The Mark of Cain

“No, I am no fraud. I tell you truly, if you go to Isis, she will tell you. If you do not, you will never know, and,” – she paused, “you will regret it all your life.”

The last words, spoken in an emphatic and impressive manner, were accompanied by a nod of the head, and the speaker moved toward the door. “That is all,” she said, as she paused on the threshold, “I have told you. You may do as you choose, but it will be an eternal regret if you fail to do my bidding.”

She was gone, and Avice, bewildered, sat quiet for a moment. “How absurd,” she thought, as soon as she could think coherently at all. “Fancy my going to a clairvoyant, or seer or whatever she called her! And anyway, I don’t know where the Isis person is.”

Then, chancing to look down at the table near her, she saw a card lying there. Immediately she knew what it was and that the woman had left it. She picked it up, and saw the address of a palmist and fortune-teller in Longacre Square.

“I’ll never go there,” she said to herself, but she put the card away in a book.

It was after only two or three brown studies over the queerness of the thing that she started for the address given. She had a subconsciousness that she had known all along that she would go, but she had to persuade herself first. That she had done, almost without knowing it, and now she was on her way. She had told no one, for she hadn’t even yet acknowledged to herself that she would go in, only that she would go and look at the place.

It was in an office building, unpretentious and altogether ordinary. She went up in the elevator and looked at the door that bore the given number. And in another moment she was inside.

It was the usual sort of place, decently furnished, but commonplace of atmosphere and appointments. There was no attempt at an air of mystery, no velvet hangings or deep alcoves. The room was light and cheerful. As Avice waited, a young woman came in. She wore a trailing robe and her pale gray eyes had a mystic far-seeing gaze.

“You want a reading?” she asked in a low, pleasant voice.

“I do if you can tell me one thing I want to know,” replied Avice, a little bluntly, for she had no faith in the seer’s powers.

“I am Isis,” and the clairvoyant or astrologer or whatever she called herself, looked at her client closely. “I think I can tell you what you wish to know, better, by gazing in my crystal.”

She went to her table, and taking a crystal ball from its case set it on a black velvet cushion. Then resting her chin on her hands she stared into the changing depths of the limpid crystal.

Avice watched her. Surely, if she were a fraud, she had most sincere and convincing manners. There was no attempt at effect or pretense of occult power.

After a time, Isis began in her soft, low voice: “I see a man in danger of his life. He is dear to you. I do not know who he is or what he has done, but his life is in grave danger. Ah, there is his salvation. I see a man who can save him. The man who is to save him must be summoned quickly, yes, even at once. Waste no time. Call him to you.”

“Who is he?” and Avice breathlessly awaited the answer.

“Fleming Stone. He is the only hope for the doomed man. Fleming Stone will rescue him from peril, but he must come soon. Call him.”

“Who is Fleming Stone? Where can I find him?”

“He is a detective. The greatest detective in the city. Maybe, in the country. But he is the one. None other can do it. It is all. You do your own will, but that is the truth.”

Isis turned from the crystal, looking a little weary. She raised her pale eyes to Avice’s anxious face, and said, “Will you obey?”

“I don’t know. How can I call a detective? I am pretty sure my advisers will not approve of calling another detective on the case, for it is a case. A criminal affair.”

Avice found herself talking to the clairvoyant as if she had known her a long time. It seemed as if she had. She could not have said that she liked the personality of Isis, but neither did she dislike it. She seemed to Avice more of a force than a person. She seemed to have no particular individuality, rather to be merely a mouthpiece for otherwise unavailable knowledge.

Avice rose to go. “That is all?” she said.

“That is all, but will you not consent to save this man?”

“Is there no hope else?”

“None. It rests with you. You will agree to call Mr. Stone?”

Compelled by the glance, almost hypnotic, that the seeress bent upon her, Avice said “Yes,” involuntarily.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“You will tell no one until after you have summoned Stone.” This was an assertion rather than a question, and Isis went on. “You can find his address in the telephone book, and then write him a letter. Tell him he must come to you, – but stay, – can you afford it?”

“Is it a great price?”

“As such things go, yes. But not more than a person in fairly good circumstances can pay.”

“I can afford it, then.”

Avice paid the fee of Madame Isis, and went away in a daze. Not so much at the directions she had received, as at the fact of this woman knowing about Kane and knowing that it was a case for a great detective. For it was, Avice felt sure of that. She had become conscious of late, of undercurrents of mystery, of wheels within wheels, and she could not rest for vague, haunting fears of evil still being done, of crime yet to be committed. The whole effect of the clairvoyant’s conversation heightened these feelings, and Avice was glad to be advised to seek out Stone. She had heard of him, but only casually; she knew little of his work and had but a dim impression that he stood high in his profession.

She went to the nearest telephone booth and found his address. But she remembered she had been told to write him, not telephone.

So, not waiting to get home, and also, with a view toward secrecy, she stopped in at one of her clubs, and wrote to Fleming Stone, urging him to take this case, and promising any fee he might ask.

Then, feeling she had burnt her bridges behind her, or, rather that she was building a new bridge in front of her, Avice went home.

CHAPTER XVIII

ALL FOR LOVE

Avice went occasionally to see Landon in The Tombs. The formalities and restrictions had been looked after by Judge Hoyt, and Avice was free to go at certain times, but she was not allowed to see Kane alone. In the warden’s room they met for their short visits, but of late, the warden had been kind enough to efface himself as much as possible, and one day, as he stood looking out of a window, he was apparently so absorbed in something outside, that the two forgot him utterly, and Landon grasped the hands of the girl and stood gazing into her sad brown eyes with a look of longing and despair that Avice had never seen there before.

At last, he said, slowly, “I suppose you know I love you,” and his voice, though intense, was as bare of inflection or emphasis as the room was of decoration. It seemed as if one must speak coldly and simply in that empty, hollow place. The very bareness of the floor and walls, made the baring of the soul inevitable and consequent.

And as she looked at Kane, Avice did know it. And the radiance of the knowledge lighted the darkness, dispelled the gloom and filled the place with a thousand pictures of life and joy.

With sparkling eyes, she went nearer to him, both hands outstretched. The three words were enough. No protestations or explanations were necessary in that moment of soul-sight.

But Kane gave no answering gesture.

“Don’t,” he said; “it means nothing. I only wanted you to know it. That is all.”

“Why is that all?” and Avice looked at him blankly.

Kane gave a short, sharp laugh. “First, because I am already the same as a condemned man; second, because if I weren’t, I couldn’t ask you to marry me and thereby lose your whole fortune.”

“I don’t care about the fortune,” said Avice, still speaking with this strange new directness that marked them both; “but I have promised Leslie Hoyt that if he frees you, I will marry him.”

“Avice! What a bargain! Do you suppose I would accept freedom at such a price? Do you love him?”

“No; I love you. I have told him so. But he will not get you off unless I will marry him, so I have promised.”

“Promised! That promise counts for less than nothing! I will get freed without his assistance, and you shall marry me! Darling!”