The Heart Line 1

The Heart Line 1

The Heart Line

A Drama of San Francisco

Author: Gelett Burgess

 

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!"