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Updated: June 12, 2025
That this broad-minded and religious Frenchwoman could possibly cherish any belief in the type of charlatan to which the American diplomatist supposed the famous Paris fortune-teller to belong was incredible to him. "I beg of you most earnestly," she repeated, in a deeply troubled voice, "to prevent any meeting between Mr. Pargeter and Madame d'Elphis!
The woman whom he now knew to be Madame d'Elphis turned, and, facing Vanderlyn, for the first time allowed her melancholy eyes to rest full on her unknown visitor. "You have your stick, your hat?" she asked. "Yes? that is well; for when our séance is over, you will leave by another way, a way which leads into the garden, and so into the street."
He never used it unless he was compelled to do so; but now he went through the weary, odious preliminaries with a certain eagerness "Alo! Alo! Alo!" At last a woman's voice answered, "Yes yes. Who is it?" "Can Madame d'Elphis receive a client this evening?" There was a pause.
There was but one door on the entresol, and on its panel was inscribed in small gold letters the word "d'Elphis." As Vanderlyn rang the bell, the odd name gleamed at him in the gas-light.
The impression of sincerity which Madame d'Elphis had produced on him had now had time to fade, and he asked himself with nervous dread whether she was, after all, likely to do what she had promised. Nay, was it in her power to lie, or rather to tell the half-truth which was all that he had asked her to tell?
La d'Elphis gave, as those sorts of people always do, a marvellously accurate account of the poor child's past, the simple, virginal past of a very young girl, but when it came to the future, she declared that her vision had become blurred, and that she could see nothing! Nothing! Nothing!
Madame d'Elphis walked across to an un-curtained window; she opened it and stepped through on to a broad terrace balcony. "Walk down the iron stairway," she said, in a low voice, "there are not many steps. A little door leads from the garden below straight into the street; the door has been left unlocked to-night." Vanderlyn held out his hand; she took it and held it for a moment.
"We must think of a way by which we can prevent an interview between Mr. Pargeter and La d'Elphis! Unless," she concluded slowly, "there is no serious reason why he should not know the truth now?" Vanderlyn also got up. A look of profound astonishment came over his face. "The truth?" he repeated.
Pargeter laid one hand on Vanderlyn's arm with the other he took out of one of his pockets a sheaf of thin slips of paper. The American knew them to contain accounts of accidents and untoward occurrences registered at the Prefecture of Police. Pargeter detached one of the slips and laid it across the sheet of paper on which Madame d'Elphis had written her laconic message:
Suddenly a door opened, and Vanderlyn turned round with eager curiosity, a curiosity which became merged in astonishment. The woman advancing towards him made her vulgar surroundings sink into blurred insignificance; for Madame d'Elphis, with her slight, sinuous figure, draped in a red peplum, her pale face lit by dark tragic eyes, looked the sybil to the life....
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