Double Trouble | Page 8

saw the full sign stretching across two windows: "Madame
le Claire, Clairvoyant and Occultist. All Mysteries Solved."
Florian stared at this sign, until he became conscious of deep weariness
at so long standing on his feet. Then he saw, blossoming, the
multiplying lights of an early winter's dusk--so numbly had the time
slipped by. And in the gruesome close of this dreadful day, the
desperate and perplexed man stole timidly down the
stairways--avoiding the elevator--and across the street to the place of
the occultist.

IV
AN ADVENTURE IN BENARES
The silly world shrieks madly after Fact, Thinking, forsooth, to find
therein the Truth; But we, my love, will leave our brains unracked, And
glean our learning from these dreams of youth: Should any charge us
with a childish act And bid us track out knowledge like a sleuth, We'll
lightly laugh to scorn the wraiths of History, And, hand in hand, seek
certitude in Mystery. --When the Halcyon Broods.
The house of the occultist was one of a long row, all alike, which
reminds the observer of an exercise in perspective, as one glances down
the stretch of balustraded piazzas. Amidon walked straight across the
street from the hotel, and counted the flights of stairs up to the fourth
floor. There was no elevator. The denizens of the place gave him a

vague impression of being engaged in the fine arts. A glimpse of an
interior hung with Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Dakota beadwork,
and barbaric arms; the sound of a soprano practising Marchesi
exercises; an easel seen through an open door and flanked by a Grand
Rapids folding-bed with a plaster bust atop; and a pervasive scent of
cigarettes, accounted for, and may or may not have justified, the
impression. On the fourth floor the scent shaded off toward sandalwood,
the sounds toward silence, Bohemia toward Benares. He walked in
twilight, on inch-deep nap, to a door on which glowed in soft, purple,
self-emitted radiance, the words:
MADAME Le CLAIRE ENTER
The invitation was plain, and he opened the door. As he did so, the
deep, mellow note of a gong filled the place with a gentle alarum. It
was sound with noise eliminated, and matched, to the ear, the velvet of
the carpet.
The room into which he looked was dark, save for light reflected from
a marble ball set in a high recess in the ceiling. None of the lamps,
whose rays illuminated the ball, could be seen, and the white globe
itself was hung so high in the recess that none of its direct rays reached
the corners of the apartment. A Persian rug lay in the center, and took
the fullest light. There were no sharp edges of shadow, but instead there
was a softly graduated penumbra, deepening into murk. Straight across
was a doorway with a portière, beyond was another, and still farther, a
third, all made visible in silhouette by the light in a fourth room, seen
as at the end of a tunnel.
Across this gossamer-barred arch of light, a black figure was projected,
and swelled as it neared in silent approach. It came through the last
portière, on into the circle of light, and stood, a turbaned negro, bowing
low toward the visitor.
"Madame le Claire," said Amidon feebly, "may I speak with her?"
There was no reply, unless a respectful scrutiny might be taken for one.
Then the dumb Sudanese, carrying with him the atmosphere of a

Bedouin tent, disappeared, lingered, reappeared, and beckoned Amidon
to follow. As they passed the first portière, that mellow and gentle
gong-note welled softly again from some remote distance. At the
second archway, it sounded nearer, if not louder. At the third, as
Amidon stepped into the lighted room, it filled the air with a golden
vibrancy. It was as if invisible ministers had gone before to announce
him.
Amidon took one long look at the scene in the fourth room, and a great
wave of unbelief rolled across his mind. Through this long day of
shocks and surprises, he had reached that stage of amazedness where
the evidential value of sensory impressions is destroyed. He covered
his eyes with his hands, expecting that the phantasms before him might
pass with vision, and that with vision's return might come the dear,
familiar commonplaces of his commonplace life.
The room seemed to have no windows, and the roar of the New York
street outside was gone, or faint as the hum of a hive. The walls were
hung with fabrics of wool or silk, in dull greens and reds, and the floor
was spread with rugs. With mouth redly ravening at him, and eyes
emitting opalescent gleams, lay a great tiger-skin rug, upon which, on a
kind of dais, sat a woman--a woman whose eyes sought