Aha! Jackpot!
There was a quick softening of the blue gaze, and she said, “Oh — I’m sorry... But I’m afraid I don’t understand...”
“How could you?” said Doctor Alcazar. “And it is I who should apologize. For imposing on your kindness—”
The big smile was completely friendly again as she waved him to a chair and perched herself on the arm of a settee and said, “Why not sit down and tell me all about it?”
“Thank you,” said Doctor Alcazar. “Thank you.” He folded his length into the chair and began.
“I should perhaps explain, Mrs. de Vries,” said Doctor Alcazar, “that I am what is sometimes called a Metaphysician — a sort of Professor of the Occult...”
It was a fine story and confident now, he did every word of it justice. It gave his listener several firm impressions, and an extraordinary but (to her, at least) entirely believable history of the events which were supposed to have brought him here. The impressions were, first, that Doctor Alcazar was a genuine and expert prober into the Arcana, second, that he was not now (and never had been) one to turn his gifts and knowledge to financial gain; third, that he himself was much moved and excited over the strange happenstance which had brought him here.
The story itself, freed from its bravura embellishments, ran thus:
Doctor Alcazar, while engaged on “a simple little experiment in behalf of a pupil,” had received a “most unusual interruption to the Kamic stream.” The crystal he had been using at the time had become, suddenly and disturbingly, a battleground between the images from the stream he had deliberately tapped and other images “from a stream unknown.” The battle had been extraordinary, and had lasted for one crowded hour before the “outside, unknown, interrupting force” had been victorious. The images it projected were strong and persistent, and they summed up (really Doctor Alcazar must not waste more of Mrs. de Vries’ time than he could help!) to the total picture of a woman in distress. A woman who was in dire danger, and seeking help...
All that, ran the story, had been two weeks ago; to be precise, fifteen days. Eleven days before Lily Morton’s death. Doctor Alcazar had made a full notation of the singular occurrence in his files and had then put the matter from his mind until yesterday when, at the home of friends in Del Monte, he had chanced to glance at the newspaper and had seen Lily Morton’s photograph upon the front page...
It was at this point that his listener interrupted Doctor Alcazar for the first time.
“And it was the same face!” she said, more in statement than question. “It was Lily’s — Lily’s image you’d seen in the crystal!”
Doctor Alcazar spread his hands. “That is the question, Miss Druce,” he said, “which has brought me four hundred miles to see you.” He paused. “My first impression, on seeing the picture, was that I had seen the same face as that in the crystal. But then—” he smiled a grave smile — “first impressions, after all, are often unreliable. And a true Metaphysician must be as sure of his facts as any Scientist...”
Mrs. Clinton de Vries looked at Doctor Alcazar with wide blue eyes.
“This,” she declared, “is terribly interesting! Absolutely fascinating!” Her gaze clouded, and a look of distress puckered the impish face. “Poor Lily!” She sighed, then gave her straight shoulders an impatient little shake and said briskly, “Well, then, Doctor, what you want are photographs of the poor girl.” She stood up. “I’ll go and—”
“Please!” Doctor Alcazar checked her. “What I would like to do — if you will permit me — is to recount to you, from my memory, a description of the face I saw in the crystal. Then, if I chance to hit upon some... ah... factor or factors known to you but not registered by the camera — well, then we shall be entitled to assume that it was indeed Lily Morton’s Kamic stream which so astonishingly obtruded upon my own.”
“Oh!... Oh, I see!” The blue eyes were concentrated, absorbed. “That’s — wonderful! There couldn’t be any mistake that way, could there?... Yes. Yes. Please do that, Doctor.”
Doctor Alcazar covered his eyes with one graceful hand and said, slowly and in a dim, faraway sort of voice which was first cousin to the booming monotone that so frequently was heard in the small black tent:
“I saw in the crystal — a woman... Part of her form, but dimly. But I saw her features clearly. Clearly...”
Drawing upon his memory, which was indeed prodigious, Doctor Alcazar gave a minute and detailed description, suitably intoned and punctuated for this semi-mystic occasion, of the homely English face he remembered staring at him across his table. When he had finished, he slowly lowered the hand from his eyes, shook his head slightly as if to clear it, and looked interrogatively at Mrs. Clinton de Vries.
She was staring at him, rapt and intent. She said, in a curiously low voice, “Lily! That’s Lily! I think I was sure before you started, Doctor, but when you remembered things like the little mole under her ear, and the gold filling in that tooth—”
She didn’t trouble to finish the sentence. She just went on staring at Doctor Alcazar.
Who now played the card — the dangerous, all-powerful or all-ruinous card — which he had suddenly realized was in his hand.
Doctor Alcazar slowly rose to his feet. He stood towering above the small woman, and bowed over her, and smiled his grave smile, and picked up his hat from the table where it lay.
“Miss Druce,” he said simply, “you have set my mind at rest.”
He said, “I cannot thank you enough for having so graciously given me your time.” He bowed again. She rose slowly, but he pretended not to notice she was rising. He was already turning away, already crossing towards the door with long deliberate strides.
It was an unpleasant moment. It was a series of unpleasant moments.
His hand was actually on the door-latch before she spoke.
She said, from somewhere much closer behind him than he had thought her to be, “Oh, Doctor—”
He turned, his hand still on the latch, and waited with stately courtesy.
She came nearer. She tilted the gray head to one side, looked up at him and said, “Doctor, will you be — what will you — I mean, aren’t you going to try and find out more?”
Aha! The winner and still champion...
Doctor Alcazar permitted a slightly puzzled expression to show upon his face.
He said, “ ‘Find out?’... I’m afraid I don’t quite follow, Mrs. de Vries.”
She said, “What I really mean—” and broke off and went on looking up at Doctor Alcazar, smiling her enormous smile again.
“Now, you give me some time,” she said. “Come back and sit down, please.”
Doctor Alcazar did as he was bidden. He chose a chair nearer the French windows, and his hostess leaned against the edge of the desk nearby and looked down at him.
“Now look,” she said with a sort of bright-eyed bluntness, “although I’ve always wanted to believe what Hamlet said to Horatio was right, I’ve met so many phoneys in my time I haven’t had a chance...”
She came away from the desk and crossed to Doctor Alcazar’s chair. There was a tremendous earnestness about her. “They’re always trying to chisel,” she said. “And they never prove anything!... But you’ve done something in ten minutes none of them ever did — you’ve convinced me!”
“I am honored,” murmured Doctor Alcazar.
“Suppose,” she said, “suppose you deliberately worked at — what would you call it? — getting in touch with Lily again! And suppose you succeeded!... Don’t you think it’s possible you might be able to find out who killed her?”