The old man nodded, smiling as if he and Stan shared a secret. He patted Molly’s hand. “A great gift, my dear child, a great gift.”
“Yeah, it’s a gift all right, Judge. Well, I guess I’ll be going back upstairs.”
Stan took both her hands in his and shook them. “You were splendid tonight, my dear. Splendid. Now run along and I’ll join you shortly. You had better lie down and rest for a few minutes.”
When he released her Molly said, “Oops,” and looked at her left hand; but Stan urged her toward the door, closing it gently behind her. He turned back to the judge.
“I’ll confess, Judge. But”-he tilted his head toward the room across the hall-“they wouldn’t understand. That is why I dropped in here for a moment. Someone here does understand.” He looked down at the dog. “Don’t you, boy?”
The Dane whined softly and crept closer.
“You know, Judge, they can sense things that are beyond all human perception. They can see and hear presences about us which we can never detect.” Stan had moved toward a reading lamp beside an armchair. “For instance, I received a very faint but clear impression just now that someone from the Other Side is in the room. I am sure it is a young girl, that she is trying to get through to us. But I can tell nothing more about her; I cannot see her. If only our handsome friend here could talk he might be able to tell us.”
The dog was staring into a dark corner of the book-lined room. He growled questioningly. Then, while the old man watched, fascinated, the Dane leaped up and shot into the corner, standing there alert and quiet, looking upward.
The mentalist slid his hand unobtrusively into his trousers pocket. “They know, sir. They can see. And now-I bid you good evening.”
The house had grown full of unseen presences for the old judge; in thinking of some who might be near him now, his eyes grew wet. Slowly, elegantly, his shoulders straight, the Great Stanton ascended the stairs with the tread of an emperor, and the judge watched him go. A wonderful young man.
In the room with the tilted ceiling Molly was lying on the bed in her brassiere and panties, smoking a cigarette. She sat up, hugging her knees. “Stan, for crying out loud, tell me why you got so mad at me when I wanted to stay for the party! Other private bookings we always stay and have fun and I don’t get lit on three champagnes, honest I don’t, honey. You think I don’t know how to behave!”
He shoved his hands into his pockets, pulled out a slip of paper and crushed it, then flung it into a corner of the room. He spoke in a savage whisper. “For Christ’s sake, don’t go turning on the tears until we get out of here. I said
He was breathing heavily, his face red and his throat working. “I’ll sweat it out of them. By Christ, that old guy downstairs gave me the angle. I’ll shake ’em loose from a pile of dough before I’m done. I’ll have ’em begging me to stay a week. I’ll have ’em wondering why I take my meals in my room. And it’ll be because they’re not fit to eat with-the bastards. I’ve been crazy not to think of this angle before, but from now on I know the racket. I’ve given ’em mentalism and they treat it like a dog walking on his hind legs. Okay. They’re asking for it. Here it comes.”
He stopped and looked down at the staring girl, whose face was chalky around the lips. “You did okay, kid.” He smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Here’s your ring, baby. I needed it for a gag.”
Frowning still, Molly slipped the diamond back on her finger and watched the tiny specks of light from it spatter the dark corner of the sloping ceiling.
Stan carefully unhooked the wires and got out of his clothes. He went into the bathroom and Molly heard the bolt slammed shut.
You never could tell why Stan did anything. Here he was, madder than a wet hen, and he wouldn’t say why and besides she wouldn’t have pulled any boners; she’d just have smiled and kept her voice low and made believe she was tired from being hypnotized. She hadn’t muffed any signals. What was eating him?
She got up and retrieved the crumpled slip from the corner. That was when it all started, when the colored waiter handed it to Stan just before they went on. Her fingers shook as she opened it.
“
CARD VIII
“I’M NOT going to put on the light. Because we’re not going to argue all night again. I tell you, there’s not a goddamned bit of difference between it and mentalism. It’s nothing but our old act dressed up so it will lay ’em in the aisles. And for real.”
“Honey, I don’t like it.”
“In God’s name, what’s the matter with it?”
“Well, what if there are-what if people do come back? I mean, well, they mightn’t like it. I can’t explain it. I’m scared.”
“Listen, baby. I been over this a hundred times. If anybody’s going to come back they’re not going to get steamed up because we fake a little. We’ll be doing the marks a favor; we’ll make ’em plenty happy. After all, suppose you thought you could really speak to your dad, now. Wouldn’t that make you happy?”
“Oh, God, I wish I could. Maybe it’s because I’ve wished so hard for just that and hoped that maybe someday I could.”
“I know, kid. I know how it is. Maybe there’s something in it after all. I don’t know. But I’ve met half a dozen spook workers in the past year and they’re hustlers, every one of them. I tell you, it’s just show business. The crowd believes we can read minds. All right. They believe it when I tell them that ‘the lawsuit’s going to come out okay.’ Isn’t it better to give them something to hope for? What does a regular preacher do every Sunday? Only all he does is promise. We’ll do more than promise. We’ll give ’em proof!”
“I-honey, I just can’t.”
“But you don’t have to
“But s’pose we got caught? I can’t help it; I think it’s mean. Remember how I told you once, the night you-you asked me to team up with you-about how I chalked on Daddy’s tomb-stone ‘He never crossed up a pal?’ I was scared to death out there in that cemetery, and I was scared every minute until I touched Daddy’s headstone, and then I started to cry and I said his name over and over, just as if he could hear me, and then somehow I felt like he really could. I was certain he could.”
“All right. I thought you were his daughter. I thought you had guts enough to turn a trick that would get you the kind of life he’d want you to have. Give us a few years in this dodge and just one big job and then we can knock off. Stop jackassing all around the country and settle down. We’ll-we’ll get married. And have a house. And a couple of dogs. We’ll-have a kid.”
“Don’t fib, honey.”
“I mean it. Don’t you think I want a kid? But it takes dough. A wad of dough. Then it’ll be Florida in the winter and the kid sitting between us in the grandstand when the barrier goes up and they streak out, fighting for the rail. That’s the kind of life I want and I’ve got my angles worked out, every one of them. Got my ordination certificate today. Baby, you’re in bed with a full-blown preacher. I bet you never thought you’d bed down with a reverend! Last week I had a tailor make me an outfit-black broadcloth. I got a turn-around collar and everything. I can put on a pair of black gloves and a black hood and work in a red light like a darkroom lamp-and nobody can see a thing. I’ve even got cloth buttons so they won’t reflect light. I tell you, it’s a perfect setup. Don’t you know a spook worker
