famous palmist or
fortune-teller. But in everything to do with social life Paris is highly
organised, London singularly chaotic.

On reaching home, he at once discovered, with a certain bitter
amusement, that Madame d'Elphis disdained the artifices with which she
might reasonably have surrounded her mysterious craft. Not only were her
name, address, and even hours of consultation, to be found in the "Tout
Paris," but there also was inscribed her telephone number.

Vanderlyn hated the telephone. He never used it unless he was compelled
to do so; but now he went through the weary, odious preliminaries with a
certain eagerness--"Alo! Alo! Alo!"

At last a woman's voice answered, "Yes--yes. Who is it?"

"Can Madame d'Elphis receive a client this evening?"

There was a pause. Then he heard a question asked, a murmured answer of
which the sense evaded him, and then a refusal,--not, he fancied, a very
decided refusal,--followed by a discreet attempt to discover his name,
his nationality, his address, with a suggestion that Madame d'Elphis
would be at his disposal the next morning.

A touch of doubt in the quick, hesitating accents of the unseen woman
emboldened Vanderlyn. He conveyed, civilly and clearly, that he was
quite prepared to offer a very special fee for the favour he was asking;
and he indicated that, though he had been told the usual price of a
seance was fifty francs, he--the mysterious stranger who was speaking to
Madame d'Elphis through the telephone--was so exceedingly anxious to be
received by her that evening that he would pay a fancy fee,--in fact as
much as a thousand francs,--for the privilege of consulting the famous
fortune-teller.

To Vanderlyn's vexation and surprise, there followed a long pause.

At last came the answer, the expected assent; but it was couched in
words which surprised and vaguely disquieted him.

"Very well, sir, my sister will be ready to receive you at eight o'clock
to-night; but she is going out, so she will not be able to give you a
prolonged seance."

Then he had not been speaking to the soothsayer herself? Vanderlyn felt
vaguely disquieted and discomfited. He had counted on having to take but
one person into his half-confidence; and then--well, he had told himself
while at the telephone that he would not find it difficult to conclude
the bargain he desired to make with the woman whose highly-pitched,
affected voice had given him, or so he had thought, the clue to a ve