The Heart Line. Gelett Burgess

smiled at her divination, doubtful of its origin.

      "You have a very good sense of direction, haven't you?"

      She appeared to notice his incredulity, but not to resent it.

      "Indeed, I have very little," she said; then, giving him her hand with a quick impulse of cordiality, she smiled, nodded and turned to the anteroom.

      He glanced at the table, saw her ring, and made a motion toward it. Then it occurred to him that it might be used as an excuse for seeing her again and he followed her out.

      In the reception-room, Fancy was yawning; seeing them, she brought her hand quickly to her mouth and raised her eyebrows at Granthope. He made no sign in reply. Clytie walked up to her impulsively and held out her hand.

      "I do hope I'll see you again, sometime," she said.

      Fancy laughed. "I do, too. You're the only one who's ever really appreciated me. You make me almost wish I was a lady." By her tone, there was some old wound that bled.

      "You're that, and better, I'm sure," Clytie answered softly; "you're yourself!"

      She turned to leave. Granthope, who had watched the two women, amused, opened the door for her, received her long, steady glance, her quiet, low "Good morning," and bowed her out.

      As soon as she had fairly left, he turned quickly to Fancy. "Where's Philip?"

      "In the back room, I suppose." Fancy looked surprised.

      "Go and get him, please; tell him to find out where this girl lives, and all he can about her."

      "Say, Frank—" Fancy began, rising.

      "Hurry, please! I don't want him to miss her. She's a good thing!"

      "She's too good, Frank, that's just it!"

      "That's why I want her. I don't catch one like that every day. Why, she's worth all the rest put together." He looked impatiently at her.

      Fancy shrugged her shoulders and sailed airily out of the room.

      Granthope stood for some time, his hands thrust into the pockets of his velvet coat, gazing abstractedly at the red wall of his reception-room. Then he took up the telephone and called for Madam Spoll's number.

      He made himself known and then said, "I'll be round to-night before your séance. I want to talk something over."

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

THE SPIDER'S NEST

       Table of Contents

      The architecture of San Francisco was, in early days, simple and unpretentious, befitting the modest aspirations of a trading and mining town. Builders accepted their constructive limitations and did their honest best. False fronts, indeed, there were, making one-story houses appear to be two stories high, but redwood made no attempts in those days to masquerade as marble or granite.

      During the sixties, a few French architects imported a taste for classic art, and for a time, within demure limits, their exotic taste prevailed. The simple, flat, front wall of houses, now grown to three honest stories high, they embellished with dentil cornice, egg-and-dart moldings and chaste consoles; they added to the second story a little Greek portico with Corinthian columns accurately designed, led up to by a flight of wooden steps; the façade was broken by a single bay-window, ornamented with conventional severity. Block after block of such dwelling-houses were built. They had a sort of restful regularity, they broke no artistic hearts.

      In later days, when San Francisco had begun to take its place in the world, a greater degree of sophistication ensued. Capitals of columns became more fanciful, ornament more grotesquely original, till ambitious turners and wood-carvers gave full play to their morbific imagination. Then was the day of scrolls and finials, bosses, rosettes, brackets, grille-work and comic balusters. Conical towers became the rage, wild windows, odd porches and decorations nailed on, regardless of design, made San Francisco's nightmare architecture the jest of tourists. Lastly, after an interregnum of Queen Anne vagaries, came the Renaissance and the Age of Stone, heralded by concrete imitations and plaster walls of bogus granite.

      Madam Spoll's house was of that commonplace, anemically classic style which, after all, was then the least offensive type of residence. It was painted appropriately in lead color—for the house, with the rest of the block, seemed to have been cast in a mold—a tone which did its best to make Eddy Street prosaic. It had been long abandoned by fashion and was now hardly on speaking terms with respectability. It occupied a place in a row of boarding-houses, cheap millinery establishments and unpretentious domiciles. There was a dreary little unkempt yard in front, with a passage leading to an entrance under the front steps; above, the sign "Madam Spoll, Clairvoyant and Medium," was displayed on ground glass, and below, hanging on a nail against the wall, was a transparency. When the lamp was lighted inside this, one read the words: "Circle To-night. Admittance ten cents."

      This Thursday the lamp was lighted. It was half-past seven o'clock.

      Devotees had begun to arrive, and, entering by the lower door, they paid their dimes to Mr. Spoll, who stood beside the little table at the entrance, left their "tests"—envelopes, flowers, jewelry or what not—and passed into the audience-room.

      This had once been a dining-room and its walls were covered with a figured paper, above which was a bright red border decorated with Japanese fans and parasols. A few gaudy paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, and here and there were hung framed mottoes: "There Is No Death"—"We Shall Meet Again"—"There Is a Land that is Fairer than Day." This room was filled with chairs set in rows, and would hold some forty or fifty persons. It was separated by an arch from a smaller room beyond, where, upon a platform, stood a table with an open Bible, an organ, two chairs and a folding screen.

      Only the front seats were at present occupied, these by habitués of the place, all firm believers, a picturesque group showing at a glance the stigmata of eccentricity or mental aberration. For the most part they were women in black; they bowed to one another as they sat down, then waited in stolid patience for the séance to open. The others were pale, blue-eyed men with drooping mustaches and carefully parted hair, and a whiskered, bald-headed old gentleman or two who sat in silence. The room was dimly illuminated by side lights.

      Farther down the hallway, opposite the foot of a flight of stairs leading upward to her living-rooms, was Madam Spoll's "study," and here she was, this evening, preparing for business.

      This room was small and crowded with furniture. The marble mantel held an assortment of bisque bric-à-brac, sea-shells, paper knives and cheap curiosities. The walls were covered with photographs, a placque or two, fans and picture cards. A huge folding bed, foolishly imitating a mirrored sideboard, occupied one corner of the room. A couch covered with fancy cushions and tidies ran beside it. A table, heavily draped, a three-legged tea-stand, an easel with a satin sash bearing the portrait, photographically enlarged in crayon, of a bold, smirking, overdressed little girl, a ragged trunk and several plush-covered chairs were huddled, higgledy-piggledy, along the other side of the room.

      Upon the couch Madam Spoll sat, spraying envelopes with alcohol from an atomizer on a small bamboo stand before her.

      She was an enormous woman of masculine type, with short, briskly curling, iron-gray hair and a triple chin. Heavy eyebrows, heavy lips, heavy ears and cheeks had Madam Spoll, but her forehead was unlined with wrinkles; her expression was serene, and, when she smiled, engaging and conciliating. She was dressed in black satin with wing-like sleeves, the front of her waist being covered with a triangular decoration of bead-work.

      Watching her with roving, black eyes was Professor Vixley, smoking a vile cigar. His face was sallow, of a predatory mold with a pointed, mangy beard, and