MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
room, of which the blinds were down, and a back room, of which the door was masked by a heavy embroidered green silk curtain. On the patch of wall which formed the third side of the landing was a dark oil painting, bearing on its tarnished gold frame the inscription in black letters, “The Witch.” The subject was that of a white-haired woman being burnt alive, while an evil-looking crowd gloated over the hideous sight.
There came the tinkle of a bell.
“Mrs. Thrawn will see you now,” said the woman shortly, drawing back the curtain to show a door already ajar.
“Come in!” called a full, resonant voice.
Feeling excited and curious, for this was the first time she had ever been to a fortune-teller, Ivy brushed past the maid.
Then she felt a pang of disappointment. The room before her was so very ordinary—just an old-fashioned back drawing-room, containing one or two good pieces of furniture, while on the chimney-piece stood a row of silver-gilt Indian ornaments.
Even the soothsayer, the obvious owner of this room, impressed her client as being almost commonplace. At any rate there was nothing mysterious or romantic about her appearance. She was a tall, powerful-looking woman, nearer sixty than fifty. Her grey hair was cut short, and she was clad in an old-fashioned tea-gown, of bright blue cashmere, which fell from her neck to her feet in heavy folds.
The most remarkable feature of Mrs. Thrawn’s face was her eyes. They were light hazel, luminous, compelling eyes, and as Ivy Lexton advanced rather timidly towards her they became dilated, as if with a sudden shock of gripping, overwhelming surprise.
Yet nothing could have appeared at once more simple and more attractive than this lovely girl who wanted to take a peep into the future. Ivy Lexton looked almost a child in her flesh-coloured cotton frock and the simple pull-on brown hat which framed her exquisite little face.
Making a determined effort over herself, Mrs. Thrawn withdrew her astonished and, indeed, affrighted, glance from her visitor, and said coldly, “I cannot give you long this morning, for I have an appointment”—she looked at her wrist-watch—“in twenty minutes. I suppose you know my fee is a pound, paid in advance?”
Ivy felt a touch of resentment. Only twenty minutes for a whole pound? Yet she was beginning to feel the compelling power of the woman, and so, slowly, she took the one-pound note that remained to her out of her bag.
Mrs. Thrawn slipped the note into one of the patch pockets of her gown, and motioned her visitor to a low stool, while she sat down, herself, in a big arm-chair opposite. For a moment Ivy felt as she had felt when as a little girl she was going to be scolded.
“We will begin with your hands. No! Not like that. Your left hand first, please, and the back to start with.”
As she took Ivy’s hand in her cool firm grasp Mrs. Thrawn said quietly, “I need not tell you that you have amazing powers of—well, keeping your own counsel, when it suits you to do so.”
Then she turned the hand she held over, and taking a small lens out of the pocket where now lay Ivy’s one-pound note, she closely scrutinised the lines criss-crossing the rosy palm.
“You’ve the most extraordinary fate-line that I’ve ever seen—and that’s saying a very great deal,” she observed.
“What I want to know,” began Ivy eagerly, “is——”
“Whether there is going to be any change for the better in your life?”
The fortune-teller waited a moment, and, lifting her head, she gave her client a long measuring look. “Yes, there is going to be a great change in your life. But as to whether it will be for the better or for the worse——?”
Mrs. Thrawn hesitated for what seemed to the other a long time. But at last she exclaimed, “From your point of view I should say ‘for the better,’ for I see money, a great deal of money, coming your way.”
Ivy turned crimson, so great were her surprise and joy.
“Will it be soon?” she asked eagerly.
“Very soon—in a few hours from now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
Mrs. Thrawn lifted her great head, and again she looked at her visitor fixedly.
“May I speak plainly? Will you try not to be offended at what I’m going to say?”
“Nothing you say could offend me,” cried Ivy in her prettiest manner. “You don’t know how happy you’ve made me!”
“I do know. But, though I don’t suppose you will ever believe it, money is not everything, Mrs.——”
“—Lexton.”
The name slipped out. After all, why shouldn’t she tell Mrs. Thrawn her name? Yet she was sorry she had done so a few moments later, for the fortune-teller, leaning forward, exclaimed harshly:
“Now for the powder after the jam! I sense that you are engaged in an illicit love affair fraught to you, and to others also, with frightful danger.”
Once more Ivy’s face crimsoned under her clever make-up, but this time with fear and dismay. Her eyes fell before the other woman’s hard scrutiny.
“Wrong is, of course, a matter of conscience, and I know you think you have nothing to be ashamed of. But you are leading a fine soul astray, and evil influences are gathering round you.”
“I know that I’ve done wrong,” faltered Ivy, frightened and perplexed by Mrs. Thrawn’s manner, rather than by her warning.
The other said sharply, “You know nothing of the sort! You’ve not got what I call a conscience, Mrs. Lexton. But a conscience nowadays is a very old-fashioned attribute. Many a young woman would hardly know what to do with one if she had it!”
Ivy did not know what to answer, and felt sorry indeed that she had let this censorious, disagreeable person know her name.
“For your own sake,” went on Mrs. Thrawn earnestly, “break with this man who loves you. For one thing, ‘it’s well to be off with the old love before you are on with the new.’”
“Then there is going to be another man in my life?” Ivy asked eagerly.
“I see a stranger coming into your life within a few hours from now. Whether his valuable friendship for you endures will entirely depend on yourself.”
Mrs. Thrawn got up from her chair.
“As we haven’t much time, I will now look into the crystal.”
She drew down the blind of the one window in the room, and, going across to the writing-table, she took off it a heavy, round glass ball which looked like, and might indeed have been sold for, a paper-weight. Then, moving forward a small, low table, she put it between herself and her visitor.
“Don’t speak,” she said quickly. “Try to empty your mind of all thought.”
Bending her head, she gazed into the crystal, and what seemed to Ivy Lexton a long time went by.
In reality, it might have been as long as two minutes before Mrs. Thrawn began speaking again, this time in a quick, muffled voice.
“I see you both now, you and the dark young man on whom you will bring unutterable misery and shame, and who will bring you distress and disappointment, if you do not break with him now, today. The safe way is still open to you, Mrs. Lexton, but soon it will be closed, and you will find yourself in a prison of your own making, and trapped—trapped like a rat in a sinking ship.”
Again there was a long, tense silence, and again Ivy began to feel vaguely frightened.
The prediction of shame and misery to another meant very little, if indeed anything, to her. But distress and disappointment to herself? Ah! that was another thing altogether. Ivy very much disliked meeting with