Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/60

50 term. But that is neither here nor there. Before I go would you like to see one more?"

"Very much, indeed, if it's as good as the last!" I replied.

In the window stood a large glass dish, half full of water and having a dark brown fly paper floating on the surface. He brought it across to the table at which I sat, and drained the water into a jug near by, leaving the paper sticking to the bottom.

This done, he took a tiny leather case from his pocket and a small bottle out of that again. From this bottle he poured a few drops of some highly pungent liquid on to the paper, with the result that it grew black as ink and threw off a tiny vapour, which licked the edges of the bowl and curled upwards in a faint spiral column.

"There, Mr. Hatteras, this is a—well, a trick—I learned from an old woman in Benares. It is a better one than the last and will repay your interest. If you will look on that paper for a moment, and try to concentrate your attention, you will see something that will, I think, astonish you."

Hardly believing that I should see anything at all I looked. But for some seconds without success. My scepticism, however, soon left me. I saw only the coarse grain of the paper and the thin vapour rising from it. Then the knowledge that I was gazing into a dish vanished. I forgot my companion and the previous conjuring trick, I saw only a picture opening out before me—that of a handsomely furnished room, and a girl sitting in an easy chair crying as if her heart were breaking. The room I had never seen before, but the girl I should have known among a thousand. It was Phyllis, my sweetheart!