Vera, The Medium | Page 5

bedroom and the reporter, as though accepting the verdict, started to follow the others. As he did so, as though in explanation or as a warning he added: "You said to always come to you for the facts." The lawyer halted, hesitated. "What facts do you want?" he asked. The reporter bowed, and waved his broad felt hat toward the listening men. In polite embarrassment he explained what he had to say could not be spoken in their presence.
Something in the manner of the stranger led Judge Gaylor to pause. He directed Garrett to accompany the reporters from the room. Then, with mock politeness, he turned to the one who remained. "I take it, you are a new comer in New York journalism. What is your name?" he asked.
"My name is Homer Lee," said the Southerner. "I am a New Orleans boy. I've been only a month in your city. Judge," he began earnestly, but in a voice which still held the drawl of the South, "I met a man from home last week on Broadway. He belonged to that spiritualistic school on Carondelet Street. He knows all that's going on in the spook world, and he tells me the ghost raisers have got their hooks into the old man pretty deep. Is that so?"
The bewilderment of Judge Gaylor was complete and, without question, genuine.
"I don't know what you mean," he said.
"My informant tells me," continued the reporter, "that Mr. Hallowell has embraced -- if that's what you call it -- spiritualism."
Gaylor started forward.
"What!" he roared.
Unmoved, the other regarded the Judge keenly.
"Spiritualism," he repeated, "and that a bunch of these mediums have got him so hypnotized he can't call his soul his own, or his money, either. Is that true?"
Judge Gaylor's outburst was overwhelming. That it was genuine Mr. Lee, observing him closely, was convinced.
"Of all the outrageous, ridiculous" -- the judge halted, gasping for words -- "and libelous statements!" he went on. "If you print that," he thundered, "Mr. Hallowell will sue your paper for half a million dollars. Can't you see the damage you would do? Can't your people see that if the idea got about that he was unable to direct his own affairs, that he was in the hands of mediums, it would invalidate everything he does? After his death, every act of his at this time, every paper he had signed, would be suspected, and -- and" -- stammered the Judge as his imagination pictured what might follow -- "they might even attack his will!" He advanced truculently. "Do you mean to publish this libel?"
Lee moved his shoulders in deprecation. "I'm afraid we must," he said.
"You must!" demanded Gaylor. "After what I've told you? Do you think I'm lying to you?"
"No," said the reporter; "I don't think you are. Looks more like you didn't know."
"Not know? I?" Gaylor laughed hysterically. "I am his lawyer. I am his best friend! Who will you believe?" He stepped to the table and pressed an electric button, and Garrett appeared in the hall. "Tell Dr. Rainey I want to see him," Gaylor commanded, "and return with him."
As they waited, Judge Gaylor paced quickly to and fro. "I've had to deny some pretty silly stories about Mr. Hallowell," he said, "but of all the absurd, malicious - - There's some enemy back of this; some one in Wall Street is doing this. But I'll find him -- I'll -- " he was interrupted by the entrance of the butler and Dr. Rainey, Mr. Hallowell's personal physician.
Rainey was a young man with a weak face, and knowing, shifting eyes that blinked behind a pair of eyeglasses. To conceal an indecision of character of which he was quite conscious, he assumed a manner that, according to whom he addressed, was familiar or condescending. At one of the big hospitals he had been an ambulance surgeon and resident physician, later he had started upon a somewhat doubtful career as a medical "expert." Only two years had passed since the police and the reporters of the Tenderloin had ceased calling him "Doc." In a celebrated criminal case in which Gaylor had acted as chief counsel, he had found Rainey complaisant and apparently totally without the moral sense. And when in Garrett he had discovered for Mr. Hallowell a model servant, he had also urged upon his friend, for his resident physician, his protege Rainey.
Still at white heat, the older man began abruptly: "This gentleman is from the Republic. He is going to publish a story that Mr. Hallowell has fallen under the influence of mediums, clairvoyants; that everything he does is on advice from the spirit world -- " he turned sharply upon Lee. "Is that right?" The reporter nodded.
"You can see the effect of such a story. It would invalidate every act of