The Heart Line 61

The Heart Line 61

He poked up the fire, and, carrying the basket over, fed in the letters,

a handful at a time. The flames roared up the chimney, sending out a

fierce heat. It took an hour to destroy the whole collection. A mass

of distorted, blackened, filmy sheets remained.

 

As he looked, a sudden draft made one leaf of charcoal glow to a red

heat, and the writing showed plain—black on a cherry-colored ground. He

stooped curiously to read it, and saw that it was the remains of a card,

filled with Fancy Gray’s handwriting. He remembered abstracting her

notes upon Clytie, made after that first day’s reading. He had placed

it in the letter-drawer for safe keeping, and had forgotten to remove

it.

 

Only the lower part was legible:

 

"... intuitive powers (?!) Play her Mysticism.

..... Easy. Sympathetic fool ...."

 

 

The glow suddenly faded, the charred paper writhed again, black and

impotent. He gave it a vicious jab with the poker, and scattered it to

ashes.

 

 

 

 

*CHAPTER XIII*

 

*THE BLOODSUCKER*

 

 

Professor Vixley’s place was on Turk Street, the lower flat of three,

whose separate doors made a triplet at the top of a tri-divided flight

of wooden steps up from the sidewalk. The door had a plate-glass

window, behind which was a cheap lace curtain. At the side, nailed over

the letter slip, was a card bearing the written inscription,

 

+−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−+

| |

| PROF. P. VIXLEY. |

| |

+−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−+

 

 

Inside, a narrow hall ran down into the house, doors leading at

intervals on the right hand, to small box-like rooms. The first one was

the Professor’s sitting- and reception-room, the shearing place for his

lambs. The small type-writer on a stand and his roll-top desk attempted

to give the room a businesslike aspect, while the homelier needs of

comfort were satisfied by the machine-carved Morris chair, a padded,

quilted couch with "hand-painted" sofa cushions and a macramé fringe

along the mantel. Art was represented by the lincrusta-walton dado

below the blank white plastered walls, partly covered with "spirit

photographs," and a small parlor organ in the corner. A canary in a

gilded cage gave a touch of gaiety to the apartment.

 

Here Professor Vixley sat smoking a terrible cigar. Beside him, upon a

small draped table, was a pile of small school slates, a tumbler of

water and a sad towel.

 

Opposite him, in a patent rocking-chair, was a young woman of some

twenty-four or five years. She was a blonde, with pompadoured

citron-yellow hair. Her eyes were deep violet, her nose slightly

retroussé, giving her a whimsical, almost petulantly juvenile look that

was decidedly engaging. She was dressed in black, so fittingly that no

man would remember what she wore five minutes after he left her. This

attractive creature, for she was indubitably winsome, was Flora Flint,

by profession a materializing medium. Her past was prolific in

adventure; by her alluring person and the dashing spirit shown in her

eyes, her future promised as much as her past.

 

"Are you busy to-day, Vixley?" she said.

 

"That’s what," said Vixley. "I’ve got a good graft doped out, and it’s

liable to be a big thing. First time to-day. One of Gertie Spoll’s

strikes, and we’re working him together. Old man Payson it is."

 

"Oh, that’s the one Doc Masterson expected me to help him with, isn’t

it?" Flora asked. "I wish you’d let me in on that."

 

"He ain’t in your line, Flo, I expect. Ain’t you doin’ anything now?"

 

"Only the regular set, the same old stand-bys, and there’s nothing in it

at four bits apiece. I’ve got so many people to pay that even if I get

forty or fifty in a circle my expenses eat it all up. Then I have to

keep thinking up new stunts and buy props."

 

"You don’t have to spend much on gas," Vixley laughed, as he began

washing off his slates.

 

Flora smiled. "No, but it comes to about the same thing in luminous

paint."

 

"Why don’t you make it yourself? It ain’t nothin’ but ground

oyster-shells and sulphur."

 

"Oh, it ain’t only that. I only use the best silk gauze that’ll fold up

small—that’s expensive; then there’s a lot of work on the forms."

 

"Don’t you get your forms from Chicago now?" Vixley asked.

 

"No, they’re no good. I can make better ones myself. Oh, occasionally

I send for a rubber face or two or some cabinet attachments and

extensions. I wish I was clever enough to do the slates." She watched

the Professor sharply.

 

"Oh, they ain’t nothin’ in slates nowadays—it don’t seem to take,

somehow. They mostly prefer the psychics. I s’pose slate-writin’ has

been wrote up too much—I know a dozen books describin’ the tricks, and

here’s this Drexel chap teachin’ ’em at a dollar apiece, even. He’s a

queer guy. When he can get a bookin’ he travels as a magician; durin’

his off-times he sells his tricks to amachures, and then when he’s down

on his uppers he does the medium. I’m sorry I went into physical

mediumship; the graft’s about played out—people is gettin’ too

intelligent. I’ve a good mind to try the developin’ stunt again."

 

"Say, do you think Madam Spoll has any real power?" Flora asked.

 

Vixley stopped in his work to become epigrammatic. "Some mediums are

’on’ and some are honest—them that’s honest are fools and them that’s

’on’ are foolin’. Gertie’s ’on’ all right, and she does considerable

fishin’. I don’t say that when she started she didn’t have some

faculty—she used to scare me good, sometimes, and she could catch a name

occasional. But Lord, it’s so much easier to fake it; you can generally

depend on human nature, and you can’t on psychometry."

 

"I can tell things sometimes," Flora ventured.

 

"Can you?" said Vixley. "Say, I wish you’d give me a readin’; they’s

somethin’ I want to know about pretty bad; p’raps you could get it for

me."

 

"Oh, I know you too well. I can’t do it much, except the first time I

see a party; but sometimes, when I’m materializing, I can go right down

and say ’I’m Henry,’ or whatever the name is."

 

"I guess they’re more likely to say, ’Are you Henry?’ They’re so crazy

to be fooled that it’s a crime to take their money."

 

"Women are. They’re easy. They simply won’t go away without a

wonderful story to tell to their friends, but men are more skeptical, as

a rule."

 

"That’s right. But, Lord, when they do swallow it, they take the hook,

bait and sinker. Why, look here, I had a party what used to come regular

about a girl he was stuck on, a Swede he was. Well, one day he went up

to this Drexel and he showed him one or two easy ways o’ workin’ the

slates, provin’ it was all tricks. The Swede comes back to me and says,

’Oh,’ says he, ’I know it’s all a fake now; you can’t fool _me_ no

more.’ I looked him straight in the eye and I says: ’Don’t you know

that fellow is really one of the best mediums in the business, and he’s

controlled by Martin Luther? He was just tryin’ to test your belief by

denyin’ the truth o’ spiritualism, and seein’ if you’d have the courage

to stand up for what you believed. If your faith ain’t no stronger than

that, after the tests I gave you, you’d better go into Mormonism and be

done with it.’"

 

"Did that hold him?"

 

"I’ve got that fellow yet; twice a month, regular, I get his little old

two dollars; Lord, he swears by me now. No, them that want to believe

_will_ believe, and you can’t pry ’em off with a crowbar. Ain’t that

right?"

 

"I guess yes!" said Flora. "But what gets my game is the widow that

used to quarrel like cats and dogs when her husband was alive and leaks

on his shoulder when he comes to her in the spirit! They’re the limit!

When a woman once gets it into her head that the dear departed can take

possession of a living body, there ain’t anything she won’t stand for.

My brother had a lovely case once. It was a woman whose husband hadn’t

passed out more than two months and she was all broke up. Well, Harry

got her to believe that her husband could get control of his body and

talk to her. At first the woman wasn’t quite sure, so Harry, talking to

her as her husband, claimed that he himself was in a dead trance.

’Why,’ he said, ’if you should stick a pin into this medium’s leg here,

he wouldn’t feel it at all!’ That was where he was foolish, for the

woman said, ’Is that so? I guess I’ll just try it and see.’ So Harry

had to stand for it while she jabbed a hat pin into him, but he was game

and didn’t whimper. Of course that convinced the woman that she was

really communicating with her lawful husband, and she begun to kiss and

hug Harry to beat the cars, she was so glad to get hubby back."

 

"Well, it’s all in a day’s work!" Vixley showed his sharp yellow fangs

in a grin.

 

"Oh, you have to make it pleasant for sitters, sometimes," Flora yawned.

 

"I guess it’s no trouble for you," Vixley said, looking at her with

admiration.

 

Flora yawned. "Well, I guess we earn our money, what with skeptics and

all. Now, if you have any of these reporters come in you can get rid of

them easy—but we can’t. We’ve got to make good for the sake of the rest

of the crowd, unless they get so gay with us that we can fire ’em out."

 

"That’s right. I never bother with skeptics; what’s the use? I don’t

want their money enough to risk their jumpin’ up and gettin’ on to the

game. No, sir! When any of these slick chaps that look like newspaper

men or sports, come in, I just do a few lines and then tell ’em

conditions ain’t satisfactory and let ’em go. It ain’t no use takin’ chances."