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Page 18
There was gloom rather than gusto in his approach to the table. He
expected little; everything had gone wrong; and he was not surprised to
note that the cloth on the table must also have served that day for a
"Business Men's Lunch, 35 cts.," as advertised on a wall placard.
Several business men seemed to have eaten there--careless men, their
minds perhaps on business while they ate. A moody waiter took his order,
feebly affecting to efface all stains from the tablecloth by one magic
sweep of an already abused napkin.
Bean read his paper. One shriek among the headlines was for a railroad
accident in which twenty-eight lives had been lost. He began to go down
the list of names hopefully, but there was not one that he knew.
Although he wished no evil to any person, he was yet never able to
suppress a strange, perverse thrill of disappointment at this
result--that there should be the name of no one he knew in all those
lists of the mangled. His food came and he ate, still striving--the game
of childhood had become unconscious habit with him now--to make his meat
and potatoes "come out even." The dinner de luxe was too palpably a
soggy residue of that Business Men's Lunch. It fittingly crowned the
afternoon's catastrophes. He turned from it to his paper and Destiny
tied another knot on his bonds. There it was in bold print:
COUNTESS CASANOVA
Clairvoyant ... Clairaudient
Psychometric.
Fresh from Unparalleled European Triumphs.
Answers the Unasked Question.
There was more of it. The Countess had been "prevailed upon by eminent
scientists to give a brief series of tests in this city." Evening tests
might be had from 8 to 10 P.M. Ring third bell.
The old query came back, the old need to know what he had been before
putting on this present very casual body. Was his present state a reward
or a penance? From the time of leaving the office to the last item in
that sketchy dinner, he had been put upon by persons and circumstances.
It was time to know what life meant by him.
And here was one who answered the unasked question!
Precisely at eight he rang the third bell, climbed two flights of narrow
stairs and faced a door that opened noiselessly and without visible
agency. He entered a small, dimly lighted room and stood there
uncertainly. After a moment two heavy curtains parted at the rear of the
room and the Countess Casanova stood before him. It could have been no
other; her lustrous, heavy-lidded dark eyes swept him soothingly. Her
hair was a marvellously piled storm-cloud above a full, well-rounded
face. Her complexion was wonderful. One very plump, very white hand
rested at the neck of the flowing scarlet robe she wore. A moment she
posed thus, beyond doubt a being capable of expounding all wingy
mysteries of any soul whatsoever.
Then she became alert and voluble. She took his hat and placed it in the
hall, seated him before the table at the room's centre and sat
confronting him from the other side. She filled her chair. It could be
seen that she was no slave to tight lacing.
Although foreign in appearance, the Countess spoke with a singularly
pure and homelike American accent. It was the speech he was accustomed
to hear in Chicago. It reassured him.
The Countess searched his face with those wonderful eyes.
"You are intensely psychic," she announced.
Bean was aware of this. Every medium he had ever consulted had told him
so.
The Countess gazed dreamily above his head.
"Your spiritual aura is clouded by troubled curnts, as it were. I see
you meetin' a great loss, but you mus' take heart, for a very powerful
hand on the other side is guardin' you night an' day. They tell me your
initials is 'B.B.' You are employed somewheres in the daytime. I see a
big place with lots of other people employed there--"
The Countess paused. Bean waited in silence.
"Here"--she came out of the clouds that menaced her sitter--"take this
pad an' write a question on it. Don't lemme see it, mind! When you got
it all wrote out, fold it up tight an' hold it against your forehead.
Never leggo of it, not once!"
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