"Don't you get your forms from Chicago now?" Vixley asked.
"No, they're no good. I can make better ones myself. Oh, occasionally I send for a rubber face or two or some cabinet attachments and extensions. I wish I was clever enough to do the slates." She watched the Professor sharply.
"Oh, they ain't nothin' in slates nowadays—it don't seem to take, somehow. They mostly prefer the psychics. I s'pose slate-writin' has been wrote up too much—I know a dozen books describin' the tricks, and here's this Drexel chap teachin' 'em at a dollar apiece, even. He's a queer guy. When he can get a bookin' he travels as a magician; durin' his off-times he sells his tricks to amachures, and then when he's down on his uppers he does the medium. I'm sorry I went into physical mediumship; the graft's about played out—people is gettin' too intelligent. I've a good mind to try the developin' stunt again."
"Say, do you think Madam Spoll has any real power?" Flora asked.
Vixley stopped in his work to become epigrammatic. "Some mediums are 'on' and some are honest—them that's honest are fools and them that's 'on' are foolin'. Gertie's 'on' all right, and she does considerable fishin'. I don't say that when she started she didn't have some faculty—she used to scare me good, sometimes, and she could catch a name occasional. But Lord, it's so much easier to fake it; you can generally depend on human nature, and you can't on psychometry."
"I can tell things sometimes," Flora ventured.
"Can you?" said Vixley. "Say, I wish you'd give me a readin'; they's somethin' I want to know about pretty bad; p'raps you could get it for me."
"Oh, I know you too well. I can't do it much, except the first time I see a party; but sometimes, when I'm materializing, I can go right down and say 'I'm Henry,' or whatever the name is."
"I guess they're more likely to say, 'Are you Henry?' They're so crazy to be fooled that it's a crime to take their money."
"Women are. They're easy. They simply won't go away without a wonderful story to tell to their friends, but men are more skeptical, as a rule."