The House of Mystery Part 12

"I have to beg your pardon, of course," said Norcross, grown easier in his manner. "But you must remember that your profession has to prove itself--that they're all accused of fraud."

"Now that you have apologized," said she, "I will prove that I have accepted the apology by answering you direct. I am not a fraud. I have been able to afford not to be. Still, I have a little sympathy with those who are. Did you ever consider," she went on, "that no fraud invents anything; that he is only imitating something genuine? Perhaps it may shake whatever faith you have in me if I tell you whatever these people profess to do has been done genuinely and without possibility of fraud."

"Even bringing spirits from a cabinet?" he asked. Just as he spoke that question, an electric bell rang somewhere to the rear of the drawing-room. Mrs. Markham sat unmoving for an instant, as though considering either the sound or his question. The bell tinkled no more.

After a moment, she smiled again.

"You must know more of all these things before I can answer your question. Haven't we talked enough? Wouldn't it be better, in your present condition of suspicion, if I try to see what we can do without seeming any further to inspect you? For you must know that long preliminary conversation is a stock method with frauds and fakirs."

Norcross's breath came a little faster, and a curious change pa.s.sed for a second over his face--a falling of all the ma.s.ses and lines. Mrs.

Markham rose, sat by the table, under the reading-lamp, and shaded her eyes with her hand. She spoke now in a different tone, softer and less inflected.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORCROSS'S BREATH CAME A LITTLE FASTER]

"I shall probably not go into trance," she said. "That is rare with me, rare with anyone, though often a.s.sumed for effect. Of you, I ask only that you remain quiet and pa.s.sive. I'd like less light."

Norcross shot a glance of quick suspicion at her as he rose, reached for the old-fas.h.i.+oned gas chandelier, and turned the jets down to tiny points.

"Oh, dear no!" spoke Mrs. Markham, "not so low as that--this is no dark seance. I merely meant that the lights are too strong for a pair of sensitive eyes. I feel everything when I am in this condition. Would you mind sitting a little further away? Thank you. I think that's right. Please do not speak to me until I speak, and do not be disappointed if I tell you nothing."

For five minutes, no sound broke the silence in Mrs. Markham's drawing-room, except the hiss of a light, quick breath and the intake and outgo of a heavier, slower one. And so suddenly, with such smothered intensity, that Norcross started in his seat, Mrs. Markham's voice emitted the first quaver of a musical note. She held it for a moment, before she began to hum over and over three bars of an old tune--"Wild roamed an Indian maid, bright Alfaretta." Thrice she hummed it, still sitting with her hand over her eyes.--"Wild roamed an Indian maid--" Then silence. But now, the breath of Norcross was coming more heavily, and the ma.s.ses of his face had still further fallen. After an interval, Mrs. Markham spoke, in a low, even tone:

"It is Lallie."

Another period of heavy silence.

"I cannot see her nor hear her speak. Martha, my control, is speaking for her. But Martha shows me the picture of a child--a little girl in an old-fas.h.i.+oned dress. And I think she is saying that name--Lallie."

The silence again, so that when Norcross moistened his dry lips with his tongue the slight smack seemed like the crackle of a fire.

"I see it more clearly now and I understand. The child gave her that name, but someone else used it for a love name. It was just between those two." The rest came in scattered sentences, with long pauses between--"I hear that song again--it was her favorite--I understand now why it comes--she was singing it when--Yes, you are the man--when you told her--She calls you Bobbert--and now I cannot see."

A bead of perspiration had appeared so suddenly on the forehead of Norcross that it had the effect of bursting from a pore. He was on his feet, was pacing the floor in his jerky little walk. When, after one course of the drawing-room, he turned back, Mrs. Markham had taken her hand from her eyes, and was facing him.

"Oh, why did you do that?" she asked. "It has its effect on me--you do not know how much!" Her manner spoke a smothered irritation. "I shall not see Lallie to-night. And she was very near."

As though something had clicked and fallen into place within him, Norcross straightened and stiffened, controlled the relaxed muscles of his face, flashed his eyes on Mrs. Markham.

"Might I ask some questions?" he said.

"You must sit quietly," she answered, "and though I can never see so well after the first contact breaks, Martha may speak for you. Sit as you did, and wait for me." Norcross walked at his nervous, hurried little pace back to his seat on the sofa. His face was quite controlled now, and his sharp eyes held all their native cunning. That grip on himself grew, as he waited for the inert seeress to speak again.

"Martha says, 'I will try,'" she gave out finally. "Quick--with your question--with your lips, not your mind--I am not strong enough now."

"What was Lallie's real name?"

"Helen."

"Her other name?"

A pause, then:

"Martha is silent. You are testing me. Tell something you want to know--even advice."

"Was there ever anyone else?"

A pause again, then:

"Never. She loved you wholly. She was angry over a little thing, just jealousy, during that last quarrel. She had already forgiven. It was only a girl's whim. Do you want advice?"

Norcross thrusted obliquely from the corner of his eye at Mrs. Markham and looked down at the floor.

"Ask her if I shall sell," he said.

The answer came so suddenly that it overlapped the last words of his sentence.

"Martha says that she is going away." No more for two silent minutes; no more until Mrs. Markham dropped her hand from her eyes, turned to Norcross, and said in a normal, sprightly tone:

"It is all over for this evening. I suppose the trouble lay in your last question. I am sorry--if you came here looking for business advice--that you got only the things of the affections. To your old love affairs, I had an unusually quick response to-night." She leaned heavily back in her chair. "Excuse me if I seem tired. There is a kind of inner strain about this which you cannot know--a strain at the core.

It does not affect the surface, but it makes you languid." Yet her manner, as she threw herself back, invited him to linger.

"I shall not ask you," she went on, "whether the things I told you to-night are true. We all have our human vanities in our work; we like to hear it praised. That is one reason why I do not ask. Then I know without your confirmation that what I told you was true. When the control comes as clearly and strongly as it did for a few minutes tonight,--before you interrupted by rising--the revelations are always accurate and true. The details I gave you are trivial. That is generally a feature of a first sitting. The scholars have found an explanation of that phenomenon, and I am inclined to agree with them.

If I were talking to you over a telephone and you were not sure of my voice, how should I identify myself? By some trivial incident of our common experience. For example, suppose I were to call you up to-morrow. How should I identify myself? Somewhat like this, probably: 'You tried to turn the gas out completely, when I wanted it only lowered in order to save my eyes.' Wouldn't that identify me to you?"

she paused as for an answer.

"As nearly as you could over a telephone wire," he answered. "You're a marvelously clever woman, to think of that," he added. Mrs. Markham answered, on the wings of a light laugh:

"If I appear at all clever by contrast with what you expected to find, it is because I have not let my mind dwell in a half-world, as have so many others of my profession. That is the tendency. I have seen no reason why I should not combat it. I believe, too, that I am the stronger for it in my work. What was I saying? Oh, yes--about the first contact. Probably the last thought of the disembodied, upon a.s.suming the trance state--for I believe that the sender of these messages, like the receivers, have to enter an abnormal condition--is to prove their ident.i.ty. That is only natural, is it not? Would not you do the same?

Think. And what do they have to offer? One of those intimate memories of years past which linger so long in the mind. Take me for example.

What should I offer to--well, to that one among the disembodied who means most to me? An adventure in stealing cream from a dairy house!"

As though she were carried away by this memory, her face grew soft and serious. With an outward sweep of her hands and a quick "but then!" she resumed:

"The best judges of character--and you must be such a one--make their mistakes. Why did you ask that question?"

Norcross, glib and effective as his tongue could be when he directed or traded, found now no better answer than:

"Because I wanted to know, I suppose."

"Were this Helen in the flesh--young and inexperienced as she was--would you expect her to give you advice in any large affair of business--would she be basically interested in it? Interested because it is yours and she loves you, perhaps--but basically? We have no proof that natures change out there. I suppose that isn't all, either. Is she, keeping her soul for you in a life which I hope is better--is she interested in whether or no you make a little more money and position?

I can conceive only one condition in which she would mention your business. If you were at a crossroads--if great danger or great deliverance hung on your decision--she might sense that. I think they must get it, by some process to which we are blind, from other disembodied spirits."

"Suppose, then, that--Martha I think you call her--had brought some old business a.s.sociate. Would he have answered me?"

"Perhaps. But that does not really explain what is in your mind. If this business matter which perplexes you were so vital, don't you suppose that some one of those very a.s.sociates would have rushed to speak, instead of a dead love? In that way, I think I can construct an answer--provided you ask that question in good faith. It is, probably, not very important whether you sell or no."

Mrs. Markham rose on this. Norcross caught the hint in her manner, and rose with her. A little "oh!" escaped her, and her face lighted.

"I know who you are, now!" she said. "You are Robert H. Norcross of the Norcross lines!"