“And I reckon if the metal is gold or silver, the spirits just might take it back,” growled Mr. Clemens. “I think we’ll leave the jewelry home, thanks. I’ll tell you one more time, Ed McPhee—you’d better not do anything to make me regret this!”
“No tricks, Sam—honest Injun,” said McPhee, with such a show of sincerity that I was almost tempted to believe him.
3
The next day, Mr. Clemens remembered some correspondence he needed to attend to, and so my plans to go back into the city had to be postponed. I briefly wondered whether I was being punished for bringing home McPhee and his wife, but if so, Mr. Clemens was punishing himself as well, since he spent the entire morning away from his beloved family, dictating letters. After luncheon, his wife handed him a thick sheaf of typewriter paper—chapters from his latest book, marked with her comments and emendations—for him to revise. We sat together the whole afternoon in his little office at the head of the stairs, he working at the typewriter (which he had brought all the way from America) and I turning my hastily scribbled notes into finished letters for him to sign and dispatch to various parties all over the world.
It was perhaps four o’clock when Mr. Clemens tore a sheet of paper out of the typewriter, put it on the growing pile of finished copy, and pushed back his chair with the air of a man who has finished his work for the day. I kept on writing—I needed only a few lines to complete the letter I was working on. He watched me for perhaps two minutes until he saw me reach for the blotter, and then he said, “Well, Wentworth, what do you make of McPhee’s séance? Is it just one more of his damned swindles?”
I looked over to try to read his expression, but he was concentrating on loading one of his pipes. “I can’t judge for certain,” I said. “I suppose we’ll all know better tonight, after we’ve seen it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” said Mr. Clemens. “Do you remember how Slippery Ed took your money at three-card monte? You knew there was some kind of trick to it, and you were keeping your eyes on him the whole time, and he still managed to sneak in the stinger. That old rascal has about as many principles as a snapping turtle. He’d cheat himself if he could figure out a way to make a profit on it. Hell, he’d probably do it anyway, just to stay in practice.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I admitted, blushing at the memory of how easily McPhee had deceived me. “But he’s not charging us admission, and he has given his promise not to use your name in publicity. I don’t see how he gains any advantage.”
Mr. Clemens snorted and waved his hand, strewing the rug with a small spray of loose tobacco from the still unlit pipe. “You don’t think he’s likely to keep that promise for five minutes, do you?”
“You don’t?” I asked, surprised. “Then why did you accept it?”
My employer finished tamping down the remaining tobacco and looked for a match. “Because Livy and Susy want to see the damned séance. Did you see that little girl’s face light up? What kind of father could tell her no? Mark my words, though: if McPhee tries anything crooked, I’ll lambaste him as a fraud and an outrage, and publish it for the whole world to see. And if he’s lied to me, it’ll give me the moral high ground. If you want to get a reader on your side, there’s nothing that’ll do it faster than the righteous indignation of an innocent, trusting man who’s been lied to. But if people think you go around looking for trouble, they pay you a lot less mind.”
“I can understand that,” I said, nodding. Then a thought occurred to me. “Do you mean to say you’re not going to McPhee’s séance with the intention of exposing him?”
He chuckled. “Even if I did, do you think it would make much difference? Old Barnum was right, you know. It doesn’t matter how many suckers you wise up—the swindler just has to walk down to the next corner, and there’ll be another one along by the time he plants his feet. No, I just think of it as gathering material I might be able to use sometime. And there’s always the tiny chance that some of what goes on won’t be a sham—that’s the part I’m really curious about—though it’s the last thing I’d expect.”
“I’d have thought that voodoo ceremony we saw in New Orleans would be enough to convince you,” I said, remembering a hot night on the shores of Bayou St. John, with Eulalie Echo dancing to wild drum music, and spine-tingling voices echoing in the dark.
“Nobody who’s met Eulalie Echo is likely to call her a sham,” said Mr. Clemens. The pipe was finally lit, and the aromatic fumes began to fill the room as he puffed on it. “For one thing, I think she’s absolutely sincere in what she believes. I’d guess the ceremony we saw that night was made up—not the real thing at all. The point was to scare the murderer into confessing, not to get in touch with the voodoo spirits. But if there’s any case to be made for supernatural powers, I’d pick Eulalie Echo as the best evidence I’ve seen for it.”
“Then why couldn’t Martha McPhee have genuine powers?” I asked.
“Ah, now we get to the nub of it,” said Mr. Clemens. “You still want to believe in that girl, don’t you? Even after you found out she’d lured you into Ed’s game—even after you found out she was secretly married to
