United States or Central African Republic ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Madame d'Elphis had just then become the rage, and so Jeanne decided to consult her, although the woman charged a higher fee than, I understand, the other fortune-tellers were then doing. When the two sisters found themselves there, my married niece bargained that the séance should be half-price, as Jeanne only wished to stay a very few minutes, and to ask but one question.
"She must make a great deal of money," said Madame de Léra, thoughtfully; with a half smile she asked her nephew the question: "Is there a Monsieur d'Elphis? Are there infant oracles?" Jacques burst out laughing, and both Vanderlyn and Madame de Léra started. It was the first time for many days that they had heard the sound of simple human laughter.
He stopped abruptly. In his wearied and yet morbidly active mind, an idea, a suggestion, of which he was half-ashamed, was beginning to germinate. "I should be grateful," he said, slowly, "if you can tell me something more about La d'Elphis. I am quite sure that I shall not be able to prevent an interview between her and Pargeter, but still something might be done Is she respectable?
And yet he knew that now his ordeal was drawing to a close; in a few moments Pargeter was due to return from his interview with Madame d'Elphis. Walking up and down the sunny room which held for him such agonising memories of the long hours spent there during the last three days in Tom Pargeter's company, Vanderlyn lived again every moment of his own strange interview with the soothsayer.
He intends to stay in Paris at least till to-morrow night, for he is convinced, it seems, that the fortune-teller, Madame d'Elphis, the woman who by some incredible stroke of luck stumbled on the right name of that horse of his which won the Oaks, will be able to tell him what has happened to to Margaret Pargeter."
"There, you can see it for yourself " Pargeter held out, with fingers twitching with excitement, a sheet of note-paper. "La d'Elphis wrote it all down! I didn't see her she's ill. But this is not the first time I've had to work her in that way, and it does just as well. Her sister managed everything, she took her in one of Peggy's gloves which I'd brought with me." Vanderlyn shuddered.
On reaching home, he at once discovered, with a certain bitter amusement, that Madame d'Elphis disdained the artifices with which she might reasonably have surrounded her mysterious craft. Not only were her name, address, and even hours of consultation, to be found in the "Tout Paris," but there also was inscribed her telephone number. Vanderlyn hated the telephone.
"Yes," continued Jacques, in answer to her look, "you may well say 'poor creature! For it's from La d'Elphis that our disreputable cousin draws the major part of his uncertain revenues. When Paris is credulous, his credit goes up, and he has plenty of money to play with. I'm told that the other night he lost ten thousand francs at 'Monaco Junior'!" Vanderlyn made a slight movement.
It had been shown under the title "The Crystal-Gazer," and it was even now an admirable portrait of his hostess, for so, unconsciously, had Vanderlyn begun to regard the woman who was so little like what he had expected to find her. Madame d'Elphis beckoned to him to follow her into yet another, and a much smaller, room. Ah!
A curt answer was given by the concierge in reply to Vanderlyn's enquiry for Madame d'Elphis. "Walk through the courtyard; the person you seek occupies the entresol of the house you will see there." And then he saw that lying back, quite concealed from the street, was another and very different type of dwelling, and one far more suited to the requirements of even a latter-day soothsayer.
Word Of The Day