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Updated: June 12, 2025
There's no object in my staying here; I can't help them to find Peggy. But La d'Elphis won't see me before to-morrow morning. If she can't clear up the mystery nobody can. I'm beginning to think, Grid" he came close up to the other man, "that something must have happened to her. I'm beginning to feel worried!"
As he made his way over the dimly-lighted, ill-paved court which separated the new building, that giving onto the street, from the seventeenth-century mansion, Vanderlyn realised that his first impression had been quite erroneous. Madame d'Elphis had evidently gauged, and that very closely, the effect she desired to produce on her patrons.
"As to her private life, I know nothing of it, but either of my nephews would be able to tell you whatever is known of her, for since that tragic affair our family have always taken a morbid interest in La d'Elphis. Would you like to know something about her now, at once? Shall I send for my nephew?" In answer to Vanderlyn's look, rather than to his muttered assent, Madame de Léra left the room.
Jacques de Léra, alone among the many men whom Vanderlyn had come across since the disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter had become the talk of the town, made no allusion to the mystery, and asked no puerile question of the man who was known to be her friend. "Mr. Vanderlyn has been asking me what I knew of the fortune-teller, Madame d'Elphis.
The offer Vanderlyn was about to convey to Madame d'Elphis was quite simple; in exchange for saying a very few words to Tom Pargeter, words which would add greatly to the belief the millionaire already possessed in what he took to be her extraordinary gifts of divination, the soothsayer would receive ten thousand francs.
You are together on a journey. It is night " Madame d'Elphis stopped speaking abruptly; she looked up at Vanderlyn, and he saw that her dark eyes were brimming with tears, her mouth quivering. "Do you wish me to describe what I see?" she asked, in an almost inaudible voice. "No," said Vanderlyn, hoarsely, he seemed to feel Peggy's arms about his neck, her soft lips brushing his cheek.
Fortunately or unfortunately, this Madame d'Elphis has been away for two or three days, but she will be back, it seems, in time to give Pargeter, who is a favoured client, an appointment to-morrow morning." Adèle de Léra suddenly rose from her chair; with a nervous movement she clasped her hands together. "Ah, but that must not happen!" she exclaimed.
Madame d'Elphis had chosen a prosaic setting for the scene of her mysteries, for the large white house looked very new, a huge wedge of modern ugliness in the pretty old street, its ugliness made the more apparent by its proximity to one of those leafy gardens which form oases of fragrant stillness in the more ancient quarters of the town.
"What a fool she must think me!" he mentally exclaimed; then came the consoling reflection, "But she won't think me a fool for long." Madame d'Elphis scarcely glanced at the thousand-franc note; she left it lying where Vanderlyn had put it. "Will you please sit down, Monsieur?" she said. Vanderlyn rather reluctantly obeyed her.
Then he heard a question asked, a murmured answer of which the sense evaded him, and then a refusal, not, he fancied, a very decided refusal, followed by a discreet attempt to discover his name, his nationality, his address, with a suggestion that Madame d'Elphis would be at his disposal the next morning. A touch of doubt in the quick, hesitating accents of the unseen woman emboldened Vanderlyn.
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