The Heart Line 12

The Heart Line 12

"He’s a good one!" Madam Spoll smiled at the Professor. "I don’t

hardly know what I’d do without him. I can always depend upon him to

make good. He ain’t too willing, and sometimes, I declare, he almost

fools me, even. I’ve known him to stand up and denounce me something

fierce, especially when there was newspaper men in the audience, and

then just gradually calm down and admit everything I wanted him to. He

looks the part, too. Why, I sent him round to Mrs. Stepson’s circle one

night, when she first come to town, and she was fooled good. I’ve seen

him cry at a materializing séance so hard it would almost break your

heart."

 

"Does he play spook?"

 

"No, he’s best in the audience. He’s a good capper, but I don’t believe

he could play spook—besides, he’s getting too fleshy."

 

"Who else have you got regular?" asked Professor Vixley.

 

"Only two or three. I don’t need so many touts as most. I pride myself

on doing my own work without much help. Of course, you got to give a

name sometimes when a fishing test won’t work, and a friend in the

audience helps. Miss French, she’s pretty good, but she’s tricky. I’m

afraid of her. I was gave away once to the _Chronicle_ and I lost a

whole lot of business. Men are safer. Harry Debert is straight enough,

but he’s stupid. He’s the too-willing kind, and you don’t have a chance

to get any effect.

 

"Say, Spoll," she added to her husband, "be sure and don’t take no combs

nor gloves! I ain’t going to do no diagnosing in public—not for ten

cents. Them that want it can pay for it and take a private setting."

 

"They’re mostly flowers to-night," said Spoll as he crept out of the

room.

 

"Lord, I do hate a flower test!" she groaned. "It’s too hard work. Of

course, they’re apt to bring roses if their name’s Rose, or lilies and

daisies the same way, but you can’t never be sure, and you have to fish.

Lockets is what I like, lockets and ballots."

 

At this moment Mr. Ringa entered. He was a bleached, tow-headed youth,

long and lanky, with mild gray eyes and a stubbly, straw-colored

mustache. Two front teeth were missing from his upper jaw. His clothes

seemed to have shrunk and tightened upon his frame. He bowed

respectfully to Madam Spoll and Professor Vixley, who represented to him

the top of the profession.

 

"Did you get that ’S.F.B.’ letter, all right?" he asked.

 

"Yes, what about it?"

 

"She’s easy!"

 

Vixley grinned. "If she’s easy for you she must be a cinch for us!"

 

Ringa persevered. "Well, I got the dope, anyway. She’s a Mrs. Brindon

and she’s worried about her husband—he’s gone dotty on some fluzie up

North. I read her hand last week. I told her they was trouble coming to

her along of a dark woman—she’s one of these beer-haired blondes—what I

call a Würzburger blonde—then I showed it to her in the heart-streak.

’Go ahead and tell me how it will come out,’ she says. I says: ’There’s

a peculiar condition in your hand that I ain’t quite on to,’ I says.

She says: ’Why, can’t you read it?’ Says I: ’Madam, if I could read

that well, I wouldn’t be doing palms for no two bits a shot; I’d be

where Granthope is, with a fly-away studio and crowding it at five

plunks, per.’ Then I says: ’Say, I hear Madam Spoll has great gifts in

predicting at all affairs of the heart. I ain’t never been to any of

her circles, but why don’t you shoot around next Thursday night and try

her out?’ ’What’ll I do?’ she says. Then I told her to write on a

paper, ’Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me, and how

will it come out?’ She done it and sealed it up into an envelope I give

her."

 

[Illustration: "I told her they was trouble coming to her"]

 

"Good work!" said Madam Spoll. "I’ll give you a rake-off if I land her.

I’ve got her ballot right here. I won’t need to open it."

 

"Ain’t that job worth a dollar to you as it stands?" Ringa asked

nervously. "I’ll call it square and take my chances on the percentage."

 

"All right. It’s a good sporting chance! Only I wish it was a man.

Women are too close." Madam Spoll opened her purse and paid him.

 

As Ringa left, Vixley asked: "By the way, how about this fellow Payson?

Do you think Lulu roped him?"

 

"I guess so. Lulu’s done pretty well lately, and she’s brought me

considerable business. She ought to be here by this time."

 

"I should think she’d be able to handle him alone."

 

"Don’t you go and tell her so! The thing for her to do is to get a

manager, but I don’t intend to queer my own game."

 

"What line is she workin’ now? She’s failed at about everything ever

since she begun with cards."

 

"Oh, she’s doing the ’Egyptian egg’ reading. Wouldn’t that freeze you?

Lord, that was out of date twenty years go; but everything goes in San

Francisco."

 

"Say, ain’t this town the penultimate limit!" Vixley ejaculated,

grinning. "Why, the dopes will stand in line all night for a chance to

be trimmed, and send their money by express, prepaid, if you let ’em.

Gert, sometimes I’m ashamed of myself for keepin’ ’em waitin’ so long!

Talk about takin’ a gumdrop away from a sick baby; that’s hard labor to

what we did for Bennett. What I want to know is, how do these damn

fools ever get all the money we take away from ’em? It don’t look like

they had sense enough to cash a check."

 

"If I had one or two more decoys as good as Ringa and Lulu Ellis, I’d be

fixed all right. I could stake out all the dopes in town. Say,

Granthope could cut up a lot of easy cash if he’d agree to stand in. I

tried to tap him about this here Payson, and he wouldn’t give me a tip."

 

"Perhaps he didn’t know anything. You can’t loosen up when you’re wide

open, can you?"

 

"He generally knows all there is to know. The trouble is he’s getting

too high-toned. Since he fitted up his new studio and butted into

society you can’t get near him with nothing like a business proposition.

I believe he thinks he’s too good for this place and will go East. He’s

a nice boy, though. I ain’t got nothing against him, only I wish he’d

help us out. Hello, here’s Lulu. Good evening, Lulu, how’s Egyptian

eggs to-day?"

 

Lulu Ellis was a dumpy, roly-poly, soft-eyed, soft-haired, pink-cheeked

young woman, as innocent appearing a person as ever lived on her wits.

Not that she had many of them, but a limited sagacity is enough to dupe

victims as willing to be cajoled as those who appeal to the Egyptian egg

for a sign of the future. Lulu’s large, brown eyes were enough to

distract one’s attention from her rule-of-thumb methods. Her fat little

hand was soft and white, her plump little body full of extravagant

curves.

 

"Say, Mr. Payson has come!" she exclaimed immediately, with considerable

excitement. "He’s on the third row at the far end."

 

Madam Spoll became alert. "Did you see his test?"

 

"No, he was here when I come," Lulu replied.

 

"Go out and get Spoll." Madam Spoll spoke sharply. "We’ve got to fix

this thing up right now."

 

Lulu returned to say: "There’s such a crowd coming in he can’t leave,

but he says it was a gold watch with a seal fob."

 

"All right, so far," said the Madam. "Now, Lulu, are you sure of what

you told me?"

 

Lulu’s reply was interrupted by the entrance of Francis Granthope, in

opera hat and Inverness cape, making a vivid contrast to the

disreputable aspect of Professor Vixley. He greeted the three

conspirators with his customary elegance.

 

"I’m sorry I had nothing about Payson when you rang me up, Madam Spoll,

but just afterward his daughter came in for a reading. Queer, wasn’t

it?"

 

"God, that’s a stroke of luck!" said Vixley eagerly. "I say, Frank, you

can work her while we handle the old man, and we’ll clean up a fortune.

They say he’s a millionaire." Vixley’s little eyes gleamed.

 

"Let’s hear what Lulu has to say, first," said Madam Spoll.

 

"Why, I didn’t get much," Lulu confessed. "He said he dropped in by

accident as he was passing by, to see what Egyptian egg astrology was.

I got his name off of some letters he had in his overcoat pocket. I made

him hang it on the hall hat-rack. I did all I could for him——"

 

"Did he get gay with you?" Professor Vixley interrupted. He had been

overtly enjoying Lulu’s plump charms with his rapacious eyes.

 

Granthope smiled; Lulu Ellis colored slightly.

 

"No, he didn’t! I don’t do none of that kind of work!"

 

"The more fool you!" Madam Spoll retorted. "He’s an old man, ain’t he?"

 

"Sixty," said Vixley, "I looked him up."

 

"Then he ought to be easy as chewing gum," said Madam Spoll.

 

Granthope lighted a cigarette and listened with a mildly cynical

__EXPRESSION__.

 

"He ain’t that kind, though," Lulu insisted. "I ain’t altogether a

fool, after all. Why, he don’t even go to church!"

 

Her three auditors laughed aloud, the Professor raucously, Madam Spoll

with a bubbling chuckle, Granthope with scarcely more than an audible

smile."That settles it, then. You’re coming on, Lulu! What else do you know?"

said Madam Spoll."Well, he has a daughter——"