THE STORY OF THE RETIRED CAR-CONDUCTOR
I was born and brought up in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and I had a close call to escape bein’ named Wrestling Brewster, one of my mother’s family names. My father voted for just plain Eli Cook, howsomever, and dad most always generally won. It might have made considerable difference to me, maybe, for as it was, whether from my name or nature, I rather took after my father, who was no mortal good. Father was what Old Colony folks call “clever,” just a shif’less ne’er-do-well, handy enough when he got to work, but a sort of a Jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Never went to church, fished on Sundays, smoked like a chimney and chewed like a cow, easy to get on with and hard to drive—no more backbone than a clam, my mother used to say. And what he was, I am, with just enough Brewster in me to make me repent, but not enough to hinder me from going astray.
I come out here to Californy in ’49, and hoofed it most all the way. I calculated to get rich without workin’, but I reckoned without my host. I looked for somethin’ easy till I got as thin as a yaller dog, and for twenty year I held on that way by my eyelids, pickin’ up odd jobs and loafin’ and whittlin’ sticks in between times. Then I got a place as driver on the Folsom Street hoss-car line, and that’s where I made my fortune by hook or crook, till I retired.
If I’d had a drop more Brewster blood I wouldn’t have did what I did, but I kind of fell into the way of piecin’ out my salary the way every one else did who worked for the company, and my conscience didn’t give me no trouble for a considerable spell. It was only stealin’ from a corporation, anyway, and I reckoned they could afford it, with the scrimpin’ pay they give us.
In them days the company ran them little double-ender cars with ten-foot bodies. When I got to the end of the route and drove my team round and hitched up at t’other end, I had to take out the old Slawson fare-box and set it up in front, for they didn’t have no conductors in early days. I s’pose I kind of hated to carry such a load of money, bein’ more or less of a shirk, and I got into the way of turning her upside down and shakin’ out a few nickels every time. They come out easy, I’ll say that for ’em, and it wa’n’t no trick at all to clean up a dollar or so every day, and twice as much on Sundays.
Well, so long as all the boys was a-doin’ the same thing, the loss wa’n’t noticed, but somehow or other the company got a few honest men on the line, and they turned in so much more money than we did every night that the old man smelled a mouse. He put in the new Willis patent fare-box that was durned hard to beat. It had a little three-cornered wheel inside that acted like a valve, and nothin’ that went in would come out, either by turnin’ the box upside down, or by usin’ the wire pokers we experimented with. They wa’n’t nothin’ for it but to git keys, and so keys we got. It looked a heap more like stealin’ than it did before, but it was rather easier. Some of the boys was caught at it, but as luck would have it, nobody never suspected me, and I took out my little old percentage regular as a faro dealer.
I salted down my money in the Hibernia Bank, and I called it my sinkin’ fund, which it was for sure sinkin’ my soul down deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit. I’m a-goin’ to make a clean breast of it, howsomever, and I own up I was about as bad as the rest of ’em, and four times as sharp at the game.
After a while the system was improved, and the company got new rollin’ stock with all two-horse cars. I was a conductor then, and I ran on No. 27 till I was off the road. The Gardner punch was my first experience in knockin’ down fares right in the face and eyes of everybody, and I had figgered a way to “hold out” long before I had the nerve to try it. But Lord! it was as easy as fallin’ off a log, when you knew how. You see, we sold a five-coupon ticket for a quarter, and we had to slice off a section for every fare, with a candle-snuffer arrangement, the check droppin’ into a little box on the under jaw of the nippers. All we had to do was to “build up” on ’em. You held back a lot of clipped tickets, with two or three or four coupons left, as the case might be, and you kept ’em underneath the bunch of regular tickets for sale. Say a man handed you a whole ticket for two fares. You made a bluff at cuttin’ it, and handed him back a three-coupon ticket from underneath your rubber band. You kept his whole one for yourself, and sold it to the next passenger for two bits.
Well, Jim Williams was caught red-handed, and Gardner’s system went to Jericho. Next they sprung the regular bell-punch on us, the kind you “punch in the presence of the passenjaire.” We had no trouble with that. They was a dummy palm-bell manufactured almost simultaneous, and we’d ring up fares without punchin’ at all. The breastplate registers was worked similar, with a bell inside your vest connected with a button. It was as easy as pie, providin’ nobody watched the numbers on the indicator while you was ringin’ up.
I left the road before they adopted the stationary registers or clock machines. I admit they’re ingenious, but still I ain’t got no doubt that, given a good big crowd and no spotters, I could manage to make my expenses with the rest of the boys.
But I won’t go round Robin Hood’s barn to spin out the story. The result was that after about fifteen years of patient, unremittin’ industry, I had somethin’ like $12,000 in the bank, and what was left of my New England conscience shootin’ through me like rheumatism. It didn’t bother me so much at first, but when once Brewster blood begins to boil it don’t slow up in a hurry. Eli Cook didn’t seem to care a continental, but they was a whole lot of Pilgrim Fathers behind me that was bound to testify sooner or later.
I tried to settle down and get into some quiet business, where I wouldn’t have no more trickery to do than maybe put a little terra alba in the sugar and peanuts in the coffee. But after lookin’ round I hankered after makin’ money easier, and so I bought minin’ stocks and hung on, assessment after assessment, like grim Death, till, by Jimminy! one day I’ll be durned if I didn’t calculate I had $30,000 to the good, if I sold. I pulled out the day before the slump. I don’t know why Providence favored my fortune, which was so wickedly come by, and I don’t know why, after doin’ so well, I didn’t have spunk enough to pay back the company, but, anyhow, I wa’n’t yet waked up to feel full consciousness of sin, and I shut my ears to the callin’ to repentance.
Now, all this time, bein’ of a South Shore family of seafaring men mostly, I had a hankerin’ after the water. So, when the first lots was cut up, out to the Beach, I bought a parcel of land on the shore. I used to go out there all the time to sit on my own sand, and recollect how it used to feel to get a good dry heat on my bare legs when I was a boy down to Duxbury. If they had only been clams there, I’d have been as happy as a pollywog in a hogshead of rain water.
One day I was walkin’ out there, and as I passed the company’s stables I see a sign out, “Cars for Sale, Cheap,” and I went in to see ’em. I speered round the yard till what did I see but old 27, my car, settin’ there without wheels, lookin’ as shabby as Job’s cat! I asked the foreman how much they wanted for it, and I got it for ten dollars. I hired a dray and moved the thing out to the Beach that very afternoon. I set it up on two sills on my lot, calculatin’ I could use it for a cabin to hang out in, over Sunday, and it was as steady as Plymouth Rock, and made as cute a little room as you’d want to see. Every time I went I tinkered round and fixed her up more, till I had a good bunk at one end, lockers under the seats, and a trig little cellar beneath, where I kept canned stuff.
’Twa’n’t long before I regularly moved out there and stayed for good. Just from force of habit, I expect, at first, I rung two bells every time I got on, and one bell before I got off, and I always keep it up, just as if the old car was really on the rails. I never went in and set down but I felt as if No. 27 was poundin’ along toward Woodward’s Gardens, with the hosses on a jog trot. Sometimes when the rain was drivin’ down and the wind blowin’ like all possessed, and it was pitch dark outside, with the surf rollin’, I’d put down my pipe and go out on the platform, and set the brake up just as tight as I could. I don’t know why, but it kind of give me a sense of security.
It wa’n’t long before I begun to feel a positive affection for that old car, what with the years I’d spent on it, and livin’ ’way out there to the Beach alone with nothin’ to think about but the way I’d robbed the company. No. 27 was more like a pet dog than a house. You can talk about ships bein’ like women, and havin’ queer ways and moods, but you go to work and take an old car, and it’s more like folks than a second cousin; and it’s got sense and temper, I’m persuaded of that.
But it wa’n’t long before No. 27 begun to act queer. I noticed it a considerable spell before I realized just what was wrong. It wouldn’t stay still a minute. It groaned and sighed like a sinner on the anxious seat. I couldn’t ease it any way I tried. It worked off the sills, and just wallowed in the sand. The sand drifts like snow at the Beach, and often I used to have to dig myself out the door after a sou’wester. I didn’t mind bein’ alone so much, for I had a book of my Uncle Joshua Cook’s sermons to read, but the way that old car talked to itself got on my nerves. The windows rattled, and sometimes a shutter would fall with a bang, sudden, and I’d jump half out of my skin. Then, too, that stealin’ was preyin’ on my mind, and I couldn’t help harpin’ on it. They was a Slawson fare-box still on the front of the car, and finally I got to goin’ in t’other way to avoid it. Then the green light got to watchin’ me, and I begun to drink, for I felt the full qualms of the unrighteous, and the car itself seemed to know it was defiled by my sin.
Finally, one night, I come home from the Cliff House, where I’d been warmin’ up my courage, and when I got back to No. 27 I see the green lantern I’d left lit was a burnin’ low, almost out. I got up on the platform and tried to ring two bells as usual, but the cord broke in my hands. I tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. That blamed car just naturally refused to recognize me, and wouldn’t let me in. Then I sat down in the sand and cried like a fool, and wondered what was wrong.
It bust on me like a light from the sky, and the callin’ of a sinner to repentance, sayin’, “Come now, this is the appointed time.” All I’d done in the old days rose up in front of me, and right there I experienced a change of heart and was convicted of sin. It come sudden, and I acted sudden. I didn’t stop to think nor reason, nor to set my mortal mind against the judgment of Heaven and that car, but I rose up confident of grace, and went round to the front platform where the fare-box was, and dropped in a nickel and tried the bell. The cord wa’n’t broke on this side, and she rung all right. The light flared up again, and the door opened as easy as a snuff-box. I was saved.
From that time on I never got aboard without payin’ my fare, and when the box was full I’d turn it over to the treasurer of the company. Of course I might have drawn out my money in the bank and paid it all up at once, but it seemed to me that this means was shown me, so that I would be reminded of my wickedness every day and keep in the road of repentance. But even then, sometimes I backslid and fell from grace when I emptied out the box. Some of the money would stick to my fingers, and it seemed as if I couldn’t stop stealin’ from the company. But afterward I’d repent and put in a quarter or even a half dollar for my fare to make up, and in that way I went on tryin’ to lead a better life, and keep in the straight and narrer road of salvation.
Well, I thought then that No. 27 would settle down and give me some peace of mind, but it wa’n’t long before that car begun to get uneasy again. I didn’t know what in creation to make of it, and it beat all the way it took on. I drew out $5,000 of good securities that was payin’ nine per cent. and sent it all in gold coin packed in a barrel of barley to the company, but that didn’t do no good at all. The car was plum crazy, and nothin’ seemed to satisfy the critter.
No. 27 settled and sobbed and sighed like a fellow that’s been jilted by a flirt. They wa’n’t no doin’ nothin’ with it. I puttered over it and tightened all the nuts, but it snivelled and whined like a sick pup every time the wind blew. When the fog come in, the drops of water stood on the window panes like tears, and every gale made the body tremble like a girl bein’ vaccinated. The old car must be sick, I thought, and I greased all the slides and hinges with cod-liver oil. The thing only wheezed worse than ever. I thought likely it might be just fleas, for the sand is full of ’em, and I sponged the cushions with benzine. It wa’n’t no more use than nothin’ at all!
Perhaps I ain’t got no call to boast, but I flatter myself I found out what was lackin’ as soon as most would have done. Howsomever, I spent a good deal of time walkin’ round the Beach thinkin’ it over. They’s quite a colony of us out there now; seemed like my car drew out a lot of others, until they’s more than a baker’s dozen of ’em scattered around, built up and managed in different ways, accordin’ to the ideas of their owners. Some h’ist ’em up and build a house underneath, some put two alongside and rip out the walls, some put ’em end to end, some make chambers of ’em and some settin’-rooms. They call the colony Carville-by-the-Sea, and it looks for all the world like some new-fangled sort of Chinatown.
I was walkin’ round one day, inspectin’ the new additions to the place, when I see a car I thought I recognised. I went up, and if it wa’n’t a Fifth Street body, and as far as I could see, it must have been the very one old 27 used to transfer with in the old days! It was numbered 18, and I remembered how she used to wait for us on the corner when we was late. Then I understood what was the matter with my car. It was just naturally pinin’ away for its old mate.
Well, sir, I went to the owner and bought No. 18 at his own price. I’d have paid twenty-five dollars if he’d asked it. I moved her onto my lot, put a foundation under her, sideways to 27, like an ell to a farm-house. And it seemed to me I noticed old 27 give a grunt and settle down in peace and contentment. I was a good guesser. I hitched ’em together with a little stoop, covered over so as to make the two practically one, and then I give the whole thing a fresh coat of white paint, and cleaned up the windows and swept out till it was all spick and span. And I never had no trouble with No. 27 after that, nor with my own conscience neither, for now the money’s all paid back with interest.
Well, sir, maybe you won’t believe it, and maybe you will, but about a year after the two was hitched together a funny thing happened. One day morning I went outdoors, and see something on the sand beside No. 18. My eyes stuck out like a fifer’s thumb when I recognised what it was. It was a plum new red wheelbarrow!
CHAPTER VII
THE EX-MEDIUM’S ADVENTURE: THE INVOLUNTARY SUICIDE
Warmed by his copious draughts of wine, stimulated by the comradeship of his fellow-adventurers, and his stomach packed to the top corner with rich foods, Professor Vango left Coffee John’s, rejoicing in a brave disregard for the troubles that had been for so long pursuing him. His superstitious terrors had subsided, and for a while he was a man again.
Clay Street was empty, and stretched black and narrow to the water-front. Below him lay the wholesale commercial quarter of the town with its blocks of deserted warehouses, silent and dark. It was a part of San Francisco almost unknown to the ex-medium, and now, at midnight, obscure and bewildering, a place of possibilities. He was for adventures, and he decided to seek them in the inscrutable region of the docks.
He stepped boldly down the street, but it was not long before the echoes of his footsteps struck him chill with dread. The packing-cases upon the curb cast shadows where fearsome things might lurk. He began to watch with a roving eye the crossings and alleys, from which some form might come upon him unawares, and he cast sharp glances over his shoulder for the appearance of the spirit that had cowed him. The thought of Mrs. Higgins brought him back to his old torture. He felt as though she were always round the next corner.
He had almost reached East Street, when he yielded to his qualms and bolted into the warmth and light of the Bowsprit Saloon to drown his forebodings in two schooners of steam beer. So disappeared Coffee John’s luck-dime, and with it the stimulating effects of his exordium. Vango’s short glow of comfort was, however, but a respite, for shortly after midnight the bar closed, and he was sent forth again into the perilous night.
He was pacing up and down the stone arcade of the Ferry Building, dismally anticipating the prospect of walking the city streets alone with his curse, when it occurred to him that he might possibly make his way to Oakland. Oakland was less strenuous; it was calm, sober, respectable, free from the distressing torments of San Francisco. Many a time he had met Mrs. Higgins upon the dock behind the waiting-room, and he knew the way well. He dodged slyly up the wagon-track, round the corner of the baggage-room, to the slip where the steamer Piedmont was waiting to set out on her last trip. As he came to the apron a few belated commuters were running for the boat. He joined them without being observed, and was hurried aboard by a warning from the deck-hands. Just as he reached the bib the bridge was drawn up, the hawsers cast off, and with a deep roaring whistle the vessel started, gathered way, and, urged by the jingle-bell, shot out of the slip into the waters of the Bay.
The crowds went forward, upstairs, to the protection of the cabin, but Professor Vango stayed by the after-rail alone, where a chain was stretched across the open stern. A ragged mist lay upon the harbour, hanging to the surface of the water like a blanket, torn open sometimes by a passing gust of wind and closing up to a thicker fog beyond. High in the air, it was clearer, and the stars shone bright.
The thumping paddle-wheels, the phosphorescent waves, and the fey obscurity of the night wrought heavily upon Vango’s emotion, and the fumes of alcohol mingled in his brain. He was not happy; things went round a bit, and he had hard work controlling his thoughts. He longed for the gay cheerfulness of the saloon above, but he felt a need of the sharp night air to revive him, first. He watched the stairway suspiciously, feeling sure that the ghost of Mrs. Higgins, if she were to appear, would come that way.
In point of fact, a woman did soon descend from the upper deck, and stood at the bottom of the stairs in some uncertainty, gazing about her. She was a heavy, middle-aged blonde, in a long black cape and veil, the type of a thousand weak, impressionable widows, and, in the dusk, through the glaze of Vango’s eyes, a passable counterfeit of the late lamented Mrs. Higgins. She soon perceived him, and came forward a few steps, while he retreated as far away, putting her off with futile gestures. Curious at this exhibition, the woman walked up to him with a question on her lips.
She was, in all probability, in search of nothing more than a glass of water, but the medium had no more than time to hear, “Tell me where—” before he had mentally completed the inquiry for her. “Where—where is Lilian?” she meant, of course. Appalled, he had jumped over the chain in the stern, and as she approached with that demand piercing his conscience-stricken soul, he shrank back unconsciously. The first step carried him to the extreme end of the boat, the second led him, with a splashing fall, into the Bay. The waters closed over him, and the steamer swept on.
When he came to the surface, spluttering but sober at last in the face of a new and more tangible danger, he heard the rising staccato of a woman’s shriek, and saw a pyramid of lights fading into the fog. Then he sank again, and all was cold, black, and wet.
He rose to the surface in a space clear of mist, dimly lighted by a wisp of moon. A few feet away a fruit-crate bobbed upon the waves in the steamer’s wake, and for this he swam. By placing it under his body, he found he could float well enough to keep his nose out of water, tolerably secure from drowning, for a time at least.
The mist closed in upon him, was swept asunder, and shut down again. The current was bearing him toward the harbour entrance he decided, and, as he had fallen overboard about opposite Goat Island, he must by this time be in the fairway, drifting for the Golden Gate and the Pacific. He might, if his endurance held out, catch sight of some ship anchored in the stream, and hail her crew. But no lights appeared, and he grew deathly cold and stiff.
In Professor Vango’s ears the sobbing of the siren on Lime Point was lulling him to a sleep that promised eternal forgetfulness, and the Alcatraz Island bell was tolling grewsomely of his passing, when his senses were aroused by a brisker note that came in quick, padded beats through the fog. He summoned his drowsy wits for a last effort, and gazed into the gloom. Suddenly, piercing the cloudy curtain drawn about him, came a small launch, stern on, churning its way at full speed straight at him.
In another moment it would have sped past him, to be swallowed up in the darkness again, but, with a mighty struggle, he threw himself at the boat, and, dodging the whirling propeller, clutched the rail with a violence that made the craft careen. It dipped as if to throw him off, but Vango held on and screamed hoarsely for help. No reply came from the boat, nor was anybody to be seen in it, so at last he made shift to climb aboard and reach the cock-pit.
The vapour and darkness lay about him like a pall, muffling even the outlines of the boat itself; no lights were burning aboard. Shivering, perplexed, terrified, but grateful for his preservation, and wondering where his fate had led him, the Professor started on a further examination of the launch.
He had taken but a few steps, when his foot struck a soft something extended upon the floor. His teeth chattered with fear as he groped down and made it out to be a human form. That it was a woman, he discovered by the long hair that had overflowed her shoulders in crisp waves, and a touch of her body showed that she was alive. He lifted her to a sitting posture on the seat, then loosened her dress at the neck, and chafed her wrists and temples. Her breath soon came in gasps; she sighed heavily and sat erect, with a shudder. She gazed into his face in the dimness, then cast her eyes over the boat and fell to weeping.
So, for some time, the launch, carrying its two wretched passengers, and what more Vango dared not guess, plunged on insanely through the fog. The medium knew nothing of practical affairs; psychology was his art, and chicanery his science; but even had he been mechanic enough to stop and reverse the engine in the dark, it would have taken a considerable acquaintance with the Bay of San Francisco to have set and kept any logical course in such a night. Wrapped in a tarpaulin which he found by him, under which his dripping form shivered in misery, the unhappy man sat, baffled, mystified, hopeless, too beat about in his mind even to wonder. The woman cried on and the propeller kept up its rhythmic thud, thud, thud, dragging the little vessel where it would.
Suddenly the swing of the choppy sea flung the woman at full length across the seat and brought her to her senses. She arose, now, and scanned the fog, then peered curiously at the medium, who was silent from very terror.
“Where are we? Where, in Heaven’s name, did you come from?” she cried, sharply, and she approached him with a searching gaze.
Trickster that he was, he sought some wile to outwit her. He mumbled something about having fallen off Fishermen’s Wharf.
She stumbled to the cuddy under the seat and brought out a lantern and a box of matches. With these she obtained a light and held it flaring in Vango’s face. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but you’ve got to help me get this boat back. Are you armed?”
The medium made an emphatic denial, for the woman’s face was sternly set. She was indubitably a quadroon, by evidence of her creamy, swarthy skin and the tight curls of her hair. Her dark eyes burned in the lamplight under heavy, knotted brows, her full lips drawing apart like a dog’s to show a line of white, straight teeth. She was the picture of Judith ready to strike, and Vango trembled under her gaze till she turned from him with an expression of contempt.
“Come aft and help me with the machinery,” she commanded. “We can’t keep on, Heaven knows where, at full speed backward through weather like this. Fi-fi, now, and mind your feet!”
They went to the tiny engine where, fumbling with the levers and stop-cocks, she brought the machinery to a stop. The silence crowded down upon them, as if someone had just died. Vango noticed that the woman kept between him and the starboard rail with some secret intent, and, as the two eyed each other, he caught sight of a revolver swinging from her belt. He saw something else, also, that made his heart stop beating for an instant; and then the quadroon held up her hand and listened attentively.
“Do you hear a bell?” she asked.
Scarcely had she spoken when in the distance a fog-whistle sang out across the water, and through the flying scud a yellow light winked and went out.
“We’re right off Alcatraz,” she said. “Here, you stand by this lever and mind my orders. Watch now, how I do it. Way forward for full speed ahead, way back to reverse, and midway to stop; and turn off the naphtha at this throttle. I’ll take the wheel, and we’ll make across for the Lombard Street Wharf. Keep a look-out ahead, and let me know the instant you see a light, or anything!”
She went forward to the wheel, and the launch forged ahead at half-speed with Vango shuddering at the engine. But it was not only the piercing wind that froze him stiff as he stood, for there was a ghastly horror aboard that was almost unbearable. As the woman had stood by the engine, swinging her lantern to show the working of the machinery, the light had sought out one corner after another, and, though she had stood between, the rays fell once upon an object protruding from beneath the seat. It was a foot; there was no mistaking the outline, though the light had touched it but for an instant. With all his resolution he put the sight out of his mind and said no word to her, for her eyes terrified him, and he dared not question.
She had, however, left the lantern behind to illuminate the machine, and it now slanted past and flickered on the toe of that foot. He tried to remove his eyes from it, but the thing held him with a morbid fascination. Look where he would, it stuck in the end of his eye and held him in an anguish. He kept his hand ready to the lever, and succeeded in obeying the woman’s orders to stop, go ahead, or back, but he acted as one hypnotised.
In about half an hour a dim light off the bow warned them off Lombard Street pier, and from here they crawled slowly past the water-front, guided by the lights on the sea-wall and the lanterns of ships in the stream. Below the Pacific Mail dock their run was straight for Mission Rock, and from there to the Potrero flats, but they were continually getting off their course and regaining it, beating about this way and that, confused in direction by the lights in the fog.
During this time the two exchanged hardly a word that did not have to do with the navigation of the boat. Vango watched her, silhouetted against the mist as she bent to one side and the other, and the distressing tensity of the situation did not prevent him now from racking his wits to find some possible explanation of her identity and purpose. He was a keen observer and used to making shrewd guesses, but this was too much for him.
At last, in the gray of the dawn, the launch arrived off Hunter’s Point, and the medium’s eyes were straining through the murk to see some landing pier, when he received a sudden summons to stop the boat. He obeyed and looked up at the woman, who came aft. He flattened himself against the rail in terror of her, for, sure now that one murder had been done aboard the launch, he feared another.
“Now,” said the quadroon woman, “I want to know who you are and all about you.”
In a few stuttering syllables he told her his story, persisting with a childish fatuity in the deceit he had already begun, and welding to it bits of truth from the strange procession of events that had carried him through the past few months. When he mentioned the fact that he was a medium, he noticed a change in the woman’s attitude immediately. His cunning awoke, and the sharper began to assert himself, following this clew, telling of how many persons he had aided with his wonderful clairvoyant powers, and the success of his trances. It is needless to say that he did not mention Mrs. Higgins, nor his reason for having given up his practice. As he rolled off the glib catch-words and phrases of his trade, he watched the woman sharply through his drooping eyelids with the agile scrutiny of a professional trickster, and sought in her appearance some clew to her secret.
With all her determination, the woman was undoubtedly sadly distraught. The pistol by her side hinted at violence. Her dishevelled hair, the distraction of her garments, her clinched fists and tightened brows told clearly of some moving experience. Above all, the corpse beside the engine, and her attempts to hide it, proclaimed some secret tragedy. Yet while her mouth trembled her eyes were steady; if he made a wrong guess it might not be well for him.
At the end of his explanations she had melted in a burst of feminine credulity and hunger for the marvellous. “Then you can help me,” she exclaimed, throwing herself upon his leadership in a swift submission to the dominant sex. “You must help me! I am in great trouble, and what is to be done must be done quickly. Can you hold a sitting now? I want to find something as soon as I can—it is of the greatest importance—I would give any price to know where to find it. You must get your spirit friends to help me!”
The medium shuffled. “You’re rather nervous, and the conditions ain’t favourable when a party is excited or sufferin’ from excitin’ emotions. The proper degree of mutuality ain’t to be obtained unless a sitter is what you might call undisturbed.” Then he put all his shrewdness into a piercing gaze. “Besides, you got murder on you! I see a red aura hoverin’ over you like you had bloody hands!”
At this the quadroon burst out, “I haven’t, but I wish I had, and it isn’t my fault!”
“Confession is good for the soul of a party,” Vango said, with unction.
“I’ll tell you everything, if you’ll only promise to help me. I am innocent of any real crime, I swear before God! But I tried to kill a man to-night. It was in self-defence, though.”
She took the lantern, and, setting the light on the seat, pointed silently to the body. “Look at him!” she said.
After a heroic conflict with his repugnance the medium rolled the corpse over till it lay face up. The dead man was a Chinaman. He could see that by his clothes and hair, although his face was half masked with clotted blood. Two shocking gashes in the forehead turned Vango sick with horror. He looked up at the woman with fear in his eyes, and asked:
“Who was the deceased?”
“It was my husband,” she said, and her sobs choked her. “We must get him ashore and put him in the house, and then we can decide what next, and perhaps you can help me. There’s our pier, over there,” and she pointed out the light on a little wharf running out from the gloom. She took the wheel again, and the launch was docked at the pier.
As Vango disembarked and prepared to help her with the corpse, the quadroon woman quickly stopped him. “Here,” she said, pointing to a large wooden case in the bow, “this must go ashore first. Take it into the shed there and watch out that you’re not seen. It won’t do for the police to see it, or any of the neighbours. I’d rather they saw the body!”
She stooped and untied a coil of rope from the case, and then the two lifted it to the floating stage. It weighed something over a hundred pounds, and it was all they could do to carry it together up the steep incline and along the pier to the shed. The woman took a key from her pocket, and unlocked the door. When the case was inside the room, which was scantily furnished with a few chairs and tables, they returned to the launch.
As they approached the stage, Vango thought of the woman’s request for a seance, and her words struck him as curious. He asked her carelessly what it was she wished to find.
“A scrap of red paper, with Chinese writing on it,” was the reply. She had no more than uttered the words, when, glancing over at the launch, Vango saw on the floor in the rays of the lantern a red spot. Looking more closely, he saw that it was undoubtedly the very paper the woman wanted. He turned suddenly and faced her to prevent her seeing it, and seized her hand. Then he sighed heavily, passing his free hand over his eyes.
“I feel a vibration of a self-independent message from my control,” he said, and fetched a dramatic shudder. “They is a kind of a pain in my head, as though a party had passed out of a stab like.”
This revelation was made in a die-away voice, as if from many miles off, and he glanced through a slit in his lids at the quadroon to see how she was taking it. Then he shuddered again more violently, but this time without dissimulation. His hand gripped hers like a wrestler’s, his eyes leaped past her, over her shoulder, staring; for there, dimly shadowed in the obscurity, holding up a spectral arm in warning, was Mrs. Higgins!
Vango’s soul was torn between greed and fear. Here was another dupe who could restore his fortune, the way to cajole her plain before him—there was the threatening form of his Nemesis protesting against his roguery, and he faltered in dread.
“Oh, what is it, what is it?” the quadroon woman cried, piteously.
The medium’s cupidity won, and the credulous woman in the flesh was more potent than her sister in the spirit. He shut his eyes and went desperately on:
“She gives me this message: What you’re a-lookin’ for will be found sooner than what you expect, and you’ll come by it on the water. You’ll be guided to it by a party who is a good friend to you and you can trust, and she gives me the letter ’V.’ He’s a dark-complected man with a beard, and there’ll be money a-comin’ to him through your help.”
Having trembled again, and sighed himself back to life, the medium turned to her drowsily, as if he had just been called from bed. “Where am I?” he said, in mock surprise, and then with a groan of relief, as he saw that Mrs. Higgins had disappeared, he added, “Oh, what was I sayin’? I must have went into a trance.”
The quadroon was in a high tremor of suspense. “What is your name? You never told me,” she demanded.
“My name?” he repeated, with a baby stare. “Vango, Professor Vango. Why?”
“Then you’re the man,” she cried. “Come! Help me take the body ashore, for we must get him to Chinatown as quickly as the Lord will let us.”
He waited till she had jumped into the boat and had laid her hand to the corpse, and then he snatched for the paper and waved it in the air. “Did you say it was a scrap of red paper you lost?”
She sprang at him and looked closely. “This is the very piece I wanted! Wong Yet is one of them!” she cried. “Now my poor husband can be avenged! God bless you, Professor; you have proved your part of the message is true, and I reckon I’ll prove mine. Find the other half of this piece of paper for me, you can do it easy with your spirit guides, and I’ll give you a thousand dollars for it!”
They stooped over the dead Chinaman, and, with Professor Vango at the shoulders and the quadroon at the knees, the corpse was carried up the landing stage and along the pier to the shed. Here was hitched a pitifully dirty white horse harnessed to a disreputable covered laundry-wagon, spattered with adobe mud. Into this equipage they loaded the remains, piled the case in the rear, and buttoned down the curtains. Then the woman mounted with Vango to the seat and drove for the Potrero.
As they turned into the San Bruno Road, the quadroon began her promised confession. She could not proceed calmly, but was swept with alternate passions of sorrow and rage. The medium, however, unmoved by her suffering, eyed her craftily, watching his chance to feed upon her superstitious hopes.