Beauty thought it was poor taste for a borrower to keep the owner so entirely in the dark; and
perhaps the idea occurred to Sir Basil, for he called Lanny on the telephone and asked if he could
spare time to run over and see him. Lanny offered to drive Madame on the next trip, and
Zaharoff said all right; Lanny might attend the seance if it would interest him. That was certainly
an advance, and could only mean that Zaharoff had managed to make friends with the Iroquois
chieftain and his spirit band.
"All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." So Lanny's stern
grandfather had quoted, at the time when Lanny was making a scandal in Newcastle by falling
in love with a young actress. The playboy thought of it now as he sat and watched this man who
might be as old as Grandfather Samuel. His suave manners were a mask and his soul a bundle of
fears. He had fought so hard for wealth and power, and now he sat and watched infirmity
creeping over him and everything slipping out of his grasp. "Then I looked on all the works
that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was
vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."
Secretiveness was the breath of the munitions king's being. For nearly a year he had had
Tecumseh and the spirits to himself, and if he had told anyone what was happening it hadn't
come to Lanny's ears. But he couldn't hold out indefinitely, because his soul was racked with
uncertainties. Was it really the duquesa who was sending him messages? Or was it merely a
fantasy, a cruel hoax of somebody or something unknown? Lanny had attended many seances,
and was continually studying the subject. The old man had to know what he made of it.
The sitting itself was rather commonplace. Evidently the munitions king and the spirit of his
dead wife had become established on a firm domestic basis. She came right away, as she would
have done if he had called her from the next room. She didn't have much to talk about—which
probably would have been the case if her "grass" had not withered and blown away. The only
difference was that Zaharoff would have known the "grass" for what it was; but this imitation
grass, this mirage, this painting on a fog—what was it? She assured him that she loved him—of
which he had never had any doubt. She assured him that she was happy—she had said it many
times, and it was good news if it was she.
As to the conditions of her existence she was vague, as the spirits generally are. They explain
that it is difficult for mortal minds to comprehend their mode of being; and that is a possibility,
but also it may be an evasion. The duquesa had given evidence of her reality, but now she
seemed to wish that he should take it as settled; that made her happier—and of course he
sought to make her happy.
But afterward he tormented himself with doubts. Should he torment her with them?
She greeted Lanny and talked to him. She had come to him first, with messages to her husband,
and now she thanked him for delivering them. It was exactly as if they had been together in the
garden of the Paris mansion. She reminded him of it, and of the snow-white poodles shaved to
resemble lions. She had escorted him into the library, and he, a courteous youth, had
understood that she might have no more time for him, and had volunteered to make himself
happy with a magazine. Did he remember what it was? She said:
remembered. He darted a glance at Zaharoff, and thought he saw the old white imperial
trembling. "Tell him that that is correct," insisted the Spanish duquesa with a Polish accent.
"He worries so much,
The spirit talked about the unusually wet weather, and about the depression; she said that
both would end soon. Such troubles did not affect her, except as they affected those she loved.
She knew everything that was happening to them; apparently she knew whatever she wanted to
know. Lanny asked her politely, could she bring them some fact about the affairs of her ancient
family which her husband had never known, but which he might verify by research; something
that was in an old document, or hidden in a secret vault in a castle; preferably something she
hadn't known during her own lifetime, so that it couldn't have been in the subconscious mind
of either of them?
"Oh, that subconscious mind!" laughed the Spanish lady. "It is a name that you make
yourself unhappy with. What is mind when it isn't conscious? Have you ever known such a
thing?"
"No," said Lanny, "because then it would be conscious. But what is it that acts like a
subconscious mind?"
"Perhaps it is God," was the reply; and Lanny wondered: had he brought with him some
fragment of the subconscious mind of Parsifal Dingle, and injected it into the subconscious
mind which called itself Maria del Pilar Antonia Angela Patrocino Simon de Muguiro у Berute,
Duquesa de Marqueni у Villafranca de los Caballeros?
VIII
