The Tyranny of the Dark Part 18

Towards Simeon's portal, held sacred to "The Keepers of the Keys of the Silent House," Kate Rice and Dr. Britt set their faces at the appointed hour.

"The plot thickens round the girl," began Britt, with a kind of mocking levity. "Mrs. Lambert has done it now!"

They had reached the comparative quiet of the cross-street. "What has she done?"

"She has delivered her ewe-lamb over to this ancient wolf of Wall Street, who will eat her up for a Little Red Riding-hood. I've been looking into Pratt's record. He has a cheerful way, I'm told, of treating his 'psychics' like oranges--squeezing them and throwing them into the street. He has become so sensitive to the sneers of the outsiders that he fears to be 'done.' After getting all that a medium can give him, he 'exposes' her elaborately, and sets her adrift, and so guards himself from the possible accusation of having been deceived. If there is any question of the medium's powers, he can then come out with a card saying: 'I knew So-and-so was a fraud. I exposed her two years--or two months--ago.' I see the girl's finish right here."

"The dreadful old man! Does the girl know this?"

"I don't think she does, but she ought to. I hate to see a nice girl, who would make some one a charming wife, perverted to these unholy uses. The crowning infamy heaped upon her head will be a full page in the _Sunday Blast_--'Another Harpie Exposed'--and it will come, Mrs.

Rice, I am sure of it. Pratt fairly fawns before her now. She is his princess, his seeress, his chief jewel; but woe to her if she displeases him or fails to meet his requirements."

"You appall me, Dr. Britt. Some one should at least warn her."

"I've already done so; but with the mother, Clarke, and Pratt to war against, the case seems hopeless. Besides, she believes in herself--up to a certain point. She'll never degenerate into one of those frumps who go from city to city playing to the foolish women and tack-headed men, but she will certainly be corrupted. If she marries Clarke her future will be woful. She has entered in so far I don't see how she can retreat. She is bound to keep on for his sake and her mother's sake."

"Is she in love with Clarke?"

"That I haven't been able to determine, but she is under his control, or she wouldn't be here."

With these gloomy words in her ears Kate entered the big, cold drawing-room to wait for the coming of the master of the house.

"Pratt is the one to whom you are to pay your first respects--he is master," warned Britt. "Ask to see his collections--that always pleases him. If you will permit, I will lead the way."

"I am trusting you."

"You may do so."

Pratt came in quite briskly, a heavy-faced, white-bearded man, wearing a sack-suit and an old-fashioned turn-down collar. He greeted Britt with a casual hand-shake, looking at Kate suspiciously. "And who is this?" he asked, bluffly.

"A friend of mine, a Mrs. Rice, who desires to see your wonderful collection of slates and paintings."

Pratt softened a little. "I'll be very glad to show them," he said, "but not now. I'll have to ask you to excuse me just now. I am in consultation with my directors."

"Certainly," said Britt, and, after Pratt went out, he added: "That means that Clarke is going to launch his thunderbolt. He's going to defy the scientific world in the most burning oration since Cicero."

At this moment two ladies, in superb wraps, descended the stairway on their way to their carriages, and one of them said, "I think it's a shame--as long as we've known Simeon Pratt--to be turned away like a tramp!"

"Oh, I don't blame her," said the other.

"Some disappointed callers," said Britt.

A moment later several other curious ones were ushered into the drawing-room. Britt kept up a low-toned comment. "All these rubber-necks are here to see the girl. You will be surprised to know how many there are with a sneaking belief in these revelations."

It was a singular situation in which to find Simeon Pratt--major-domo to a crowd of idle curiosity-seekers--and when he returned, with an a.s.sumption of haste and bustle, Britt saw him in a new light--that of a poor, lonely, broken old man, weary of life, yet living on in daily hope of communion with the dead, stuffing his heart with dreams and delusions, walking mechanically round, interested only in death.

He had forgotten Kate's name, but he remembered her wish to see his treasures.

"Come to my library," he said; "but first let me call your attention to this remarkable painting."

The painting--or rather wash-drawing in black-and-white--hung over the grand-piano in the light of the west windows. It was globular in form, and represented, Simeon explained, the "War of Light and Darkness."

One-half of the globe was darkly shaded, curiously fretted by the lighter half. Above sat a snow-white eagle. Beneath, with prodigious wings outspread, and eyes gleaming like points of fire, hovered a mysterious bat.

"Look closer," commanded Simeon.

Narrower scrutiny brought out, even in the darker half of the globe, a mult.i.tude of intertwined forms, outlined with pen and ink. Those of the lighter hemisphere were beautiful as angels, with faint stars in their hair. All were singing. The others, the denizens of the dark, were twisted and contorted in agony, and each was drawn with such certainty of prearrangement that the line which formed the arm of one outlined the head of another. There were hundreds of them, and the whole work was as intricate in design as the engraving on a bank-note, and so packed with symbolism--according to Simeon's exegesis--that one might study it for days. "Observe," said he, "the innumerable faces formed by the line which divides the two worlds. Take these gla.s.ses."

Kate, by means of the powerful instrument which he thrust upon her, was able to detect hundreds of other faces invisible to the unaided eye. "It is wonderful. Who did it?"

"A Swedish servant-girl," answered Simeon, loudly, addressing every one in the room. "She couldn't write her name; but when the spirit of Raphael controlled her she could do this with her eyes shut. There's nothing like that picture in the world. It cannot be duplicated by any artist in the flesh."

"That's no dream," murmured Britt.

Pratt hurried them on, past many other equally wonderful paintings, to his library, and as his guests filed in he faced them. "The things I am about to show you have no equal anywhere. They have taken years to collect, and have cost me more than a hundred thousand dollars. I can show you but a few."

The library was a splendid room, rich with the light of the western sun, whose arrangement instantly struck Kate Rice as unusual, for the book-shelves were precisely like those of a butler's pantry. They began at about four feet from the floor and reached entirely to the ceiling, and were filled with splendid, neglected books, while beneath a broad shelf, at their base, were rows of little bra.s.s k.n.o.bs, each of which indicated a shallow drawer. Each drawer had a lock and a small plate which bore a letter and a number, not unlike the cabinet of a numismatist.

"There are but two keys in existence," explained Simeon, with shining face. "The one I now hold and the one in my safety vaults. No one is permitted in this room without my secretary or myself." He moved down the room between the cabinet and the big table. "Here is a message from Columbus." He unlocked and drew out one of the drawers and laid it upon the table. It was exquisitely made, and contained two ordinary hinged school-slates, with the inner sides visible, but protected by a heavy plate of gla.s.s. "This message came to me through Angelica c.o.x--under test conditions," Pratt further explained, as Kate bent above it.

"What do you mean by test conditions?" asked Britt.

"I mean, sir, that I bought and took these slates to the medium, and held them in my hands while that message was written." There was irritation in his voice. He replaced the drawer. "But here is a painting from Murillo, the great artist. He painted the face of one of the ancients." He laid before his silent auditors another drawer which contained a sheet of card-board on which was a fairly good pastel of an Arab in a burnouse. It had the weak and false drawing which would result in the attempt of an amateur to copy an engraving in color.

"This came in broad daylight while I held the clean card-board on my head," explained Simeon.

Britt looked at Kate. "The painter might have stood on his head," he blasphemously whispered.

And so down through that splendid room the host moved, exhibiting letters from Napoleon, flowers from Marie Antoinette, verses from Mary Queen of Scots, together with paternal advice from many others equally eminent in history.

"You keep good company," ventured Kate. "Have you anything from Shakespeare?"

"Certainly; and from Edwin Forrest and Lincoln and Grant."

"Anything from Admiral Kidd?" asked Britt.

"Or from Mary Jane Holmes?" added Kate.

Simeon looked at the jokers in silence, not quite sure whether they intended to trap him or not. "No, I save only the words of the most eminent persons in history, outside my own family--I have wonderful testimony from them."

"Ah, show us those, please," cried Kate.

He hesitated, pondering Britt's face, and at last said, "I will show you some materializations," and led the way to some cases filled with pressed flowers. "These are from India and Tibet," he explained.

Kate was getting bored, but Britt seemed fascinated by both Pratt and the exhibit. "To think of one human being possessing a collection like that--painfully ama.s.sing it. It's too beautiful!"

"But the girl--ask him to let us see the girl," she urged.

"Don't hurry; he can't be turned aside from his groove."