As she entered the smoking-room of the flat, the early premonition of disaster returned. It was an unwholesome place after Richmond Park on a December day.... Webster himself, white-faced and orientally impassive, in a frame of yellow down cushions and a heavy atmosphere of burning cedar-wood, was a sinister mystery-monger and purveyor of forbidden fruit. She came to him for excitements and experiences which the world conspired to keep her from obtaining elsewhere. An unwholesome man.... If anything happened, she had only herself to blame.... Yet nothing could happen, unless the new clairvoyant told her something horrid about the future.... She was not going to run away from a clairvoyant....
The warm rooms, thickly curtained and heavy with scented smoke, were already half-full. Sonia Dainton and Jack Summertown were on either side of the club fender with cigarettes in their mouths; the Baroness Kohnstadt, with something of her brother Sir Adolf Erckmann's build and colouring and with all of his guttural intonation, was impressively describing Madame Hilary's powers; Lord Pennington, with a tumbler of brown brandy and soda in one hand, swayed insecurely on one arm of a chair and discharged amorous darts at a weak-mouthed girl with big eyes and a high colour, who giggled in apprehensive appreciation; on the other sat Sir Adolf, bald, bearded and fleshly, competing with Pennington for her attention. Involuntarily Lady Barbara paused in the door-way. If Jack Waring heard that she had been to Webster's rooms on such an errand in such company.... They were not worth it....
"Hullo, Babs!" "Babs darling!" "Liddle Barbara!" "How ripping!"
The usual chorus of welcome greeted her and mounted to her head. Sonia Dainton was kissing her extravagantly. Sir Adolf lurched forward to praise her looks and dress, Lord Pennington to repeat and laugh at any phrase that she let fall. Doing nothing, saying little, simply by being herself, she dominated them until the door opened a second time and a gaunt woman in a clinging black dress and hat like an embossed shield rustled into the room. Her great height and noiseless movements diverted attention from Lady Barbara; she threw up her veil with a clockwork gesture as though she were ripping it from her face. Webster advanced with a bow and was preparing to introduce her, when she stopped him with a second mechanical fling of the hand.
"Ah, no! You tell me who they are and then you say, 'Madame Hilary is an impostor; she knew a little before—and she make up the rest.' Is it not so? For an exhibition I like better to know nothing." Her eyes flashed, as she looked round on one face after another. "You, Mr. Webster, I know—your name, at least—but these others I know not at all. It is well. And I like better for you not to tell me. But you are all waiting! While I drink this tea, you shall decide who first is to make trial."
She sat down, unembarrassed by the stealthy examination to which she was being subjected on all sides, and, unpinning her veil, shewed a narrow, lined face with sunken cheeks, an aquiline nose and eyes that were lack-lustre after their initial flash. Too well-bred to seem bored, she displayed at least a want of interest which chilled the spirits of the party and left her ascendant. Webster was flustered at having to stage-manage the séance; for Sir Adolf was so diffident and Sonia so unsympathetic that he had difficulty in finding volunteers. Lady Barbara at once offered herself, but seemed impressed by his whispered warning that she had better first see what surprising exhibitions people sometimes made of themselves.
"Here, I'll start the bidding," cried Jack Summertown, jumping up from the fender. "Don't pinch my simulation-gold watch, any one. Only fair to warn you, ma'am," he went on to Madame Hilary, "that I think all this jolly old spiritualism is a fake. What do I have to do? And may I finish my goodish cork-tipped Turkish Regie?"
Madame Hilary, suddenly appreciating that she was being addressed, seemed to awake and assume new vitality. Shewing neither offence nor amusement at his scepticism, she motioned Summertown to a chair and drew her own opposite to it.
"Yes, go on smoking. It does not matter." She looked round the room with another clockwork movement, switched on a reading-lamp, so that the light shone straight into her own face, and then plunged the rest of the room in darkness. "All that is needed is for you to look at me, into my eyes. Never take your eyes off mine. I like better for you not to try, not to will yourself. I shall ask you questions, and you will answer them. Questions about the past. I like better for you not to be sympathetic. Try not to answer my questions. And, when I have persuaded you to answer them, I shall ask you more questions—about the future. And you will answer them, too. And afterwards I will tell you what you have said. So you will come to know the future."
She paused to draw breath, and Summertown, obediently looking into her eyes, finished his cigarette and tossed the end into the fire-place. He was still smiling a little; but the room was grown silent, and every one was looking at him; the gaunt, narrow face before him, grimly serious, discouraged levity, though it sharpened his desire to expose her as soon as she began her tricks. And for that the easiest thing was obstinately to answer none of her questions.