ROSALIE'S FIRST REPORT Rosalie Le Grange, upon assuming her position as housekeeper in the Markham establishment, had written Dr. Blake that Tuesday was her afternoon out, and suggesting that he meet her every Tuesday afternoon at three in the ladies' parlor of the old Hotel Greenwich, which lay far from main lines of traffic and observation. So they sat on the faded velvets of the Greenwich that fall afternoon, heads together in close conference. "You're wastin' your money," began Rosalie. "Tell me about Miss Markham first," he interrupted; "is she well?" "As well as she ever is--that girl's far from strong. The more I think of this job"--she reverted to her subject--"the more meechin' I feel about it, spyin' on a good woman an' a great medium like her. Git the girl away from her! Let me tell you, Dr. Blake, your girl's the luckiest girl in the world, and I don't care if I have to say it right into your face. If I'd had a chance to develop my mediumship straight from a great vessel of the spirit like that, I wouldn't be fakin' test books, and robbin' card cases, and givin' demonstrations to store girls at a dollar a trance. To learn from Mrs. Markham! She ought to thank God for the chance." Then, perceiving that she had left his feelings out of consideration--noticing by the droop of his eyes how much she had depressed him--she patted his knee and let a tender smile flutter over her dimples. "Of course, Boy," she said, with the sweet patronage of woman, "I don't take no stock in the notion that the girl has got to put aside earthly love, and that kind of talk. We've all got our notions and our places--where we don't follow the spirit guides. Perhaps that's just Mrs. Markham's weak spot. Maybe her own love affairs was ashes in her mouth. Come to think of it, I never did know who Mr. Markham was. What I'm tryin' to tell you is that you've got your pig by the wrong ear, for you can't expose what's genuine. And I'm ashamed of what I'm doin', and if I hadn't promised to stay a month, I'd leave this very day." Her companion made an involuntary motion of alarm. "Don't be afraid--I'm not goin' to yet. Gettin' the place was easy. You want a housekeeper stupid and respectable; I was all that. I was bothered, before I got started, to get the letters of recommendation, but I got 'em--never mind how. And they were good, too. I'm Mrs. Granger, as I told you, and I'm a widow. So I took the place away from a Swede, an Irishwoman, and a French ginny. Right at the start, I found a line on Mrs. Markham. When she was alone with me, after we come to terms, she was just as kind and good as any lady in the land. I don't suppose that means anythin' to you, but it did to me. Big fakirs and crooks just live their lives in terror, afraid of their own shadows. They've got to be sweet and kind on the outside, and so they take out their crossness and irritation on the help. I'd rather be keeper in an asylum than cook to a burglar. But Mrs. Markham was fine--and no airs and no softness. If the spirit ever hallowed a face, it's hers. I know you don't like her, and you can't be blamed--her keeping your little girl from you! But you must have noticed her voice, how pretty it is if she does talk English fashion. Now that was my first sight into her. Whatever she's done, she's never done materializin', which is just where pure, proved fakin' begins. It's as soft as a girl's. It wouldn't be if she'd worked up her voices for men controls. I've been complimented on my voice myself, but you must have noticed the way it slides down and gits deep every little while. That's left to show I did materializin' in St. Paul; and I'm ashamed of it, too. My, how I wander around in Robin Hood's barn! But I'm full of it." "Tell me everything," he said, "and in your own way." "'You know my profession?' says Mrs. Markham. "'No, Ma'am,' says I. "'I'm a religious teacher, in a way,' says she. 'A medium if you care to call it that. I prefer another name.' "'A medium!' says I. 'My! I was to a medium last week!' "Perhaps you don't see why I done that. 'T was to give her an opening. First move, when you're fakin' on a big scale, is to make dopes out of your servants. Git 'em to swallow the whole thing; then find the yellow spot, work it, and pull 'em into your fakin'. But she never followed the lead, even so much as to seem interested. 'Indeed?' says she. 'Well, I see only a few callers, and usually in the evening. I'm a little particular about bein' disturbed at such times, and I must ask you not to come below the top floor on such evenings. Ellen, the parlor maid, always sits by the front door to answer the bell.' That was a relief. I was afraid I'd have to answer bells, which would have been risky. Dopes that follow big mediums go to little ones sometimes; there was a chance that I'd let in one of my own sitters and be recognized. And the arrangement didn't look faky to me as it may to you; for a fact, you're just a bundle of nerves when you're coming in and out of real control. "'And I hope you'll be comfortable,' says she, 'I'm coming up this evening to see if your room is all right and if there's anything you want. You'll like my servants, I think.' "Right there I began to be ashamed of our game, and it hasn't got any less, I'll tell you. "It was hard work getting the job to runnin', and I didn't have much time for pokin' into things. When I did git room to turn around, I went through that whole house pretendin' to take inventories. I didn't find a thing that looked out of place, or faky. Not a scrap of notes on sitters, not a trap, not a slate, not a thread of silk mull, not a spark of phosphorus. I wasn't fool enough to break the rule about coming downstairs when she had sitters. Let her catch me spyin', and the bird's gone. But last Sunday night I had a fair chance. I knew it would come if I waited. There's three servants under me--Mary the cook, who's a hussy; and Martin the furnace man, who's a drunk; and Ellen, who's a fool. I'd listened to 'em talking and I'd pumped 'em gradual, but I couldn't git a definite thing--and what the help don't know about the crooked places in their bosses ain't generally worth knowin'. Ellen, the maid, ought to 'a' been my best card--her sittin' every night at the door catchin' what comes out of the parlors. She couldn't tell a thing. All she knew was that she heard a lot of talk in low tones, and it was something about spirits and the devil, and then she crossed herself. As help goes, they like Mrs. Markham, which is a good sign. "Last Sunday, at supper, Ellen begins to complain of a pain in her head. It seemed to me that I'd better take, just once, the chance of being recognized by a sitter, an' 'tend door for the seance. So I begun with Ellen. "'You're sick, child,' says I, havin' her alone at the time. 'It looks to me like neuralgia.' "Well, you're a doctor--I don't have to tell you how easy it is to make a person think they're sick. And that's my specialty--makin' people think things. In half an hour, I had that girl whoop-in' an' Martin telephonin' for a doctor. Then I broke the news over the house telephone to Mrs. Markham. She waited ten minutes, and called me down. It come out just as I figured. She wanted me to 'tend door. I'd been playin' the genteel stupid, you know, so she trusted me. And I must say I'd rather she hated me, the way I'm out to do her. She told me that I was to sit by the door and bring in the names of callers, and if anyone come after eight o'clock, I was to step into the outside hall and get rid of 'em as quick as I could. Now let me tell you, that killed another suspicion. One way, the best way of fakin' in a big house, is to have the maid rob the pockets of people's wraps for letters an' calling cards an' such. I'd thought maybe Ellen played that game, she acted so stupid; but here I was lettin' in the visitors, me only, a week in the house. I took the coats off her callers myself and I watched them wraps all the time. Nobody ever approached 'em while I looked. She had only four sitters, two men and two women--an old married couple an' a brother an' sister, I took it from their looks an' the way they acted toward each other. The old couple were rich and tony. They didn't flash any jewelry, but her shoes and gloves were made to order and her coat had a Paris mark inside. The brother and sister must be way up, too; he was dressed quiet but rich, and he had a Bankers' Association pin in his buttonhole. Yes, they wasn't paupers, and that's the only fake sign I've seen about Mrs. Markham. But that's nothin'. Stands to reason the best people go to the best mediums, just like they go to the best doctors and preachers. "That sittin', you hear me, was real. I got by the double doors where I could listen. You just hear me--it was real. You ain't a sensitive. You've followed knowledge and not influences, and it's going to be hard for me to git this into you. So I'll tell you first how it would have looked to you, and then how it looked to me. I'm not sayin' what she gave wasn't something she got out of test books and memorandums, because I don't know her people or yet how much she'd had to do with them. It was the way it come out that impressed me. First place, she didn't go into trance. That's a fake to impress dopes, nine times out of ten. If you ever git anything real from me, you'll git it out of half trance. Then she didn't feel around an' fish, an' neither did she hit the bull's eye every time. She'd get the truth all tangled up. John would say a true thing, that only he knew, and she'd think she got it from James. Her sitters were fine acknowledgers, especially the old maid, and I could tell. That's how I would 'a' looked to you, and now let me tell you how it struck me. You don't have to believe it. "I was sittin' there just takin' it all in, when I began to get influences. Now laugh; but you won't stop me. It never struck me so strong in my life as it did right there. And it all come from Mrs. Markham. It was like a sweet smell radiatin' from that room, and just makin' me drunk. It was like--maybe you've heard John B. Gough speak. Remember how he had you while you listened? Remember how you believed like he did and felt everything was right and you could do anything? Now that is as near like it as I can tell you and yet that ain't it by half. You ain't a sensitive. You can't git just what I mean. "An' then I begun to see. I can't tell you all; I was half out; but just this for a sample: I had a sitter last week, an old lady; an' the sittin' was a failure. Yes, I was fishin' and pumpin', but she was close-mouthed an' suspicious. I got it out of her that she was worried about her boy. I tried a bad love affair for a lead, an' there was nothing doing. I tried bad habits and it was just as far away; and I give it up and was thankful I got fifty cents out of her. Well, while I sat there listenin' to Mrs. Markham, right into my mind came a picture--the old lady leanin' over a young man--her pale and shaky and him surprised an' mad,--and he held a pen in his hand, an' I got the word 'forgery!' That's one of the things I saw while that influence come from Mrs. Markham; and if you only knew how seldom I git anything real nowadays, you'd be as crazy as me about her. I just had to use all the force I've got to look stupid when the sitters went out." Rosalie had talked on, oblivious to Dr. Blake's anxieties and feelings. He sat there, the embodiment of disappointment. "As perfect a case of auto-suggestion as I ever knew," his professional mind was thinking. But he expressed in words his deeper thought: "Then that line fails." "I'm sorry, boy," responded Rosalie, "but I'm doin' my job straight, and you wouldn't want it done any other way. And I feel you'll git her somehow; if not this way, some other. And the longer the wait the stronger the love, I say. She don't seem any too happy, even if Mrs. Markham does treat her well." "Doesn't she?" he asked, his face lighting with a melancholy relief. "Good symptom for you, ain't it? And I can't think of nothing else that can be on her mind. But how that girl passes her days, I don't know. It must be dull for her, poor little bird. She and Mrs. Markham ain't much apart. She looks at Mrs. Markham like a dog looks at his master, she's that fond of her. Seems to read a lot, and twice they've been out in the evening--theater, or so the chauffeur said. We don't have no private car. We hire one by the month from a garage. An' if I ever liked a girl and wanted to see her happy, that's the one!" Rosalie rose. "Must do some shoppin'. Can't say I hope for better news next week, not the kind of good news you're looking for. But I'm hopin' for good news in the end." Dr. Blake remained sitting, his head dropped in depression on his breast. Rosalie stooped to pat it with a motherly gesture. "Just remember this," she said, "you love her and she loves you or I miss my guess, an' there ain't no beatin' that combination. If I was fakin' with you I wouldn't need no more than that to make me see your two names in a ring. And remember this, too, boy! There never was anything that turned out just the way you expected. You figure on it twenty ways. It always beats you; and yet when you look back, you say, 'Of course; what a fool I was.' Good-by, boy--here next Tuesday at three unless I tell you different by letter." Rosalie was gone. Dr. Blake walked in the park that night until dawn broke over the city roofs. And he drew out a dull and anxious existence,--shot and broken with whims, fancies, all the irregularities of a lover,--during the week in which he awaited Rosalie's next report.