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!”