Something is happening in connection with a male relative that worries you. It will not be settled for some time. Are there any questions you would like to ask?"

"I think you have answered them already," she replied.

He leaned back, to shake his hands and pass them across his forehead, theatrically. Another bubble had broken in his consciousness. "Oliver Payson!"—the name came sharply to his inner ear like a voice in a telephone. Oliver Payson—he recalled now where he had seen the name—upon the newspaper cut pinned to the door of Madam Grant's bedroom. Like two drops of quicksilver combining, this thought fused with that suggested by the mole on the girl's cheek. "Clytie Payson"—this name came to him, springing unconjured to his mind. He determined to hazard a test of the inspiration. He simulated the typical symptoms of obsession, trembled, shuddered and writhed in the professional manner. Then he said:

"Would you like a clairvoyant reading? I think I might get something interesting, for I feel your magnetism very strongly."

She assented with an alacrity she had not shown before. Her eyes opened wider, she threw off her lassitude, awakening to a mild excitement.

"Let me take your hands again—both of them. This is something I don't often do, but I'll see what I can get."

He shut his eyes and spoke monotonously:

"I see a name—C, l, y—"

The girl's hands gave an involuntary convulsion.

"—t, i, e. Is that it? Clytie! Wait—I get the name—"

Beneath slightly trembling lids, a fine, sharp glance shot out at her and was withdrawn again. It was as if he had stolen something from her.

"Payson!"

The girl withdrew her hands suddenly; she drew in her breath swiftly, paling a little.

"That's my name, Clytie Payson! It's wonderful! Go on, please!"

She gave him her gracilent, dewy hands again, and he thrilled to their provocative spell. He took advantage of her distraction to enjoy them lightly. When he spoke there was no hesitation in his voice.

"I don't understand this! I don't know who these people are, or where they are, and it seems ridiculous to tell it. But there is a fearfully disordered room with the sun coming in through dirty, broken windows. The floor is covered with rubbish, there's no furniture but a few old boxes. I see two women and a little girl. They are in old-fashioned costumes."

Clytie's face was pale, now, and she watched him breathlessly.

"One of the women has white hair and vivid black eyebrows. She talks wildly sometimes; sometimes she's quite calm. The other woman is middle-aged and has a soft voice. The little girl is dressed in blue; she is sitting on a box listening. The crazy woman is kissing her."

He shook himself, shuddered and opened his eyes, to find Miss Payson gazing upon him, her hand to her heart.

"It's strange!" she said.

"It sounds nonsensical, I suppose," he said, "but that's just what I get. Can you make anything of it?"'

"It's all true!" said Clytie. "That very thing happened to me when I was a little girl—so long ago, that I had almost forgotten it."

"You remember it, then?"

"Yes, it all comes back to me—though I have wondered vaguely about it often enough. It was when I was four years old and I went with my mother to call on this strange, crazy woman—if she were crazy! I never knew. I never dared speak to father about it. He never knew that we went, I think. I had an idea that he wouldn't have liked it, had he known."

"And your mother?"

"She died—the same year, I think. We left San Francisco, father and I, soon after, and we lived abroad for several years. I didn't even remember the scene until long afterward, when something brought it up. Then it was like a dream or a vision."

"Do you know, Miss Payson, I feel that you have very strong mediumistic powers; I can feel your magnetism. I think that you might develop yourself so as to be able to use your psychic force."

She took it seriously.

"Yes, I think I do have a certain amount of capacity that way. I can never depend upon it, though, but my intuitions are very strong and occasionally rather strange things have happened to me."

It amused him to see how quickly she had fallen into the trap he had set for her. Experience had taught him it was a common enough assertion for women to make, and he was cynically incredulous. He was a little disappointed, too; as, in his opinion, it discounted her intelligence. Nevertheless, he found in it a way to manipulate her.

"Perhaps I might help you to develop it," he suggested, "although I'm not much of a clairvoyant myself; I claim only to be a scientific palmist."

"I think you are wonderful," Clytie asserted, giving him a glance of frank admiration. "This test alone would prove it. You see, having some slight power myself, I'm more ready to believe that others have it."

He waived her compliment with apparent modesty.

"Women are more apt to be gifted that way—it isn't often I attempt a psychic reading. What is written in the palm I can read; as a physician diagnoses a case from symptoms in the pulse and tongue and temperature, so I read a person's character from what I see in the hand. I have been particularly interested in yours, Miss Payson, and perhaps I have been able to give you more than usual. I hope I may have the opportunity of seeing you again; I'm quite sure I can help you, or put you in the way of assistance."

She arose and slowly drew on her gloves, her mind full of the revelation. He watched every motion with delight. Her brief mood of irradiation had given place to her customary languor, and her fragile loveliness, emphasizing the opposite to every one of his virile, ardent traits, allured him with the appeal of one extreme to another. Most of all, her mouth, wayward with its ravishing smile, enchanted him. It was controlled by no coquetry, he knew, and it moved him the more for that reason. Yet she seemed loath to go and moved slowly about the room. She stopped to point with a sweeping gesture at one side of the velvet-hung wall.

"It's rather too bad to hide the windows, isn't it?"

He smiled at her divination, doubtful of its origin.

"You have a very good sense of direction, haven't you?"

She appeared to notice his incredulity, but not to resent it.

"Indeed, I have very little," she said; then, giving him her hand with a quick impulse of cordiality, she smiled, nodded and turned to the anteroom.

He glanced at the table, saw her ring, and made a motion toward it. Then it occurred to him that it might be used as an excuse for seeing her again and he followed her out.

In the reception-room, Fancy was yawning; seeing them, she brought her hand quickly to her mouth and raised her eyebrows at Granthope. He made no sign in reply. Clytie walked up to her impulsively and held out her hand.

"I do hope I'll see you again, sometime," she said.

Fancy laughed. "I do, too. You're the only one who's ever really appreciated me. You make me almost wish I was a lady." By her tone, there was some old wound that bled.

"You're that, and better, I'm sure," Clytie answered softly; "you're yourself!"

She turned to leave. Granthope, who had watched the two women, amused, opened the door for her, received her long, steady glance, her quiet, low "Good morning," and bowed her out.

As soon as she had fairly left, he turned quickly to Fancy. "Where's Philip?"

"In the back room, I suppose." Fancy looked surprised.

"Go and get him, please; tell him to find out where this girl lives, and all he can about her."

"Say, Frank—" Fancy began, rising.

"Hurry, please! I don't want him to miss her. She's a good thing!"

"She's too good, Frank, that's just it!"

"That's why I want her. I don't catch one like that every day. Why, she's worth all the rest put together." He looked impatiently at her.

Fancy shrugged her shoulders and sailed airily out of the room.

Granthope stood for some time, his hands thrust into the pockets of his velvet coat, gazing abstractedly at the red wall of his reception-room. Then he took up the telephone and called for Madam Spoll's number.

He made himself known and then said, "I'll be round to-night before your séance. I want to talk something over."

CHAPTER III

THE SPIDER'S NEST

The architecture of San Francisco was, in early days, simple and unpretentious, befitting the modest aspirations of a trading and mining town. Builders accepted their constructive limitations and did their honest best. False fronts, indeed, there were, making one-story houses appear to be two stories high, but redwood made no attempts in those days to masquerade as marble or granite.

During the sixties, a few French architects imported a taste for classic art, and for a time, within demure limits, their exotic taste prevailed. The simple, flat, front wall of houses, now grown to three honest stories high, they embellished with dentil cornice, egg-and-dart moldings and chaste consoles; they added to the second story a little Greek portico with Corinthian columns accurately designed, led up to by a flight of wooden steps; the façade was broken by a single bay-window, ornamented with conventional severity. Block after block of such dwelling-houses were built. They had a sort of restful regularity, they broke no artistic hearts.

In later days, when San Francisco had begun to take its place in the world, a greater degree of sophistication ensued. Capitals of columns became more fanciful, ornament more grotesquely original, till ambitious turners and wood-carvers gave full play to their morbific imagination. Then was the day of scrolls and finials, bosses, rosettes, brackets, grille-work and comic balusters. Conical towers became the rage, wild windows, odd porches and decorations nailed on, regardless of design, made San Francisco's nightmare architecture the jest of tourists. Lastly, after an interregnum of Queen Anne vagaries, came the Renaissance and the Age of Stone, heralded by concrete imitations and plaster walls of bogus granite.

Madam Spoll's house was of that commonplace, anemically classic style which, after all, was then the least offensive type of residence. It was painted appropriately in lead color—for the house, with the rest of the block, seemed to have been cast in a mold—a tone which did its best to make Eddy Street prosaic. It had been long abandoned by fashion and was now hardly on speaking terms with respectability. It occupied a place in a row of boarding-houses, cheap millinery establishments and unpretentious domiciles. There was a dreary little unkempt yard in front, with a passage leading to an entrance under the front steps; above, the sign "Madam Spoll, Clairvoyant and Medium," was displayed on ground glass, and below, hanging on a nail against the wall, was a transparency. When the lamp was lighted inside this, one read the words: "Circle To-night. Admittance ten cents."

This Thursday the lamp was lighted. It was half-past seven o'clock.

Devotees had begun to arrive, and, entering by the lower door, they paid their dimes to Mr. Spoll, who stood beside the little table at the entrance, left their "tests"—envelopes, flowers, jewelry or what not—and passed into the audience-room.

This had once been a dining-room and its walls were covered with a figured paper, above which was a bright red border decorated with Japanese fans and parasols. A few gaudy paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, and here and there were hung framed mottoes: "There Is No Death"—"We Shall Meet Again"—"There Is a Land that is Fairer than Day." This room was filled with chairs set in rows, and would hold some forty or fifty persons. It was separated by an arch from a smaller room beyond, where, upon a platform, stood a table with an open Bible, an organ, two chairs and a folding screen.

Only the front seats were at present occupied, these by habitués of the place, all firm believers, a picturesque group showing at a glance the stigmata of eccentricity or mental aberration. For the most part they were women in black; they bowed to one another as they sat down, then waited in stolid patience for the séance to open. The others were pale, blue-eyed men with drooping mustaches and carefully parted hair, and a whiskered, bald-headed old gentleman or two who sat in silence. The room was dimly illuminated by side lights.

Farther down the hallway, opposite the foot of a flight of stairs leading upward to her living-rooms, was Madam Spoll's "study," and here she was, this evening, preparing for business.

This room was small and crowded with furniture. The marble mantel held an assortment of bisque bric-à-brac, sea-shells, paper knives and cheap curiosities. The walls were covered with photographs, a placque or two, fans and picture cards. A huge folding bed, foolishly imitating a mirrored sideboard, occupied one corner of the room. A couch covered with fancy cushions and tidies ran beside it. A table, heavily draped, a three-legged tea-stand, an easel with a satin sash bearing the portrait, photographically enlarged in crayon, of a bold, smirking, overdressed little girl, a ragged trunk and several plush-covered chairs were huddled, higgledy-piggledy, along the other side of the room.

Upon the couch Madam Spoll sat, spraying envelopes with alcohol from an atomizer on a small bamboo stand before her.

She was an enormous woman of masculine type, with short, briskly curling, iron-gray hair and a triple chin. Heavy eyebrows, heavy lips, heavy ears and cheeks had Madam Spoll, but her forehead was unlined with wrinkles; her expression was serene, and, when she smiled, engaging and conciliating. She was dressed in black satin with wing-like sleeves, the front of her waist being covered with a triangular decoration of bead-work.

Watching her with roving, black eyes was Professor Vixley, smoking a vile cigar. His face was sallow, of a predatory mold with a pointed, mangy beard, and sharp, yellow teeth. He wore a soft, striped flannel shirt with a flowing pink tie. From the sleeves of his shiny, cutaway coat, faded to a purplish hue, his thin, tanned, muscular hands showed like the claws of a vulture.

"You seem to be doin' a pretty good business," he remarked, dropping his ashes carelessly upon the floor.

"So-so," Madam Spoll answered. "If things go well we hope to get a new hall up on Post Street, but there ain't nothing in tests. Straight clairvoyance is the future of this business. Of course, we have to give cheap circles to draw the crowd, but it's a lot of bother and expense and it does tire me all out. Then there's always the trouble from the newspapers likely to come up."

"Pshaw! I wouldn't mind gettin' into the newspapers occasionally, it's good advertisin'. The more you're exposed the better you get along, I believe."

"'Lay low and set on your eggs' is my motto," said the Madam. "I don't like too much talk. I prefer to work in the dark—there's more money in it in the long run. I don't care if I only have a few customers; if they're good and easy I can make all I want."

"What do you bother with sealed messages for, Gert?" Professor Vixley asked.

"Oh, I got to fix a lot of skeptics to-night. I can usually open the ballots right on the table easy enough behind the flowers, but I want to read a few sealed messages besides. It may help along with Payson, too." She took up an envelope numbered "275." It was saturated with alcohol. She held it to the light, and squinting at the transparent paper, she read: "'When is Susie coming home?' Now, ain't that a fool question? I'll take a rise out of her, see if I don't! That's that woman who got into trouble in that poisoning case."

"Say, the alcohol trick's a pretty good stunt when you get a chance to use it! But I don't have time for it in my business."

"Yes, it's easy enough if you use good, grain alcohol, but I wish I had an egg-tester. They save a lot of time, and you can read through four or five thicknesses of paper with 'em. Spoll, he has plenty of chance to hold out the ballots and bring 'em in to me; his coming and going ain't noticed, because he has to fetch 'em up to the table, anyway. By the time I go on, all the smell's faded out. If it ain't, my handkerchief is so full of perfumery that you can't notice anything else. I'm going to fit up my table with one o' them glass plates with an electric flash-light underneath that I can turn on with a switch. You can read right through the envelope then. But I don't often consent to tests like that. It deteriorates your powers. And my regular customers are usually contented to send their ballots up open and glad of the chance to get an answer. They don't want to give the spirits no trouble! Lord, I wish I had the power I had when I begun." She smiled pleasantly at her companion.

"I see old Mrs. Purinton on the front row as I come in," Vixley observed, shifting his cigar labially from one corner of his mouth to the other.

"Say, there's a grafter for fair!" she exclaimed. "She's been coming here to the publics for two years and never once has she gave me a private setting. That's what I call close. She's as near as matches! And always the same old song—little Willie's croup or when's Henry going to write, and woozly rubbish like that. I got a good mind to hand her a dig. I could make a laughing-stock out of her, and scare her away easy. Folks do like a laugh at a public séance; you know that, Professor."

"Sure! It don't do no harm as long as you hit the right one."

"Oh, I ain't out for nothing but paper-sports and grafters. I know a good thing when I see it. I hope there'll be something doing worth while in this Payson business. He may show up to-night. Lulu claims she conned him good."

"I hope I'll have a slice off him," said Professor Vixley, his beady, black eyes shining. "We got to get up a new game for him before we pass him down the line."

"Oh, if anybody can I guess we can; there's more'n one way to kill a cat, besides a-kissing of it to death."

"Yes, smotherin' it in hot air, for instance!" Vixley grinned.

"They's one thing I wish," said Madam Spoll, "and that is that we had a regular blue-book like they have in the East. Why, they tell me there's six thousand names printed for Boston alone. If we had some way of getting a lead with this Payson it would be lots easier. But I expect the San Francisco mediums will get better organized some day and coöperate more shipshape."

Here Mr. Spoll entered, a tall, thin, bony, wild-eyed individual with a rolling pompadour of red hair, his face spattered with freckles. He walked on tiptoe, as if at a funeral, bowed to the Professor, coughed into his hand, and took up the letters Madam Spoll had been investigating, putting down some new ones.

"Oh, here's that 'S.F.B.' that Ringa told me about," she said, glancing at an envelope. "Is Ringa come in yet?"

"I ain't seen him; but it's early," said Spoll. "He'll show up all right. I'll send him right in."

"Is Mr. Perry in front?"

"You bet!" Spoll was still tiptoeing about the room on some mysterious errand. "Perry ain't likely to lose a chance to make a dollar, not him!"

"He's a good one!" Madam Spoll smiled at the Professor. "I don't hardly know what I'd do without him. I can always depend upon him to make good. He ain't too willing, and sometimes, I declare, he almost fools me, even. I've known him to stand up and denounce me something fierce, especially when there was newspaper men in the audience, and then just gradually calm down and admit everything I wanted him to. He looks the part, too. Why, I sent him round to Mrs. Stepson's circle one night, when she first come to town, and she was fooled good. I've seen him cry at a materializing séance so hard it would almost break your heart."

"Does he play spook?"

"No, he's best in the audience. He's a good capper, but I don't believe he could play spook—besides, he's getting too fleshy."

"Who else have you got regular?" asked Professor Vixley.

"Only two or three. I don't need so many touts as most. I pride myself on doing my own work without much help. Of course, you got to give a name sometimes when a fishing test won't work, and a friend in the audience helps. Miss French, she's pretty good, but she's tricky. I'm afraid of her. I was gave away once to the Chronicle and I lost a whole lot of business. Men are safer. Harry Debert is straight enough, but he's stupid. He's the too-willing kind, and you don't have a chance to get any effect.

"Say, Spoll," she added to her husband, "be sure and don't take no combs nor gloves! I ain't going to do no diagnosing in public—not for ten cents. Them that want it can pay for it and take a private setting."

"They're mostly flowers to-night," said Spoll as he crept out of the room.

"Lord, I do hate a flower test!" she groaned. "It's too hard work. Of course, they're apt to bring roses if their name's Rose, or lilies and daisies the same way, but you can't never be sure, and you have to fish. Lockets is what I like, lockets and ballots."

At this moment Mr. Ringa entered. He was a bleached, tow-headed youth, long and lanky, with mild gray eyes and a stubbly, straw-colored mustache. Two front teeth were missing from his upper jaw. His clothes seemed to have shrunk and tightened upon his frame. He bowed respectfully to Madam Spoll and Professor Vixley, who represented to him the top of the profession.

"Did you get that 'S.F.B.' letter, all right?" he asked.

"Yes, what about it?"

"She's easy!"

Vixley grinned. "If she's easy for you she must be a cinch for us!"

Ringa persevered. "Well, I got the dope, anyway. She's a Mrs. Brindon and she's worried about her husband—he's gone dotty on some fluzie up North. I read her hand last week. I told her they was trouble coming to her along of a dark woman—she's one of these beer-haired blondes—what I call a Würzburger blonde—then I showed it to her in the heart-streak. 'Go ahead and tell me how it will come out,' she says. I says: 'There's a peculiar condition in your hand that I ain't quite on to,' I says. She says: 'Why, can't you read it?' Says I: 'Madam, if I could read that well, I wouldn't be doing palms for no two bits a shot; I'd be where Granthope is, with a fly-away studio and crowding it at five plunks, per.' Then I says: 'Say, I hear Madam Spoll has great gifts in predicting at all affairs of the heart. I ain't never been to any of her circles, but why don't you shoot around next Thursday night and try her out?' 'What'll I do?' she says. Then I told her to write on a paper, 'Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me, and how will it come out?' She done it and sealed it up into an envelope I give her."

"Good work!" said Madam Spoll. "I'll give you a rake-off if I land her. I've got her ballot right here. I won't need to open it."

"Ain't that job worth a dollar to you as it stands?" Ringa asked nervously. "I'll call it square and take my chances on the percentage."

"All right. It's a good sporting chance! Only I wish it was a man. Women are too close." Madam Spoll opened her purse and paid him.

As Ringa left, Vixley asked: "By the way, how about this fellow Payson? Do you think Lulu roped him?"

"I guess so. Lulu's done pretty well lately, and she's brought me considerable business. She ought to be here by this time."

"I should think she'd be able to handle him alone."

"Don't you go and tell her so! The thing for her to do is to get a manager, but I don't intend to queer my own game."

"What line is she workin' now? She's failed at about everything ever since she begun with cards."

"Oh, she's doing the 'Egyptian egg' reading. Wouldn't that freeze you? Lord, that was out of date twenty years go; but everything goes in San Francisco."

"Say, ain't this town the penultimate limit!" Vixley ejaculated, grinning. "Why, the dopes will stand in line all night for a chance to be trimmed, and send their money by express, prepaid, if you let 'em. Gert, sometimes I'm ashamed of myself for keepin' 'em waitin' so long! Talk about takin' a gumdrop away from a sick baby; that's hard labor to what we did for Bennett. What I want to know is, how do these damn fools ever get all the money we take away from 'em? It don't look like they had sense enough to cash a check."

"If I had one or two more decoys as good as Ringa and Lulu Ellis, I'd be fixed all right. I could stake out all the dopes in town. Say, Granthope could cut up a lot of easy cash if he'd agree to stand in. I tried to tap him about this here Payson, and he wouldn't give me a tip."

"Perhaps he didn't know anything. You can't loosen up when you're wide open, can you?"

"He generally knows all there is to know. The trouble is he's getting too high-toned. Since he fitted up his new studio and butted into society you can't get near him with nothing like a business proposition. I believe he thinks he's too good for this place and will go East. He's a nice boy, though. I ain't got nothing against him, only I wish he'd help us out. Hello, here's Lulu. Good evening, Lulu, how's Egyptian eggs to-day?"

Lulu Ellis was a dumpy, roly-poly, soft-eyed, soft-haired, pink-cheeked young woman, as innocent appearing a person as ever lived on her wits. Not that she had many of them, but a limited sagacity is enough to dupe victims as willing to be cajoled as those who appeal to the Egyptian egg for a sign of the future. Lulu's large, brown eyes were enough to distract one's attention from her rule-of-thumb methods. Her fat little hand was soft and white, her plump little body full of extravagant curves.

"Say, Mr. Payson has come!" she exclaimed immediately, with considerable excitement. "He's on the third row at the far end."

Madam Spoll became alert. "Did you see his test?"

"No, he was here when I come," Lulu replied.

"Go out and get Spoll." Madam Spoll spoke sharply. "We've got to fix this thing up right now."

Lulu returned to say: "There's such a crowd coming in he can't leave, but he says it was a gold watch with a seal fob."

"All right, so far," said the Madam. "Now, Lulu, are you sure of what you told me?"

Lulu's reply was interrupted by the entrance of Francis Granthope, in opera hat and Inverness cape, making a vivid contrast to the disreputable aspect of Professor Vixley. He greeted the three conspirators with his customary elegance.

"I'm sorry I had nothing about Payson when you rang me up, Madam Spoll, but just afterward his daughter came in for a reading. Queer, wasn't it?"

"God, that's a stroke of luck!" said Vixley eagerly. "I say, Frank, you can work her while we handle the old man, and we'll clean up a fortune. They say he's a millionaire." Vixley's little eyes gleamed.

"Let's hear what Lulu has to say, first," said Madam Spoll.

"Why, I didn't get much," Lulu confessed. "He said he dropped in by accident as he was passing by, to see what Egyptian egg astrology was. I got his name off of some letters he had in his overcoat pocket. I made him hang it on the hall hat-rack. I did all I could for him——"

"Did he get gay with you?" Professor Vixley interrupted. He had been overtly enjoying Lulu's plump charms with his rapacious eyes.

Granthope smiled; Lulu Ellis colored slightly.

"No, he didn't! I don't do none of that kind of work!"

"The more fool you!" Madam Spoll retorted. "He's an old man, ain't he?"

"Sixty," said Vixley, "I looked him up."

"Then he ought to be easy as chewing gum," said Madam Spoll.

Granthope lighted a cigarette and listened with a mildly cynical expression.

"He ain't that kind, though," Lulu insisted. "I ain't altogether a fool, after all. Why, he don't even go to church!"

Her three auditors laughed aloud, the Professor raucously, Madam Spoll with a bubbling chuckle, Granthope with scarcely more than an audible smile.

"That settles it, then. You're coming on, Lulu! What else do you know?" said Madam Spoll.

"Well, he has a daughter——"

"Yes, Granthope knows all about that," from the Madam.

"Her name is Clytie," said Granthope. "Twenty-seven."

"Is she a looker?" asked Vixley.

Granthope turned to him and gave him a patronizing glance. "You wouldn't think so, Professor. She's hardly your style. But she's good enough for me!" He languidly flipped the ash from his cigarette and took his pose again.

Lulu went on: "I think he had a love affair before he was married, but I couldn't quite get it. I didn't dare to fish very much. And that's about all I got."

"That's plenty, Lulu. You can go now. Here's a dollar for you and much obliged for passing him up."

"Oh, thank you," said Lulu. "I'm afraid it ain't worth that much. He gave me a dollar himself, though I don't charge but four bits, usually."

"Lord, what a fool!" said Vixley, watching her go out. "That girl won't ever get nowhere, she's too innocent. She knows no more about real life than a boiled egg."

"She's all right for me, though," Madam Spoll replied. "That's just the kind I need in my business. She fools 'em every time. They ain't nothing like a good blusher for a stool-pigeon, you take my word for it. Lulu's all right in her place." She turned to wash her hands at a bowl in the corner.

"Well," said Vixley, crossing his legs, "are you coming in with us, Frank?"

"It looks pretty good to me, so far. But it depends. What have you got about Payson, anyway?" Granthope's tone was languid.

Madam Spoll winked at Vixley, as she wiped her hands behind the palmist's back.

"Why," Vixley replied, "Payson's in wool and is director of a bank, besides. He's a square-head with a high forehead, and them are easy. Gertie, here, can get him into a private sittin', and when she does, you leave him to her—she'll find a way all right. She don't do no lumpy work, Gertie don't, you know that, all right! When she passes him along to me, I'll manage him like the way we worked Bennett with the real estate. I'd like another chance as good as him."

"You just wait," said Madam Spoll. "I got a hunch that this Payson is going to be pretty good pie; and we got a good strong combination, Frank, if you want to do your share."

"It's a pity Spoll ain't got some of Gertie's gumption," said Vixley, smiling with approval at his partner.

"Don't you make no mistake about Spoll—he's done some good work on Payson already." The Madam was adjusting her waist before the glass and coquetting with her hair. "The trouble with you, Vixley, is that you ain't got no executive ability—I'm going to organize this game myself. I can see a way to use Spoll and Ringa, and Flora, too. We want to go into this thing big. Payson's a keener bird than Bennett was, but they's more in him."

"So Spoll has begun, has he?" Granthope asked.

"Yes. He located the Paysons over on North Beach."

"I know that much already. The mother's dead. Mr. and Miss Payson have traveled abroad. What else do you know about her?"

"Why, it seems she's the sole heir. Good news for you, eh? High society, too—Flower Mission, Kitchen Garden, Friday Cotillions, Burlingame, everything. She could help you, Frank, if you got on the right side of her."

Here Mr. Spoll tiptoed in, bowed to Granthope, and said:

"Eight o'clock, Gertie."

Madam Spoll arose cumbrously, took a last peep in the mirror of the folding bed and turned into the hall, saying, "You take my advice, Frank. We depend upon you. See what you can do with the girl." She paused to bend a keen glance upon him. "What did you do with her, anyway?"

"Why, I did happen on something," he answered. "Do you remember Madam Grant, who used to live down on Fifth Street, twenty-odd years ago?"

Madam Spoll came back into the room eagerly.

"The crazy woman who lived so queer and yet had lots of money? Yes! She did clairvoyance, didn't she? I remember. She had a kid with her, too. Let's see—he ran away with the money, didn't he? And nobody ever knew what become of him. What about her?"

There was a duel of astute glances between them. Granthope had his own reasons for not wanting to say too much. He guarded his secret carefully, as he had guarded it from her for years.

"Miss Payson used to go down to see Madam Grant with her mother, when she was a little girl."

"No! did she, though? With her mother? That's queer! Hold on, Vixley. What did Lulu say about a love affair before Payson was married? Do you get that? Here's his wife visiting Madam Grant; you remember her, don't you? There's something in that I believe we got a good starter already."

Spoll appeared again, anxiously beckoning, and she went with him down the hall.

Vixley took up the scent. "Say, Frank," he asked, "how did you happen to get on to that, anyway? That was slick work."

Granthope turned to him and replied patronizingly, "Oh, I ought to know something about women by this time. I got her to talking."

Vixley frowned, intent in thought, stroking his scant, pointed beard and biting his mustache; then he slapped his knee with his claw-like hand. "Say, you got a grand chance there," he exclaimed. "See here, you can get in with the swells and be in a position to help out lots. It's the chance of a lifetime, and we'll make it worth your while."

"How?" Granthope inquired contemptuously.

"By a fair exchange of information. You put us wise, and we'll put you wise. I'll trust you to find ways of using what help we give you." He cackled.

"Yes—you can trust me. I think I might have some fun out of it. I don't mind helping you out, but all I need myself is a little imagination, some common-sense and a frock coat."

Vixley looked at him admiringly. "I wish't I had your chance, Frank; that's what I do. Say, you just light 'em and throw 'em away, don't you! I s'pose if I had your looks I could do it myself."

Granthope looked him over calmly. "There's no knowing what a bath and a manicure and a suit of clothes would do for you, Professor."

"You can't make brains out o' soap," retorted the medium.

"And you can't make money out of dirt.

"We'll see who has the money six months from now."

"It's a fair enough bargain. I take the girl, you take the money. I'm satisfied." Granthope arose and yawned. "Oh," he added, "did you know Payson had a partner named Riley? He was drowned in seventy-seven."

"That's funny. Queer how things come our way! Mrs. Riley is here in the front room with a test. She was tried for the murder of one of her husbands. Gert's goin' to shoot her up with it to-night. You better go in and see the fun. She'll give it to her good."

"I think I will," said the palmist.

He left Vixley plunged in thought, and walked out.

Turning into the audience-room he sat down on a chair in the rear. The place was almost filled. His eyes scanned the assembly carefully, roving from one spectator to another. On a side seat near him, a party of four, young girls and men, sat giggling and chewing gum. The rest of the company showed a placid vacancy of expression or lukewarm expectancy.

Madam Spoll at the organ and her husband with his violin, had, meanwhile, been playing a dreary piece of music, "to induce the proper conditions," as she had announced from the platform. They stopped, retarding a minor chord, and the medium went to the table and began to handle the tests, rearranging them, putting some aside, bringing others forward, in an abstracted manner. Then, looking up with a self-satisfied smile, she spoke:

"I want to say something to the new-comers and skeptics here to-night in explanation of these tests. Them who have thoroughly investigated the subject and are familiar with every phase of mediumship, understand, of course, that these objects are placed here merely to attract magnetism to the sitter and induce the proper conditions, so that your spirit friends will be able to communicate with you. This phase of mediumship is called psychometry, but if I'd stop to explain just what that means, I wouldn't have time to give any readings. Now, it won't be possible to get any messages unless you come here in the proper mood to receive them. You must send out your best thought and do all you can to assist, or else my guides won't be able to establish communication on the spirit plane. If you merely come here only to laugh and to make a scoff of the proceedings, I'll have to ask you to leave before I begin, for they's many here to-night who are honestly in search of the truth, seeking to communicate with the dear, loved ones beyond on the other side."

She passed her hand across her eyes, sighed, and fingered her chin nervously. She poked the articles on the table again.

"As I come on to this platform, I see an old man over there, in that direction, what you might call a middle-aged man, perhaps, of a medium height, and whiskers, like. I feel a condition of going on a journey, you might say, somewhere east of here, though maybe not very far, and I get the name John. The light goes over in your direction, lady, that one with the red hat. Yes, you. Would that be your father, possibly?"

The lady, straightening herself upon being thus addressed, said timidly, "I think perhaps you mean my uncle. His name was John."

"Maybe it is an uncle, though I get the influence of a father very strong, too. Has your father passed out?"

The lady in the red hat nodded.

"Then it is your father, do you see? Yes, I get an uncle, too, who wishes to communicate, only his influence ain't strong enough. That shows it ain't mind reading, as the newspaper folks say, don't it?" She smiled, as if she had made a point, and the audience appeared to be impressed.

"About this journey, now: maybe you ain't had no idea of traveling, but John says you will. I don't think it's liable to be very far, though. It'll be before the last of September or the first of October and John says it'll be successful. Do you understand what I mean?"

The lady, frightened at the terrible import of this question, did not speak.

"Did you send up an article?"

"It's that purse with the chain."

Madam Spoll fingered it and weighed it reflectively.

"I get a condition of what you might call inharmony. Seems to me like in your home something is worrying you and you ain't satisfied, you understand, with the way things are going and sometimes you feel as if, well, you just couldn't stand it!" Her smile, now, bathed her dupe with sympathy.

The lady nodded vigorously, with tightly shut lips.

"You kind of wonder if it does any good for you to go to all the trouble you do to sacrifice yourself and try to do your duty, when it ain't what you might call appreciated. And you're worried about money, too. Ain't that so?"

She received a ready assent. The woman's eyes were fixed upon her. Every one in the room watched the stripping naked of a soul.

"Well, John says that your father and him are helping you all they can on the spirit plane, and he thinks conditions will be more favorable and will take a turn for the better by the first of the year."

A question fluttered on the woman's lips, but before it had time to escape, Madam Spoll suddenly turned in the other direction.

"While I was talking to that lady," she said, "I felt an influence leading me to that corner over there by the clock, and I get the initials 'S.F.B.' Is there anybody of that name over there?"

A flashily dressed woman, with tinted yellow hair and rhinestone ear-rings, raised her hand.

"Those are my initials," she announced.

Madam Spoll grew impressive. "Your name is Brindon, ain't it?"

The woman gasped out a "Yes."

"Did I ever see you before?"

"No," said the blonde, "not to my knowledge, you didn't."

Madam Spoll made a comprehensive gesture with both hands, calling attention to the miracle. "You sent up a sealed ballot, didn't you?"

The woman nodded. She was obviously excited, looking as if she feared her skeleton was to be dragged forth from its closet; as indeed it was.

Madam Spoll took up the envelope with her delicate thumb and forefinger and displayed it to the audience.

"You see, it's still sealed," she announced, then, shutting her eyes, she continued: "My guides tell me that he's what you might call infatuated, but he'll come back to you and say he's sorry. Do you understand that?"

The woman was now painfully embarrassed and shrank into her seat. The medium, however, did not spare her. It was too good a chance for a dramatic sensation. She tore the envelope open and read its contents boldly: "Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me?" It was a psychological moment. The old women stared at Mrs. Brindon with morbid delight. There was a little buzzing of whispers through the room. Then the audience prepared itself for the next sensation.

The medium picked up another envelope. "This is marked '275,'" she said, then she clutched her throat. "Oh," she cried, "I'm strangling! They's somebody here who passed out very sudden, like they was poisoned. It's terrible. I can't answer the question the party has written because there's an evil influence here, a wicked woman. She had three husbands and two of 'em died suspicious. Her name is Riley. Would that be you?" She pointed forcefully at a dried-up, old woman in a shawl, with bleared eyes and a veined nose.

There was no response.

"Was this question something about your daughter?" Madam Spoll asked.

The woman coughed and bowed, shrinking into herself.

"I guess you better go somewhere else for your readings," Madam Spoll declared cruelly. "Your aura don't seem to me to be very harmonious. I don't know what's the matter to-night," she went on, passing her hand across her forehead in apparent distress. "The conditions around me are something horrid." Her voice rose. "There's somebody in this very room here who has committed murder. I can't do a thing until I get that off my mind. My guides tell me who it is, and that they'll be satisfied if he'll acknowledge it and say he's sorry. Otherwise, this séance can't go on."

She stopped and glared about the hall. By this time she had worked her audience up to an intense excitement. Every one looked at his neighbor, wondering what was to come, but no one offered to confess to a crime. Madam Spoll raged up and down the platform in a frenzy. Then she stopped like an elephant at bay.

"I know who this person is. It's a man, and if he don't rise and acknowledge it, I shall point him out!"

No one stirred. On the fourth seat, a clean-shaven man of thirty-five, with sharp, aquiline features and wide-spread ears, sat, transfixed with horror, his two hands clenched. It was Mr. Perry, the cleverest actor in the medium's support.

She advanced toward him as if drawn by a secret power, stared into his eyes, and putting her hand upon his shoulder, said:

"Thou art the man!"

Mr. Perry wriggled out of her grasp. "See here," he cried, "you mind your own business, will you. You're a fake! You got no right to make a fool of me." His voice trembled, his face was a convincing mask of guilt arraigned.

The medium shook a warning finger at him. "You either acknowledge what I say is true, or you leave the hall! I can't go on with you here."

Mr. Spoll came in to stand beside her valiantly; spectators stood up to watch the drama. Mr. Perry's eyes were wild, his face distorted; suddenly he arose and rushed out of the room. Madam Spoll snapped her fingers two or three times, shook herself and went back to the platform. The murmurs died down and the séance was resumed.

Madam Spoll waited a while in silence, then she picked up a gold watch with a seal fob from the table. "I'm glad to feel a more peaceful influence," she said. "I'm directed toward this watch. I don't know who brought it up, for I was out of the room at the time, but I get the name 'Oliver.'" She looked up expectantly.

A gentleman arose from an end seat in the third row. He had a high domed head, partly bald, and a gray chin-beard with a shaven upper lip; under shaggy overhanging eyebrows, cold gray eyes looked through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. His air was benevolently judicial and bespoke culture and ease. He had, moreover, a well-marked presence, as of one used to being considered influential and prominent. A row of false teeth glittered when he opened his mouth.

"That's my name," he acknowledged in a deep, fluent voice that was heard all over the room, "and that is my watch."

Madam Spoll fixed him in the eye. "I'd like to know if I can't get your other name. My guides are very strong to-night." After a few moments of self-absorption, she smiled sweetly upon him. "I think I can get it clairaudiently. Would it be Pearson?"

"No, but that's pretty near it, though."

"It sounds like Pearson to me, Pearson. Payson, oh, yes, it's Payson, isn't it?"

"That's right," he said, and sat down.

"Did I ever see you before?"

"Not to my knowledge, Madam."

She looked triumphantly at her audience and smiled.

"If they's any skeptics here to-night, I hope they'll go away satisfied." A number of old ladies nodded emphatically. "Of course, newspaper men never come on a night like this, when my guides are strong. Funny what you see when you ain't got a gun, ain't it? The next time I'm half sick and tired out, they'll be plenty of them here to say I'm a fake, like our friend here who left so sudden, white as a sheet. Now, when I was directed to that watch, I was conscious of a spirit standing beside this gentleman," she pointed at him benevolently, "influencing me to take it up. It's a woman, and she must have been about thirty when she passed out, and remarkably handsome, too. She was sort of fair-complected, between dark and light. I get a feeling here in my throat and down here," she touched her breast, lightly, curving her arm gracefully inward, "as if she went out sudden, like, with heart disease. Do you know what I mean?"

Mr. Payson had bent forward now. "Yes," he said, "I think I do. Has she any message for me?"

"Yes, she has; but—well, you see, it ain't one I'd exactly care to give in public, and I don't think you'd want me to, either. If you come up after the séance is over, I'll see if I can get it for you. Or you might do still better to have a private setting and then I'll have time to tell you more. She brings me a condition of what you might call worry or anxiety, as if you had something on your mind."

She turned to a bunch of flowers, and, taking them up, smelled them thoughtfully, for a while. Mr. Payson settled back in his seat.

As the medium commenced again, Granthope arose with his faint, cynical smile and walked quietly out. He found Mr. Spoll at the table by the door.

"Well, I guess he's on the hook." The palmist buttoned his cape and lighted a cigarette.

"Trust Gertie for that," said Spoll; "she'll land him all right, see if she don't. Good night!"

Granthope turned up his collar and walked out into the street.

CHAPTER IV

THE PAYSONS

Mr. Oliver Payson lived on a half-deserted street on the northerly slope of Russian Hill, in a quarter of the town which, at one time, promised to become a favored, if not an aristocratic residential district. But the whim of fashion had fancied in succession Stockton Street, Rincon Hill, Van Ness Avenue, Nob Hill, and had now settled upon the Western Addition and the Presidio Heights. The old North Beach, with its wonderful water and mountain view, nearer the harbor and nearer the business part of the city, had long been neglected. The few old families, who in early days settled on this site, still remained; and, with the opening of new cable-car lines, found themselves, not only within a short distance of down-town, but at the same time almost as isolated as if they had dwelt in the country, for this part of the city is upon none of the main routes—few frequent the locality except upon some special errand.

One side of the street was still unbuilt upon; on the southern side stood three houses, each upon its fifty-vara lot, comfortably filling the short block. That occupied by the Paysons was an old frame structure of two stories, without attempt at ornamentation, except for its quaint, Tudoresque pointed windows and a machicolated wooden battlement round the flat roof. It stood on a gentle slope, surrounded by an old-fashioned garden, which was hedged in, on either side, by rows of cypress and eucalyptus trees, protecting it from the trade winds, which here blow unhampered across the water.

In front, a scene ever-changing in color as the atmospheric conditions changed, was ranged in a semi-circular pageant, the wild panorama of San Francisco Bay, from Point Bonita and Golden Gate in the west, past the Marin County shore with Sausalito twinkling under the long, beautiful profile of Mount Tamalpais, past Belvedere with its white villas, Alcatraz and Goat Island floating in the harbor, to the foot-hills behind Oakland and Berkeley, where, in the east, Mount Diablo's pointed peak shimmered in the blue distance.

In the second story of this house Clytie had a bookbinding room, where she spent most of her spare time. It was large, bare, sunny, impregnated with the odor of leather skins, clean and orderly. A sewing frame and a heavy press stood behind her bench and upon a table were neatly arranged the pages of a book upon which she was working. Carefully placed in workmanlike precision were her knives, shears, glue pot and gas heater and a case of stamping irons in pigeonholes.

She was, this afternoon, in a brown gingham pinafore, with her sleeves rolled up, seated before the table, her sensitive hands moving deftly at the most delicate operation connected with her craft. Upon a square of heavy plate glass, she laid a torn, ragged page, and, from several old fly leaves, selected one that matched it in color. She cut a piece of paper slightly larger than the missing portion, skived the edges, and pasted it over the hole or along the frayed margin. The work was absorbing and exacting to her eyes; to rest them, she went, from time to time, to the window and looked out upon the bay.

The water was gray-green streaked with a deeper blue. In the "north harbor" two barks lay at anchor in the stream and ferry-boats plied the fairway. In and out of the Gate there passed, at intervals, tugs with sailing ships bound out with lumber or in with nitrates, steamers to coast ports, or liners from overseas, rusty, weather-beaten tramps, strings of heavy-going barges, lusty little tugs, lumber schooners wallowing through the tide rip, Italian fishing smacks, lateen-rigged with russet sails, saucy launches, and, at last, the magnificent bulk of a white battleship sliding imperiously into the roadstead along the waterfront.

At four o'clock Clytie's mind seemed to wander from her occupation, and now, when she ceased and looked out of the window, her abstracted gaze was evidently not directed at what she saw. Her mental vision, rather, seemed alert. Her slender golden eyebrows drew closer together, her narrow, sharp nostrils dilated; her lips, half open, inhaled deep, unconscious breaths. The pupils of her eyes contracted like a cat's in the light. Then she shook herself, passed her hand over her forehead, shrugged her shoulders and resumed her work.

A little later this performance was repeated; this time, after her momentary preoccupation, she rose more briskly, put her tools away, laid her book carefully aside and took off her pinafore. After washing her hands she went into her own room on the same floor. She went down-stairs ten minutes after, in a fresh frock, her hair nicely arranged, radiating a faint perfume of violet water. She opened the front door and walked slowly down the path to the gate where the wall, though but waist-high on the garden side, stood high above the sidewalk. Here she waited, touching the balustrade delicately with her outstretched fingers, as if playing upon a piano. The breeze loosened the severity of her coiffure, which relaxed into slight touches of curling frivolity about her ears and neck. Her pink frock billowed out into flowing, statuesque folds as she stood, like a figurehead, gazing off at the mountains. Her mouth was set into a shape not quite a smile, a queer, tremulously subtle expression of suspense. She kept her eyes in the direction of Hyde Street.

It was not long before a man turned the corner and walked briskly toward her. He looked up at the first house on the block, searching for the number; then, as his eyes traveled along to the next gate, he caught sight of her. Instantly his soft felt hat swung off with a quick flourish and he sent her a pleased smile.

"Here I am, Mr. Granthope!" Clytie called down to him, and on the instant her face was suffused with pink. She had evidently expected him, but now she appeared as agitated as if his coming had surprised her.

He ran up the flight of wooden steps, his eyes holding hers all the way. His dark, handsome face glowed; he abounded with life and spirit as he stood before her, hand outstretched. In the other, he held a small leather-bound book.

"Good afternoon, Miss Payson!" he said heartily. He shook hands eagerly, his touch, even in that conventional greeting, consciously managed; the grasp was sensitive and he delayed its withdrawal a suggestive second, his dark eyes already at work upon hers. "How lucky I was to catch you out here!" he added, as he dropped her hand.

"Oh, I've been expecting you for some time," Clytie replied, retreating imperceptibly, as from an emotional attack, and turning away her eyes.

He noticed her susceptibility, and modified his manner slightly.

"Why! You couldn't possibly have known I was coming?"

"But I did! Does that surprise you? I told you I had intuitions, you know. You came to bring my ring, didn't you?"

"Yes, of course. You really have second-sight, then?" He looked at her as one might look at a fairy, in amusement mingled with admiration.

"Yes—haven't you?" She put it to him soberly.

"Haven't I already proved it?" His eyes, well-schooled, kept to hers boldly, seeking for the first sign of her incredulity. Into his manner he had tried to infuse a temperamental sympathy, establishing a personal relation.

She did not answer for a moment, gazing at him disconcertingly; then her eyes wandered, as she remarked: "You certainly proved something, I don't quite know what."

He laughed it off, saying: "Well, I've proved at least that I wanted to see you again, and made the most of this excuse."

"Yes, I'm glad I forgot the ring. I'm really very glad to see you, too—I half hoped I might. Won't you come up to my summer-house? It's not so windy there, and we can talk better."

He accepted, pleased at the invitation and the implied promise it held, and followed her up the path and off toward the line of trees. The place was now visited by belated sunshine which compensated for the sharp afternoon breeze. In the shelter of the cypress hedge the air was warm and fragrant. Here was an arbor built of withe crockery crates overgrown with climbing nasturtiums; it contained a seat looking eastward, towards Telegraph Hill. In front stood a sun-dial mounted on a terra cotta column, beneath a clump of small Lombardy poplars.

As she seated herself she pointed to it. "Did you know that this is a sort of cemetery? That sun-dial is really a gravestone. When I was a little girl I buried my doll underneath it. She had broken open, letting the sawdust all out, and I thought she must be dead. It may be there now, for all I know; I never dug her up."

He looked over at the shaft, saying, "A very pretty piece of symbolism. I suppose I have buried illusions, myself, somewhere."

She thought it over for a moment, and apparently was pleased. "I'd like to dig some of them up," she said at last, turning to him, with the slow movement of her head that was characteristic of her.

"Haven't you enough left?"

She started to reply, but evidently decided not to say what she had intended, and let it drop there, her thought passing in a puzzling smile as she looked away again.

He had laid his book beside him upon the bench, and, when her eyes came back, she took it up and looked at it. A glance inside showed it to be an old edition of Montaigne. She smiled, her eyes drifted to him with a hint of approval for his taste, then she turned her interest to the binding. As she fingered the leather, touching the tooled surfaces sensitively, her curiosity did not escape his sharp eyes, watching for anything that should be revelatory.

She explained: "I have a technical interest in bindings. I do some of that work myself. It's curious that I happened to be at work to-day on an old copy of Montaigne. I'm rebinding it for my father's birthday. You'd never think my hands were of any practical use, would you?"

He laughed. "Inconsistencies like that are what baffles one most, especially when one knows that most characters are inconsistent. But we professionals have to go by general rules. I should expect you to be an exception to all of them, though."

He watched her surreptitiously, noting her diminishing color, the evasion of her glance, and the air of self-consciousness with which she spoke, as they talked for a while of obvious things—the weather, the view, and the picturesque, old-fashioned garden. She had taken the ring and had put it upon her finger, keeping her eyes on its turquoises. Her whole demeanor ministered to his vanity, already pleased by her frank welcome. He was used enough to women's interest and admiration for him to expect it and play upon it, but this was of a shyer and more elusive sort; it seemed to hold something more seriously considered, it baffled him, even as he enjoyed its unction. Besides all this, too, there was a secret romantic charm in the fact that they had shared together that vivid experience of the past. He came back for another draught of flattery.

"It was odd that you expected me, wasn't it?" he said. "I can't help wondering about it."

She had her eyes upon the Sausalito boat, which was weaving a trailing web of foam past Alcatraz Island. At his words, she turned to him with the same slow seriousness as before and replied:

"I shouldn't think it would seem so remarkable to you, your own power is so much more wonderful."

"Perhaps so in that one case, but you know I don't, ordinarily, claim clairvoyance. It's only occasionally, as the other day with you, that I attempt it."

Her eyes awakened; she said earnestly, "Was I really able to bring that out in you?"

He caught at the hint. "Why, what else could it be but your magnetism? It was the more strange because I had never seen you before."

The glow faded, and she relaxed her nervous energy. "Ah, hadn't you? I wonder!"

"Why, had you ever seen me before that day?"

"I think so. At least you seem, somehow, familiar."

"When was it, and where, then?"

She seemed too puzzled to answer, or fatigued with following an intangible thread of thought. As she spoke, slowly, intensely, her hands made large, vague gestures, often pausing in mid air, as her voice paused, waiting for the proper word to come. "I don't know. It only seems as if I had been with you—or near you, or something—I don't know what. It's like a dream—or a story I can't quite recall, only—" she did not finish the sentence.

He wondered what her game could be. Fundamentally cynical, though he never permitted it to show in his manner, he distrusted her claims to prevision. There was, after all, nothing in Miss Payson's words that might not be accounted for by what he knew of the wiles of feminine psychology. His training had taught him how much a baseless hint, injected at the proper moment, could accomplish in the masquerade of emotions and the crafty warfare of the sexes. That he and she had been actors together in a past uncomprehended scene, he regarded as a mere coincidence of which he had already made good use; he refused to connect it with her suggestive remark, for he was sure that she must have been unaware of his presence in Madam Grant's room that day, so long ago. It seemed to him more likely that, woman-fashion, she had shot into the air and had brought down an unsuspected quarry. And yet, even as a coincidence, he could not quite dismiss the strangeness of it from his mind.

He was preparing to turn it to a sentimental advantage, when Clytie, who had relapsed into silence, suddenly aroused herself with one of those impulsive outbursts which were characteristic of her.

"There is something about it all that is stranger still, I think!"

Her golden brows had drawn together, separated by two vertical lines, as she gazed at him. Then with a little jet of fervor, she added:

"I'm afraid I know too much about you, Mr. Granthope! It's somewhat embarrassing, really. It doesn't seem quite fair, you know."

"I'm not quite sure that I understand."

"Oh, you know! You must know!"

He laughed. "Really, Miss Payson, it's very flattering, of course—"

"Oh, no, it's not in the least flattering."

"I wish you'd explain, then." He leaned back, folded his arms and waited indulgently. So long as he could keep the conversation personal, he was sure of being able to manage her, and further his own ends. It amused him.

She busied herself with a lace handkerchief as she continued, in a low voice, as if she were ridding herself of a disagreeable task, and always with the slow, monotonous turning of her questing eyes toward him, and away. "Of course I've heard many things about you—you're a good deal talked about, you know; but it's not that at all—it's an instinctive knowledge I have about you. I can't explain it. It's a queer special feeling—almost as if, in some way, I had the right to know. That's why I wanted to see you again—I hoped you'd come. I wanted to tell you."

"But all that certainly is flattering," he said. "I wouldn't be human if I weren't pleased to hear that you're interested, even if—"

She could not help breaking into smiles again, as she interrupted him.

"Oh, but I haven't told you yet."

"Please do, then!"

"It sounds so foolish when I say it—so priggish! But it's this: I don't at all approve of you. Why in the world should I care? I don't know. It isn't my business to reform you, if you need it." Now she had brought it out, she could not look at him.

Curiously enough, though he had been amused at her assumption of a circumstantial knowledge of him, this hinted comprehension of his character, of the duplicity of his life, if it were that, impressed him with the existence in her mind of some quality as rare and mysterious as electricity, a real psychic gift, perhaps. It gave him an instant's pause. Instinctively he feared a more definite arraignment. He began a little more seriously, now, to match his cleverness against her intuition; and, for the first defense, he employed a move of masculine coquetry.

"You have been thinking of me, then?"

"Yes," she replied simply, "I have thought about you a good deal since I was in your studio. But I suppose you're used to hearing things like that from women." She was apologetic, rather than sarcastic.

He shrugged his shoulders. He seemed to be able to make no way against her directness. "I've thought not a little of you, too, Miss Payson. You are wonderfully psychic and sensitive. I think you should develop your power—you might be able to do extraordinary things with it. I wish you'd let me help you. That is," he added humorously, "if I'm not too far gone in your disapproval."

"Oh, the disapproval—I call it that for want of a better word—isn't so important as the fact that I should feel it at all, don't you see? You remember that you told me I was the kind of a woman who, if she liked a man, would tell him so, freely. That is true. I would scorn to stoop to the immemorial feminine tricks. I do like you, and in spite of what I can't quite explain, too. I don't know why, either. It seems as if it's a part of that other feeling I've mentioned—that I've been with you, or near you, before."

He leaned forward to extort more of this delicious confession from her. "Do you mean spiritually, or merely physically near?"

"Oh, I don't mean an 'elective affinity' or anything so occult as that," she laughed. "Indeed, I don't quite know what I do mean—it's all so vague. I can't formulate it. It escapes me when I try. But I did know, for instance, quite definitely, that I'd see you again. I tell you about it only because I think that you, with your power in that way, may be able to understand it and explain it to me."

He thought he saw his chance, now, and instinctively he began to pose, letting his eyes deepen and burn on her. He nodded his head and said impressively:

"Yes. I have felt it, too, Miss Payson. It's wonderful to think that you should have recognized me and understood me so well. No one ever has before. We are related by some tie—I'm sure we've met before, somewhere, somehow—"

She jumped up and stood before him, her hands tightly held, her lips pressed together. For a moment, so, she looked hard at him; then what there had been of anger in her gaze softened to something like sadness or pity.

"That's what I meant!"

He misunderstood her remark and her attitude and went still farther astray from her meaning.

"You are not like any other woman I have ever known," he said, in the same soulful way.

"Why can't you be honest with me!" she broke out. She was astonishingly alive now; there was no trace of her former languor. He winced at realizing, suddenly, and too late, that he had made a false step.

"Why do you make me regret having been frank?" she went on, with a despairing throb in her voice. "You have almost succeeded in making me ashamed of myself, already. That is just what I disapprove of in you. Don't imagine that you can ever deceive me with such sentimentality. I shall always know when you're straightforward and simple. That's what I've been trying to make you understand—that I do know!"

She turned slowly away from him, almost hopelessly. For a moment she remained immobile, then before he had recovered his wits, she had modified the situation for him. Her eyes drifted back to his as she remarked thoughtfully:

"I am sure, too, that you could help me, if you would."

"How?" He tried to pull himself together.

"Merely by being honest with me."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, I know that's a good deal to ask," she laughed.

"Of me?"

"Of any one."

"I'll try, Miss Payson," he said, not too seriously. "But you've frightened me. I don't dare think too hard about anything, you're such a witch."

She released him graciously and keyed down to an easier tone.

"You must forgive me if I've been too frank, Mr. Granthope, but this interview is almost like a first meeting, and you know how much one is apt to say in such a situation. Let's not continue the discussion—I'm embarrassed enough already. I know I shall regret what I've said. We'll talk of something pleasanter. Tell me about that pretty girl in your office."

"Oh!" he exclaimed, and his tone was as if he had said, "Aha!" He wondered if it were possible that, after all, it was only this which had moved her to speak.

Clytie frowned, but if she read his thought, she let it go unchallenged.

"She's an original little thing; I like her," she added.

"You do?" he said mischievously exaggerating his surprise.

"Yes, I do. Don't think I'm trying to patronize her, but she's a dear—and she's very pretty."

"Do you think so? I shall have to tell her that. She's pretty enough, at least, to have been on the stage. She was in vaudeville for a couple of years. I first got acquainted with her at the Orpheum. I've known her a long time. She's a great help and a great comfort to me, and a very clever girl."

"How long has she been your assistant?"

"Two years."

"And you haven't fallen in love with her yet?"

Granthope was relieved. He was sure now that she was, if not jealous, suspicious of his relations with Fancy. It was not the first time he had encountered such insinuations.

"Oh, not in the least," he said. "I can give you my word as to that. I don't think it ever occurred to me—though I'd do anything in the world for her."

"And I suppose you're as sure of her immunity?"

"Why, of course," said Granthope, and in his tone there was the ring of masculine assurance.

Clytie smiled and shook her head. "There are some things men never can know, no matter how clairvoyant they are," she said, looking away.

He did not follow this up, but arose to leave. "I'm afraid you have a very poor opinion of me, Miss Payson," he said, "but I do feel complimented by your frankness. Perhaps I shall merit it—who knows?" It was his turn to address the distance, and, in spite of his consciousness of an histrionic effect, his own words sounded curiously in his ears; they seemed premonitory. He shook himself free from her influence again. She had controlled the situation from the first word; he had only made a series of mistakes. It all confirmed his first estimate of her: that she was very well worth his while, but that her capture would be difficult.

Clytie, too, had arisen. Her mood had lightened, and her sense of humor had returned. "I hope I haven't been either tragic or absurd," she said, smiling. "I'm not always so serious, Mr. Granthope. The next time I meet you I'll probably be more conventional."

"Then I may see you again?"

"I doubt if you can help it."

"I shall certainly not try to!" Then he paused. "You mean—?"

"Yes!"

There was something delightful to him in this rapid transfer of wordless thought. It again established an intimacy between them. That she acknowledged such a relation by anticipating another meeting, an inevitable one, charmed him the more. He might win, after all, with such assistance from her. Her power of intuition aroused his curiosity—he longed to experiment with it. She was a new plaything which he had yet to learn to handle. Before, he had dominated her easily enough; he might do so again.

"Miss Payson," he said, "won't you come down to my studio again sometime? I'd like to make a more careful examination of your hand, and perhaps I can help you in developing your psychic sense."

"Oh, no, thank you. Really, I can't come again—I shall be pretty busy for a while—I have to go to the Mercantile Library every afternoon, looking up material for my father's book—and, after all, I got what I wanted."

"What did you want?"

"Partly to see you."

He bowed. "Curiosity?"

"Let's call it interest."

"You had no faith, then, in my palmistry?"

"Very little."

"Yet you acknowledge that I told you some things that were true?"

"Haven't I told you several things about yourself, too?"

"I'd like to hear more."

"Oh, I've said too much, already."

"Let's see. That I am more or less of a villain—"

"But a most interesting one!"

"That I have met you before—"

"Not perhaps 'met'—"

"That Fancy Gray is in love with me—"

"Oh, I didn't say that!"

"But you suspect it?"

"If I did, it was impertinent of me. It's none of my business."

"Well, you won't come again—you've quite satisfied your curiosity by seeing me?"

"Quite. I've confirmed all my suspicions."

"What were they?"

Clytie laughed. "Really, you're pushing me a little too hard, Mr. Granthope. I'd be glad to have you call here, sometime, if you care to. But my psychic powers are quite keen enough already. They rather frighten me. I want them only explained. As I say, it's embarrassing, sometimes. I hate to speak of what I feel—it's all so groundless and it sounds silly."

"You know more, then, than you mention?"

"Oh, much!"

"About me, for instance?"

"Yes. But it's vague and indefinite. It needn't worry you."

"Even though you disapprove?"

She laughed again. "You may take that as a compliment, if you like."

He nodded. "It is something that you care."

"I'm mainly curious to see what you'll do—"

"Oh, you're expecting something, then?"

"I'm watching to see. I confess I shall watch you. I said that you interested me—that's what I mean. You're going to—well, change."

As she stood between him and the light her soft hair showed as fine and crisp as spun glass. Her lips were sensitively curved with a flitting smile, her eyes were dreamy again. Everything about her bespoke a high spiritual caste, but, to Granthope, this only accented the desirability of her bodily self—it would make her the greater prize, unlike anything he had, so far, been able to win. He had an epicure's delight in feminine beauty, and he knew how its flavor should be finely tinctured by mind and soul; even beauty was not exciting without that, and of mere beauty he had his fill. Besides, she had unexpected reserves of emotion that he was continually tempted to arouse. But so far he had hopelessly misplayed his part, and he longed to prove his customary skill with women.

"Well," he said finally, offering his hand, "I hope I'll be able to satisfy you, sooner or later. I'll come, soon, for a report!"

"Oh, my mood may have changed, by that time."

He gave her the farewell amenities and went down the path to the gate. There he turned and saw her still watching him. He waved his hat and went down the steps, his mind restless with thoughts of her.

Clytie remained a while in the arbor. The fog had begun to come in now with a vanguard of light fleecy clouds riding high in the air, closing the bay in from all sides. The massive bank behind followed slowly, tinted with opal and rose from the setting sun. It settled down, shutting out her sight of the water, and its cohorts were soon scurrying past her on their charge overland from ocean to harbor. The siren at Point Bonita sighed dismally across the channel. It soon grew too cold to remain longer in the garden, and she went into the house shivering, lighted an open fire in the library and sat down.

For half an hour she sat there in silence, inert, listless, lost in thought, her eyes on the blurred landscape mystic with driving fog. The room grew darker, illuminated only by the fitful flashes of the fire. Her still, relaxed figure, fragile and delicate as an ivory carving, was alternately captured and hidden by the shadow and rescued and restored by the sudden gleam from the hearth. She had not moved when her father's step was heard in the hall. He came in, benignly sedate. His deep voice vibrated through the room.

"Well, Cly, dreaming again?"

She started at the sound and came out of her reverie to rise and greet him affectionately. He put down some books and a package of papers and lighted the chandelier, exchanging commonplaces with her—of her bookbinding work, which she confessed to have shirked; of the weather, with a little of old age's querulous complaint of rheumatic touches; of the black cat, which was their domestic fetish and (an immortally interesting topic to him) of the vileness and poisonous quality of San Francisco illuminating gas. His voice flowed on mellifluously with unctuous authority, as he seated himself in his arm-chair beneath the lamp, shook out his evening paper and rattled its flapping sheets.

Clytie evinced a mild interest in his remarks, smiled gently at his familiar vagaries, answering when replies should be forthcoming, in her low, even, monotonously pitched tones. She questioned him perfunctorily about the book he was writing, an absorbing avocation with him, warding off his usual disappointment at her lack of sympathy by involving herself in a conversational web of explanation regarding Foreign Trade Expansion, Reciprocal Profits and The Open Door in the Orient.

"There's not much use working on it at the office," he concluded. "I'm too liable to interruptions."

"Who interrupted you to-day?" she asked.

"Oh, there was a queer chap in this afternoon, an insurance solicitor; Wooley, his name was. I told him I didn't want an accident policy, but I happened to tell him about that time on the Oakland Mole, when I got caught between two trains in the Fourth of July crush—you remember? and he told me about all the narrow escapes he ever heard of, trying to get me to go into his company. Funny dog he was. He kept me laughing and talking with him for an hour. Then Blanchard came in. He says he's coming around to-night." He hesitated and scanned her intently through his gold-bowed glasses, under his bushy brows. "I hope you will treat him well, Cly."

Her face grew serious and her sensitive lips quivered, as she said:

"Why do you like Mr. Cayley so much, father?"

"Why, he's a very intelligent fellow, Cly; I don't know of another young man of his age who is really worth talking to. He knows things. He has a broad outlook and a serious mind. He's the kind of young man we need to take hold of political and commercial reform. I tell you, the country is going to the dogs for lack of men who are interested in anything outside of their own petty concerns. Why, he's the only one I know who really seems interested in oriental trade and all its development means to the Pacific slope. That's remarkable, considering he isn't himself connected with any commercial enterprise. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have him to discuss my subject with. He seems to be genuinely interested in it. I wish you were as much so, Cly!"

Clytie turned away, smiling somewhat ironically, an uncommon expression for her engaging features.

"You know," she said slowly, "that I don't quite trust him."

"Why, you two have been friends long enough, you should know him better by this time. You're intimate enough with him."

"Oh, it's only a feeling I have. You know I have my intuitions—but what friendship there is has been of his seeking."

"He's all right, Cly," her father said dictatorially. "I haven't lived in the West for fifty years without knowing something of men. I do want you to learn to appreciate him. He's got a future before him and he is certainly fond of you. You know, if anything did come of it, I would—"

Clytie arose abruptly. "I think dinner's almost ready, father, and I'm hungry. Are you ready?"

She was imperious, holding her tawny head erect, her chin high, her hands clasped behind her back, the willowy suppleness of her body now grown rigid. Mr. Payson sighed resignedly, and allowed a moment's silence to speak for him; then, finding that his daughter's attitude continued to dominate the situation, he, too, arose, patted her cheek and shook his head. This pantomime coaxed forth a gracious smile from her. He took his manuscripts and left to go up to his room. Clytie remained at the window till he returned.

They had nearly finished their dinner, when, after a casual dialogue, she remarked, without looking at him:

"Father, do you remember anything about an old crazy woman who lived down south of Market Street somewhere, years ago—in a cheap hotel, I think it was?"

He started at her question and his voice, ordinarily so calm and so mellow, quavered slightly.

"What do you mean? Who was she?" he asked earnestly.

"That's what I want to know," Clytie said, stirring her coffee.

"What do you know about her?"

"Why—I went to see her once."

"You went to see her? When?"

"Then you did know her!"

Mr. Payson spoke cautiously, watching his daughter. "I have heard about her, yes, but I never knew you had been there. How in the world did that happen? It must have been a long time ago." He stared as if he could scarcely believe her assertion.

"Mother took me there once or twice. It's almost the first thing I remember."

"She did? She never told me! It's strange you have never mentioned it before."

"Perhaps I oughtn't to mention it now. I thought, somehow, that she wouldn't want me to tell you about it."

His tone now was disturbed, anxious, pitched in a higher key.

"Why shouldn't you speak of it? What difference could it possibly make? I remember that woman, yes. She was not old, though. Do you recall her well? You were very young then."

"I can almost see her now. She had white hair and black eyebrows, with a vertical line between them; she was pale, but with bright red lips. She wore a strange red gown. I think she must have been very beautiful at one time. Who was she, father?" Clytie sent a calm, level glance at him.

"Oh, she was a friend of your mother's. Your mother and I used to keep track of her and help her, that's all."

"Was she poor, then?"

"No, she wasn't. That was the queer part of it. She had considerable ability and actually carried on a real estate business, though she was pretty mad. She had lucid intervals, though, when she was as reasonable as any one."

"What became of her?"

"She died, I think, of heart disease. It must have been the same year your mother died, if I remember rightly."

"What was her name?"

Mr. Payson grew more nervous at this questioning, but he replied, "They called her Madam Grant, I believe. How did you happen to bring up the subject after all these years, Cly?"

It was her turn to be embarrassed. "Well—I've recalled that scene occasionally, and wondered about it—it has always been a mystery I couldn't explain, and I never dared talk about it. Of course, it's only one of those vivid early pictures of childhood, but it has always seemed very romantic."

"It was a strange situation," Mr. Payson replied. "She was a very unfortunate woman and I was sorry for her. I never would have permitted you to go, if I had known, of course, but perhaps your mother knew best." He dropped his chin upon his hand. "Yes, I'm glad you went, now. What impression did she make on you?"

"I only remember thinking how beautiful she must have been."

"Yes," Mr. Payson's voice was almost inaudible. He pushed his chair back, rose and went into the library. Clytie followed him.

"Are you going out to-night, father?"

"Yes, I've got some business to attend to."

"In the evening?" she raised her brows.

"Oh, I'm only looking up something—for my book." He turned away to avoid her gaze.

"Oh!" She sat down and took up a book without questioning him further. Soon after, the front doorbell rang and Mr. Cayley was shown in by the Chinese servant.

Blanchard Cayley was well known about town, for he had a place in many different coteries. By his birth he inherited a position in a select Southern set that had long monopolized social standing and looked scornfully down upon the upstart railroad aristocracy and that nouveau riche element which was prominent chiefly through the notoriety conferred by the newspapers. Blanchard Cayley's parts gained him the entrée, besides, to less conventional circles, where his wit and affability made him a favorite. He belonged to two of the best clubs, but his inclinations led him to dine usually at French or Italian restaurants, where good-fellowship and ability distinguished the company. He wrote a little and knew the best newspaper men and all the minor poets in town. He drew a little, and was familiar with all the artists. He accounted himself a musical critic and cultivated composers. He knew San Francisco like a rat, knew it as he knew the intricacies of French forms of verse, as well as he knew the architecture of music and the history of painting. He had long ceased his nocturnal meanderings "down the line" from the Hoffman Bar to Dunn's saloon, but he occasionally took a post-graduate course, of sorts, to see whether, for the nonce, the city was wide open or shut. He had discovered the Latin Quarter, now well established as a show-place for jaded pleasure-seekers, and had played bocce with the Italians in the cellars of saloons, before the game was heard of by Americans. He had found the marionette theater in its first week, traced every one of Stevenson's haunts before the Tusitala had died in Samoa, knew the writings of "Phoenix" almost by heart, and had devoured half the Mercantile Library. Tar Flat and the Barbary Coast he knew as well as the Mission and North Beach, and as for Chinatown, he had ransacked it for queer jars, jade and hand-made jewelry, exhausting its possibilities long before San Franciscans had realized the presence, in that quarter, of anything but an ill-smelling purlieu of tourists' bazaars.

He had "discovered" women as well—women, for the most part, whose attractions few other persons seemed to appreciate. His last find was Clytie Payson—a much more valuable tribute to his taste than any heretofore. He had devoted himself assiduously to her, and it was his boast that he could remember the hat she wore when he first saw her, ten years before. His pursuit of her had been eccentric. Cayley was mathematical and his methods were built upon a system. During the first years of their acquaintance he alternated months of neglect with picturesque arrivals on nights so tempestuous and foul that his presence would be sure to be counted as a flattering tribute, and would outweigh, with his obvious devotion, the previous languor of his pursuit. This was a fair sample of the subtlety of his psychological amours, for Blanchard Cayley was not of the temperament to run across the room and kiss a girl with verve and ardor. He led, however, an intense mental life; there he was a creature of enthusiasms and contempts, capable of no intermediate emotion.

What else was true of his character it would be necessary to determine from the several ladies of his choice whom he kept carefully apart, recipients of his subdivided confidence. Blanchard Cayley did not introduce female contemporaries.

He wore a carefully trimmed, reddish, Vandyke beard, with a drooping mustache; his hair curled a bit effeminately. Large blue eyes, the well-developed nose of the hobbyist, hands of a sixteenth-century gentleman, aristocratic, well-kept, soft. To-night he was in half-dress—dinner jacket and gold studs, an inch wide stripe upon his trousers—this under a yellow mackintosh and cricket cap, in strict accordance with his own ideas of form.

Mr. Payson was in the library still busy with his manuscript when he entered. The two shook hands. Blanchard's manner had in it something of a survival of the old school. He was never awkward, yet never bombastic. Suave, rather, with a semi-humorous touch that relieved his courtesy of anything solemn. He smiled, showing his teeth, saying, with an appearance of great interest,

"Well, Mr. Payson, I see you're still at it. How's The Open Door in the Orient?"

"Oh, getting on," said Mr. Payson. "I want to read you my last chapter when I get a chance. I think you'll like it."

Cayley had been successful in appearing to listen, and at the same time pay his respects to Clytie, whose hand he did not let go without a personal pressure in addition to the visible greeting. He kept it an unpleasant half-second longer than had Granthope. She freed herself with a slight gesture of discomfort. "Perhaps I'd better go up-stairs and leave you men alone to talk it over," she suggested.

"Certainly not," said her father. "I'll wait until some other time, only I thought Blanchard would be interested."

"Indeed, I am," Cayley protested. "I'm very anxious to hear your opinion about gold, too. I have something to suggest, myself. Oh!" He delved into his breast pocket. "Here are some notes on the history of the trade dollar, Mr. Payson. You know I was speaking of it. I've been looking up the subject at the mint and at the library for you; I think it might give you some ideas."

Mr. Payson took the paper eagerly and pushed up his spectacles to examine it. "Thank you; thank you very much. I'll be glad to look it over. It's a pleasure to find any one nowadays who's so interested in what is going to be a very vital question. You'll find my cigars here, somewhere. Cly, you go and find the box, won't you?"

As Clytie disappeared in the direction of the dining-room, he added, "You must humor her, Blanchard, she's a bit skittish. Don't force her hand and I think you'll bring her around."

"Thanks for the tip, but I have my idea," was the reply. "It's only a question of time when I shall be able to produce the psychological condition I want."

Mr. Payson shook his head dubiously. "I don't know. That isn't the way we went about it when I was young. We didn't bother much with psychology then. We had emotions to attend to."

"Oh, love-making is just as much a science as anything else, and there is no reason why it shouldn't progress. There are modern methods, you know; it's only a form of hypnotism." He smiled blandly.

When he and Clytie were alone—a situation she seemed to delay as much as possible—Cayley sat down opposite her with an ingratiating, disarming smile. He was neither eager nor impressive. He was sure of himself. It did not, as he had said, seem to matter a great deal about her emotions; he scarcely considered her otherwise than as a mind whose defenses he was to overthrow in an intellectual contest. He began with elaborate circumlocution.

"Well, I've discovered something."

Her delicate eyebrows rose.

"It is a curious botanical fact that there are four thousand lamp-posts in the city of San Francisco."

"Why botanical?"

"That is just what I expected you to ask."

"Then I'll not ask it." She was already on the defense.

"But you did!"

"Well?" She appeared to resent his tone.

"Now, see here!" He laid his right forefinger to his left palm. "Suppose a Martian were visiting the earth. He wouldn't at first be able to distinguish the properties of things. So, seeing these four thousand lamp-posts, he might consider them as a part of the Terrene flora—queer trees."

It was like a game of chess, and it was evident that she could not foresee his next move. The detour was too complicated. She seemed, by her attitude, to be on her guard, but allowed him, with a nod of assent, to proceed.

"Now, suppose you have the Martian, or let us call it the uncorrelative point of view. Suppose you use brain-cells that have hitherto been quiescent or undeveloped."

"I don't exactly follow." Her attention wandered.

He probed it. "Suppose I should get up and kiss you."

She awoke suddenly.

"You see what I mean now?" he continued. "You exploded a new cell then. You gained a new point of view with regard to me. Don't be afraid. I'm not going to kiss you."

"Indeed, you're not!" Her alarm subsided; her resentment, rising to an equal level, was drawn off in a smile at the absurdity of the discussion.

He went on: "But you must acknowledge that I have, at least, produced a psychological condition. I'm going to use that new cell again." He waited for her answer.

"Dear me!" she exclaimed at last. "We're getting very far away from the lamp-posts. I'm quite in the dark."

He proceeded: "My character is lighted by four thousand lamp-posts also."

"Ah, I see! You want me to regard them as botanical facts. I, as a supposititious Martian, with this wonderful new cell, am to perceive in you something that is not true?"

"No, for in Mars, the lamp-posts, we will suppose, are vegetables—not mechanical objects."

"A little more light from the lamp-posts, please."

"They are emotions, alive and growing. They have heat as well as light, in spite of their subtleties. I want you to perceive the fact that my methodical nature shows that I have a determined, potent stimulus—that I have energy—that I am in earnest."

She seemed to sniff the danger now and stood at gaze. He went on:

"I shall keep at the attempt until you do look at me in this way—till I've educated these dormant cells."

"If you are leading up to another proposal," Clytie said, "I must say I admire your devotion to method, but it is time thrown away."

He took this calmly enough. He took everything calmly; but he did not abate his persistence. "I'm not leading up to a proposal so much as I am to an acceptance."

Clytie shrugged her shoulders. "You'll be telling me you're in love with me next."

"Do you doubt it?"

"A half-dozen proposals have not convinced me."

"Seven," he corrected. "This is the eighth."

"How long do you intend to keep it up?"

"Until I produce in your mind a psychological condition which will convince you that I'm in earnest, that I am sincere, that I am the man for you. Then I shall produce an emotional reflex—it's sure to follow. It may come to-night and it may come next year. Sooner or later circumstances will bring about this crystallization. Some shock may help; it may be a simple growth. I am sure to win you in the long run. I'm bound to have you, and I will, if I have to make a hundred attempts. You can't dismiss me, for I'm an old friend and you need me. I have educated you, I have broadened your horizon. You see, I am playing with my cards on the table."

"But without trumps." Clytie stifled a yawn.

"Meaning, I suppose, that I have no heart? Clubs may do. I rely upon your atavism."

"I suppose you have as much heart as can be made out of brain."

"What if I say that I'm jealous? Will that prove that I have a heart?"

"Oh, you're too conceited ever to be jealous."

"But I am! I'll prove it. I happen to know that that palmist person, Granthope, was here this afternoon and you spent half an hour with him. How's that?"

"How do you know?" She awoke to a greater interest.

"You don't seem to realize that I make it my business to know all about you. This came by accident, though. I was on the Hyde Street car and I saw him get off and come in here. I waited at the end of the road till he went back. Now, what if I should tell your father that you have been entertaining a faking palmist here, on the sly?" He leaned back and folded his hands.

Clytie rose swiftly and walked to the door without a look at him.

"Father," she called, "Mr. Cayley has something to say to you."

"Never mind," Cayley protested. "That was merely an experiment."

Mr. Payson, in overcoat and silk hat, thrust a mildly expectant head in the room.

"It was only about the trade dollar business," said Cayley. "I'll tell you some other time."

Mr. Payson withdrew, scenting no mischief, and Clytie sat down without a word.

"Thought you'd call my bluff, did you?" said Cayley, unruffled. "I like spirit!"

"If you don't look out you'll succeed in boring me." Clytie's manner had shown an amused scorn rather than resentment. She was evidently not afraid of him.

"You're fighting too hard to be bored," he remarked coolly. He added, "Then you are interested in him, are you?"

"I am." Clytie looked him frankly in the face.

"Why?" he asked.

"I've heard a lot about him and he appeals to my imagination. I scarcely think I need to apologize for it. Have you any objection to my knowing him?"

"I'd rather you wouldn't get mixed up with him; since he's been taken up the women are simply crazy about him, as they always are about any charlatan. They're all running after him and calling on him and ringing him up at all hours. Why, Cly, they actually lie in wait for him at his place; trying to get a chance to talk to him alone. I don't exactly see you in that class, that's all. You can scarcely blame me."

"Oh, I haven't rung him up yet," said Clytie, "but there's no knowing what I may do, of course, with all my unexploded brain-cells."

"How did he happen to come here, then?"

"He came to see me, I suppose."

Cayley accepted the rebuff gracefully. "Well, in another month, when some one else comes along, people will drop him with a thud. He's a nine days' wonder now, but he's too spectacular to last. This is a great old town! We need another new fakir now that the old gentleman in the Miller house has stopped his Occult Brotherhood in the drawing-room and his antique furniture repository in the cellar. I haven't heard of anything so picturesque since that Orpheum chap caught the turnips on a fork in his teeth, that were tossed from the roof of the Palace Hotel. I suppose I'll have a good scandal about Granthope, pretty soon, to add to my collection."

Clytie accepted the diversion, evidently only too glad to change the subject. "What collection?" she asked.

"My San Francisco Improbabilities. I've got a note-book full of them—things no sane Easterner would believe possible, and no novelist dare to use in fiction."

"Oh, yes, I remember your telling me. What are they? One was that house made entirely of doors, wasn't it?"

"Yes, the 'house of one hundred and eighty doors' at the foot of Ninth Street. Then, there is the hulk of the Orizaba over by the Union Iron Works, where 'Frank the Frenchman' lives like a hermit, eats swill and bathes in the sewage of the harbor. Then there's 'Munson's Mystery' on the North beach—nobody has ever found out who Munson is. And Dailey, the star eater of the Palace Hotel—he used to have four canvas-back ducks cooked, selected one and used only the juice from the others; he ordered soup at a dollar a plate; and he had a happy way of buying a case of champagne with each meal, drinking only the top glass from each bottle."

Clytie laughed now, for Cayley was in one of his most amusing and enthusiastic moods. "Do you remember that tramp who lived all summer in the Hensler vault in Calvary Cemetery?"

"Yes, but that isn't so impossible as Kruger's castle out in the sand-hills by Tenth Avenue. It's a perfect jumble of job-lot buildings from the Mid-winter Fair, like a nightmare palace. I went out there once and saw old Mother Kruger, so tortured with rheumatism that she had to crawl round on her hands and knees. She had only one tooth left. The old man is one of the last of the wood-engravers and calls himself the Emperor of the Nations. He has resurrected Hannibal and an army of two hundred thousand men; also he revived Pompeii for three days. He wanted to bring Mayor Sutro back to life for me, but I wouldn't stand for it."

Cayley swept on with his anecdotes. "Who would believe the story of 'Big Bertha,' who buncoed all the swellest Hebrews in town, and ended by playing Mazeppa in tights at the Bella Union Theater? Who has written the true story of Dennis Kearney, the hack-driver, who had his speeches written for him by reporters, and went East with a big head, unconsciously to plagiarize Wendell Phillips in Fanueil Hall? Or of 'Mammy' Pleasant, the old negress who had such mysterious influence over so many millionaires—who couldn't be bribed—who died at last, with all her secrets untold? There's Romance in purple letters!

"What do you think of a first folio Shakespeare, the rent-roll of Stratford parish, and a collection of Incunabula worth thirty thousand dollars, kept in the deserted library on Montgomery Street in a case, by Jove, without a lock! What's the matter with Little Pete, the Chinaman, jobbing all the race-tracks in California? Who'd believe that there are streets here, within a mile of Lotta's fountain, so steep that they pasture cows on the grass?"

"Then there's Emperor Norton, and the Vigilance Committee, and all the secrets of the Chinatown slave trade," Clytie contributed, with aroused interest.

"Oh, I'm not speaking of that sort of thing. That's been done, and the East and England think that Romance departed from here with the red-shirted miner. Everybody knows about the Bret Harte type of adventure. It's the things that are going on now or have happened within a few years—like finding that Chinese woman's skeleton upside down, built into the wall of the house on the corner of Powell and Sutter; like Bill Dockery, the food inspector, who terrorized the San Bruno road, like a new Claude Duval, holding up the milkmen with a revolver and a lactometer, and went here, there and everywhere, into restaurants and hotels all over the peninsula, dumping watered milk into the streets till San Francisco ran white with it."

"Then there's Carminetti's," Clytie recalled, now. "That's modern enough, and typical of San Francisco, isn't it? I mean not so much what's done there, as the way they do it. I've always wanted to go down there some Saturday night and see just what it's like."

"I wouldn't want you to be seen there, Cly, it wouldn't do." Cayley shook his head decidedly.

"Why wouldn't it do?"

"It's a little too lively a crowd. You'd be disgusted, if they happened to hit things up a bit, as they often do."

"I don't see why I shouldn't be privileged to see what is going on. It's a part of my education, isn't it? It's all innocent enough, from what you say; it's at worst nothing but vulgar. I think I am proof against that."

"People would get an altogether wrong opinion of you. They'd think you were fast."

"I fast?" Clytie smiled. "I think I can risk that. I shouldn't probably want to go more than once, it's true. You don't know me, that's all. You don't believe that I can go from one world of convention to another and accept the new rules of life when it's necessary. It's just for that reason that I do wish to go—as, when I went to London, I wanted to see if I could accept all their slow, poky methods of business and transportation and everything and find out the reason of it all for myself, before I thought of criticizing it. I want to understand Carminetti's, if I can, and if you won't take me, I'll find some one who will."

"Granthope, perhaps?" Cayley suggested with irony.

"I have no doubt he'd understand my motives better than you do!"

"Well, it might be an interesting experiment. Miss Payson at Carminetti's—there's a San Francisco contrast for you!"

"You may add it to your list of Improbabilities. Study me, if you like, and put me in your list. You may find that I have a surprise or two left for you." She smiled to herself and threw back her head proudly.

"You do tempt me to try it," he said, coolly watching her. "You'd look as inconsistent there as those old French family portraits in that saloon out on the Beach—Lords of Les Baux, they were, I believe, administrators of the high justice, the middle and the low!

"And, oh!" he added, "that reminds me of another thing I found to-day while I was looking over a file of the Chronicle, digging up this trade dollar business. It was way back in 1877; a queer story, but I suppose it's true."

"What was it?" Clytie asked. The rays of the lamp shot her hair with gold sparks as she sat in a low chair, listening.

"Why, there was an old woman who was half crazy; she lived down south of Market Street somewhere in the most fearful squalor."

Clytie suddenly moved back into the shadow.

"Yes, yes,—what else?" She followed his words with absorbed attention.

"There was no furniture except a lot of boxes and a bookcase. And here's the remarkable thing: there was about two inches of rubbish and dirt matted down all over the floor, where she used to hide money and food and any old thing, wrapped in little packages. When she died, her stuff was auctioned off, and they found a trunk with a whole new wedding outfit in it. How's that?"

"What was her name?" Clytie asked breathlessly.

"I don't remember it. She was a sort of clairvoyant, I believe. There was a little boy lived with her, too. It seems he disappeared after she died. Ran away."

Clytie leaned forward again, her eyes wide open and staring. Her hands were tightly clasped together.

"A little boy?" she repeated.

"Why, that's what it said in the paper. Great story, isn't it?"

Clytie's breath came and went rapidly, as if she were trying to breathe in a storm, amidst the dashing of waves. The color went from her cheeks, her thin nostrils dilated. Then, retreating into the shade again, she managed to say:

"It certainly is romantic."

"No one would believe a thing like that could be true," he followed.

"No, I can scarcely believe it's possible, myself," she replied, controlling her agitation.

Blanchard Cayley ran on and on with his talk. Clytie gave him scant attention, answering in monosyllables.

CHAPTER V

THE RISE AND FALL OF GAY P. SUMMER

Two hours after leaving Granthope's studio, Mr. Gay P. Summer had "dated" Fancy Gray. Mr. Summer was a "Native Son of the Golden West"; he had, indeed, risen to the honorable station of Vice President of the Fort Point Parlor of that ecstatic organization. He was, in his modest way, a leader of men, and aspired to a corresponding mastery over women. In all matters pertaining to the pursuit and conquest of the fair sex, Mr. Summer was prompt, ingenious and determined. Before two weeks were over he was able to boast, to his room-mate, of Fancy's subjection. Fancy herself might equally well have boasted of his. At the end of this time he was, at least, in possession of her photograph, six notes written in a backward, slanting penmanship, twelve words to the damask page, with the date spelled out, a lock of hair (though this was arrant rape), and one gray suede, left-hand glove. These he displayed, as trophies of the chase, upon the bureau of his bedroom and defended them, forbye, from the asteistic comments of his room-mate, an unwilling and unconfessed admirer of Gay P. Summer's power to charm and subdue.

In those two weeks much had been done that it is not possible to do elsewhere than in the favored city by the Golden Gate. A Sunday excursion to the beach was the fruit of his first telephonic conversation. There are beaches in other places, indeed, but there is no other Carville-by-the-Sea. This capricious suburb, founded upon the shifting sands of "The Great Highway," as San Francisco's ocean boulevard is named, is a little, freakish hamlet, whose dwellings—one could not seriously call them houses—are built, for the most part, of old street-cars. The architecture is of a new order, frivolously inconsequent. According to the owner's fancy, the cars are placed side by side or one atop the other, arranged every way, in fact, except actually standing on end. From single cars, more or less adapted for temporary occupancy, to whimsical residences, in which the car appears only in rudimentary fragments, a suppressed motif suggested by rows of windows or by sliding doors, the owners' taste and originality have had wanton range. Balconies jut from roofs, piazzas inclose sides and fronts, cars are welded together, dovetailed, mortised, added as ells at right angles or used terminally as kitchens to otherwise normal habitations.

Gay P. Summer was, with his room-mate, the proprietor of a car of the more modest breed. It was a weather-worn, blistered, orange-colored affair that had once done service on Mission Street. The cash-box was still affixed to the interior, the platform, shaky as it was, still held; the gong above, though cracked, still rang. There was a partition dividing what they called their living-room, where the seats did service for bunks, from the kitchen, where they were bridged for a table and perforated for cupboards. There was a shaky canvas arrangement over a plank platform; and beneath, in the sand, was buried a treasure of beer bottles, iron knives, forks and spoons and wooden plates.

Here, unchaperoned and unmolested, save by the wind and sun, Gay P. Summer and Fancy Gray proceeded to get acquainted. They made short work of it.

Fancy's velvet cheeks were painted with a fine rose color that day. Her hair looked well in disorder; how much better it would have looked, had it kept its natural tone, she did not realize. Her firm, white line of zigzag teeth made her smile irresistible, even though she chewed gum. Her eyes were lambent, flickering from brown to green; her lower lids, shaded with violet, made them seem just wearied enough to give them softness. None of this was lost on Gay.

He, too, was well-developed, masculine, agile, with a juvenile glow and freshness of complexion that rivaled hers. His dress was jimp and artful, with tie and socks of the latest and most vivid mode. Upon his short, pearl, covert coat, he wore a mourning band, probably for decoration rather than as a badge of affliction. His eyes were still bright and clear without symptoms of dissipation. His laughter was good to hear, but, as to his talk, little would bear repetition—slangy badinage, the braggadocio of youth, a gay running fire of obvious retort and innuendo, frolic and flirtations. That Fancy appeared to enjoy it should go without saying. She was not for criticism of her host and entertainer that fine day. She let herself go in the way of gaiety he led and slanged him jest for jest, for Fancy herself had a pert and lively tongue.

Upon one point only did she fail to meet him. Not a word in regard to her employer could he get from her. Again and again, Gay came back to the subject of the palmist and his business secrets; Fancy parried his queries every time. He tried her with flattery—she laughed in his face. He attempted to lead her on by disclosing vivacious secrets of his own life; his ammunition was only wasted upon her. He coaxed; he threatened jocosely (she defended herself ably from his punitive kiss), but her discretion was impregnable. She made merry at his expense when he sulked. She tantalized him when he pleaded. Her wit was too nimble for him and he gave up the attempt.

The stimulation of this first meeting went to Fancy's head. She laughed like a child. She sang snatches from her vaudeville days and mimicked celebrities. Gay dropped his pose of worldly wisdom and made shrieking puns. They played like Babes in the Wood.

At seven o'clock, hungry and sun-burned, they walked along the beach to the Cliff House and dined upon the glazed veranda, watching the surf break on Seal Rocks. As they sat there in the dusk, haunted by an elusive waiter, Gay waxed eloquent about himself, told of his high office in the Native Sons, revealed the amount of his salary at the bank, touched lightly upon his previous amours, bragged loftily of his indiscretions at exuberant inebriated festivals, puffing magnificently the while at a "two-bit" cigar.

Fancy paid for her meal by listening to him conscientiously, ejaculating "No!" and "Yes?" or "Say, Gay, that's a josh, isn't it?" If her mind wandered (Fancy was nobody's fool), he did not perceive it.

To their cocktails and California claret they now added a Benedictine, and Gay grew still more confidential. The night fell, and the crowd began to leave. They walked entirely round the hotel corridor, bought an abalone shell split into layers of opalescent hues, then with a last look at the sea-lions, barking in the surge, they walked for the train, found a place in an open car and sat down, wedged into a hilarious crowd, reveling in song and peanuts.

Disregarded was the superb view they passed. The train, skirting the precipitous cliffs along the Golden Gate, commanded a splendor of darkling water and tumultuous mountain distances, theatrical in beauty. The sea splashed at the foot of the precipice beneath them. The hills rose above their heads, the intermittent twinkle of lighthouses punctuated the purple gloom. It was all lost upon them. Fancy's head drooped to Gay's shoulder. He put his arm about her, cocking his hat to one side that it might not strike hers as he leaned nearer. No one observed them, no one cared, for every Jack had his Jill, and a simple, primitive comradeship had settled upon the wearied throng. A baby whined occasionally as the train lurched round the sharp curves of the track. A riotous yell or two came from the misogynists of the smoking compartment. Fancy did not talk. Gay's loquacity oozed away. He was content to feel her breathing against his side.

There were telephone conversations often after that, then occasional lunches down-town, when Fancy, always modishly dressed, drew many an eye to her well-rounded, well-filled Eton jacket, her smart red hat, her fresh white gloves and her high-heeled shoes. Gay was proud of her, and he showed her off to his friends without caution. Fancy was nothing loath. Occasionally they went to the theater, dining previously in style at some popular restaurant, where Gay hoped that he might be seen with her. To such as discovered them, he would bow with proud proprietorship; or perhaps saunter over, on some flimsy pretext, to hear his friends say, with winks and smiles:

"By Jove, that girl's all right, old man! She's a stunner. Say, introduce me, will you?"

To which Gay would answer:

"Not on your folding bed! This is a close corporation, old man. I've got that claim staked out, see? So long!" and walk away pleased.

At the theater, he always made a point of going out between the acts, in order that his reëntry might point more conspicuously at his conquest. Afterward, at Zinkand's, having engaged a table beside which all the world must pass, he would pose, apparently oblivious to the crowd, talking to her with absorbed interest.

Fancy suffered the exhibition without displeasure. She had no objection to being looked at. To make a picture of herself, to play the arch and coquettish before a room of well-dressed folk was one of the things she did best.

She was recognized occasionally and pointed out by one or another of Granthope's patrons. "There she is; over behind you, in the white lace hat, with a chatelaine watch—don't look just yet, though," was the almost audible formula which Gay P. Summer learned to wait for. At such times his chest swelled with pride. To walk into a restaurant with her late at night and leave a wake of excited whispers behind him, was all he knew of fame.

It did not escape Gay's notice, however, that Fancy's eyes were not always for him. In the middle of his longest and most elaborate story, she would often throw a surreptitious glance about the room, letting it rest for an instant—a butterfly's caress—upon some admiring stalwart stranger. Once or twice he detected the flicker of Fancy's smile, a smile not meant for him. He found that, although his attention was all for Fancy, Fancy's errant glances allowed nothing and nobody to escape her observation. If he mentioned any one whom he had seen in the room, Fancy had seen him, or more often her, first. Fancy always knew what she wore, what it cost, what she was doing, how much she liked him and what her little game was.

This sort of thing would have been an education for Gay, had he been amenable to such teaching; but what women see and know without a tutor he would and could never know. Wherefore, such dialogues as this were common:

Fancy: "The brute! He's actually made her cry, now. She's a little fool, though; it's good enough for her!"

From Gay: "Where?—who do you mean?"

"Over there in the corner—don't stare so, please!—See those two fellows and two girls? The girl in the white waist is tied up in a heart-to-heart talk with that bald-headed chap, but she's dead in love with the other fellow, see? Yes, that fellow with the mustache. My! but she's jealous of the other girl."

"How can you tell? Oh, that's all a pipe-dream, Fancy!"

"Why, any fool would know it—any woman would, I mean. She had a few words with him—the fellow she's stuck on, just now! He must have said something pretty raw. Look at her eyes! You can tell from here there are tears in them. Look! See? I thought so. She's going to try and make him jealous! What do you think of that?"

"Why, she's changed places with him; what's that for?" To Gay, the drama was as mysterious as a Chinese play.

"Just to get him crazy, of course! That other fellow thinks she's really after him, too. The other girl sees through the whole game, of course. My, but men are easy! Those two fellows are certainly being worked good and plenty. Just look at the way she's freezing up to that bald-headed chap now. Well, I never! If that other girl isn't trying to get you on the string. Smile at her, Gay, and see what she'll do."

"Never mind about her!" said Gay, secretly pleased at the tribute. "You girls can always see a whole lot more than what really happens. She's just changed places on account of the draught, probably. She is lamping me, though, isn't she? Say, she's a peach, all right!"

"Yes, she's sure pretty. Say, Gay—"

"What?" His eye returned fondly to her.

"Do you think I'm as pretty as she is?"

"Oh, you make me tired, Fancy. Gee! You've got her sewed up in a sack for looks!"

So Fancy played her game cleverly, keeping Gay, but keeping him off at arm's length. But as time went on, his ardor grew and she was often at her wits' end to handle him. Though free from any conventional restraints, she did not yet consider her lips Mr. Summer's property, though she permitted him a cool and lifeless hand upon occasion. In time, the excitable youth began to understand her reserve; but instead of dampening his enthusiasm, it aroused his zest for the chase. She was not so easy game as he had thought. He waxed sentimental, therefore, and plied her with equivocal monologues, hinting, in the attempt to make sure of his way. At this, her sense of humor broke forth, effervescing in lively ridicule. This brought Mr. Summer, at last, to the point of an out-and-out proposal. Fancy, experienced in such situations, warned in time by his preludes, did not take it too seriously.

"I am sorry to say you draw a blank, Gay," she informed him lightly. "I'm not in the market yet. Many a man has expected me to become domesticated at sight, and settle down in content over the cookstove. But I haven't even a past yet—nothing but a rather tame present and hope for a future. I don't seem to see you in it, Gay. In fact, there's nobody visible to the naked eye at present."

"Well," he said, "I'll cut it out for now, as long as I can't make good, but sometime you'll come to me and beg me to marry you, see if you don't. Whenever you get ready, I'll be right there with the goods."

Fancy laughed and the episode was closed.

"Say, Fancy, there's a gang of artist chaps and literary guys I'd like to put you up against," Gay said one afternoon. "I think you'd make a hit with the bunch, if you can stand a little jollying."

"You watch me!" Fancy became enthusiastically interested. "Where do they hang out?"

"They eat at a joint down on Montgomery Street. They're heavy joshers, though. They're too clever for me, mostly. It's the real-thing Bohemia down there, though."

"Why didn't you tell me about it before?" she pouted. "I'm game! Let's float in there to-night and see the animals feed."

So they went down to the Latin Quarter together.

Bohemia has been variously described. Since Henri Murger's time, the definition has changed retrogressively, until now, what is commonly called Bohemia is a place where one is told, "This is Liberty Hall!"—and one is forced to drink beer whether one likes it or not, where not to like spaghetti is a crime. Not such was the little coterie of artists, writers and amateurs, who dined together every night at Fulda's restaurant.

In San Francisco is recruited a perennial crop of such petty soldiers of fortune. Here art receives scant recompense, and as soon as one gets one's head above water and begins to be recognized, existence is unendurable in a place where genius has no field for action. The artist, the writer or the musician must fly East to the great market-place, New York, or to the great forcing-bed, Paris, to bloom or fade, to live or die in competition with others in his field.

So the little artistic colonies shrink with defections or increase with the accession of hitherto unknown aspirants. Many go and never return. A few come back to breathe again the stimulating air of California, to see with new eyes its fresh, vivid color, its poetry, its romance. To have gone East and to have returned without abject failure is here, in the eyes of the vulgar, Art's patent of nobility. Of those who have been content to linger peaceably in the land of the lotus, some are earls without coronets, but one and all share a fierce, hot, passionate love of the soil. San Francisco has become a fetish, a cult. Under its blue skies and driving fogs is bred the most ardent loyalty in these United States. San Francisco is most magnificently herself of any American city, and San Franciscans, in consequence, are themselves with an abounding perfervid sincerity. Faults they have, lurid, pungent, staccato, but hypocrisy is not of them. That vice is never necessary.

The party that gathered nightly at Fulda's was as remote from the world as if it had been ensconced on a desert island. It was unconscious, unaffected, sufficient to itself. Men and girls had come and gone since it had formed, but the nucleal circle was always complete. Death and desertions were unacknowledged—else the gloom would have shut down and the wine, the red wine of the country, would have tasted salt with tears. There had been tragedies and comedies played out in that group, there were names spoken in whispers sometimes, there were silent toasts drunk; but if sentiment was there, it was disguised as folly. Life still thrilled in song. Youth was not yet dead. Art was long and exigent.

It was their custom, after dinner, to adjourn to Champoreau's for café noir, served in the French style. In this large, bare saloon, with sanded floor, with its bar and billiard table, foreign as France, almost always deserted at this hour save by their company, the genial patron smiled at their gaiety, as he prepared the long glasses of coffee. To-night, there were six at the round table.

Maxim, an artist unhailed as yet from the East, was, of all, the most obviously picturesque, with a fierce mustached face and a shock of black hair springing in a wild mass from his head to draggle in stringy locks below his eyes, or, with a sudden leonine shake, to be thrown back when he bellowed forth in song. He had been in Paris and knew the airs and argot of the most desperate studies. His laughter was like the roar of a convivial lion.

Dougal, with a dog-like face and tow hair, so ugly as to be refreshing, full of common sense and kindness, with a huge mouth full of little cramped teeth and a smile that drew and compelled and captured like a charm—he sat next. Good nature and loyalty dwelt in his narrow blue eyes. His slow, labored speech was seldom smothered, even in the wit that enveloped it.

Most masculine and imperative of all, was Benton, with his blur of blue-black hair, fine tangled threads, his melting, deep blue eyes, shadowy with fatigue, lighted with vagrant dreams or shot with brisk fires of passion. His hands were strong and he had an air of suppressed power.

The fourth man was Philip Starr, a poet not long for San Francisco, seeing that the Athanæum had already placed the laurels upon his brow—he was as far from the conventional type of poet as is possible. He had a lean, eager, sharply cut face, shrewd, quick eye and sinewy, long fingers. His hair was close cropped, his mouth was tight and narrow. Electricity seemed to dart from him as from a dynamo. Just now he was teaching the company a new song—an old one, rather, for it was an ancient Anglo-Saxon drinking-song, whose uproarious refrain was well fitted to the temper of the assembly.

At one end of the table sat a young woman, petite, elf-like as a little girl, a brown, cunning, soft-haired creature, smiling, smiling, smiling, with eyes half closed, wrinkled in quiet mirth. This was Elsie Dougal.

Opposite her was a girl of twenty-seven, with a handsome, clear-cut, classic face, lighted with gray eyes, limpid and straightforward, making her seem the most ingenuous of all. Mabel's hair curled unmanageably, springy and dark. Her face was serious and intent till her smile broke and a little self-conscious laugh escaped.

Starr pounded with one fist upon the table, his thumb held stiffly upright:

he sang, and the chorus was repeated. Then with the heel of his palm and his fingers outstretched, pounding merrily in time:

then with his fist as before:

and, raising his fists high over his head, coming down with a bang:

They went through the song together, dancing Foreman, Middleman, and Littleman, ending in a pianissimo. Then over and over they sang that queer, ancient tune, till all knew it by heart.

Benton pulled his manuscript from his pocket and read it confidentially to Elsie, who smiled and smiled. Starr recited his last poem while Dougal made humorous comments. Maxim broke out into a French student's chanson, so wildly improper that it took two men to suppress him. Mabel giggled hysterically and began a long, dull story which, despite interruptions, ended so brilliantly and so unexpectedly, that every one wished he had listened.

Then Dougal called out:

"The cavalry charge! Ready! One finger!"

They tapped in unison, not too fast, each with a forefinger, upon the table.

"Two fingers!"

The sound increased in volume.

"Three fingers, four fingers, five!"

The crescendo rose.

"Two hands! One foot! BOTH FEET!"

There was a hurricane of galloping fists and soles. Then, in diminuendo:

"One foot! One hand! Four fingers, three, two, one! Halt!"

The clatter grew softer and softer till at last all was still.

As Gay opened the door, Fancy heard a roar that increased steadily until it became a wild hullabaloo. Looking in, she saw the six seated about the table, the coffee glasses jumping madly with the percussion. The noise was like the multitudinous charge of troopers. Then the tumult died slowly away, the patter grew softer and softer, ending in a sudden hush as seven faces looked up at her. Gay P. Summer's advent was greeted with frowns, but Fancy gathered an instant acclaim from twelve critical eyes.

She stepped boldly into the room and shed the radiance of her smile upon the company.

"I guess this is where I live, all right!" she announced. "I've been gone a long time, haven't I? Never mind the introductions. I'm Fancy Gray, drifter; welcome to our fair city!"

They let loose a cry of welcome, and Dougal, rising, opened a place for her between his chair and Maxim's.

"I'm for her!" He hailed her with a good-natured grin. "She's the right shape. Come and have coffee!"

"I accept!" said Fancy Gray.

Gay's reception was by no means as cordial as hers, which had been immediate and spontaneous at the sound of her caressing, jovial voice and the sight of her genial smile, which seemed to embrace each separate member of the party. They made grudging room for him beside Elsie, who gave him a cold little hand. Mabel bowed politely.

"Where'd you get her, Gay?" said Starr. "You're improving. She looks like a pretty good imitation of the real thing."

"Oh, I'll wash, all right," said Fancy.

Gay P. proudly introduced her to the company. He played her as he might play a trump to win the seventh trick. Indeed, without Fancy's aid, he would have received scant welcome at that exclusive board. Many and loud were the jests at Summer's expense while he was away. Many and soft were the jests he had not wit enough to understand when he was present. Philip Starr had, at first sight of him, dubbed him "The Scroyle," and this sobriquet stuck. Gay P. Summer was ill versed in Elizabethan lore, but, had his wit been greater, his conceit would still have protected him.

He had already unloaded Fancy, though he was as yet unaware of it. She was taken up with enthusiasm by the men, whom she drew like a magnet. Mabel and Elsie watched her with the keenness of women who are jealous of any new element in their group. It was, perhaps, not so much rivalry they feared, for their place was too well established, as the admittance into that circle of one who would betray a tendency toward those petty feline amenities that only women can perceive and resent.

But Fancy Gray showed no such symptoms. She did not bid for the men's attention. She made a point of talking to Elsie, and she managed cleverly to include Mabel in the attention she received. Fancy, in her turn, scrutinized the two girls artfully and made her own instantaneous deductions. All of this by-play was, of course, quite lost upon the men.

The talk sprang into new life and Fancy's eye ran from one to another member of the group, dwelling longest upon Dougal. His ugliness seemed to fascinate her; and, as is often the case with ugly men, he inspired her instant confidence. She made up to him without embarrassment or concealment, taking his hairy hand and caressing it openly. At this, Elsie's eyelids half closed, but there was no sign of jealousy. Mabel noticed the act, too, and her manner suddenly became warmer toward the girl. By these two feminine reactions, Fancy saw that she had done well.

They sang, they pounded the table; and, as an initiation, every man saluted Fancy's cheek. She took it like an empress. Then, suddenly, Dougal held up two fingers. Every one's eyes were turned upon him.

"Piedra, Pinta?" he cried, with a side glance at Fancy.

Every one voted. Mabel held up both her hands gleefully.

So was Fancy Gray, though she was not aware of the honor till afterward, admitted to the full comradeship of the Pintos. It was a victory. Many had, with the same ignorance as to what was happening, suffered an ignominious defeat. Fancy's election was unanimous.

And for this once, in gratitude for his discovery, Mr. Gay P. Summer, The Scroyle, was suffered to inflict himself upon the coterie of the Pintos.

There were other honors in store for Fancy Gray.

Piedra Pinta is two hours' journey from San Francisco to the north, in Marin County—a land of mountains, virgin redwood forests and trout-filled streams. One takes the ferry to Sausalito, crossing the northern bay, and rides for an hour or so up a little narrow-gage squirming railroad into the canyon of Paper Mill Creek; and, if one has discovered and appropriated the place, it is a mile walk up the track and a drop from the embankment down a gravelly, overgrown slope, into the camp-ground. Here a great crag rears its vertically split face, hidden in beeches and bay trees. At its foot a flattened fragment has fallen forward to do service as a fireplace. Beyond, there are more boulders in the stream, which here widens and deepens, overhung by clustering trees. Save when an occasional train rushes past overhead, or a fisherman comes by, wading up-stream, the place is secret and silent. Opposite, across the brook, an oat-field slopes upward to the country road and the smooth drumlins beyond. A not too noisy crowd can here lie hugger-mugger, hidden from the world.

To Piedra Pinta that next Saturday they came, bringing Fancy Gray, a smiling captive, with them. The men bore blankets and books; the women food and dishes enough for a picnic meal. They came singing, romping up the track, big Benton first with the heaviest load. In corduroys and jeans, in boots and flannel shirts they came. Little Elsie, like a girl scout, wore a rakish slouch hat trimmed with live carnations, a short skirt, leggings, a sheath knife swinging from her belt. Mabel had her own pearl-handled revolver. The rest looked like gipsies.

They slid down the bank and debouched with a shout into the little glade. Fancy entered with vim into the celebration. Not that she did any useful work, that was not her field; she was there chiefly as a decoration and an inspiration. She had dressed herself in khaki. Her boots were laced high, her sombrero permitted a shower of tinted tendrils to escape and wanton about her forehead. She found fragrant sprays of yerba buena and wreathed them about her neck.

It was all new and strange to her, all delightful. She had seen the artificial side of the town and knew the best and worst of its gaiety; but here, in the open for almost the first time, she breathed deeply of the primal joys of nature and was refreshed. Her curiosity was unlimited; she played with earth and water, fire and air. She unbuttoned the collar of her shirt-waist and turned it in, disclosing a delicious pink hollow at her throat. She rolled up her sleeves, displaying the dimples in her elbows. At the preparations for the dinner she was an eager spectator, and when the meal was served, smoked and sandy, and the bottles were opened, all traces of the fairy in her disappeared; she was simple girl. She ate like a cannibal and ate with glee.

The shadows fell. The nook became dusky, odorous, moist; the rivulet rippled pleasantly, the ferns moved lazily in the night airs. The moon arose and gave a mysterious argent illumination. The going and coming ceased, the shouting and lusty singing grew still. The blankets were opened and spread at the foot of the rock. Dougal and Elsie took their places in the center and, the men on one side and the girls on the other, they lay upon the ground and wrapped themselves against the cooling air. The fire was replenished and its glare lighted up the trees in planes of foliage, like painted sheets of scenery.

They lay down, but not to sleep. Dougal's coffee, black and strong, stimulated their brains. The talk ran on with an accompaniment of song and jest. One after another sprang up to sing some old-time tune or to recite a familiar, well-beloved poem; the dialogue jumped from one to the other. Some dozed and woke again at a chorus of laughter; some sat wide-eyed, staring into the fire, into the darkness, or into one another's eyes.

Maxim was prodigious. He blared forth rollicking airs, he did scenes from La Bohème, posturing picturesquely against the flame, his long black locks sweeping his face. Starr improvised while they listened, rapt. Benton climbed high into a beech tree and there, invisible, he recited Cynara and quoted The Song of the Sword, while Dougal jeered and fed the blaze. Mabel listened entranced and appreciative, and ventured occasionally on one more long, dull story—her tale always growing melodramatically exciting, as the attention of her listeners wandered. Elsie sat and smiled and smiled, wide awake till three.

Forgotten tales, snatches of song, jokes and verses surged into Fancy's head and one after another she shot them into the night. She, too, arose and sang, dancing. Not since her vaudeville days had she attempted it, but mounting to the spirit of the occasion, she thrilled and fascinated them with her drollery.

She and Dougal were the last ones awake. They spoke now in undertones. Maxim was snoring hideously, so was Benton. Starr lay with his mouth open, Mabel was curled into a cocoon of blankets, flushed Elsie was still smiling in her sleep.