Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/68

66 street with papers and dust always flying. The street had given me many stories, most of them disagreeable. A young girl had committed suicide in one of the gray houses. There had been amurder in another house. It is rich with food for ever hungry reporters. Perhaps the old woman did have something pithy to relate. I recalled Will Hoist's last words and with this new interest they had a portending sound.

I walked slowly up the street trying to decide. The afternoon was mine. I had counted on walking through the park to the beach. I needed exercise. Jack had said that the woman was dying. She was most likely dead now. I detested seeing dead bodies especially old ones. Well, all I had to do was to ask for Lorna Blanchard. If the Reaper had called before me, I could go away.

Looking around to see that Jack Hayes had not followed me, he was always up to tricks, I swung on to a car and got a transfer to the old trolley line that bumps along within two short blocks of Hubert street.

The sun was obscured by fog from the bay when I got to Hubert street and the old gray houses were desolate in shadow. I had never seen the place quite as melancholy. 2021 loomed up like a great gray vault and the iron picket fence around the small space allotted for a garden, but where no garden had bloomed for years, looked like the fences one sees around graves in old church yards.

I found, to my surprise, by reading a stained placard below the door bell, that Lorna Blanchard was a medium. She gave trumpet and cabinet demonstrations every Tuesday and Friday night. I began to imagine many reasons for this woman's summons as I rang the bell and waited for an answer. She had, of course, heard from the spirit of Will Hoist. Or it might be Peter. I have never taken much stock in spiritualism for I had attended many seances and had always run into tricks. These I had written for a Sunday editorial.

The door did not open for some time. I became chilled by the fog and the wind that sang mournfully about the big gray house. Finally the door was opened a very small crack by some one who asked, "What do you want?"

"I am Willows, reporter for the 'Page.' Lorna Blanchard sent for me," I said to the dim face peering at me through the crack.

"Oh, yes, just a moment."

The door closed and I heard slow foot steps ascending a flight of stairs. Then there was silence and then again foot steps decending the stair. This time the door was opened wide.

"Upstairs, if you please," invited a servile voice coming from an old man in seedy black who stood in the shadows cast by a feeble gas jet. The tiny blue flame served only to illuminate the first few steps and after that it was a case of feeling my way. The old man followed close behind me but he said nothing and made no apologies for the darkness.

At the top of the stairs, I found another dim gas jet and a long cold hall with countless doors opening into countless rooms. To one of these doors the old man led me; paused and knocked. He received no immediate answer, so he opened the door and looked in. A welcome rush of warm air came out to me and I could glimpse, over the old man's head, a small iron stove with rounded, flushed cheeks like a fat man with a fever. A voice, low pitched and musical, asked if that was Barlow.

"Yes, Miss Blanchard, this is Barlow and I've brought the man from the 'Page'."

"Oh, I am glad," said the rich voice followed by a deep sigh of relief. "Tell him to come in, Barlow."

ENTERED a warm, high room, the one window of which, had a cracked yellow shade pulled down. The place was scantily furnished. It had a few plush bottomed chairs, a table littered with dusty volumes, dirty dishes, newspapers, and a Ouija board; a heavy oaken bureau and a heavy oaken bed to match. That was about all. Above the bed, and staring wrathfully at me, was the crayon portrait of a fierce black whiskered man with a transparent veil covering the lower half of his face. Around his head were drawn moons and stars and planets.

These details I had short time to notice for my whole attention was instantly drawn to the woman lying in the middle of the heavy oaken bed. Her face was most unusual although so much of it had wasted away that her eyes and nose and high cheek bones were all that seemed to remain. What held me and stimulated my interest were her remarkable eyes. They were the eyes of a dead woman who was still lingering, with eyes only, between life and death. They were not of this earth and yet they still held the spark that is not for the dead. She fixed those startling eyes upon me and said:

"I was afraid you wouldn't come, Mr. Willows. You don't know how afraid I was. I am pausing between this world and the greater one to come but the door is rapidly closing. It is a heavy black door and I can push against it only a short time longer."

I leaned over her, anxious to catch every word. She was like a well written story, interesting from the start.

"What is it you want to tell me, Miss Blanchard?" I asked.

"I want to try and prove to you that poor Will Hoist did not kill Gladys Rogers. I want to lay the guilt at the right door. Please sit down. It is quite a long story. Tell Barlow to keep up the fire. It is cold here for you but not for me. I am free from all that. Can you hear me? My voice used to be very loud and clear. It sounds now as if I am whispering."

"I can hear you perfectly, Miss Blanchard," I said, seating myself on one of the plush bottomed chairs. Barlow was refilling the round stove with coal and the reflections of the flames danced on the room's stained walls.

"How did you come to send for me?" I inquired.

"I saw you often at different seances and when I saw you in court I remembered your face. In your writing you were always so kind to poor Will Hoist. You did not condemn him from the start as most of the newspaper men did."

Looking back, I had been rather square with Will Hoist even though he did exasperate me with his weakness. I did not tell the public he had played the coward before he died.

"How did you know my name?" I pursued, "I never had the pleasure of signing my stories."

"The board told me that," she said, and she indicated the Ouija board on the table.

Barlow had taken a seat beside the stove and sat slumped over, his shadow, huge and black, cast behind him on the bare wall.

Lorna Blanchard turned her head slowly on her pillow; fixed me with her eyes and began her strange story.

"To begin with, Mr. Willows, I was nursing Mrs. Hoist when her twin boys were born. I was not a professional nurse. In fact, my father was training me to follow in his footsteps. That is his picture over the bed. He was a wonderful man but too far beyond us to be fully understood. I always feared him when he wore the black veil. We lived next door to Mrs. Hoist. She was a widow, a queer weak little woman who always leaned on me for advice. Her husband had treated her brutally and had bullied her. She had a bad habit