"And our friend here, Mr. Lyon," continued Harcout, with his eyes devoutly raised to the ceiling, "met her at one of our pleasant seances."
I made another note at this point.
"To be frank—'hem! it's my nature to be frank—" then turning his face to me and raising his eyebrows inquiringly—"I suppose, Mr. Pinkerton, it is quite desirable that I should be so?" To which I responded, "Necessarily so," when he resumed: "To be frank, then, Mr. Lyon was wonderfully interested in her. In fact, the woman has a strange power of compelling admiration and even fear—shall I say fear, Mr. Lyon?"
"Guess that's about right," said Mr. Lyon tersely.
"Admiration and fear," repeated Mr. Harcout, as if thinking of something long gone by, while Lyon chewed more fiercely than ever. "Indeed, Mr. Pinkerton, she's a superb woman—a superb woman; but a she-devil for all that!"
I noticed that Harcout's fervor seemed to have come from some similar experience, and I noted both it and his heated estimate of Mrs. Winslow, although he remarked that he had never met her.
"Well, my friend here was irresistibly drawn to her, and he has told me that for a time it seemed that he had found his real affinity. You felt that way, didn't you, Lyon?"
Lyon nodded and chewed rapidly.
"But for a long time the more my friend endeavored to secure her favor, the more she seemed to draw away from and avoid him, though constantly making opportunities to more deeply impress him with her most splendid physical and mental qualities. My friend recollects now, though he gave it no attention at the time, that she shrewdly drew from him much information regarding his family affairs, habits, business relations, and wealth; and as she was, or pretended to be, a medium of great power, at those times when he sought her professional services she worked upon his feelings in such a peculiar manner as to completely upset him."