“And a certain cuss is skedaddlin’ without liftin’ a finger to help her!” said Harkness grimly. “Put that in the picture, fer I ain’t fergittin’ it.”
The disclosures which followed astonished the intoxicated cowboy. He could not have revealed them more clearly himself. The fortune teller took excursions into the future too, in a way to please him; and, as she could tell the past so well, he was glad to believe in her glittering portrayals of delights to come.
Altogether Harkness was bewildered to the point of stupefaction. He was sure he had never seen this woman nor she him, and her knowledge produced in him a half-frightened sensation. Though he always resolutely denied it to himself and to others, he was deeply superstitious. If he began to sing as soon as he rose in the morning, he tried to dissipate the bad luck that foretold by singing the words backward. If he chanced to observe the new moon for the first time over his left shoulder, he turned round in his tracks three times and looked at it over his right. If he saw a pin on the floor with its point toward him he picked it up, for that was a sign of good luck. And he had such a collection of cast-off horseshoes he could have started a shoeing shop on short notice.
Harkness was so well satisfied with the fortune teller that when she concluded he dropped the second five dollar bill on the tray.
“You’re as welcome to it, lady, as if it was water,” he declared. “Five dollars won’t count even a little bit when I come into the fortune you p’inted out to me. You’re a silver-plated seer from the front counties. You’ll find Dicky Carroll jumpin’ into this red boodoir the first time he hits Denver. I’ll tell him about you, and it’ll set him wild.”
Then he plunged down the stairway, fully convinced that he had received the full worth of his money, not at all knowing that he had imparted much more information than he had received.
When he was gone the woman leaned back in her red chair and laughed until the tears came into her eyes. She laid aside the reddish veil, thus revealing the features of Sibyl Dudley, and wiped away the tears with a filmy handkerchief.
Then she began to make an estimate of the value of the information she had received from this intoxicated cowboy, and from William Sanders. It was considerable. She had formed many of her statements so craftily that they were questions, and she had made these men talk about themselves and their affairs in really garrulous fashion.
When a little time had elapsed she ventured into the street, in an entirely different garb and veiled more heavily. Walking across the street she hailed a cab, and was driven home, halting however at a corner to purchase copies of the latest Denver papers. At home she began to absorb their contents.
Sibyl Dudley’s finances were at a low ebb. Mr. Plimpton, the stock broker, had met a reverse of fortune, and criminal proceedings being hinted by men he had fleeced, he had gone into exile. Where he was Sibyl did not know, and if she had known he could not have helped her, for he had now no money. With debts thickening about her, and no new admirer with a plethoric bank account yet appearing, she was being driven to desperate extremities. To tide over this day of evil fortune she had, carefully veiled that no one might know her, become Madame Manton.