The Heart Line. Gelett Burgess
no idea of traveling, but John says you will. I don't think it's liable to be very far, though. It'll be before the last of September or the first of October and John says it'll be successful. Do you understand what I mean?"
The lady, frightened at the terrible import of this question, did not speak.
"Did you send up an article?"
"It's that purse with the chain."
Madam Spoll fingered it and weighed it reflectively.
"I get a condition of what you might call inharmony. Seems to me like in your home something is worrying you and you ain't satisfied, you understand, with the way things are going and sometimes you feel as if, well, you just couldn't stand it!" Her smile, now, bathed her dupe with sympathy.
The lady nodded vigorously, with tightly shut lips.
"You kind of wonder if it does any good for you to go to all the trouble you do to sacrifice yourself and try to do your duty, when it ain't what you might call appreciated. And you're worried about money, too. Ain't that so?"
She received a ready assent. The woman's eyes were fixed upon her. Every one in the room watched the stripping naked of a soul.
"Well, John says that your father and him are helping you all they can on the spirit plane, and he thinks conditions will be more favorable and will take a turn for the better by the first of the year."
A question fluttered on the woman's lips, but before it had time to escape, Madam Spoll suddenly turned in the other direction.
"While I was talking to that lady," she said, "I felt an influence leading me to that corner over there by the clock, and I get the initials 'S.F.B.' Is there anybody of that name over there?"
A flashily dressed woman, with tinted yellow hair and rhinestone ear-rings, raised her hand.
"Those are my initials," she announced.
Madam Spoll grew impressive. "Your name is Brindon, ain't it?"
The woman gasped out a "Yes."
"Did I ever see you before?"
"No," said the blonde, "not to my knowledge, you didn't."
Madam Spoll made a comprehensive gesture with both hands, calling attention to the miracle. "You sent up a sealed ballot, didn't you?"
The woman nodded. She was obviously excited, looking as if she feared her skeleton was to be dragged forth from its closet; as indeed it was.
Madam Spoll took up the envelope with her delicate thumb and forefinger and displayed it to the audience.
"You see, it's still sealed," she announced, then, shutting her eyes, she continued: "My guides tell me that he's what you might call infatuated, but he'll come back to you and say he's sorry. Do you understand that?"
The woman was now painfully embarrassed and shrank into her seat. The medium, however, did not spare her. It was too good a chance for a dramatic sensation. She tore the envelope open and read its contents boldly: "Does he care more for Mae Phillips than he does for me?" It was a psychological moment. The old women stared at Mrs. Brindon with morbid delight. There was a little buzzing of whispers through the room. Then the audience prepared itself for the next sensation.
The medium picked up another envelope. "This is marked '275,'" she said, then she clutched her throat. "Oh," she cried, "I'm strangling! They's somebody here who passed out very sudden, like they was poisoned. It's terrible. I can't answer the question the party has written because there's an evil influence here, a wicked woman. She had three husbands and two of 'em died suspicious. Her name is Riley. Would that be you?" She pointed forcefully at a dried-up, old woman in a shawl, with bleared eyes and a veined nose.
There was no response.
"Was this question something about your daughter?" Madam Spoll asked.
The woman coughed and bowed, shrinking into herself.
"I guess you better go somewhere else for your readings," Madam Spoll declared cruelly. "Your aura don't seem to me to be very harmonious. I don't know what's the matter to-night," she went on, passing her hand across her forehead in apparent distress. "The conditions around me are something horrid." Her voice rose. "There's somebody in this very room here who has committed murder. I can't do a thing until I get that off my mind. My guides tell me who it is, and that they'll be satisfied if he'll acknowledge it and say he's sorry. Otherwise, this séance can't go on."
She stopped and glared about the hall. By this time she had worked her audience up to an intense excitement. Every one looked at his neighbor, wondering what was to come, but no one offered to confess to a crime. Madam Spoll raged up and down the platform in a frenzy. Then she stopped like an elephant at bay.
"I know who this person is. It's a man, and if he don't rise and acknowledge it, I shall point him out!"
No one stirred. On the fourth seat, a clean-shaven man of thirty-five, with sharp, aquiline features and wide-spread ears, sat, transfixed with horror, his two hands clenched. It was Mr. Perry, the cleverest actor in the medium's support.
She advanced toward him as if drawn by a secret power, stared into his eyes, and putting her hand upon his shoulder, said:
"Thou art the man!"
Mr. Perry wriggled out of her grasp. "See here," he cried, "you mind your own business, will you. You're a fake! You got no right to make a fool of me." His voice trembled, his face was a convincing mask of guilt arraigned.
The medium shook a warning finger at him. "You either acknowledge what I say is true, or you leave the hall! I can't go on with you here."
Mr. Spoll came in to stand beside her valiantly; spectators stood up to watch the drama. Mr. Perry's eyes were wild, his face distorted; suddenly he arose and rushed out of the room. Madam Spoll snapped her fingers two or three times, shook herself and went back to the platform. The murmurs died down and the séance was resumed.
Madam Spoll waited a while in silence, then she picked up a gold watch with a seal fob from the table. "I'm glad to feel a more peaceful influence," she said. "I'm directed toward this watch. I don't know who brought it up, for I was out of the room at the time, but I get the name 'Oliver.'" She looked up expectantly.
A gentleman arose from an end seat in the third row. He had a high domed head, partly bald, and a gray chin-beard with a shaven upper lip; under shaggy overhanging eyebrows, cold gray eyes looked through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. His air was benevolently judicial and bespoke culture and ease. He had, moreover, a well-marked presence, as of one used to being considered influential and prominent. A row of false teeth glittered when he opened his mouth.
"That's my name," he acknowledged in a deep, fluent voice that was heard all over the room, "and that is my watch."
Madam Spoll fixed him in the eye. "I'd like to know if I can't get your other name. My guides are very strong to-night." After a few moments of self-absorption, she smiled sweetly upon him. "I think I can get it clairaudiently. Would it be Pearson?"
"No, but that's pretty near it, though."
"It sounds like Pearson to me, Pearson. Payson, oh, yes, it's Payson, isn't it?"
"That's right," he said, and sat down.
"Did I ever see you before?"
"Not to my knowledge, Madam."
She looked triumphantly at her audience and smiled.
"If they's any skeptics here to-night, I hope they'll go away satisfied." A number of old ladies nodded emphatically. "Of course, newspaper men never come on a night like this, when my guides are strong. Funny what you see when you ain't got a gun, ain't it? The next time I'm half sick and tired out, they'll be plenty of them here to say I'm a fake, like our friend here who left so sudden, white as a sheet. Now, when I was directed to that watch, I was conscious of a spirit standing beside this gentleman," she pointed at him benevolently, "influencing