Home tomorrow, at any rate, which fact he would wire to Boggs as soon as they arrived in Jimtown. And to Sabina as well, along with brief preliminary word of his success in Tuttletown.
9
Sabina
Sabina’s second audience with Professor A. Vargas on Thursday afternoon and third on Friday morning followed along similar lines as the first. At Thursday’s he professed to have made contact with his spirit control, and that Angkar had agreed to seek out the shade of the mythical Gregory Milford; at the just completed Friday sitting, he claimed that Angkar had made contact with Gregory, who was “quite happy in the Afterworld though still adjusting to spirit life.” It was possible that communication might be established between brother and sister at Saturday’s séance, he said, though Angkar had told him that the alleged “malevolent forces” were particularly active at present. It was therefore necessary that her “psychic energy be properly focused” at the séance in order to circumvent the evil influence. Which, of course, required the third audience and another ten-dollar “donation.”
At both the second and third, Vargas probed for additional information about the Milford family’s finances, and for personal details about Gregory’s life and activities before “his passage beyond the veil.” And deflected Sabina’s attempts to question him about his and the college’s past activities and the reason for his move to San Francisco as neatly as she deflected his subtle attempts at seduction. The remainder of each session was taken up with embellishments in his line of double-talk about attuned impulses, paranormal rapport, spatial and temporal laws, and theocratic unity.
There was no doubt that Vargas was an out-and-out fraud and a shameless womanizer to boot. The answer to Sabina’s wire to the Pinkerton Agency’s New York office provided evidence of both facts.
Six years previously, one Abraham Vargas had acted as assistant to a fraudulent clairvoyant known as the “Albany Seer” who had bilked gullible Social Register clients of thousands of dollars before being unmasked and arrested. Vargas had been charged, tried, and convicted along with him, receiving a six-month prison sentence. And during the trial, it had come to light that both men had indulged in immoral escapades with more than one of their female acolytes.
Nothing was known in New York of Vargas since his release. But he had obviously learned enough tricks from his employer to set up his own fake spiritualist confidence game. Where he had operated the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses before traveling west was anyone’s guess. As was where and how he had acquired the services of the cold-eyed Annabelle; there was no record of her having been involved with Vargas or the “Albany Seer” in New York. Another of his sexual conquests, no doubt.
Winthrop Buckley would surely be as satisfied as Sabina that the professor was a fraud, but an ardent occultist such as Mrs. Buckley might well be inclined to give Vargas the benefit of the doubt unless she was presented with empirical proof of his duplicity. This, Sabina felt sure, could be accomplished at Saturday’s séance, assuming Vargas’s bag of mediumistic tricks was as standard as she expected it must be from her client’s description of what had transpired the previous Saturday.
The task of providing that proof would be made even easier if she had a better idea of how those tricks were worked. And if she could talk John into attending the séance with her.
His wire from Jamestown had arrived just before close of business on Thursday, letting her know that he had successfully wrapped up his investigation for the Sierra Railway Company and expected to be back in the city sometime this afternoon. Both bits of news had pleased her, the latter more than the former. And not only because she coveted his assistance.
The old adage was true where John was concerned: absence did indeed make the heart grow fonder.
The narrow storefront where Madame Louella conducted her Gypsy fortune-telling dodge was on Kearney near Pine, sandwiched between the shop of a woman who made what she billed as “fashionable cloaks for the ladies” and a grifter who called himself the “Napoleon of Necromancers.” A large sign above the entrance proclaimed that Madame Louella SEES ALL, KNOWS ALL, TELLS ALL and would inform those who wished to know what their futures held for the price of twenty-five cents per reading.
Sabina climbed a short flight of stairs to the second floor and entered to the tinkling of a bell. The anteroom was empty, but the low murmur of voices from behind the drawn black curtain that separated it from Madame Louella’s inner sanctum indicated a visitor. The odor of incense permeated the room, a different variety than that used by A. Vargas but no less unpleasant. Black curtains, cabalistic signs, incense — all seemed de rigueur with those who practiced spiritualism, fortune-telling, mind reading, and other such flimflams.
She sat on one of three wooden chairs to wait. The incense seemed particularly strong today; if she hadn’t stopped at a tea shop for lunch on her way to Kearney Street, the biting odor would have had an even queasier effect on her stomach than it did. It was one reason Sabina avoided coming here except when absolutely necessary. The other was that a little of Madame Louella in person went a long way. Absence in the fortune-teller’s case did not make the heart grow fonder.
Her wait, fortunately, was not long. The curtain was soon drawn aside and a corpulent man wearing a satisfied smile emerged. He smiled at Sabina, bowed slightly, set a large derby firmly atop his bald head, and exited. Once the bell ceased tinkling, Madame Louella’s turbaned head appeared, then the rest of her large body encased as usual in a robe of tarnished-gold color emblazoned with mystic symbols in black and crimson. The turban was also gold, a fat blue costume jewel set into the middle of it. Stray black curls straggled from beneath the cloth.
When she saw Sabina, her solemn expression dissolved into a bright-eyed smile. “Well, hello there, dearie. What brings you here this fine afternoon? Come to pay the two dollars you owe me, eh?”
“Those, and perhaps a few more.”
“So? I’ve yet to uncover any information on Professor Vargas and the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses. He hasn’t been operating in the city long and has done nothing to attract attention.” In the grifters’ community, she meant.
Sabina said, “There is another way you can earn an additional fee.”
“How large an additional fee?”
“That remains to be determined. Large enough to suit you, I should think.”
The woman’s nostrils twitched visibly. To her, the whiff of money to be had was stronger than that of any other odor including her dratted incense. As a prod, she commenced her usual litany of complaints: how dreadful business had been of late, how her rent was in arrears and she was living hand to mouth, how her lot in life was an affront to a woman born with Romany blood in her veins and the gift of foretelling the future.
“Romany blood, my foot,” Sabina said affably. “You’re as much a Gypsy as I am, you old fraud.”
Madame Louella cackled. “True enough,” she admitted. “But business really has been poor lately. Both kinds,” she added meaningfully.
Nonsense. The woman made enough gathering and selling information to pay her bills and keep her in relative comfort. But Sabina refrained from stating the fact, saying instead, “Be candid with me, and your primary source of income will soon improve.”
“I’m always willing to be candid for the right price, dearie.”
Louella led the way through the curtain into her “fortune room,” one not unlike Vargas’s private office — another similarity in the trappings utilized by paranormal tricksters. Walls painted black, window black-curtained to keep out light, a table draped in black cloth and two facing chairs. And the only illumination an enormous crystal globe treated with a phosphorescent chemical that gave it an eerie inner glow — the same sort of trick A. Vargas used to light the table in his consulting room.