The House of Mystery | Page 7

He was the
jester in the court of King Norcross; one of the half-dozen men whom
the bachelor lord of railroads admitted to intimacy. A measured
intimacy it was; and it never trenched on business. Bulger, like all the
rest, owed half of his position to the fact that he never asked by so
much as a hint for tips, never seemed curious about the operations of
Norcross. There was the time on Wall Street when Norcross, by a lift of
his finger, a deflection of his eye, might have put his cousin and only
known relative on the right side of the market. He withheld the sign,
and his cousin lost. The survivors in Norcross's circle of friends
understood this perfectly; it was why they survived. If they got any
financial advantage from the friendship, it was through the advertising
it gave. For example, Bulger, a broker of only moderate importance,
owed something to the general understanding that he was "thick with
the Old Man."

Norcross looked up; his mustache lifted a little, and his eyes lit.
"Drink?" he said. His allowance was two drinks a day; one just before
he left the office, the other before dinner.
"Much obliged," responded Bulger, "but you know where I was last
night. If I took a drink now, I would emit a pale, blue flame."
Norcross laughed a purring laugh, and touched a bell. The secretary
stood in the door; Norcross indicated, by an out-turned hand, the top of
his desk. The secretary had hardly disappeared before the office-boy
entered with a tray and glasses. Simultaneously a clerk, entering from
another door as though by accident, swept up the balance sheets of the
L.D. and M. and bore them away. Bulger's glance followed the papers
hungrily for a second; then turned back on Norcross, carefully mixing a
Scotch highball.
As Norcross finished with the siphon, his eyes wandered downward
again.
"Ever been about much down there?" he asked suddenly. Bulger
crossed the room and looked down over his shoulder.
"Where?" he asked, "The Street or--"
"Trinity Churchyard."
"Once I sang my little love lays there in the noon hour," answered
Bulger. "I was a gallant clerk and hers the fairest fingers that ever
caressed a typewriter--" The intent attitude of Norcross, the fact that he
neither turned nor smiled, checked Bulger. With the instinct of the
courtier, he perceived that the wind lay in another tack. He racked the
unused half of his mind for appropriate sentiments.
"Bully old graveyard," he brought out; "lot's of good people buried
there."
"Know any of the graves?"

"Only Alexander Hamilton's. Everyone knows that."
"That one--see--that marble shaft--not one of the old ones."
"If you're curious to know," answered Bulger easily, "I'll find out on
my way down to-morrow. I suppose if you were to go and look, and the
reporters were to see you meditating among the tombs, we'd have a
scare head to-morrow and a drop of ten points in the market." Bulger's
shift to a slight levity was premeditated; he was taking guard against
overplaying his part.
"No, never mind," said Norcross, "it just recalls something." He paused
the fraction of a second, and his eye grew dull. "Wonder if
they're--anywhere--those people down under the tombstones?"
"I suppose we all believe in immortality."
"Seeing and hearing is believing. I believe what I see. Born that way."
Norcross was speaking with a slight, agitated jerk in his voice. He rose
now, and paced the floor, throwing out his feet in quick thrusts. "I'm
getting along, Bulger, and I'd like to know." More pacing. Coming to
the end of his route, he peered shrewdly into the face of the younger
man. "Have you read the Psychical Society's report on Mrs. Fife?"
Bulger's mind said, "Good God no!" His lips said, "Only some
newspaper stuff about them. Seemed rather remarkable if true.
Something in that stuff, I suppose."
"I've read them," resumed Norcross. "Got the full set. We ought to
inform ourselves on such things, Bulger. Especially when we get older.
That gravestone now. There's one like it--that I know about." Norcross,
with another jerky motion, which seemed to propel him against his will,
crossed to his desk and touched a bell, bringing his secretary instantly.
"Left hand side of the vault, box marked 'Private 3,'" he said. Then he
resumed:
"If they could come back they would come, Bulger. Especially those

we loved. Not to let us see them, you understand, but to assure us it is
all right--that we'll live again. That's what I want--proof--I can't take it
on faith." His voice lowered. "Thirty years!" he whispered. "What's
thirty years?"
The secretary knocked, entered, set a small, steel box on the glass top
of the desk. Norcross dismissed him with a gesture, drew out his keys,