“I don’t know—but she’ll tell you somehow. She’s cute— She’s awful cute. You mark my words, she’ll find a way.”
“That’s the reason I don’t have you in the house yet, Mrs. Spash,” Lindsay explained.
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me that,” Mrs. Spash announced, triumphant because of her own perspicuity.
“It’s only that I have a feeling that she can do it more easily if we’re alone. That’s why I send you home at night. She comes oftenest in the evening when I’m alone. They all do. Oh, it’s quite a procession some nights. They come one after another, all trying—” He paused. “Sometimes this room is so full of their torture that I— You know, it all began before I came here. It began in an apartment in New York. It was in Jeffrey Lewis’ old rooms. He tried to tell me first, you see.”
“Did you see Mr. Lewis there?” Mrs. Spash asked this as casually as though she had said, “Has the postman been here this morning?” She added, “I see him here.”
“No, I didn’t see him,” Lindsay explained grimly, “but I felt him. And, believe me, I knew he was there. He was the only one of the lot that frightened me. I wouldn’t have been frightened if I had seen him. It was he, really, who sent me here. I work it out that he couldn’t get it over and he sent me to Lutetia because he thought she could. I wonder—” he stopped short. This explanation came as though something had flashed electrically through his mind. But he did not pursue that wonder.
“Well, don’t you get discouraged,” Mrs. Spash reiterated. “You mark my words, she’ll manage to say what she’s got to say.”
“Well, it’s time I went to work,” Lindsay remarked a little listlessly. “After all, the life of Lutetia Murray must get finished. Oh, by the way, Mrs. Spash,” Lindsay veered as though remembering suddenly something he had forgotten, “do other people see them?”
“No—at least I never heard tell that they did.”