The words I had planned to fling at her died in my throat. Fraud or not, she was superb. Her pock-marked face had a haughty dignity and her bearing was that of a great queen.
"I'm sorry," I apologized, without knowing why. "I'm in trouble. I hoped you could help me. All I got out of your trance was a child laughing and a dog barking."
Her eyes glowed in the twilit room.
"What this dog?" she demanded. "You know this dog?"
"Yes," I told her. "It's my dog. His name is Ponto. He's a Great Dane and he's at the kennels."
"You go, Mr. Tompkins," she ordered me. "You better go fast. That dog—wha's his color now?"
"Black," I said.
"Yes, black," She rolled her eyes until I saw the whites.
"That black dog don' mean no good to you or yours. You keep away fum that dog, Mr. Tompkins. No, suh, I don't want you money. There's no luck with you, white man, with that black dog. I don' know how Ah knows, but Ah does know."
As I walked out into the bright cool air of Lenox Avenue, I felt relieved. Madame la Lune was an interesting enough type. She obviously had the primitive sense of second sight, intuition, whatever it is, that let her penetrate behind human appearances. The medium business was just a trade trick. In Africa or Haiti she could have been a witch-doctor with a pet snake. In New Orleans, even, she would be a voodoo priestess. Here in Harlem, she had become a medium. Of course, she was a fraud, but how had she imitated the barking of the Great Dane?