The Heart Line. Gelett Burgess
was intent, almost scowling, two vertical lines persisting between his brows; his mouth was fixed. His concentration seemed to hold no personal element; there was nothing to resent in the contact of his fingers or the absorption of his gaze. Suddenly, however, he looked up and smiled—he knew how to smile, did Granthope—and the relation between them became so personal and intimate that she involuntarily drew away her hand. He was instantly sensitive to this and by his attitude reassured her. Not, however, before she had blushed furiously, in spite of evident efforts to control herself.
His eyes glanced again at the mole on her cheek. Then, as if electrified by the sudden kindling and intensification of her personality, his subconscious mind finished its work without the aid of reason. As a bubble might separate itself from the bottom of the sea and ascend, quivering, to the surface, his memory unloosed its secret, and it rose, to break in his mind. The mole—he had seen it before—where? Like a tiny explosion the answer came—upon the cheek of the little girl who visited them that day, twenty-three years ago, at Madam Grant's—the day she died. It reached him with the certainty of truth. It did not even occur to him to doubt its verity. In a flash, he saw what sensational use he could make of the intelligence. Another idea followed it—an old trick—perhaps it would work again.
"Would you mind taking off that ring?" he asked.
She drew off a simple gold band set with three turquoises. He laid it upon the cushion, turning it between his fingers as he did so. In a single glance he had read the inscription engraved inside. His ruse was undetected; her eyes had roved about the room. He turned to her again.
"You are twenty-seven years old. You have a lover, or, rather, a man is making love to you. I do not advise you to marry him. You have traveled a good deal and will take another journey within a year. Something is happening in connection with a male relative that worries you. It will not be settled for some time. Are there any questions you would like to ask?"
"I think you have answered them already," she replied.
He leaned back, to shake his hands and pass them across his forehead, theatrically. Another bubble had broken in his consciousness. "Oliver Payson!"—the name came sharply to his inner ear like a voice in a telephone. Oliver Payson—he recalled now where he had seen the name—upon the newspaper cut pinned to the door of Madam Grant's bedroom. Like two drops of quicksilver combining, this thought fused with that suggested by the mole on the girl's cheek. "Clytie Payson"—this name came to him, springing unconjured to his mind. He determined to hazard a test of the inspiration. He simulated the typical symptoms of obsession, trembled, shuddered and writhed in the professional manner. Then he said:
"Would you like a clairvoyant reading? I think I might get something interesting, for I feel your magnetism very strongly."
She assented with an alacrity she had not shown before. Her eyes opened wider, she threw off her lassitude, awakening to a mild excitement.
"Let me take your hands again—both of them. This is something I don't often do, but I'll see what I can get."
He shut his eyes and spoke monotonously:
"I see a name—C, l, y—"
The girl's hands gave an involuntary convulsion.
"—t, i, e. Is that it? Clytie! Wait—I get the name—"
Beneath slightly trembling lids, a fine, sharp glance shot out at her and was withdrawn again. It was as if he had stolen something from her.
"Payson!"
The girl withdrew her hands suddenly; she drew in her breath swiftly, paling a little.
"That's my name, Clytie Payson! It's wonderful! Go on, please!"
She gave him her gracilent, dewy hands again, and he thrilled to their provocative spell. He took advantage of her distraction to enjoy them lightly. When he spoke there was no hesitation in his voice.
"I don't understand this! I don't know who these people are, or where they are, and it seems ridiculous to tell it. But there is a fearfully disordered room with the sun coming in through dirty, broken windows. The floor is covered with rubbish, there's no furniture but a few old boxes. I see two women and a little girl. They are in old-fashioned costumes."
Clytie's face was pale, now, and she watched him breathlessly.
"One of the women has white hair and vivid black eyebrows. She talks wildly sometimes; sometimes she's quite calm. The other woman is middle-aged and has a soft voice. The little girl is dressed in blue; she is sitting on a box listening. The crazy woman is kissing her."
He shook himself, shuddered and opened his eyes, to find Miss Payson gazing upon him, her hand to her heart.
"It's strange!" she said.
"It sounds nonsensical, I suppose," he said, "but that's just what I get. Can you make anything of it?"'
"It's all true!" said Clytie. "That very thing happened to me when I was a little girl—so long ago, that I had almost forgotten it."
"You remember it, then?"
"Yes, it all comes back to me—though I have wondered vaguely about it often enough. It was when I was four years old and I went with my mother to call on this strange, crazy woman—if she were crazy! I never knew. I never dared speak to father about it. He never knew that we went, I think. I had an idea that he wouldn't have liked it, had he known."
"And your mother?"
"She died—the same year, I think. We left San Francisco, father and I, soon after, and we lived abroad for several years. I didn't even remember the scene until long afterward, when something brought it up. Then it was like a dream or a vision."
"Do you know, Miss Payson, I feel that you have very strong mediumistic powers; I can feel your magnetism. I think that you might develop yourself so as to be able to use your psychic force."
She took it seriously.
"Yes, I think I do have a certain amount of capacity that way. I can never depend upon it, though, but my intuitions are very strong and occasionally rather strange things have happened to me."
It amused him to see how quickly she had fallen into the trap he had set for her. Experience had taught him it was a common enough assertion for women to make, and he was cynically incredulous. He was a little disappointed, too; as, in his opinion, it discounted her intelligence. Nevertheless, he found in it a way to manipulate her.
"Perhaps I might help you to develop it," he suggested, "although I'm not much of a clairvoyant myself; I claim only to be a scientific palmist."
"I think you are wonderful," Clytie asserted, giving him a glance of frank admiration. "This test alone would prove it. You see, having some slight power myself, I'm more ready to believe that others have it."
He waived her compliment with apparent modesty.
"Women are more apt to be gifted that way—it isn't often I attempt a psychic reading. What is written in the palm I can read; as a physician diagnoses a case from symptoms in the pulse and tongue and temperature, so I read a person's character from what I see in the hand. I have been particularly interested in yours, Miss Payson, and perhaps I have been able to give you more than usual. I hope I may have the opportunity of seeing you again; I'm quite sure I can help you, or put you in the way of assistance."
She arose and slowly drew on her gloves, her mind full of the revelation. He watched every motion with delight. Her brief mood of irradiation had given place to her customary languor, and her fragile loveliness, emphasizing the opposite to every one of his virile, ardent traits, allured him with the appeal of one extreme to another. Most of all, her mouth, wayward with its ravishing smile, enchanted him. It was controlled by no coquetry, he knew, and it moved him the more for that reason. Yet she seemed loath to go and moved slowly about the room. She stopped to point with a sweeping gesture at one side of the velvet-hung wall.
"It's rather too bad to hide the windows, isn't it?"
He