On the other side she acted as cautiously. She remained till almost the last passenger had left the boat, then walked swiftly through the train-shed to her car. For an hour, as the train sped on, she scarcely looked to the right or the left.
The train slowed up at Stockton, and stopped. Clytie looked carelessly out of the window. Just as the train started again, Granthope appeared on the platform. He went up to a cab-driver and began talking. Clytie, flushing deeply, watched him so intensely that at last, as if attracted by some mental telepathy, he looked round and caught sight of her. His hat came off to her immediately. He gave a quick glance at the now rapidly moving train, as if intending to board it, then he gave it up as impossible. Clytie's eyes lost him, and she was carried on. It was a long time before the color faded from her cheeks.
CHAPTER XVI
TIT FOR TAT
Professor Vixley had prepared his campaign with Mr. Payson with the scientific delight of an engineer. His cunning was not too low to prevent his love of the sport for the sport's sake, and his elaborations and by-plays were undertaken with relish and enthusiasm. The pleasure was vastly heightened for him by the character of his dupe. Mr. Payson was a figure in the community, a man of weight and influence. He had an established position and an assured wealth. Heavy and slow, mentally, he had the dignified respectability that is usually associated with business success.
In the mental manipulation of such a personage Vixley felt a sense of power as enjoyable as the pecuniary reward. The dwarf, socially, led the giant.
He had his charge, by this time, well in hand. The old gentleman's ponderous mentality had been managed like an ocean steamship lying at the dock. One by one the lines of doubt and distrust and prejudice had been released. It was now time to fire his intellectual boilers. By means of their tricks, eavesdropping methods and clever guess-work, and with Cayley's help, they had fed him fuel for the imagination until now he was roused to a dynamic, enthusiastic belief in spiritualism, or that version of it which best suited their ends. Captain and pilot were aboard and in command. It remained but to ring up the engines, turn over the wheel and get under way for the voyage. Many another such argosy had been fitted out and had sailed forth from their brains, to return laden with treasure. There was hazard of collision or shipwreck, but the only obstacle now in view was Granthope, and Vixley felt sure that he could be blown out of the way with the explosion of a few scandals.
Mr. Payson's mind had an inertia which, once successfully overcome, was transformed to momentum. He was as credulous, as responsive, as influenced by the specious logic of the medium as if he had never been a skeptic. Vixley's next move was to realize financially on Payson's vanity and literary aspirations.
The ensuing series of communications from "Felicia," automatically transcribed by Vixley, developed the fact Mr. Payson's book would meet with disastrous competition from an unknown author who was working upon the same subject in Chicago. Such a publication would, in the eyes of any publisher, materially affect the value of a San Francisco book. Something must be done to prevent the rival work from being printed. The first step necessary, Vixley asserted, was to send a man to Chicago and investigate the case and report upon it. This preliminary reconnaissance cost a considerable sum. Payson did not see the emissary, for Vixley had warned him of the possibility of blackmail. "Felicia" now informed the sitter that the aid of the spirit world could be invoked to forestall the competing writer's efforts.
There was a band of spirits on the "third sphere," it seemed, who, though usually maleficent, could be placated. These "Diakkas" could, and possibly would, exert certain magnetic or psychic powers so as to prevent competition. It was difficult, however, to win over spirits so fantastic as these, even when one had established communication with them—itself an intricate and dangerous process. The only safe way, Mr. Payson was assured, was to create an atmosphere pleasing to them, one which absorbed antagonistic vibrations, and facilitated communication by intensifying the sitter's aura and rendering their acceptance of earthly conditions easy. And so forth, through an elaborate exposition.