I made a pretence of buying some fruit. “This is the business for which I brought you ashore,” I said to Ellen.
It was impossible that the woman could have heard me, yet she turned sharply, eying Ellen as she came forward.
“It was for no oranges you come. Why didn’t ye say what you come for? If there’s any dead belonging to ye, I’ll bring ye word from them. There’s spirits all about me; there’s spirits at yer back, there’s spirits fillin’ the street. What’ll you have, my young man?” to a boy who stopped. “Eight and ten cents them is.”
Ellen drew back. “Let us go, let us go,” she said.
At that moment a series of soft double-knocks, as if made by two knuckles of a gloved hand, sounded all about us,--under the pavement, on the roof, on the stall.
“There’s yer change.--I’ve a message for _you_,” suddenly facing Ellen; “there’s a spirit here to speak to you.”
“He is dead, then?” catching both hands together as if to support herself.
The woman took down a greasy card, on which the alphabet was printed, from a nail where it hung, and ran her pencil lightly along it, as the raps continued in swift, soft succession. She spelled out this message:--
“I think of you here. Of you and Joe. You will come to me.”
The woman glanced at Ellen, who leaned against the edge of the block.
“I was murdered; drugged and murdered,” was the answer.
“He is dead. There is no chance any more.” That was all she said, with a strange inconsistency, forgetting her anger of the other day. “There is no chance, no chance,” I heard her mutter, as we went back to the boat; “he’s gone now.”
The blow was as hard as if it had struck her for the first time. I told Warrick the story without comment.
“It goes dead against the other,” he exclaimed. “And yet where did either woman get their knowledge of the business we wanted cleared. The blood-mark on the chin, the possibility that the dead man had been drugged and murdered? There’s truth in it, in all the muddle.”
I said nothing. But the matter had taken a hold on me which I could not shake off. I determined to look through the absurdity and mystery of this so-called spiritualism until I had discovered the truth which Warrick believed lay in it. I could not divest myself, either, of an unaccountable impression that at last we were upon the track of the missing man.