The House of Mystery | Page 8

opened the box. It distilled a faint scent of old roses and old papers.
Norcross looked within for a moment, as though turning the scent into
memories, before he took out a locket. He opened it, hesitated, and then
extended it to Bulger. It enclosed an exquisite miniature--a young
woman, blonde, pretty in a blue-eyed, innocent way, but characterless,
too--a face upon which life had left nothing, so that even the great
painter who made the miniature from a photograph had illuminated it
only with technical skill.
"Don't tell me what you think of her," Norcross said quietly; "I prefer to
keep my own ideas. It was when I was a young freight clerk. She taught
school up there. We were--well, the ring's in the box, too. They took it
off her finger when they buried her. That's why--" to put the brake on
his rapidly running sentiment, he ventured one of his rare pleasantries
at this point--"that's why I'm still a stock newspaper feature as one of
the great matches for ambitious society girls."
Bulger, listening, was observing also. Within the front cover of the case
were two sets of initials in old English letters--"R.H.N." and "H.W."
His mind, a little confused by its wanderings in strange fields, tried idly
to match "H.W." with names. Suddenly he felt the necessity of
expressing sympathy.
"Poor--" he began, but Norcross, by a swift outward gesture of the hand,
stopped and saved him.
[Illustration: "IT WASN'T THE MONEY; IT WAS THE GAME--"]
"Well, I got in after that," Norcross went on, "and I drove 'em! It wasn't
the money; it was the game. She'd have had the spending of that. And it
isn't just to see her--it's to know if she is still waiting--and if we'll make

up for thirty years--out there."
As Bulger handed back the locket, the secretary knocked again.
Norcross started; something seemed to snap into place; he was again
the silent, guarded baron of the railroads. He dropped the locket into
the box, closed it. "The automobile," said his secretary. Norcross
nodded, and indicated the box. The secretary bore it away.
"Come up to dinner Tuesday," said Norcross in his normal tone. But his
voice quavered a little for a moment as he added:
"You're good at forgetting?"
"Possessor of the best forgettery you ever saw," responded Bulger.
Forthwith, they turned to speech of the railroad rate bill.
* * * * *
When, after a mufti dinner at the club, Bulger reached his bachelor
apartments, he found a telegram. The envelope bore his office address;
by that sign he knew, even before he unfolded the yellow paper, that it
was the important telegram from his partner, the crucial telegram, for
which he had been waiting these two days. It must have come to the
office after he left. He got out the code book from his desk, laid it open
beside the sheet, and began to decipher, his face whitening as he went
on:
BUTTE, MONT.
Reports of expert phony. Think Oppendike salted it on him. They will
finish this vein in a month. Then the show will bust. Federated Copper
Company will not bite and too late now to unload on public. Something
must be done. Can't you use your drag with Norcross somehow?
WATSON.
Bulger, twisting the piece of yellow paper, stared out into the street.
His "drag with Norcross!" What had that ever brought, what could it

ever bring, except advertising and vague standing? Yet Norcross by a
word, a wink, could give him information which, rightly used, would
cancel all the losses of this unfortunate plunge in the Mongolia Mine.
But Norcross would never give that word, that wink; and to fish for it
were folly. Norcross never broke the rules of the lone game which he
played.
As Bulger stood there, immovable except for the nervous hands which
still twisted and worried the telegram, he saw a sign on the building
opposite. The first line, bearing the name, doubtless, was illegible; the
second, fully legible, lingered for a long time merely in his perceptions
before it reached and touched his consciousness.
"CLAIRVOYANT," it read.
He started, leaned on a table as though from weakness, and continued
to stare at the sign.
"Who is the cleverest fakir in that business?" he said at length to
himself.
And then, after a few intent minutes:
"When he was a freight clerk--thirty years ago--that was at Farnham
Mills--'H.W.'--granite shaft--sure it can be done!"

III
THE LIGHT
As Dr. Blake tucked his racket under his arm and came down to the net,
the breeze caught a corner of her veil and let the sunlight run clear
across her face. He realized, in that moment, how the burning interest
as a man, which he had developed in these three