"Lord! What a pity!" he murmured. "She would have been such an inspiration to him. It was the devil's own luck. Poor Kenwick! Poor little Crete!"

CHAPTER XII

Madame Rosalie was setting her stage for a caller. It was evidently to be an important client, for cards, crystal, horoscope, ouija-board, and other handmaidens to divination were set forth upon the table in the dim back parlor. The priestess herself, in her garnet-colored robe, moved about the room with the noiselessness of a shadow. Although it was barely dusk she drew the shades and swung the electric bulb over the end of the table. Then she stood surveying her work with the critical scrutiny of an artist experimenting for the best light upon his picture.

Her too-brilliant eyes roved restlessly from one carefully arranged detail to another.

Suddenly a footstep sounded outside, and there was a buzz of the electric bell. Madame Rosalie waited exactly the correct length of time before responding to its summons. The interval was expressive neither of eagerness nor indifference. When she returned to her sanctum it was to usher into it a man who moved hurriedly, drew off a pair of heavy driving-gloves, and tossed them into the Morris-chair. The astrologist removed them quietly to a settee in a far corner of the apartment and seated herself in the chair.

"They say you're the eighth wonder of the world." Her visitor spoke with a thinly veiled sarcasm as he took his place under the light. "I might as well tell you at the outset that I don't go in much for this sort of thing. I'm here upon the suggestion of somebody else. I've known a good many of you trance mediums and my experience has been that you're strong on the future and weak on the past. You play safer that way. But it happens that I want help with the past more than with the future. What's the idea now? Are you going to hypnotize me?"

His voice was not antagonistic, only briskly businesslike. He might have been suggesting that he try on the suit of clothes which a salesman was proffering for his favor.

Madame Rosalie answered in the low, slightly indifferent voice that had surprised Roger Kenwick. "Hypnotism is a cooperative measure. I couldn't hypnotize you unless you were willing and would help me."

He laughed. "That's a good deal for you to admit. Most of you people claim to be able to do anything."

"Do you wish me to try to hypnotize you?"

"No, I don't care about it especially. It takes a lot of time, doesn't it? Get busy on something that comes right down to bra.s.s tacks."

She turned the crystal sphere slowly in her hand. "You are obsessed by a fear, and you have reason to be. There is a very serious problem confronting you, and you need help in solving it. I can't help you, but perhaps I can find some one else who can."

She gathered up a bundle of cards. At first glance he had thought they were playing-cards, but he saw now that the reverse sides were all blanks. "On each of these I am going to write a word," she explained.

"I'll hold it for an instant before your eyes. Read it, close your eyes, and then look at those maroon-colored curtains over there."

Without comment he followed these instructions. Ten minutes pa.s.sed while the client glanced at the cards and then at the curtains. Sometimes his gaze strayed back to the bit of pasteboard before the medium had another one ready. By the end of the hour she had cast his horoscope, read his palm, and performed other mystic rites. Then she settled back in the deep chair and announced herself ready to "project the astral body." A few moments pa.s.sed in absolute silence. The medium appeared to fall into a light slumber, and the man on the other side of the table was prepared to see her face contorted by the writhing pains of the trance victim.

But it remained calm, almost deathlike. His shrewd eyes were sizing her up as she slept. He seemed almost to forget that he had come for spiritual counsel, and his gaze was calculating, speculative, as though he were considering her possibilities as an ally. Suddenly a voice came from the depths of the chair. It made him jump. It was not the voice of Madame Rosalie, but one that seemed vaguely familiar.

"Marstan is dead." The words died away in a kind of moan. After an interval of silence came the message, "He says to tell you that you have found the criminal, and now is the time to act." She seemed to sink deeper into oblivion. The client waited a full minute. Then he leaned over and whispered through the stillness two words--"Rest Hollow."

The medium's head rolled from side to side on the cushions of the chair, like that of a surgical patient who is trying to escape the ether sponge. "Gone!" she muttered. "All gone!"

He swept aside the cards and ouija-board and leaned closer, his hands almost touching hers. The amused skepticism had died out of his amber eyes, and the question that he asked came in a tense whisper. "Where is Ralph Regan?"

A frown drew the woman's heavy black brows together. "Gone!" she murmured again. "Gone!"

It was not possible for him to determine from her tone whether she was answering his last question or merely repeating her response to "Rest Hollow." He tried again.

And after a moment the reply came slowly through stiff lips. "The way leads over a curving road. Follow that road to a place with a high stone fence where the gates stand always open. There you will find him."

He settled back in his chair, his eyes resting, fascinated, upon the graven face.

"Marstan is here." She spoke in her own voice now and there was in it a note of infinite weariness. "He has something to say to you."

The man smiled grimly. "I should think he would. Tell him to go ahead; I'm listening."

"He says you must give up the first plan----" She frowned in the effort of transmission. "And the second plan--and try the third. He says there is a woman working in the plan too: she has just begun to work in it.

You must get her aid or she might----"

He leaned forward eagerly. "Yes? She might what?"

"I don't quite get it. It's a difficult control. But he seems to be afraid of that woman. He wants very much to warn you against----"

She shivered slightly and opened her eyes. The man had left his seat and was standing close to her side. "I hope you got what you want," she said wearily. "I don't know when I've had a sitting that has cost so much."

He crossed to the settee and picked up his gloves. "It must get on your nerves. Suppose we go out somewhere and have a little bite of supper. I know a place down on Dupont; no style about it, but they give you a great little meal. What do you say?"

She glanced at the nickel clock upon the mantel. "It's almost seven,"

she demurred, "and I expect another client at seven-thirty."

"No more sittings to-night," he decreed. There was an almost insolent authority in his tone. "Time to call a halt. It's dinner-time in heaven, and spirits must live. You're coming out with me. Get on your street togs, little witch."

Without further protest she obeyed while her escort waited in the shabby entrance-hall. At the curb he helped her into the roadster, and five minutes later they were seated at a small bare table in one of the popular bohemian restaurants of the downtown district.

"No Martinis any more," he sighed, as he helped her out of her cheap coat with its imitation-fur collar. "Life isn't what it used to be, is it?" His own hat and expensive-looking overcoat he hung upon the peg in a diamond-shaped mirror bearing the soap-written injunction, "Try Our Tamales." "But they serve a placid little near-beer in this place that helps some. Bring two, waiter."

When the attendant returned with the gla.s.ses, he tossed off the contents of his at a gulp, but the woman sipped hers with the leisurely enjoyment of the epicure. Then she set it down and stabbed with her fork at the dish of green olives in the center of the table.

The soup came, a rich bean chowder, which she ate almost in silence, while her companion commented casually upon the service and furnishings of the cafe. They had a rear table near the swinging doors that led into the kitchen. It was not more or less conspicuous than any of the others.

The atmosphere of unconventionality which pervaded the place seemed to envelop all its habitues in a sort of mystic veil that was in itself a guarantee of privacy. At the table nearest them a girl was talking earnestly to a man who sat with his arm about her. Madame Rosalie, raising her eyes from her soup-plate, encountered the bold, appraising stare of her escort. She returned it impersonally and with the flicker of a smile, taking in the "freckled" eyes and the large thin hands. And when she smiled her face re-gained something of a former beauty. The man leaned toward her with a consciously confiding manner. "You call yourself Madame Rosalie," he said. "But isn't it really Mademoiselle?"

Her smile deepened but she gave him no answer. In the delicate, lacy waist and white skirt which she had donned, she looked years younger.

There was a ruby pendant at her throat but she wore no other jewel. The garish light of the cafe, shining upon her straight black hair, gave it a l.u.s.ter that was like the dull gleam of jet.

"Not Mademoiselle?" he queried again, and his smile was like the pa.s.sword between two brother lodge-members.

And then Madame Rosalie lost some of her inscrutable reserve. "Not _Rosalie_," she corrected. "But it's a good name; as good as any other for my trade, don't you think?"

He turned one of the clumsy gla.s.s salt-shakers between his fingers. "The name is all right," he admitted. "But--why do you do--that sort of thing? You admit yourself that it's hard on your nerves. Why do you do it--when you could do other things?"

The waiter reappeared and littered the table with an army of small oval platters. Odors of highly seasoned macaroni and ragout steamed from them. Madame Rosalie dipped daintily into the nearest dish. But in spite of her restraint, it would have been apparent to a close observer that her enjoyment of the meal was the keen avidity of one who has been long denied. When the waiter was out of hearing, she caught up the last words sharply.

"What do you mean by 'other things'?" For the first time her voice was eager, as though seeking counsel.

He shrugged. "_I_ don't pretend to be a clairvoyant. Yet I know that there are other things that you could do--have done."

"How do you know it?"

"Well, in the first place, if you had been a medium for very long, the clever medium that you undoubtedly are, you would have made more money at it."

"I have made money at it."

"Not as much as you should have made. You wouldn't live as you do if you had money."