Galusha the Magnificent Part 71

"No. There was a hot fire. But to-day, when the second package came, I caught a glimpse of the printing on the wrapper. It was from The Psychical Research Society; I think that was it. There is such a society, isn't there?"

"I believe so. I... Ssh! Careful, here he is."

Captain Jethro strode across the parlor threshold. He glared beneath his heavy eyebrows at the couple.

"Lulie," he growled, "don't you know you're keepin' the meetin' waitin'?

You are, whether you know it or not. Martha Phipps, come in and set down. Come on, lively now!"

Martha smiled.

"Cap'n Jeth," she said, "you remind me of father callin' in the cat.

You must think you're aboard your old schooner givin' orders. All right, I'll obey 'em. Ay, ay, sir! Come, Lulie."

They entered the parlor, whither Galusha, Mr. Cabot and Primmie had preceded them and were already seated. The group in the room was made up about as on the occasion of the former seance, but it was a trifle larger. The tales of the excitement on the evening when the light keeper threatened to locate and destroy the "small, dark outsider" had spread and had attracted a few additional and hopeful souls. Mr. Obed Taylor, driver of the Trumet bake-cart, and a devout believer, had been drawn from his home village; Miss Tamson Black, her New Hampshire visit over, was seated in the front row; Erastus Beebe accompanied his sister Ophelia. The Hardings, Abel and Sarah B., were present and accounted for, and so, too, was Mrs. Hannah Peters.

Galusha Bangs, seated between Miss Cash and the immensely interested Cousin Gussie, gazed dully about the circle. He saw little except a blur of faces; his thoughts were elsewhere, busy in dreadful antic.i.p.ation of the scene he knew he must endure when he and his cousin and Miss Phipps returned to the house of the latter. He did not dare look in her direction, fearing to see once more upon her face the expression of suspicion which he had already seen dawning there--suspicion of him, Galusha Bangs. He sighed, and the sigh was so near a groan that his relative was startled.

"What's the matter, Galusha?" he whispered. "Brace up, old man! you look as if you were seeing spooks already. Not sick--faint, or anything like that?"

Galusha blushed. "Eh?" he queried. "Oh--oh, no, no. Quite so, really.

Eh? Ah--yes."

Cabot chuckled. "That's a comprehensive answer, at any rate," he observed. "Come now, be my Who's-Who. For example, what is the name of the female under the hat like a--a steamer basket?"

Galusha looked. "That is Miss Hoag, the--ah--medium," he said.

"Oh, I see. Did the spirits build that hat for her?"

Miss Hoag's headgear was intrinsically the same she had worn at the former seance, although the arrangement of the fruit, flowers, sprays and other accessories was a trifle different. The red cherries, for example, no longer bobbed at the peak of the roof; they now hung jauntily from the rear eaves, so to speak. The purple grapes had also moved and peeped coyly from a thicket of moth-eaten rosebuds. The wearer of this revamped millinery triumph seemed a bit nervous, even anxious, so it seemed to Martha Phipps, who, like Cabot and Galusha, was looking at her. Marietta kept hitching in her seat, pulling at her gown, and glancing from time to time at the gloomy countenance of Captain Jethro, who, Miss Phipps also noticed, was regarding her steadily and slowly pulling at his beard. This regard seemed to add to Miss Hoag's uneasiness.

The majority of those present were staring at the senior partner of Cabot, Bancroft and Cabot. The object of the attention could not help becoming aware of it.

"What are they all looking at me for?" he demanded, under his breath.

Galusha did not hear the question, but Primmie did, and answered it.

"They don't know who you be," she whispered.

"What of it? I don't know who they are, either."

Miss Cash sniffed. "Humph!" she declared, "you wouldn't know much worth knowin' if you did--the heft of 'em.... Oh, my savin' soul, it's a-goin'

to begin! Where's my mouth organ?"

But, to her huge disappointment, her services as mouth organist were not to be requisitioned this time. Captain Hallett, taking charge of the gathering, made an announcement.

"The melodeon's been fixed," he said, "and Miss Black's kind enough to say she'll play it for us. Take your places, all hands. Come on, now, look alive! Tut, tut, tut! Abe Hardin', for heaven's sakes, can't you pick up your moorin's, or what does ail you? Come to anchor! Set down!"

Mr. Harding was, apparently, having trouble in sitting down. He made several nervous and hurried attempts, but none was successful. His wife begged, in one of her stage whispers, to be informed if he'd been "struck deef." "Don't you hear the cap'n talkin' to you?" she demanded.

"Course I hear him," retorted her husband, testily, and in the same comprehensively audible whisper. "No, I ain't been struck deef--nor dumb neither."

"Humph! You couldn't be struck any dumber than you are. You was born dumb. Set DOWN! Everybody's lookin' at you. I never was so mortified in my life."

The hara.s.sed Abel made one more attempt. He battled savagely with his chair.

"I CAN'T set down," he said. "This everlastin' chair won't set even. I snum I believe it ain't got but three laigs. There! Now let's see."

He seated himself heavily and with emphasis. Mr. Jim Fletcher, whose place was next him, uttered an agonized "Ow!"

"No wonder 'twon't set even, Abe," he snorted. "You've got the other laig up onto my foot. Yus, and it's drove half down through it by this time. Get UP! Whew!"

A ripple of merriment ran around the circle. Every one laughed or ventured to smile, every one except the Hardings and Captain Hallett and, of course, Galusha Bangs. The latter's thoughts were not in the light keeper's parlor. Cousin Gussie leaned over and whispered in his ear:

"Loosh," whispered Mr. Cabot, chokingly, "if the rest of this stunt is as good as the beginning I'll forgive you for handing that fourteen thousand to the mummy-hunters. I wouldn't have missed it for more than that."

Captain Jethro, beating the table, drove his guests to order as of old he had driven his crews. Having obtained silence and expressed, in a few stinging words, his opinion of those who laughed, he proceeded with his arrangements.

"Tamson," he commanded, addressing Miss Black, "go and set there by the organ. Come, Marietta, you know where your place is, don't you? Set right where you did last time. And don't let's have any more mockery!"

he thundered, addressing the company in general. "If I thought for a minute there was any mockery or make-believe in these meetin's, I--I--"

He paused, his chest heaving, and then added, impatiently, but in a milder tone, "Well, go on, go on! What are we waitin' for? Douse those lights, somebody."

Miss Hoag--who had been glancing at the light keeper's face and behaving in the same oddly nervous, almost apprehensive manner which Martha had noticed when she entered the parlor--took her seat in the official chair and closed her eyes. Mr. Beebe turned down the lamps. The ancient melodeon, recently prescribed for and operated upon by the repairer from Hyannis, but still rheumatic and asthmatic, burst forth in an unhealthy rendition of a Moody and Sankey hymn. The seance for which Galusha Bangs had laid plans and to which he had looked forward hopefully if a little fearfully--that seance was under way. And now, such was the stunning effect of the most recent blow dealt him by Fate, he, Galusha, was scarcely aware of the fact.

The melodeon pumped on and on. The rustlings and shiftings in the circle subsided and the expectant and shivery hush which Primmie feared and adored succeeded it. Miss Black wailed away at the Moody and Sankey selection. Miss Hoag's breathing became puffy. She uttered her first preliminary groan. Cousin Gussie, being an unsophisticated stranger, was startled, as Mr. Bangs had been at the former seance, but Primmie's whisper rea.s.sured him.

"It's all right," whispered Primmie. "She ain't sick nor nothin'. She's just a-slippin' off."

The banker did not understand.

"Slipping off?" he repeated. "Off what?"

"Off into sperit land. In a minute you'll hear her control talkin'

Chinee talk.... There! My savin' soul! hear it?... Ain't it awful!"

"Little Cherry Blossom" had evidently been waiting at the transmitter.

The husky croak which had so amazed Galusha was again heard.

"How do? How do, everybodee?" hailed Little Cherry Blossom. "I gladee see-ee you. Yes, indeedee."

Cabot made mental note of the fact that the Blossom spoke her spirit pidgin-English with a marked Down-East accent. Before he had time to notice more, the control announced that she had a message. The circle stirred in antic.i.p.ation. Primmie wiggled in fearful ecstasy.

"Listen!" commanded Little Cherry Blossom. "Everybodee harkee. Spirit comee heree. He say-ee--"

"Ow-ooo-ooo--ooo--OOO!!"

As prophesied by Mr. Zacheus Bloomer, the fog had come in and Zacheus, faithful to his duties as a.s.sociate guardian of that section of the coast, had turned loose the great foghorn.

The roar was terrific. The windows rattled and the whole building seemed to shake. The effect upon the group in the parlor, leaning forward in awed expectation to catch the message from beyond, was upsetting, literally and figuratively. Miss Tamson Black, perched upon the slippery cushion of a rickety and unstable music stool, slid to the floor with a most unspiritual thump and a shrill squeal. Primmie clutched her next-door neighbor--it chanced to be Mr. Augustus Cabot--by the middle of the waistcoat, and hers was no light clutch. Mr. Abel Harding shouted several words at the top of his lungs; afterward there was some dispute as to just what the exact words were, but none whatever as to their lack of propriety. Almost every one jumped or screamed or exclaimed. Only Captain Jeth Hallett, who had heard that horn many, many times, was quite unmoved. Even his daughter was startled.