He wore a soft, striped flannel shirt with a flowing pink tie. From the sleeves of his shiny, cutaway coat, faded to a purplish hue, his thin, tanned, muscular hands showed like the claws of a vulture.
"You seem to be doin' a pretty good business," he remarked, dropping his ashes carelessly upon the floor.
"So-so," Madam Spoll answered. "If things go well we hope to get a new hall up on Post Street, but there ain't nothing in tests. Straight clairvoyance is the future of this business. Of course, we have to give cheap circles to draw the crowd, but it's a lot of bother and expense and it does tire me all out. Then there's always the trouble from the newspapers likely to come up."
"Pshaw! I wouldn't mind gettin' into the newspapers occasionally, it's good advertisin'. The more you're exposed the better you get along, I believe."
"'Lay low and set on your eggs' is my motto," said the Madam. "I don't like too much talk. I prefer to work in the dark—there's more money in it in the long run. I don't care if I only have a few customers; if they're good and easy I can make all I want."
"What do you bother with sealed messages for, Gert?" Professor Vixley asked.
"Oh, I got to fix a lot of skeptics to-night. I can usually open the ballots right on the table easy enough behind the flowers, but I want to read a few sealed messages besides. It may help along with Payson, too." She took up an envelope numbered "275." It was saturated with alcohol. She held it to the light, and squinting at the transparent paper, she read: "'When is Susie coming home?' Now, ain't that a fool question? I'll take a rise out of her, see if I don't! That's that woman who got into trouble in that poisoning case."
"Say, the alcohol trick's a pretty good stunt when you get a chance to use it! But I don't have time for it in my business."
"Yes, it's easy enough if you use good, grain alcohol, but I wish I had an egg-tester. They save a lot of time, and you can read through four or five thicknesses of paper with 'em. Spoll, he has plenty of chance to hold out the ballots and bring 'em in to me; his coming and going ain't noticed, because he has to fetch 'em up to the table, anyway. By the time I go on, all the smell's faded out. If it ain't, my handkerchief is so full of perfumery that you can't notice anything else. I'm going to fit up my table with one o' them glass plates with an electric flash-light underneath that I can turn on with a switch. You can read right through the envelope then. But I don't often consent to tests like that. It deteriorates your powers. And my regular customers are usually contented to send their ballots up open and glad of the chance to get an answer. They don't want to give the spirits no trouble! Lord, I wish I had the power I had when I begun." She smiled pleasantly at her companion.
"I see old Mrs. Purinton on the front row as I come in," Vixley observed, shifting his cigar labially from one corner of his mouth to the other.
"Say, there's a grafter for fair!" she exclaimed. "She's been coming here to the publics for two years and never once has she gave me a private setting. That's what I call close. She's as near as matches! And always the same old song—little Willie's croup or when's Henry going to write, and woozly rubbish like that. I got a good mind to hand her a dig. I could make a laughing-stock out of her, and scare her away easy. Folks do like a laugh at a public séance; you know that, Professor."
"Sure! It don't do no harm as long as you hit the right one."
"Oh, I ain't out for nothing but paper-sports and grafters. I know a good thing when I see it. I hope there'll be something doing worth while in this Payson business. He may show up to-night. Lulu claims she conned him good."
"I hope I'll have a slice off him," said Professor Vixley, his beady, black eyes shining. "We got to get up a new game for him before we pass him down the line."
"Oh, if anybody can I guess we can; there's more'n one way to kill a cat, besides a-kissing of it to death."
"Yes, smotherin' it in hot air, for instance!" Vixley grinned.
"They's one thing I wish," said Madam Spoll, "and that is that we had a regular blue-book like they have in the East. Why, they tell me there's six thousand names printed for Boston alone. If we had some way of getting a lead with this Payson it would be lots easier. But I expect the San Francisco mediums will get better organized some day and coöperate more shipshape."
Here Mr. Spoll entered, a tall, thin, bony, wild-eyed individual with a rolling pompadour of red hair, his face spattered with freckles. He walked on tiptoe, as if at a funeral, bowed to the Professor, coughed into his hand, and took up the letters Madam Spoll had been investigating, putting down some new ones.
"Oh, here's that 'S.F.B.' that Ringa told me about," she said, glancing at an envelope. "Is Ringa come in yet?"
"I ain't seen him; but it's early," said Spoll. "He'll show up all right. I'll send him right in."
"Is Mr. Perry in front?"
"You bet!" Spoll was still tiptoeing about the room on some mysterious errand. "Perry ain't likely to lose a chance to make a dollar, not him!"
"He's a good one!" Madam Spoll smiled at the Professor. "I don't hardly know what I'd do without him. I can always depend upon him to make good. He ain't too willing, and sometimes, I declare, he almost fools me, even. I've known him to stand up and denounce me something fierce, especially when there was newspaper men in the audience, and then just gradually calm down and admit everything I wanted him to. He looks the part, too. Why, I sent him round to Mrs. Stepson's circle one night, when she first come to town, and she was fooled good. I've seen him cry at a materializing séance so hard it would almost break your heart."
"Does he play spook?"
"No, he's best in the audience. He's a good capper, but I don't believe he could play spook—besides, he's getting too fleshy."
"Who else have you got regular?" asked Professor Vixley.
"Only two or three. I don't need so many touts as most. I pride myself on doing my own work without much help. Of course, you got to give a name sometimes when a fishing test won't work, and a friend in the audience helps. Miss French, she's pretty good, but she's tricky. I'm afraid of her. I was gave away once to the Chronicle and I lost a whole lot of business. Men are safer. Harry Debert is straight enough, but he's stupid. He's the too-willing kind, and you don't have a chance to get any effect.
"Say, Spoll," she added to her husband, "be sure and don't take no combs nor gloves! I ain't going to do no diagnosing in public—not for ten cents. Them that want it can pay for it and take a private setting."
"They're mostly flowers to-night," said Spoll as he crept out of the room.
"Lord, I do hate a flower test!" she groaned. "It's too hard work. Of course, they're apt to bring roses if their name's Rose, or lilies and daisies the same way, but you can't never be sure, and you have to fish. Lockets is what I like, lockets and ballots."
At this moment Mr. Ringa entered. He was a bleached, tow-headed youth, long and lanky, with mild gray eyes and a stubbly, straw-colored mustache. Two front teeth were missing from his upper jaw. His clothes seemed to have shrunk and tightened upon his frame. He bowed respectfully to Madam Spoll and Professor Vixley, who represented to him the top of the profession.
"Did you get that 'S.F.B.' letter, all right?" he asked.
"Yes, what about it?"
"She's easy!"
Vixley grinned. "If she's easy for you she must be a cinch for us!"
Ringa persevered. "Well, I got the dope, anyway. She's a Mrs. Brindon and she's worried about her husband—he's gone dotty on some fluzie up North. I read her hand last week. I told her they was trouble coming to her along of a dark woman—she's one of these beer-haired blondes—what I call a Würzburger blonde—then I showed it to her in the heart-streak. 'Go ahead and tell me how it will come out,' she says. I says: 'There's a peculiar condition in your hand that I ain't quite on to,' I says. She says: 'Why, can't you read it?' Says I: 'Madam, if I could read that well, I wouldn't be doing palms for no two bits a shot; I'd be where Granthope