CHAPTER VII

*

*THE WEAVING OF THE WEB*

Madam Spoll was sitting in her study on Eddy Street, awaiting her victim, when Francis Granthope, immaculate as usual, appeared in her doorway, having been admitted by Spoll. She was in front of the glass, pinning on a lace collar.

"Hello, Frank," she said cordially, looking over her shoulder, "you're a sight for sore eyes! We don't see much of you, nowadays."

"I've been pretty busy, lately," he answered, sitting down and looking about with an expression of ill-concealed distaste. The stuffy, crowded room seemed more unpleasant than ever, after his evening at the Maxwells'. Madam Spoll seemed more gross. Everything that had been familiar to him had somehow changed. He seemed to have a different angle of vision. It was close and warm, and the air smelled of dust.

"You ain't a-going to forget your old friends, now you've got in with the four hundred, are you, Frank?" she said earnestly.

He pulled out a cigarette-case and lit a cigarette. As he struck the match he answered:

"Not if they don't meddle in my affairs." He gazed at her coolly as he inhaled a puff of smoke and sent a ring across the room.

Madam Spoll's face grew stern. "That's no way to talk, Frank. I've been the same as a mother to you, in times past, ever since you went into business, in fact. It looks like you was getting too good for us."

"Why, what's the matter now?"

"Oh, you're so stand-off, nowadays."

He laughed uneasily. "You always said I was spoiled."

"Well, who's spoiling you now? Miss Payson?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know, well enough! Lord, why don't you come out with it! It's all in the family, ain't it? You've got her on the string, all right, ain't you?"

"I have not." The frown grew deeper in his forehead.

"H'm!" She drew a long breath. "Well, that means we'll have to begin at the beginning, then, I expect. I had a sort of an idea that you _had_ got her going, and wouldn't mind saying so, but if you're going to go to work and be mysterious, why, I'll have to talk straight business." She pointed at him with her pudgy finger. "Now, see here, she's been writing to you, anyways. You can't deny _that_."

"What makes you think so?"

"I don't think anything at all about it; I know. What d'you take me for? A Portugee cook? It's my business to know all about the Paysons, that's all. Very good."

Granthope looked more concerned, and eyed her suspiciously.

"There's only one way for you to have found that out," he said. "And that reminds me. I want to get those notes I gave you about her when you were up at my place. I didn't keep a copy, and I've forgotten some of the details that I need."

Madam Spoll raised her eyebrows, also her shoulders, and made an inarticulate noise in her throat. "Funny you need them so bad all of a sudden. Not that they done us much good--we've found out a lot for ourselves; about all we need for the present."

"Well, I haven't interfered with your game, and I don't see why you should interfere with mine. Only, I'd like those memoranda back, please." His tone was almost peremptory.

"I'm sorry, but I ain't got 'em."

"Where are they?"

"Why, I give 'em to Vixley."

Granthope saw that it was no use to go further. He had, in spite of his precautions, already aroused her suspicions, and so he pretended to consider the matter of no moment. Madam Spoll, however, was now thoroughly aroused.

"What I want to know, Frank, is whether you're with us or not."

"I thought the understanding was that we were to work separately."

"Separately _and_ together. Mutual exchange _and_ actual profit, for each and for all. We got a mighty good thing in Payson, me and Vixley have, and we propose to work it for all it's worth. It'll be for your interest to come in and help us out. True, you have done something, but now you're lallagagging, so to speak, when you might be making a big haul. Payson's easy, and we can steer the girl your way, through him. He'll believe anything. All we got to do is to say my guides want him to have you for a son-in-law, and the trick is as good as turned. I agree to get him started this afternoon. He's a ten-to-one shot. I can see that with half an eye. It'll only be up to you to make good with the girl, and Lord knows that'll be easy for you. Now is that straight enough for you?"

Granthope rose and began to pace the floor nervously. He paused to straighten some magazines upon the table, he adjusted a photograph upon the wall, he moved back a chair; then he turned to her and said:

"I don't see how there's anything in this for me. I'm through with all that sort of thing, and I think, on the whole, I'll stay out. I'm going in for straight palmistry--and--well, another kind of game altogether. You wouldn't understand it even if I explained. I've got a good start, now, and I don't want to queer myself."

Madam Spoll made a theatrical gesture of surprise. "Lord, Frank, who would have thought of you doing the Sunday-school superintendent act on me! A body would think you'd never faked in your life! My Lord, I'm trying to lead you astray, am I?"

"That's all right. I don't pretend to be very virtuous, but some of this is getting a little raw for me."

Madam Spoll opened her eyes and her mouth. "What's got into you, anyway?"

"Something's got out, perhaps," he said, frowning. "At any rate, I don't care to make use of Miss Payson to help you rob her father."

"Rob her father!" Outraged innocence throbbed in Madam Spoll's voice. "Lord, Frank, you're plumb crazy! Why, he won't spend no money he don't want to, will he? He can afford it well enough! He'll never miss what we get out of him. You might think I was going to pick his pockets, the way you talk." She took him by the arm. "See here! You ain't really stuck on that Payson girl, are you? Why, if I didn't know you so well, I'd be almost ready to suspect you of it! But land, you've had women running after you ever since you went into business! But I notice you don't often stay away from the office more'n two days running."

"I don't know that my private affairs are any of your business," he said curtly. He was rather glad, now, of the chance for an outright quarrel.

But she would not let it come to that, and continued in a wheedling tone: "Well, this happens to be my business, and I speak to you as a friend, Frank, for your own good as well as mine. You can take it or leave it, of course; I ain't a-going to try and put coercion on to you, and there's time enough to decide when we get Payson wired up. Then I'll talk to you just once more. You just think it over a while, and don't do nothing rash."

Granthope arose to leave. He was for a more romantic game, himself. The vulgarity here offended him esthetically rather than ethically, and yet he winced at the insinuations Madam Spoll had made.

"I think I can go it alone," he said; "as for rashness, I won't promise."

He had gone but a few minutes when Professor Vixley entered and shook a long lean claw with Madam Spoll, took off his coat and sat down. "Well," he said affably, "how're they coming, Gert?"

"Oh, so-so; Frank Granthope's just been here."

"Is that so! Did you get anything out of him?"

"No. And he wants his Payson notes back again. What d'you think of that!"

Vixley crossed his legs, and whistled a low, astonished note. "We're goin' to have trouble with Frank, I expect."

Madam Spoll's smooth forehead wrinkled. "Frank's a fool! He's leary of us, and I believe he'll throw us down if we don't look out."

"Most time to put the screws on, ain't it?"

"I don't know; we'll see. We can go it alone for a while. Wait till we really need him and I'll guarantee to make him mind. He's got the society bug so bad I couldn't do anything with him."

"The more he gets into society the more use he is to us," said Vixley. "He's a pretty smooth article."

"Do you know, I have an idea he's getting stuck on that Payson girl."

Vixley cackled.

"You never can tell," said Madam Spoll. "I believe Frank's got good blood in him. Sooner or later it's bound to come out."

"Well, if he's after the girl, it'll be easier for us to bring him around. He won't care to be gave away."

"That's right, and we'll use it. I can see that girl's face when she hears about him crawling through the panel at Harry Wing's to play spook for Bennett."

"Not to speak of Fancy," Vixley added, grinning.

To them, Ringa entered. He slunk into a chair beside Vixley, smoothed down his tow hair, stroked his bristling mustache, and allowed his weak gray eyes to drift about the room.

"Well?" Madam Spoll queried, giving him a glance over her fat shoulder.

"I found him all right, and I've got something. I guess it's worth a dollar, Madam Spoll."

"Let's hear it, first," said Vixley.

"I done the insurance agent act, and I jollied him good." Ringa grinned, showing a hole in his mouth where two front teeth should have been.

"You jollied him," Vixley showed his yellow teeth. "Lord, you don't look it!"

"I did though," the pale youth protested. "I conned him for near an hour."

"You're sure he didn't get on to you?" Madam Spoll asked, regarding her head sidewise in the glass and patting the blue bow on her throat.

"Sure! I was a dead ringer for the real-thing agent, and I had the books to show for it. I worked him for an insurance policy."

"Well? What did he say?" Madam Spoll turned on him like a mighty gun.

"He was caught between two trains once on the Oakland Mole, and I guess he was squeezed pretty bad. He said it was a close call."

"That's all right," said Vixley; "we can trim that up in good shape, can't we, Gert?"

"It'll do for a starter. Give him a dollar."

"Anything more to-day?" Ringa asked, rising slowly.

"No; I'll let you know if I want you," said the Madam.

Ringa slouched out.

"I'd let that cool off a while till he's forgotten it," Vixley suggested.

"I'll make him forget it, all right," Madam Spoll returned. "That's my business. You do your part as well as I do mine and you'll be all right."

"It's only this first part that makes me nervous."

"Oh, he ain't going to catch _me_ in a trap. I got sense enough to put a mouse in first to try it."

She stood in front of the mirror in the folding-bed, arranging her hair, which had been wet and still glistened with moisture, holding her comb, meanwhile, in her mouth. Professor Vixley tilted back in his plush chair, his head resting against the grease-spot on the wall-paper which indicated his habitual pose.

"Now don't you go too fast," he said, pulling out a square of chewing-tobacco and biting off a corner. "This here is a-goin' to be a delicate operation. Payson ain't so easy as Bennett was. Bennett would believe that cows was cucumbers, if we told him so, but this chap is too much on the skeptic. We got to go slow."

"You leave me alone for _that_," Madam Spoll replied easily. "I guess I know how to jolly a good thing along. Has he got the money? That's all I want to know about him."

"He's got money all right. That's a cinch. I'm not in this thing for my health. What's more, he's got the writin' bug, and I can see a good graft in that."

"Well, I'll give it a try."

"No, you better keep your hands off that subject, Gertie. I can work that game better'n you. I got it all framed up how I can string him good. I'm goin' to make that a truly elegant work of art. All you got to do is to get him goin', and then steer him up against me."

The door-bell rang noisily up-stairs and Mr. Spoll's footsteps were heard going to answer the summons.

"I guess that's my cue," said Madam Spoll, smiling affably. "I wish I had more magnetism to-day." She shook her hands and snapped her fingers. "I can't stand so much of this as I used to. I can remember when I could get a name every time without fishing for it. But what I've lost in one way I have learned in another. I'm going to give him a run for his money, and don't you forget it."

Vixley smiled and rubbed his hands. "Go in and win, Gert. I guess I'll take a nap here on the lounge while I'm waitin' for you, and see if the Doc doesn't come in."

"All right," she replied; then marched up-stairs and went into action.

The upper parlor, where she received her patrons for private sittings, was a large room separated from the back part of the house by black walnut double doors. Upon the high-studded walls were draperies of striped oriental stuffs, caught up with tacks and enlivened by colored casts of turbaned Turks' heads, most of which were chipped on cheek and on chin, showing irregular patches of white plaster. Upon the mantel chaos reigned, embodied in a mass of minor decorations of all sorts, such as are affected by those who deem that space is only something to be as closely filled as possible. The furniture was cheaply elaborate and formally arranged, running chiefly to purple stamped plush and heavy woolen fringe. The silk curtains in the windows were severely arranged in multitudinous little pleats, fan shaped, drawn in with a pink ribbon at the center. There was scarcely a thing in the room, from the fret-sawed walnut whatnot in the corner to the painted tapestry Romeo upon the double doors, that an artist would not writhe at and turn backward. A little ineffective bamboo table in the center was made a feature of the place, but supported its function with triviality.

Mr. Payson had just entered, cold and blue from the harsh air outside. He bowed to the seeress.

She began with the weather, referring to it in obvious commonplaces, eliciting his condemnation of the temperature. She offered to light the gas-log and succeeded, during the conversational skirmish, in drawing from him the fact that he suffered from rheumatism, especially when the wind was north.

Madam Spoll allowed the ghost of a smile to haunt her face for a brief moment. "Lucky you ain't got my weight, it gets to you something terrible when you're fat. I ain't quite so slim as I used to be." She looked up from the grate coquettishly, marking the effect of her words.

"Now let's set down and get ready," she said, going over to the frail table and pressing her hands to her forehead. "I ain't in proper condition to-day; I've been working hard and my magnetism's about wore out. But I'll see what I can do."

He took a seat opposite her and waited. His attitude was benignly judicial; his eyes were fixed upon her, through his gold-bowed spectacles.

"Funny thing how different people are," she began. "Now, I get your condition right off. You ain't at all like the rest of the folks that come here. I get a condition of study, like. I see what you might call books around you everywhere--not account-books, but more on the literary. Books and sheep, you understand. Not live ones! I would say they was more on the dead sheep. Flat ones, too, with hair, like--queer, ain't it? Sounds like nonsense I suppose, but that's just what I get. They must be some mistake somehow." She drew her hand across her forehead and snapped the electricity off her finger-tips. Then she rubbed her hands and twisted her mouth. "Do you know what I mean?"

"Why, it might be wool perhaps; I have something to do with wool," he offered.

"Now ain't that strange? It _is_ wool, as sure's you're born! I can see what you might call skins and bales of wool. And I get a condition of business, too--but not what you might call a retail business. Seems like it was more on the wholesale."

"Yes, that's right," he assented, nodding.

"What did I tell you!" she exclaimed. "I do believe I may get something after all, though very often the first time ain't what you might call a success, and sitters are liable to get discouraged. I can tell you only just what my guides give me, you know, and sometimes Luella is pernickerty. She's my chief control. You know how it is yourself, for you'll be a man that knows women right down to the ground, and you've always been a favorite with the ladies, too."

"Oh, I never knew many women," he said modestly.

"It ain't the number I'm speaking of. It's the hold you had over 'em, specially when you was a young man. They was women who would do anything you asked them and be glad of the chance; now, wasn't they? Did you ever know of a party, what you might call a young woman, though not so very young, with the initial C?" She mumbled the letter so that it was not quite distinguishable.

"G?" he said. "Why, yes!--was that the first name or the last?"

"It seems like it was the first name, the way I get it--would it be Grace?"

This was, of course, a random "fishing test," and she got a bite.

"My wife's name was Grace."

She hooked the fact, noticing the tense, and let her line play out to distract his attention temporarily.

"It don't seem quite like your wife. Seems like it was another woman who you was fond of. Maybe it was meant for the last name. Sometimes my control does get things awfully mixed. Or, it might be a middle initial. You wait a minute and maybe I'll get it stronger."

"Oh, if it was the last name, I think I recognize it."

She had another line out and another bite, now, and played to land both, coaxing the truth gently from him.

"Yes, it's a last name, and she was terrible fond of you. She was in love with you for some time, you understand? And there was some trouble between you."

"There was, indeed!" Mr. Payson shook his head solemnly.

The hint now made sure of, she heightened it to make him forget that he himself had given the clue.

"I get a feeling of worry, and what you might call a misunderstanding. You didn't quite get along with each other and it made a good deal of trouble for you. You was what I might call put out, you understand? She's in the spirit now, ain't she?"

"Yes; she died a good many years ago."

Madam Spoll returned to her first fish and began to reel in. "Your wife's passed out, too, and Luella tells me she's here now. She says Grace was worried, too. But she's happy now and wants you to be. You was a young man then, and yet you have never got over it. You wasn't rightly understood, was you?"

Mr. Payson shook his head again. He was listening attentively.

"But it wan't your fault, do you understand? It was something that couldn't be helped. And sometimes when you think of this other lady you say to yourself, 'If she only knew! If she only knew!'"

"Yes, I wish she did. It really wasn't my fault."

Madam Spoll cast more bait into the pool.

"Now, would her given name be Mary, or something like that?"

"No--it was an uncommon name."

The medium persisted stubbornly.

"That's queer. I get the name of Mary very plain."

"My mother's name was Mary; perhaps you mean her?"

"It might be your mother, and yet it seems like it was a younger woman. Now, this lady I spoke of had dark hair, didn't she? or you might call it medium--sort of half-way between light and dark."

"No; she had white hair."

Another fish was on the hook. Madam Spoll had got what she wanted. This admission of Mr. Payson's, coupled with the fact Granthope had discovered, that Clytie had visited the crazy woman, identified the old man's first love, she thought, effectually. She kept this for subsequent use, however. It would not do, as Vixley had said, to go too fast.

"Then this Mary must be some one else," she said. "You may not recognize her now, but you probably will. I can't do your thinking for you, you know. It may possibly be that you'll meet her some day; at any rate, my guides tell me you must be careful and don't sign no papers for Mary. I don't know whether she's in the spirit or not. You may understand it and you may not. All I can do is to give you what I get."

Madam Spoll now became absorbed in a sort of reverie. When at last she emerged it was with this:

"I see your mother and your wife now, and I get the words, 'It's a pity Oliver couldn't marry her.' I don't know what they mean at all."

"I understand. I was intending to marry another woman, the one you spoke of just now, but something prevented."

"That must be it. My guide tells me that something dreadful happened, and it was what you might call hushed up and you separated from her."

"It was not my fault."

"I get a little child, too"--Mr. Payson grew still more absorbed. The medium noticed his instant reaction in eyes, mouth and hands. On the strength of that evidence, she took the risk of saying:

"The child was the lady's with the white hair."

"What about it?" demanded Mr. Payson.

"I see the child standing by a lady who grew gray very young, you understand. And now they're both gone. Was you ever interested in Sacramento or somewhere east of here?"

"Stockton?" he asked. "I lived there for a while."

"That's it. I see a river, and steamboats coming in, and there's the child again."

"A boy or a girl?"

She hesitated for a moment to dart a glance at him as swift as an arrow. Then she risked it. "A girl."

He drew a long breath. "I don't quite understand."

"It certainly is a little girl, and she's with the lady with the gray hair. But wait a minute. Now I get a little boy, and he's crying."

"Where is he?" came eagerly from Payson's lips.

"He's on this side. He's alive. I'll ask my guide." She plunged into another stupor, then shook herself, rubbed her forehead, wrung her hands.

"I can't get it quite strong enough to-day, but I'll find out later. He seems to be mixed up with you, some way, not in what you might call business, but more personally. You're worried about him."

Mr. Payson, with a shrug of his shoulders, appeared to disclaim this.

"Yes, you are! You may not realize it, but you are. The time will come when you understand what I mean. Now you're too much interested in other things. Your mind is way off--toward New York, like, or in that direction."

He looked puzzled.

"Maybe it ain't as far as New York, but it's somewhere around there, and I see books and printing presses. Do you have anything to do with printing?"

This he also disclaimed.

"Funny!" she persisted. "I get you by a printing-press looking at a book and then I see you at a table writing."

"I have done some writing, but it has never been printed."

"Well, it will be! My guide tells me that you have a great talent for literary writing, and it could be developed to a great success.

"Now," she added, "you let me hold your hands a while till I get the magnetism stronger. Just hold them firm--that's right. Lord, you needn't squeeze them _quite_ so hard!" She beamed upon him with obvious coquetry. "Now I'm going into a trance. I don't know whether Luella will come, or maybe little Eva. Eva's the cunningest little tot and as bright as a dollar. She's awful cute. You mustn't mind anything she says or does, though. Sometimes, I admit, she mortifies me, when sitters tell me what she's been up to. I've known her to sit on men's laps and kiss 'em and hug 'em, like she was their own daughter, but Lord, she don't know any better. She's innocent as a baby."

His face grew harder as she said this, but she proceeded, nevertheless, with her experiment, closing her eyes and sitting for a while in silence. Then her muscles twitched violently; she squirmed and wriggled her shoulders. Finally she spoke, in a high, squeaky falsetto, a fair ventriloquistic imitation of a child's voice.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Payson, I'm little Eva! I brought you some flowers, but you can't see 'em, 'cause they're spirit flowers. You don't look very well. Ain't you feelin' well to-day? I'm always well here, and it's lovely on this side."

He made no response. Madam Spoll's soft hand, obviously controlled by her spirit guide, moved up Mr. Payson's arm and patted his cheek. He drew back suddenly.

"My!" little Eva exclaimed. "You frightened me! What a funny man you are! Won't you just let me smoove your hair, once? I'd love to. Oh, I think you're horrid! I'm just doin' to slap your face--there!" Which she did quite briskly.

Mr. Payson loosened his hold with some annoyance.

"Well, I ain't doin' to stay if you don't love me," the shrill voice went on. "I don't _like_ men who don't love me. Good-by, old man, I'm doin'."

There was another wriggle on the part of the medium, after which a lower-toned voice said:

"How do you do! I'm Luella."

He watched the medium's blank, expressionless face as she spoke.

"Say, you ain't well, I can see that. Haven't you got a pain in your leg? Excuse me saying it, but I can feel it right there."

She touched him gently on the thigh.

"Oh, that's only a touch of rheumatism," he replied.

"No, it ain't," she said, "it's more serious than that. It's chronic, and it's growing worse. Sometimes it's so painful that you almost die of it, isn't it? I know where you got it; it come of an accident. I can see you in a big crowded house, like, and there's railroad trains coming and going, and you're crowded and jammed. You got internal injuries and a complication. You didn't realize it at the time, but it's growing worse every day. If you don't look out you'll pass out through it, but if you went right to work, you could be cured of it, before it gets too bad."

"What could I do about it?" he asked. "The doctors don't help me much."

"Of course they don't. You haven't been to the right ones. I was an Indian doctor, and I can see just what's the matter with you. You need a certain kind of herb I used to use when I was on the flesh-plane in Idaho."

"Can't you help me, then?"

"Oh, I've got to go now, they're calling to me. So good-by." Another wriggle and Madam Spoll was herself again.

"Well, what did you get?" she asked when she recovered.

"Why, don't you know?"

"No more'n a babe unborn," she said. "I was in a dead trance, and I never remember anything that happens. I hope little Eva didn't tease you any."

"Who is the other one--Luella?"

"Why, she's an Indian princess that passed out about ten years back. She's got a great gift of diagnosing cases. She's helped my sitters a good deal."

"She told me something about my trouble."

"You mean about the gray-haired lady or the child?"

"Oh, no, about my leg!"

"Did she, now? Well, what did I tell you! Seems to me you _do_ look peaked and pale, like you was enjoying poor health. I noticed it when you first come in. I don't believe your blood's good. Luella don't prescribe ordinarily, but she can diagnose cases something wonderful. If I should tell you how many doctors in this town send their patients to me to be diagnosed before they dare to treat them themselves, you'd be surprised. Why, only the other day a lady come in here that was give up by four doctors for cancer, and Luella found it was only a boil in her kidney. She went to a magnetic healer and was cured in a week. Now she's doing her own work and taking care of her babies, keeping boarders and plans to go camping this very month."

"Who was the doctor?" Mr. Payson asked, much impressed.

"Doctor Masterson. He's up on Market Street somewhere. Perhaps I've got a card of his around. I'll see if I can find it."

She walked over to the mantel and fussed among its dusty ornaments, saying, with apparent concern, as she rummaged:

"I don't know as I ought to send you to Doctor Masterson, after all. You see, he ain't a man I like very much, and few do, I find. He don't stand very well with the Spiritual Society, nor with anybody else that I know of. He ain't quite on the square, do you understand what I mean? To be perfectly frank, I think he's a rascal. He has a bad reputation as a man, but all the same, he's a good medium, nobody denies _that_, and he does accomplish some marvelous cures! If Luella said your complaint was serious, she knows, and it looks to me like you must go to Doctor Masterson or die of it, for if he can't cure you, nobody can. He's certainly a marvelous healer."

She found the card at last, and brought it over to Mr. Payson.

"Here it is, but you better not tell him I give it to you, for we ain't on very good terms, and I wouldn't want him to know that I was sending him business."

As Mr. Payson rose to go, the medium stopped him with a gesture.

"Wait a minute," she said, passing her hand across her forehead. "Grace is here again and she says: Tell him that we're doing all we can on the spirit plane to help him and we want him to cheer up, for conditions are going to be more favorable in a little while, say, by the end of September.'"

She paused a moment and then added:

"Who's Clytie? Would that be the gray-haired lady?"

"What about Clytie?" He was instantly aroused.

"It don't seem to me like she's in the spirit, exactly. She's on the material plane. Let's see if I can get it more definite. Oh, Grace says she's your daughter."

"That's true."

"What do you think of that? I get it very plain now. Grace says she's watching over Clytie and will help her all she can."

"Can't she tell me anything more?"

The medium became normal. "No, I guess that's about all I can do for you to-day. I think you got some good tests, specially when you consider it was the first time. When you come again I expect we can do better, and I'm sure we can find that little boy you was interested in."

Mr. Payson rose and stood before her, sedate, dignified, and said, in his impressive platform-manner:

"I don't mind saying that I consider this very remarkable, Madam Spoll, very remarkable. I shall certainly call again sometime next week. I am much interested. Now, what is the charge, please?"

"Oh, we'll only call this three dollars. My price is generally five, but I'm sort of interested in your case and I want you to be perfectly satisfied. You can just ring me up any time and make an appointment with me."

She bowed him out with a calm, pleasant smile.

Down-stairs, Professor Vixley was awaiting her. With him was a shrewd-eyed, bald-headed, old man, with iron spectacles, his forehead wrinkled in horizontal lines, as if it had been scratched with a sharp comb. He had a three days' growth of red beard on his chin and cheeks, and his teeth, showing in a rift between narrow, bloodless lips, were almost black. He wore a greasy, plaid waistcoat, a celluloid collar much in need of the laundry and a ready-made butterfly bow.

"Why, how d'you do, Doctor Masterson?" said Madam Spoll. "I was hoping you would get around to-day, so's we could talk business. I suppose you put him wise about Payson, Vixley?"

"Certainly," said the Professor. "We're goin' to share and share alike, and work him together as long as it lasts. How did you get on with him to-day?"

"Oh, elegant," was the answer, as she took a seat on the couch and put up her feet. "I don't believe we're going to be able to use Flora, though."

Professor Vixley's black eyes glistened and he grinned sensuously. "Why, couldn't you get a rise out of him?"

Madam Spoll shook her huge head decidedly. "No, that sort of game won't work on him. He ain't that kind. I went as far as I dared and give him a good chance, but he wouldn't stand for it."

"That's all right, Gert," said Vixley, "I ain't sayin' but what you're a fine figure of a woman, but he's sixty and he might prefer somebody younger. You know how they go. Now, Flora, she's a peach. She'd catch any man, sure! She knows the ropes, too, and she can deliver the goods all right. Look at the way she worked Bennett. Why, he was dead stuck on her the first time he seen her. She put it all over Fancy at the first rattle out of the box."

Again Madam Spoll's crisp, iron-gray curls shook a denial. "See here, Vixley!" she exclaimed, "I ain't been in this business for eighteen years without getting to know something about men. Bennett was a very different breed of dog. I can see a hole in a ladder, and I know what I'm talking about. Payson ain't up to any sort of fly game. He's straight, and he's after something different, you take my word for that. If there was anything in playing him that way, I'd be the first one to steer him on to Flora Flint, but he'd smell a mice if she got gay with him and he'd be so leary that we couldn't do nothing more with him."

"Well, what _did_ you get, then?" Vixley asked.

"Did you wire it up for me?" Doctor Masterson added.

"Oh, I fixed you all right, Doc. He'll show up at your place, sure enough. That accident tip worked all right and I got him going pretty good about his leg. He's got your card and I give you a recommendation, I don't think! You want to look out about what you say about me. We ain't on speaking terms, you understand, and you're a fakir, for fair. You can get back at me all you want, only don't draw it hard enough to scare him away."

Doctor Masterson grinned, showing his line of black fangs, and stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets placidly. "Oh, I'm used to being knocked, don't mind me. I'll charge him for it. If I'm going to be the villain of this here drama, I'll do it up brown."

"Let's see now. I s'pose you can probably hold him about two months, can't you?" said Vixley, stroking his pointed black beard and spitting into the fireplace.

"Oh, not so long as that," said Madam Spoll. "We want to get to work on that book proposition. A month's plenty long enough. They ain't much money in it."

"I don't know." Doctor Masterson shook his head. "I've strung 'em for six months many's the time."

"Women, perhaps, but not men," said the Madam.

"Well, maybe. Men are liable to be in more of a hurry, of course."

"And women ain't so much, with you, are they?"

The two men laughed cynically.

"Oh, they's more ways to work women than men, that's all," the doctor replied. "They're more interested in their symptoms, and they like to talk about 'em. Then, again, they's a more variety of complaints to choose from. I don't say I ain't had some pretty cases in my day."

"Say!" Madam Spoll interposed. "Who's having a circle to-night--Mayhew?"

"Let's see--it's Friday, ain't it? Yes, Mayhew and Sadie Crum," Vixley replied.

"Well, I s'pose we got to put 'em wise about Payson," said the Madam. "He's got the bug now and he's pretty sure to make the rounds."

"Can't we keep him dark?" said Vixley. "He's our game and they might possibly ring him in."

"No, that won't do," she answered emphatically. "We got to play fair. They've always been square with us, and they won't catch him, I'll see to that. Mayhew's straight enough and if Sadie tries to get gay with us, we can fix her and she knows it. And the more easy tests he gets, the better for us. It'll keep him going, and so long as they don't go too far, it'll help us. The sooner he gets so he don't want to impose test conditions, the better, and they can help convert him for us. I'll ring up Mayhew now. I've got a good hunch that Payson will show up there to-night."

She raised her bulk from the couch and went to the telephone by the window, calling for Mayhew's number. When she had got it, she said:

"Is this number thirty-one? ... Yes, I'm number fifteen.... Sure! Oh, pretty good! ... I got a tip for you. I'm playing a six-year-old for the handicap, named Oliver. Carries sixty pounds, colors blue and gray, ten hands, jockey is Payson. He's a ten-to-one shot. My wife Grace lived in Stockton. Do what you can for me, but keep your hands off, do you understand? Numbers forty and thirteen are with me in this deal and we'll fix it for you if you stand in ... yes, all right! If he shows up let me know to-morrow morning, sure."

She turned to the two men. "I guess that's all right now."

"What's all that about Stockton?" Vixley asked.

"He lived there once and there's something more about his wife or something. Mayhew may fish it out of him, and if he does I'll put you on."

"I ain't seen him yet," said the doctor, "but I guess I'll recognize him. Sixty years old, Oliver Payson, one hundred and sixty pounds, blue eyes and gray hair, six feet tall. Are you sure he's a ten-to-one, though? That cuts more ice than anything."

"Oh, sure!" said Madam Spoll. "Why, he swallowed the whole dose. He ain't doing no skeptic business. He thinks he's an investigator. Wait till you hear him talk and you'll understand. Not religious, you know, but a good old sort. He's caught all right, and if we jolly him along, we can polish him off good."

"They ought to be some good materializin' graft in that wife proposition. Grace, was it? We might turn him over to Flora for that." This from Vixley.

"I've been thinking of that," said Madam Spoll, "but I don't know whether he'll stand for it or not. It won't be anywheres near the snap it was with Bennett, in full daylight, and we'll have to have special players. I believe I can put my hands on one or two that can help us out, though. Miss French for one; she's got four good voices. Then there's a young girl I got my eye on that'll do anything I say. She's slim and she can work an eight-inch panel as slick as soap; and she's got a memory for names and faces that beats the directory. Besides, I believe she's really psychic. I've seen her do some wonderful things at mind-reading."

"No, can she really!" said Vixley.

"Oh, I used to be clairaudient myself when I begun," said Madam Spoll a little sadly. "I could catch a name right out of the air, half the time. I've gave some wonderful tests in my day, but you can't never depend upon it, and when you work all the week, sick or well, drunk or sober, you have to put water in the milk and then it's bound to go from you. You have to string 'em sooner or later. This girl's a dandy at it, though, but that'll all wait. There's enough to do before we get to that part of the game. I expect I had better go out and see Sadie Crum myself. I don't trust her telephone. She's got a ten-party line, what do you think of that?"

"A ten-party line don't do for business," said Vixley, "but it's pretty good for rubberin'. I've got some pretty good dope off my sister's wire. She spends pretty near all her time on it and it does come in handy."

"Oh, pshaw!" Madam Spoll looked disgusted. "I ain't got time to spend that way. What's the use anyway? They ain't but one rule necessary to know in this business, and that is: All men is conceited, and all women is vain."

"That's right!" Vixley assented. "Only I got another that works just as good; all women want to think they are misunderstood, and all men want to think they understand. Ain't that right, Doc?"

Masterson grinned. "I guess likely you ought to know, if anybody does. But I got a little one of my own framed up, too. How's this? All men want to be heroes and all women want to be martyrs."

The three laughed cynically together. They had learned their practical psychology in a thorough school. Madam Spoll chuckled for some time pleasantly.

"You're the one had ought to write a book, Masterson. I'll bet it would beat out Payson's!"

"Lord!" said Vixley. "If I was to write down the things that have happened to me, just as they occurred--"

"It wouldn't be fit to print," Madam Spoll added. Vixley looked flattered.

"How about that pickle-girl?" he asked next.

"What's that?" said Doctor Masterson.

"Oh, a new graft of Gertie's. Did she come, Gert?"

"I should say she did," Madam Spoll replied. "And I got her on the string staking out dopes, too. Why, she's mixed up with a fellow at the Risdon Iron Works, and she don't dare to say her soul's her own since she told me."

"Nothin' like a good scandal to hold on to people by," Masterson remarked. "Where'd you get her?"

"Oh, she floated in. I give her a reading and found out she worked in a pickle factory down on Sixth Street where there are fifty or more girls. Soon as I found out the handle to work her by, I made her a proposition to tip off what's doing in her shop. She makes her little report, steers the girls up here, and then she comes round and tells me who they are and all about 'em."

"That's what I call a good wholesale business," said Vixley enviously. "I wish I could work it as slick as that. She uses the peek-hole in the screen, I suppose?"

"Sometimes, and sometimes she sits behind the window curtain up-stairs."

"You have to give yourself away, that's the only trouble," said Doctor Masterson.

"Oh, no," Madam Spoll remarked easily, "I just tell her that I can't always get everybody's magnetism, though of course I can always get hers. That gives her an idea she's important, don't you see? Then I can always lay anything suspicious to the Diakkas. Evil spirits are a great comfort."

"And anyways, if she should want to tell anything," Vixley suggested, "you can everlastingly blacklist her at the factory with what you know."

"Yes," Madam Spoll assented; "she's got a record herself, only she hasn't got sense enough to realize on it the way I do on mine. Is they any bigger fool than a girl that's in love?"

"Only a man that is," Vixley offered sagely.

"Oh, _men_!" she exclaimed contemptuously. "I believe they ain't more'n but three real ones alive to-day!"

The Professor's eyes snapped. "Well, they's women enough, thank the Lord!"

"Well," said Doctor Masterson, "I got to go to work; I'm keeping office hours in the evening now and I have to hump. So long, Gertie, I'll be all ready for Payson, but you and Vixley have got to keep jollying him along. You want me to hold him about a month? I'll see what I can do, and if I get a lead, I'll let you know." He shook hands and left them.

"I ain't so sure of the Doc as I'd like to be," said Madam Spoll after he had gone.

"Nor me neither," Vixley replied. "We've got to watch him, I expect, but he'll do for a starter and we can fix him if he gets funny. There ain't nothin' like cooeperation, Gertie."

As Madam Spoll sat down again to open a bottle of beer she had taken from beneath the wash-stand, Professor Vixley began to twirl his fingers in his lap and snicker to himself.

"What are you laughing at, Vixley?" she asked, pouring out two frothing glasses.

"I was just a-thinkin' about Pierpont Thayer. Don't you remember that dope who went nuts on spiritualism and committed suicide?"

"No, I don't just recall it; what about it?"

"Why, he got all wound up in the circles here--Sadie Crum, she had him on the string for a year, till he didn't know where he was at. He took it so hard that one day he up and shot hisself and left a note pinned on to his bed that said: 'I go to test the problem.' Lord! I'd 'a' sold every one of my tricks and all hers to him for a five-dollar bill! Why didn't he come to _me_ to test his problem? He'd 'a' found out quick enough."

"Yes, and after you'd told him all about how it was done, I'll guarantee that I could have converted him again in twenty minutes."

"I guess that's right," said Vixley. "Them that want to believe are goin' to, and you can't prevent 'em, no matter what you do. They're like hop fiends--they've got to have their dope whether or no, and just so long as they can dream it out they're happy."

*