The Heart Line 39
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 coöperation, 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."
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