The House of Mystery Part 9

"Very satisfactory--with modifications," responded the sitter. "For instance, it is absolutely true that I had a father. His name wasn't Wilfred, it was James. And he died before I was born. But don't let that discourage you. I can prove his existence. The other true thing was the corker. I've been to fifty-seven varieties of mediums in the course of this experiment, and you're the first to jump at the widest opening I gave. I am a physician. I've put iodoform on my handkerchief every morning to prove it. I've been listed six times as a commercial traveler, twice as a con man, eight times as a clerk, three times as a policeman, with scattering votes for a reporter, a clergyman, an actor and an undertaker. But you're the first to roll the little ball into the little hole. I am a physician, or was. Better than that, you got it that I specialized on surgery--and I didn't plant _that_. You draw the capital prize."

"Young man," asked Rosalie with an air of shocked and injured innocence, "are you accusing me of _fakery_?" But despite her stern lips, in Rosalie's cheeks played the ghost of a pair of dimples. They were reflected, so to speak, by twin twinkles in the eyes of her sitter. And he went straight on:

"In addition, you're the prettiest of them all, and a cross-eyed man with congenital astigmatism could see that you're a good fellow. Do!

_My_ controls tell _me_ that you're about to be offered a good job."

"My controls tell _me_," responded Rosalie Le Grange, "that if you don't quit insultin' a lady in her own house and disgracin' her crown of mediums.h.i.+p, out you go. There's those here that will defend me, I'll have you know!"

The young man's face sobered. "I beg your pardon, Mme. Le Grange," he said, "I have been sudden. Would you mind my coming to the point at once? I'm here to offer you a job."

Rosalie looked him sternly over a moment, but in the end her dimples triumphed. She lifted her right hand as though to arrange her hair, two fingers extended--the sign in the Brotherhood of Professional Mediums to recognize a fellow craftsman. The young man made no response; Rosalie's eyes flashed back on guard.

"How much is this business worth to you?" pursued the young man.

"Mediums ain't measuring their rewards by earthly gains," responded Rosalie; and now she made no secret of her dimples. "If we wanted to water our mediums.h.i.+p, couldn't we get rich out of the tips we give people on their business?"

"But getting down to the earth plane," the young man continued--and perhaps the twinkles in his eyes were never more obstreperous--"how much would you ask to take a nice, easy job of using your eyes for me?"

"Well," said Rosalie, "if there was nothin' unprofessional about it, I should say fifty dollars a week." She smiled on him now openly. "You're a doctor. I don't have to say, as one professional person to another, that there's such a thing as ethics."

The young man smiled back. "Oh, certainly!" he said. "I understand that!" Quite suddenly he leaned forward and clapped Rosalie's shoulder with a motion that had nothing offensive about it--only good fellows.h.i.+p and human understanding--"I want you to help me expose Mrs. Paula Markham."

The announcement stiffened Rosalie. She sat bolt upright. "There ain't nothin' to expose!" she said.

"Now let's get on a business basis," said the young man.

"Well, you let me tell you one thing first. If you're pumpin' me for evidence, it don't go, because you've got no witnesses."

"I'm not pumping you for anything. I'm willing to admit that the spirits, not you, smelled the iodoform--"

"An' noticed that you was scrubbed clean as a whistle and that when we held hands to unite our magnetism, you was pawing for my pulse,"

pursued Rosalie, dropping her defences all at once. Thereupon, Roman haruspex looked into the eyes of Roman haruspex, and they both laughed.

But Rosalie was serious enough a moment later.

"Now when you come to talk about exposing Mrs. Markham, you've got to show me first why you want her exposed, and you've got to let me tell you that you're wastin' your money. There's enough that's fake about this profession, but I know two mediums I'd stake my life on; barring of course myself"--here Rosalie smiled a smile which might have meant a confession or a boast, so balanced was it between irony and sweetness--"Mrs. Markham and Mrs. Anna Fife. They're _real_."

She peered into the face of her investigator. His expression showed skeptical amus.e.m.e.nt. She knew that her pa.s.sion for talking too much was her greatest professional flaw; though had she thought it over maturely, she would have realized that she had never got into trouble through her tongue. Her trained instinct for human values led her inevitably to those who would appreciate her confidences and keep them.

So the sudden retreat within her defences, which followed, proved irritation rather than suspicion.

"See here," she pursued, "are you a psychic researcher?"

"Cross my heart," answered the young man, "I never a.s.sociated with spooks in my life until this week. I did it then because I wanted a first-cla.s.s professional medium to take a good job."

"Investigating Mrs. Markham? What for? Has she got a cinch on a relative of yours?"

"Well, I'd like her for a relative," started the young man. Then he hesitated and for the first time faltered. A light blush began at the roots of his hair and overspread his face.

"I got that you were a physician," said Rosalie, "but there's one place I got you plumb wrong. I thought it was business troubles. So the trouble's your heart and affections! It's that big-eyed blonde niece of Markham's, of course. Well, you ain't the first. The best way to bring the young men like a flock of blackbirds is to shut a girl away from 'em."

Now the young man showed real surprise.

"How did you know?" he enquired.

"My controls an' guides, of course," responded Rosalie. "They couldn't find anybody else to fall in love with around the Markham house--ain't as smart as you thought you was, are you?"

"Beside you," he responded, "I'm Beppo the Missing Link."

Rosalie acknowledged the compliment, and turned to business.

"I ain't asking you how I'm going about it," she said; "probably you've planted that. I _am_ asking you if you're willing to risk fifty a week on a pig in a poke? I know about her; we all do. She's just like Mrs.

Fife. The Psychic Researchers have written up Mrs. Fife, but they ain't got half of her. They miss the big things, just like they get fooled on the little things. _We_ know. And we know about Mrs. Markham, too, though she's had sense enough to keep shut up from the professors.

"You're a skeptic," pursued Rosalie, "and I'm blowin' my breath to cool a house afire when I talk to you. I guess I just talk to hear myself talk. We start real. I did; we all do. With some of us it's a big streak an' with some it's a little. I was pretty big--pretty big.

Things happen; voices and faces. Things that are true right out of the air, and things that ain't true--all mixed up with what you're thinking yourself. It comes just when it wants to, not when you want it. And the longer you go on, and the more horse sense you get, the less it comes."

Rosalie stopped a moment, and veiled her eyes with her lashes, as though speaking out of trance.

"Everyone of us says to herself, 'It won't leave me!' An' we start to practice. What are we goin' to do then? You git a sitter. She pays her two dollars. And _they_ don't come perhaps. Not for that sitter, or the next sitter, or the next. But you have to give the value for the two dollars or go out of business. So some day, you guess. That's the funny thing about this business, anyway. Lots of times you ain't quite sure whether guessing did it, or spirits. I've glimpsed the ring on a girl's left hand, and right then my voices have said, 'Engaged!' Now was it me makin' that voice, or the spirit? I don't know. But when you begin to guess, you find how easy people are--how they swallow fakes and cry for more. As sitters go, fakin' gets 'em a lot harder than the real stuff.

An' before long--it's easy--you're slipping the slates or bringing spooks from cabinets--let me tell you no medium ever did that genuine.

But it's funny how long the real thing stays. Now you--I called your father Wilfred. Maybe I'll wake up to-morrow night, seein' your face, and a voice will come right out of the air and say a name--and it'll be yours. It's happened; it will happen again; but generally when I can't make any use of it.

"I'm goin' a long way round to get home. There's some so big that they don't have to fake. Sometimes, of course, the controls won't come to them, but they can afford to tell a sitter they can't sense nothin', because the next sitter will get the real stuff--the stuff you can't fake. Mrs. Fife is that way. I've seen her work and I know. I know just as well about Mrs. Markham, though I haven't seen her. She keeps tight shut up away from the rest of us. She never mixes. But some of us have seen her, they've pa.s.sed it on.

"Mediums," added Rosalie Le Grange, after a pause, "is a set of pipe dreamers as a cla.s.s, but there's one place where you can take their word like it was sworn to on the Bible. It's when they say somebody has the real thing. Because mediums is knockers, and when they pa.s.s out a bouquet, you can bet they mean it. No, young man, Mrs. Markham, if she _does_ play a lone hand, is the real thing. But I may help you waste your money."

The young man had lost his air of cynical levity, he was regarding Rosalie Le Grange somewhat as a collector regards a new and uncla.s.sified species.

"Why?" he asked.

"Who's the greatest doctor in the world?" asked Mme. Le Grange.

"Watkins, I suppose," responded the young man.

"What'd you give for a chance to stay in his office a month and see him work? See?"

He nodded his head.

"Of course."

"I was a darned little fool when I was young," pursued Rosalie Le Grange, "an' now that I'm gettin' on in years I'm just as darned an old one. I like to take chances. See?"

"Mme. Le Grange," said her sitter, again clapping her rounded shoulder, "you're a fellow after my heart."

"Just a second before we come to the bouquets," responded Rosalie Le Grange, "there's another reason. Can you guess it?"

"I've already given up guessing on you."

On the table beside Mme. Le Grange lay an embroidery frame, the needle set in a puffy red peony. Mme. Le Grange picked it up and took a st.i.tch or two. Her head bent over her work, so that the playful light made gold of the white in her chestnut hair, she pursued: