After Little Hookah done her regular dance that Sunday night, I got the hymn started, and announcin’ that the spirit that rapped was a dear one known to ’em all, I pulled out the new form that I had just fixed, and waited for the tap on the cabinet to show that all was ready. I didn’t like to do it. I felt funny, like something would go wrong. But I pulled the string, and then—O God!—there—in the other corner of the cabinet—was Mrs. Higgins—Mrs. Higgins holdin’ her arm across the curtains and just lookin’ at me like her eyes was tearin’ through me!
They seen somethin’ was wrong, and Mrs. Schreiber got the robe away before they found me—they said my control was too strong—and some said I was drunk. I did get drunk, too, crazy drunk, next day—and when I come round Mrs. Schreiber tried to do cabinet work with me on the front seat—and there I seen her—in her corner—just like she used to sit—and I never went back.
But a man has got to eat, and when my money was gone, and I wasn’t so scared as I was at first, I tried to do test seances, sayin’ to myself maybe she wouldn’t mind that—and the first article I took up, there she was in the second row, holdin’—oh, I couldn’t get away of it—holdin’ a locket just like she done the first night I seen her.
Then I knew I’d have to quit, and I hid from the circle—they wanted me because Mrs. Schreiber couldn’t make it go. I slept in the Salvation Army shelter, so as not to be alone, and she let me be for a while.
But to-day I seen a party in the street that I used to give tests to, and he said he’d give me two bits to tell him about his mine—and I was so broke and hungry, I give it a trial and—there She was—in the shadow by the bootblack awnin’—just lookin’ and lookin’!
The little medium broke off with a tremor that made the glasses shake.
CHAPTER IV
ADMEH DRAKE
“I expeck yer cut off yer own nose, all right,” said Coffee John. “If the sperits of the dead do return, an’ I was to come along with ’em, it seems to me I’d plye Mrs. ’Iggin’s gyme, an’ run abart a million o’ shyster ghost-raisers art o’ business in this city. I see their notices in the dyly pypers, an’ it feerly mykes a man sick. The more you show ’em up, the more the people come to be gulled. ’Uman nychur is certingly rum. Lord love yer, I’ve been to ’em, an’ I’ve been told my nyme was Peter, wa’nt it? an’ if not Peter, Hennery; an’ didn’t I ’ave a gryte-gran’father wot died? So I did, an’ I’m jolly glad ’e ain’t lived to be a hundred an’ forty neither! W’y is it thet the sperit of a decent Gawd-fearink woman wants to get familiar with a bloke wot wipes ’is nose on ’is arm-sleeve an’ chews terbacker? It’s agin reason an’ nature, an’ I don’t go a cent on it. It’s enough to myke a man commit murder coupled with improper lengwidge!”
He turned to the third man, who had made no comments on the stories. “You’re one as ’as loved an’ lost,” he said. “Yer look like one as is a lion with men an’ a bloomin’ mouse with women. You don’t cyre w’ether school keeps or not, you don’t, an’ I’m wonderin’ why. I don’t just like yer turnin’ yer back on Dewey, though plenty o’ Spanishers ’ave felt the syme wye. Yer gort a fist as could grip a gun-stock, an’ an eye wot ain’t afryde to look a man in the fyce, if yer do keep ’em behind specs. If yer can give a good reason for turnin’ Dewey to the wall, nar’s the charnce!”