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THE DARK MIRROR





-s
*


“She saw . . . the face of the girl she knew as Leonora,
--
and yet . . . it was likewise the face of Priscilla Maine.


T H E D A R K
MIRROR
BY
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
Author of “The False Faces,”
“The Lone Wolf.” Etc.
Illustrated by
RUDOLPH TANDLER
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
GARDEN city NEW York London
1920
b) ºr "


- -
*** ! --> : . ---, --
THE 1, 2 W, * * * *-*.
-- - -
PUBLIC L.E.A.T. .
2579054
Aść,‘. º
TILDEN FOUNSATIONs
*
R 1926 L
k- -
- coPYRIGHT, 1920, By
- Louis Joseph VanCE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTo Foreign LANGUAGES,
... INCLUDING THE scANDINAVIAN
copyRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY THE McCALL company
º


TO
WILSON BEALL WANCE
(who Thought of IT FIRST)
This tale is dedicated BY
Its AUThor:
and HIS





CONTENTS
The Antagonists
The Haunted Woman
The Haunting Portrait
Rendezvous with Destiny
The Gathering Storm
Rendezvous with Death
The Day of Grace
The Changeling
The Day of Reckoning
XI When It Came True .
The Street of Strange Faces .
page
42
72
97
122
179
216
253
277
316
358





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
She saw . . . the face of the girl she knew
as Leonora . . . . . . Frontispiece
racing page
Her ears were deafened with Red's profane
instructions 38
Once more Mario lifted her into a waiting
motor car . . . . . . . . . 294
He knelt and pressed his lips to Priscilla’s; to
her forehead, her leaden eyes, her languid
hands . . . . . . . . . 310





f
THE DARK MIRROR





The Dark Mirror
CHAPTER ONE
THE STREET OF STRANGE. FACES
I. THE DARK CORNER
y | WHE way of the thing was ever the same:
it befell without warning; or rather,
the girl had never learned to take heed
of signs which seemed plain enough in retro-
spect, when she sat alone and puzzled her
pretty head with the dark riddle of this shadow
life which set her so widely apart from every
girl she knew and, indeed, from all the rest of
humankind . . .
She had a day of restlessness, whose every
hour brewed its new peculiar mood, whose
every mood was purposeless, with times of al-
most feverish gaiety, causeless, fitful, fugitive,
and other times when for no reason in her
3


4. THE DARK MIRROR
knowledge she caught herself sighing long
fluttering sighs that shook her strangely. So
might one's spirit sigh in weariness, faint with
the burden of incessant strife with some great
antagonist of unguessable identity.
Toward nightfall all these were soothed
away into a feeling of serene poise and self-
possession; and saturate with consciousness of
the rich, strong wine of vitality that quickened
her, she thought of life in the likeness of a wide
and placid river, wherein she drifted like a
fearless swimmer—a stream whose waters were
warm, sweet, and calm with a penetrating
quality of delicious calm she never dreamed
could be disturbed, so absolute it seemed, so
permanent, so imperturbable.
Only the sighs persisted oddly, as if her
spirit knew moments of melancholy of which
her mind knew nothing.
And insidiously the tranquil surface of that
contentment was flawed by apprehensions of
nameless danger, of peril latent, stealthy and
implacable; as though the swimmer surmised
some monstrous shape of evil skulking unseen
in those opaque deeps—or felt herself subtly
ensnared by a current whose irresistible set was
altogether toward destruction.


THE DARK MIRROR 5
Now at length perceiving what was to come,
panic paralysed in her the instinct of self-pres-
ervation: though horror brimmed the cup of
being, she made no effort to fight free but, as
one who knows that struggling must prove
vain, resigned herself and let the baneful cur-
rent work its will with her. Fascination, too,
was at work, deep within her a mad desire to
go again that wild way she had so often gone,
and once more be, and do, and see . . .
So it is, so it must be, with those to whom
a drug has made itself a thing of Life and
Death.
On ahead, like a bend in the river, waited
that turning in her psychic life which she knew
as the Dark Corner: while she lay passive in
the grasp of that power which so obscurely
had its rise in her yet was repugnant to her,
being at once her Will and her Necessity. And
as the Dark Corner drew momentarily more
near, the transfusion which she termed the
Change was effected by what may only be de-
scribed as a convulsion of her very soul, after
which came lassitude, a vast enervation in which
all lingering traces of reluctance were obliter-
ated.
Now she was no longer herself, but another


6 THE DARK MIRROR
woman than the one she knew, a strange
woman clothed in her own flesh but in no other
way akin to her Self of everyday, having no
thought, impulse or emotion with which that
Self could sympathise, save such as may be
considered common to all her sex. Yet, in-
comprehensibly, consciousness of the old self-
identity survived; and though (as she con-
ceived it) dispossessed from its tenement, her
Self continued by her body's side, observant,
critical, intrigued, something amused . . .
In this wise rounding the Dark Corner, she
passed into that place which she had named the
Street of Strange Faces; and the enigma of
this confusion of Self with non-Self was for-
gotten in the rush of exotic sensation and emo-
tion, excitement and lawless joy, which in-
variably accompanied definite and final com-
mitment to renewed pursuit of these tran-
scendental adventures.
II. LEONORA
THE strangest thing about the Street
of Strange Faces was that neither it
nor any of its Faces was really strange.
She knew the Street, whose stones her feet


THE DARK MIRROR 7
-
had never trod, knew every inch of it, all its
turns and windings, its doorways and byways
and whither they led, its smells and sounds, its
babel of tongues, its window-lights that bit the
shadows with such diversity of ardour.
Together with the Faces, its windows made
the Street, being of many sorts, to each its
own significant illumination: hard plate glass
masks of saloons beaming false fellowship,
mean shop fronts of ingratiating shine, win-
dows of homely golden glow, others through
whose latticed shutters filtered sinister gleams
bespeaking the unspeakable, others again that
gave only dull reflections in begrimed panes of
naphtha flames flaring luridly above pushcarts
arrayed in unbroken lines along the curbs.
Through this welter of light and shadow, in
the sidewalk channels, the Faces passed and
repassed, lurking darkly in forbidding door-
ways, seeking brazenly the brightest glare,
coming and going without rest, in uncouth car-
nival: kind and brutal, cunning and naïve,
wicked and innocent, swarthy, fair, unique,
commonplace; faces that disgusted, faces that
allured, faces that meant nothing, that were
mere empty mouthing masks; faces of Orien-
tal cast, yellow and red and brown; negro faces


8 THE DARK MIRROR
in every shade of quartering; faces of Cauca-
sians come together from all corners of the
globe; faces twisted and working, or set and
stamped with every passion flesh is heir to;
grinning, leering, scowling, blazing, bacchic,
austere, blank . . .
She knew them all: they all knew her. The
sense of strangeness ebbed; with every step,
with every look around, with every breath she
drew, she was losing touch with that other Self
which had so singularly renounced its author-
ity and faded into impotence at the Dark Cor-
ner, but which still kept step with her, clung
to her more closely than her shadow, and like
a wraith of the living, watched, noted and com-
pared while taking part in actions wholly for-
eign to its nature and experiencing reactions
obscure to it and unintelligible.
Now the girl moved swiftly, with ease and
boldness, even with a hint of arrogance: giving
the Faces look for look, smile for smile, frown
for frown; laughing impishly up at a tall po-
liceman who knitted black brows over indul-
gent blue eyes; flinging racy retorts to the ban-
ter of a knot of men emerging from a gin-
mill; chilling with glance and word the ad-
vances of those who should have known better;


THE DARK MIRROR 9
chaffing hucksters who bawled in her ears the
tawdry virtues of their wares; pausing now
and again to exchange more kindly persiflage
with folk who held title to her liking; cutting an
impudent figure, as confident and unabashed
as a colt turned loose in home pastures.
Her sharp perceptions took in everything;
not one considerable detail escaped their re-
mark. And she liked it, she liked it all, she
was curiously permeated to her very marrow
with delight in sounds and sights and smells
familiar to her senses since time beyond their
earliest record.
The Street, never wide, was the narrower
for its double rank of pushcarts. Between
these an occasional automobile or horse-drawn
vehicle went gingerly to spare the multitude
of urchins, half dressed and less than half
washed, of every age and almost every nation-
ality, that swarmed upon the asphaltum.
Tenement houses—their fire escapes converted
into balconies lavishly draped with candid
bedding and still more candid women—drew
confidential heads together on high, leaving
visible only a slender ribbon of cobalt sky. In
between the air was sluggish, thick with un-
natural haze, and rank with many odours; an


10 THE DARK MIRROR
unholy alliance of garlic, fried fish, boiled cab-
bage and stale beer maintaining debatable as-
cendency over the native aroma of a stratum
of society which holds soap less necessity than
luxury. And the night was tumultuous with
screams of children at crude play, howls of
babies wallowing in neglect, bawling of street
vendors, each striving to outyell his nearest
competitor, clatter of tinny pianos, blare and
whine of jaded phonographs, the drunken gig-
gle of a fiddle, and from some far, high coign
of forlorn complaint of a French horn tire-
lessly reiterating one phrase of stuttering inco-
herence; all relieved against a wholly normal
undertone of incessant gossip and bickering.
The girl hugged to herself the joy of living;
this was to her the breath of life; even more,
it was enterprise, adventure, the very stuff of
Romance. -
She went her way smiling, with a conscious
smile bred of knowledge that she was dressed
in her best, in her very newest best at that,
garments of a cut and cost and quality such as
the Street seldom saw. But it saw them now
and gave tongue to comment in strident ac-
cents and pungent phraseology, most of which
the girl ignored other than by that toss of her


THE DARK MIRROR II
head which was a characteristic gesture. To
several critics, however, she replied with wit
of the gutter, direct and hard hitting but good
humoured, or on due provocation with resent-
ment translated into irony that bit like an
acid. She was very much at home.
Nevertheless, her show of nonchalance
cloaked circumspection; if her looks were free
and roving, they were likewise keen and watch-
ful. Though the width of the Street was be-
tween them, she was well aware of two plain-
clothes men who turned to stare when she had
gone by and conferred together concerning
her craftily, after the absurd manner of their
kind, out of the corners of their mouths.
But that was a minor circumstance, more
fun than reason for worry: let 'em rubber as
much as they wanted; they hadn't anything on
her—never would have. They couldn't jug
a girl for wearing good clothes, even if they
didn't know where she had got them or
how . . .
The stress on her attention was due to con-
siderations far more weighty; and when, of a
sudden, at a crossing, she descried its cause, she
checked in unfeigned dismay, with startled
pulses.


12 THE DARK MIRROR
III. THE MAN MARIO
ON the far corner a tall man, simply
clothed, composed of habit, stood stir-
less, hands clasped lightly before him in
a gesture with which the girl was well ac-
quainted, head and shoulders lifting above the
crowd. Against the tawny flames of naphtha.
torches his profile was sharp and black, the sil-
houette of an ascetic, gravely fine; but none
better than she knew how its austerity was be-
lied by haunted eyes whose sincerity could
wring truth from lips that moved to frame a
lie.
And he was looking for her; she knew that,
too.
In a flurry so real that it touched her anger,
she swung aside into the bye-street, a grim
street that led anywhere but the way she
wished to go. Yet she welcomed its sullen
gloom and went swiftly, heedless of everything
but the necessity of escaping, knowing in her
heart she could not escape . . .
A street of sullen quiet and gloom: the
sound of pursuing footfalls was soon detected,
their light, sure, rapid tempo recognised.


THE DARK MIRROR 13
Tempted to run, the girl refrained only be-
cause flight must be interpreted as confession
of weakness, of shame and cowardice.
Her name was called in a voice of resonant
timbre: “Leonora! I beg of you . . . It is I,
Mario!”
She stopped and swung round with a spe-
cious show of surprise subsiding into indiffer-
ence. Tone and manner were discouraging;
but her heart was faint.
“Oh, hello! It's you . . .”
The man paused, hat in hand, his attitude
one of pleading and reproach, yet informed
with an ineffaceable dignity.
“You saw me, Leonora. Why did you
run—from me?”
She tossed her head. “What makes you
think I did?”
“I do not think: I know. You turned up
this street to avoid me. Leonora, why?”
“If you thought that—that I wanted to be
left alone—why'd you follow me?”
The man lifted his hands palms uppermost,
and let them fall.
“You know . . . I love you. I make no se-
cret of that. I have told you—how many
times?—a hundred? Yes”—his enunciation


l4 THE DARK MIRROR
grew more rapid—“and you are not indiffer-
ent to me. You never said so, but . . . I
know.”
“Oh, I like you all right 33
“No: more than that; too much to wish to
hurt me. Is it not so?”
“Why, I don't want to hurt you, of course.
But—”
“Then when I see you run from me as if I
were a plague, what am I to think? What am
I to do? Stand still and let my hurt heart
break? Or follow and beg you to tell me why?”
“Well—if you've got to know—I was in a
hurry. I've got a date—and I’m late.”
“And I am detaining you! Forgive me—
but let me go with you a little way.”
The girl shot hunted glances right and left;
then, since nothing in sight promised diversion,
said ungraciously: “Nobody can stop your
walking with me.”
“Nobody but you, Leonora. One word 2:
“One word from me and you'll do exactly
as you please.” With a nervous laugh—“Oh,
come along!”—she turned back, walking has-
tily, the man Mario falling in at her side. “I’d
just as leave you didn't come all the way,
though.”


THE DARK MIRROR I5
“You do not wish me to know where you
go.” He nodded sober confirmation of an un-
uttered guess. “I see . . .”
“You see a terrible lot!” The girl had a
spasm of irritation. “You’re always seeing
things. Well, what do you see now?”
“You go to meet those others”—his tone
was sad—“those whom I have so often begged
you >>
“Guess it's my business who my friends are.”
“Certainly you give me no right to make it
mine. That cannot affect the truth that such
associations are unwise.”
“Maybe I'm best judge of that, too.”
“Leonora: why pretend to me? Deceive
yourself if you must and can—but not me, not
one who loves you as I do. Do not attempt
it, even. It is so useless.”
With a courtesy the more gratifying because
it was so novel, Mario put his hand under her
arm, lightly piloting her through the human
mazes of the brawling Street, which they
crossed squarely and quickly left behind.
After a little while, being in the wrong, she
said sulkily: “I don't see why you're always
making out I’m trying to put something over
on you. I never promised . . .”


I6 THE DARK MIRROR
“True. But you know I am right, that I
would never ask anything of you not justified
by man's natural solicitude for the woman of
his love. You know what these friends of
yours are, and their ways, whither they lead,
their inevitable end. You know, if you per-
sist, your fate must be as theirs.”
“I guess what's good enough for my friends
is good enough for me—”
“No, Leonora: you are too good for that—
or I could not love you.”
The man paused, and his hold on her arm
drew the girl to an unwilling pause with him,
midway down a dark, dead block of industrial
buildings, with a windowless wall beside them
and not a soul nearby to hear. The rays of a .
distant street lamp were still strong enough
to reveal the intense earnestness which ani-
mated the dark, strong face bending over her,
and in spite of impatience and of indignation
at being cornered, the girl was distressed, more
than a little humbled in her own esteem by
this revelation of an affection more enduring
and generous and frank than any she had ever
known.
And all the while that second Self, so weird-
ly Leonora and yet not Leonora, divined even


THE DARK MIRROR 17
more clearly than she the exquisite mettle of
the spirit that shone out of Mario's eyes, and
was shaken by the urgency of the message in
his favour which it struggled vainly and hope-
lessly to impart.
“I am not a common man.” Mario was stat-
ing simple fact, innocent of conceit. “I know
the world outside the one, you know, and the
men and women who live in it. Where I go,
I look about me, and reflect on what I see.
I am seldom mistaken in those who interest
me. And you whom I love . . . I tell you,
Leonora, there is something fine in you, some-
thing finer than you dream, something that
might ennoble you if you would give it one lit-
tle chance. You are no more of this life than
I, and you do a wrong thing, a wicked and
cruel thing, when you trample down that which
is good in you and might bring you to a splen-
did destiny.”
Impressed in spite of herself, touched, and
flattered, too, she looked uneasily away, twist-
ing her hands together, her tongue faltering.
“I suppose you know what you mean . . .
“And you also. I mean, you could love me
if you would, and in my love, in the life I offer
you, become the self that today you hide away


I8 THE DARK MIRROR
so jealously, your real self, a woman fine and
strong and true, not this adventure-loving
companion of rogues and vagabonds—and
worse!” He gave an imploring gesture. “Ah,
Leonora, if only you would give them up!”
She looked up with wistful eyes, all effront-
ery abandoned, only the woman remaining,
the woman whom this man alone had the se-
cret of perceiving in her. In this, indeed, re-
sided the true reason for her fear of meeting
Mario: he was disastrous to her peace of mind,
her self-complacence; when she listened to him,
satisfaction departed and in its stead came in-
quietude, with the wish to be what he would
have her be, what intuition told her she could
be if she would but set herself to overcome her
own resistance.
She searched his face in wonder. When he
disturbed her so profoundly, why did she like
him so much? What was it that gave him
power to charm her wits away, discontent her
with all that had otherwise seemed excellent
and complete, make nothing of the steel of her
set purpose? Was it his love alone?
He loved her, she was satisfied of that, but
with such forbearance, such consideration,
tenderness and understanding as left her in-


THE DARK MIRROR I9
credulous. In the Street love was another
thing entirely, a fiercer, cruder business,
brusque and selfish without disguise—some-
thing open, direct and casual, but as essential
as meat and drink. But this was different, this
love Mario had for her.
Yes: and it was true, what he asserted, he
too was different; there was no one like him,
so gentle and strong and brave, fastidious, re-
served, and thoughtful. In her world he made
a figure striking and incongruous. Yet he lin-
gered on obstinately, in part (he told her) be-
cause it was his passion to study every side of
life, but mostly because he loved her and never
would willingly give up hope of winning her.
He would never leave, he protested, till she
went with him.
Her heart misgave her; she was afraid . . .
“Leonora!” he pleaded. “Come with
me . . .”
In a moment of determination she tried to
put sentiment aside with a hard little laugh of
scorn. “I guess you don't understand: Red
would kill me if I chucked him!”
“He would never find you where I would
take you, to my home in Spain; or if he ever
did, he would not dare lift eyes to you, or know


20 THE DARK MIRROR
in you, a lady, moving in the world for which
she was born, the girl he knew as Leonora and
loved—after his fashion—with whatever feel-
ing it is he calls love!”
In a dull voice she insisted: “You don’t
know Red . . .”
But she was more than tempted. She liked
Mario too much, better even than Red—at
long last she admitted it—Red whose conquest
had till now been her greatest pride. Sheer
force of mind and character compelled admira-
tion and affection for Mario: in his restricted
sphere Red prevailed solely through brute
cunning, hardihood, and ruthlessness. Life
with Red would never lack interest; but with
Mario she could be happy all her days, con-
tent and unafraid.
“Come with me, Leonora, and be your true
self. Life can be beautiful . . .”
He played shrewdly on her most secret
weakness: she was fond of believing herself
somewhat better than her milieu, through some
romantic accident superior in point of birth as
well as, what was undeniable, in spirit and in-
telligence. Vistas of powerful seduction
opened to her contemplation. She knew mo-
mentary intimations of a fate as strange as


THE DARK MIRROR 21
that which he promised her; and at heart an
arrant egoist, she saw herself primitively as
she had seen other women, in her excursions
into the haunts of the well-to-do, radiantly be-
gowned and furred and jewelled, lolling inso-
lently in a limousine car, Mario at her side
“dressed like a gentleman” . . .
But this vision was swiftly dissipated by re-
crudescence of that fear which Red inspired, in
honest conviction that no earthly power could
save her from his vengeance.
“You don’t know Red.” She shook her
head solemnly in a spirit of fatal prophecy.
“He’d croak you, too; he'd croak us both.”
Mario smiled faintly. “I am not afrai
“He isn't the only one, he's got his gang.”
“Still I am unafraid. What are such crea-
tures? Vermin—less than vermin, nothing!”
“You’re not afraid of dying?”
“What is life without your love?” He had
a thoughtful moment. “Who knows but death
may prove infinitely more wonderful than this
life of ours? There is but one way of finding
out . . .”
She heard him in a stare. The woman in
her could hardly be unaffected by the hand-
some gravity of that extraordinary counte-
»


22 THE DARK MIRROR
nance, whose salient features gained so much
through that Rembrandtesque play of deep
shadows and dull light. And he was “talking
like a book,” yet unpretendingly, as always
speaking his mind without affectation. Under
the spell of his mentality she acknowledged
now for the first time that he was essential:
all else was nothing; Red, adventure, success,
the domination of personality which she had
already imposed upon her environment—none
of these mattered if to have them she must
forego the love of Mario. And of a sudden
care fastened cruel claws upon her heart and
wrung from it a cry of self-betrayal.
“Maybe you're not afraid, Mario. I don’t
believe you are. But I am—afraid for you.
I wish you'd go away.”
“You care that much!”
“No-not the way you mean »
“You love me!” Her hands lifted in pro-
test: he caught and enclosed them both in his
own. His shadowed face and eyes grew lumi-
nous, his sonorous accents vibrated with emo-
tion. “You love me, Leonora—at last.”
He was drawing her steadily toward him, all
her strength seemed to have ebbed from her
limbs. There was madness in the beating of
2


THE DARK MIRROR 28
her heart, madness mounting like mist into her
brain. Now she was in his arms, and glad.
His lips closed on hers. For a long breath she
was a mere thing of reeling senses.
“You love me!”
“I don't know,” she murmured—“may-
be . . .”
“Tomorrow you will marry me, and we will
go away 22
Stung by realisation of what had happened,
she struggled to be free.
“Let me go, Mario—please!”
“You will marry me?”
“I don't know—perhaps—yes, I will. But
not tomorrow—not right away.”
“Why—?”
“Let me go—I’ll tell you.” He released
her. She stepped back, shaken with love and
fright, looking fearfully up and down the
street. It remained dark and lonely, singular-
ly deserted.
“Tell me what reason
“I can't marry you just yet. I’ve got to
break with Red so’s he won’t know it wasn’t
him that broke with me. And I’ve got other
things to do—things I can't tell you about,
Mario—things I’ve got to 'tend to before I


24 THE DARK MIRROR
can marry you. But you can trust me: I've
promised, and I will, as soon as ever I can...”
Her voice quavered, and she thrust out her
hands, fending off his arms. “Please don't
kiss me again, please let me go now. If any-
body saw us and told Red . . .”
He made a sign of submission. “As you
will, so be it, my Leonora. I will see you again
—when?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll give you a ring about noon
and fix to meet you—uptown somewheres, I
guess. Now—I’ve got to run. Good night
. . . dear.”
He uttered in resignation: “Good night.”
With a flickering smile of fondness she turned
and left him, her slight young figure flitting
swiftly through the shadows. Beneath the
lamp at the far street corner, she turned,
looked back, saw him motionless where she
had left him, surmised his look of longing and,
waving a hand, ran on, wild joy in her heart
contending with cold fear.
For now she had done it, and there'd be the
devil to pay. But it couldn't be helped.
Though hell and heaven were leagued against
them, she would go through. She always did,
once she got started. And with Mario, she


THE DARK MIRROR 25
knew, it was as with her: he too would go
through, now he knew she loved him, though
Red and all the world besides should try to
stop him . . .
Breathless, she presently modified her pace
to a rapid walk, but went on blindly, through
a labyrinth of streets of which she received no
impression other than of a blur of dubious
shadows and uncertain lights . . .
At length, well out of her course, she
stopped, imposed coherence upon her thoughts,
got her bearings, and started on anew, in a
cooling mood constraining herself to forget
Mario and concentrate upon the business that
waited for her at her destination.
But the Self outside herself, of whose con-
stant company she was wholly ignorant, never
ceased to yearn back toward that gallant, lone-
ly figure they two had left behind in the quiet
bye-street.
Iv. RISTORI's
HER walk took on the semblance of
an aimless saunter. She met the po-
liceman she had seen from a distance,
looked him impudently up and down,


26 THE DARK MIRROR
got a blank stare in response, and passed on.
Rounding a corner, she glanced idly over-
shoulder; he was not even looking back. Feel-
ing more secure, she turned sharply, half way
down a block in the shadow of the Elevated,
and with the calm assurance of her apparent
kind entered what had once been a dwelling of
some pretentiousness but now was dedicated
to the decadent uses of according to its paint-
ed signboard—“Ristori’s Table d’Hôte—Din-
ner with Wine 75c.—Luncheon 50c.”
She was later than she had thought: a
glimpse of the general dining room proved
that; few patrons of the establishment re-
mained, a scattered handful lingering over
liqueurs and cigarettes, elbows planted on
coarse and winestained tablecloths, by pairs
deeply interested in each other. Scanning
their faces, she recognised nobody; and nobody
paid her the least heed except a waiter who
knew her by sight and scraped her a grinning
bow as she started up the stairs. *
In the corridor at the head of the first flight,
she turned to the back of the house and laid
a confident hand upon the knob of the furthest
door. It turned, but the door was stubborn.
With a movement of impatience she knuckled


THE DARK MIRROR 27
the panels with a triple knock of peculiar tim-
ing. A hum of voices in the closed room died
away, a heavy tread became audible, a key
grated, the door swung open. She went in,
nodding lightly to the man who had admitted
her and, finding herself under the concentrated
regard of eleven pair of eyes, paused in the
middle of the floor and struck a spirited pose.
“Good evening, folks! Pipe my new rags!”
The silence that answered her was broken
after a little by Red Carnehan, who said heav-
ily: “Hello, kid. Sit down.”
Ignoring his invitation to an empty chair
on his right, she dropped her pose but remained
where she had stopped, lifting her brows a lit-
tle and reviewing the company with quizzical
gaze.
Though both windows were open, closed
shutters prevented any draught from vitiating
the stuffiness of the “private dining room”—a
bed-chamber in the intention of the architect.
In an atmosphere stifling with smells of food,
alcohol, and a truculent perfume, the smoke of
imitation Turkish tobacco hung in lazy, lilac
reefs. Discoloured paper of a morbid pattern
was parting in reluctant spirals from the walls.
Dust of decades weighed down an elderly car-


28 THE DARK MIRROR
pet and obscured its florid design. Scorbutic
paint disfigured the fine old woodwork.
The man who had let Leonora in having re-
sumed his chair, twelve were seated at a table
littered with debris of a meal, unclean earth-
enware plates, and those high-shouldered bot-
tles of dark glass, guiltless of labels, which
seem to be the sole habitat of the vin du pays
so generally known as “red ink” that to name it
by this alias no longer excites a smile.
Because of the heat all the men but one—
Mr. Harry the Nut—had put off their coats
and collars, while the women had loosened their
blouses at the throat. Sweat beaded faces of
various complexions, ranging from the san-
guine countenance of Red to the pastiness of
Charlie the Coke. Leonora, looking from one
to another, found each, with the exception of
Red's, sullen of cast if not openly hostile. She
sketched a lofty smile.
“What's the funeral?”
Red Carnehan—red of head and hand—an
Italo-Celtic product, as slender, supple and
sinewy as a snake, and as deadly—replied suf-
ficiently, “Nobody's—yet,” and again waved
a hand toward the vacant chair. “Whyn't you
sit down?” He added: “You’re pretty late.”
W


THE DARK MIRROR 29
“What about it?” The girl flounced to the
table and threw herself sideways into the chair.
“I don’t see as that's any reason why every-
body's got to wear mourning.”
English Addie, blonde, blousy and full-bod-
ied, sprawled half across the table and, with-
out removing the cigarette from her mouth,
spoke in accents of cloying affection flatly de-
nied by her semi-sober stare of jealousy.
“Maybe you won't mind tellin' us w'at mide
you lite, dearie . . .”
Leonora experienced a qualm of misgivings.
Had somebody spied on her and Mario and
hurried ahead to tattle? . . . Even so, that
was a matter between Red and herself, noth-
ing to excite ill-feeling in the others. But Red
was apparently unruffled although unusually
subdued for him, and perhaps a shade suspi-
ciously impartial in his attitude.
She lied readily, without a quiver, naming
the two plain-clothes men she had noticed in
the Street of Strange Faces.
“Ennis and Corbin lamped me on the way
here—if it's anything in your young life, Ad-
die dear—and I had to chase all over to lose
> »
-
eIII


30 THE DARK MIRROR
“You did shake 'em, kid—sure?” Red de-
manded with keen interest.
“Sure. If I hadn't I wouldn't be here now.”
“Maybe so,” Charlie the Coke drawled in a
voice as colourless as the flesh of his face—
“maybe not.”
“Where do you get that stuff?”
In flashing resentment Leonora swung
round to face him. For a thought Charlie en-
deavoured to withstand her gaze, assuming a
look of vacuity; but the task was beyond the
compass of drug-drenched powers; his eyes
shifted, their lids drooped, and his essay in in-
solence died miserably in a sickly grimace.
“Ah, I didn’t mean nothin', Nora.”
“You’re a liar,” the girl stated with crisp
conviction. “What's all this, anyway? I
want to know.”
Her eyes ranged again the array of faces,
challenging each in turn, and getting no satis-
faction; for each in turn averted his gaze with
an expression more or less sheepish and discon-
certed, all but Red, Harry the Nut, and Inez,
the third and only other woman present.
Red's countenance was morose and anxious;
Harry, slenderly elegant in flashy but admira-
bly tailored clothing, wore a look of satiric


THE DARK MIRROR 31
amusement; Inez, like Leonora, dark and
young but lacking her clear pallor of complex-
ion and regularity of feature, confronted her
with a steady stare and an unquestionable
SIleer.
“Well? What's it all about? Start some-
thing, somebody—why don't you? If any-
thing's gone wrong, let me in the know. I
guess I’ve got as much right as anybody—”
The Nut shrugged and with supercilious
nonchalance selected another cigarette from
the flat gold case he was fond of displaying;
a circumstance which, according to one's bias,
might or might not be taken as indicating that
the case had been honestly come by. Inez
seemed eager to speak, but Red forestalled her.
“It's like this, kid: Eddie's been pinched.”
The fact that the person in question, being
under indictment for burglary, had for some
time succeeded in remaining at large solely by
grace of his loyal associates, might have been
thought enough to rob this announcement of
some of its staggering quality. But to Leo-
nora it came as a genuine shock, and she
showed it unmistakably.
“No!” she exclaimed, and added a most un-
ladylike phrase of mixed incredulity and re-
- *
!


32 THE DARK MIRROR
gret. “When'd they get him—and where?”
“Tonight—in the place next door to Addie's
—went straight there as if they knew where
he’d be and when.”
“Somebody's squealed,” Leonora declared
with conviction.
“That's just it,” Inez affirmed significantly.
“I wonder who!”
Leonora needed a little time before she was
able to couple the thinly veiled animosity of
the gathering, to which she had been sensible
ever since entering, with the tone employed by
Inez, something which this last would ordina-
rily have lacked audacity to attempt. Then
immediately her temper grew incandescent.
“Meaning me?”
“Why, hon!” Inez drawled, rounding her
eyes—“whatever made you think that?”
But she committed the grievous error of try-
ing to exchange with Red a look of malicious
understanding which Leonora intercepted in-
stantly.
“Never you mind what made methink that,”
she said in cold rage: “I get you: I ain't blind
and dumb. But take it from me, Inez: you
chuck it and chuck it quick. If I get one more
word out of you, trying to make me out a stool-
|


THE DARK MIRROR 38
pigeon—if I ever see you look that way at Red
again—your people'll have no kick coming.”
“Oh, is that so?” Inez demanded with mis-
taken pertness. “What do you think you'll
do?”
“Irish you,” Leonora informed her savagely
—“irish you till all you'll need will be a wood
kimono lined with satin and trimmed with tin.
And you know I’ll do it, too.”
Her small emphatic fist struck the table;
Red's hand closed on it.
“Easy, kid; don't run away with the wrong
idea 32
“I won't. Don't worry.” She wrenched her
hand free. “I’m no simp. I’ve got more
brains than the rest of this push lumped to-
gether—that goes for you, too, Red. And I
won’t stand for insinuations from nobody—
not from that rotten little cat that's trying to
make up to you—she's always jealous of me—
or anybody else. You . . .” For a moment
words proved inadequate. She sat in a tense
posture, white with fury, breathing quickly;
and even Red avoided her eyes. “Ah, you all
make me sick! Eddie gets pinched—God
knows how!—and you all fix on me as the
squealer because I happen to be a few minutes


34 THE DARK MIRROR
late tonight! Why, you poor fish !” She
checked abruptly, noting another questionable
gap in the company. “Why pick on me?
Where's Leo Bielinsky? Why isn't he here?
If being late's proof of squealing—he's later
than me!”
“That ain't all, Nora,” English Addie inter-
posed. “We want to know where you got
those clothes.”
“What's that to you? Can't I spend my
money, dress myself decent, if I want to?”
“Yes: but where'd you get the front you was
wearing when Harry seen you up on Fifth
Avenue yesterday?”
“He never—”
“Oh, yes, I did, Nora,” the Nut interrupted
with his exasperating gentility, mincing his
words in the fashion he found useful in uptown
bars. “Putting on dog, too, and getting away
with it great—travelling with a dame that
looked like she wouldn't take nothing from the
Queen of England. I tell you, I saw you.”
“That's another lie!” But the steadiness of
Harry's eyes was disconcerting. Unquestion-
ably he believed his assertions. Leonora's
tongue tripped over the denial: “I
wasn’t . . .”


THE DARK MIRROR 35
“Well, then, tell us where you were at four
o'clock yesterday afternoon,” Addie suggested
blandly.
At that hour Leonora had been in a Second
Avenue motion picture theatre with Mario:
an indiscretion to which she could not possibly
confess. Perceptibly she lost assurance.
“None of your damn business.”
“Better tell 'em, kid,” Red counselled un-
easily. “You got to come clean 22
“Like hell I have!” Once more the flames
of rage leapt high. “I don't owe this gang
anything, much less an account of everything I
do. The shoe's on the other foot. You all
know me, you all know I'm on the level. Most
of you'd be up the river today if it wasn't for
me—and you know that, too. How far do
you think you'd get if my brains didn't work
for you, tell you what to do and how to get
away with it without the bulls tumbling? Who
planned the raid on Einstein's hock shop? Did
any of you get pinched for that? Who figured
out how to get those bonds away from the
Chemical Trust's messenger? Was anybody
lagged for that? . . . And because I take the
trouble not to lead a coupla guns right up to
you tonight—and because the Nut saw some-


36 THE DARK MIRROR
body that looked like me all dolled up on Fifth
Avenue yesterday—or thinks he did—”
“It was you, all right,” Harry affirmed
coolly.
Their glances met and clashed, the girl's hot
with challenge and resentment, the man's cold
with malice. For the first time she recognised
in this creature an enemy. Then her super-
excited intelligence, grappling with the prob-
lem of how to confute his implicit accusation,
experienced a flash of memory followed by a
lightning-like stroke of intuition.
“If you want to know who squealed,” she
suggested deliberately, “why don't you give
Harry the office? Ask him what he does with
all his time, where he gets the coin for all his
swell clothes, who he talks to when he's bulging
up to the bars of the big hotels. Ask him why
the cops always look the other way when
they see him coming, why he ain't never
pinched 2x
With an oath Harry thrust back his chair,
which overturned with a crash, and jumped up,
guilt stamped upon his countenance of sudden
pallor, glinting fearfully in his furtive little
eyes. But in the same instant the door—left
negligently unlocked after the entrance of


THE DARK MIRROR 37
Leonora—was hastily opened and slammed.
The first to identify the man who had slipped
in and now stood fumbling with the key, Eng-
lish Addie cried out in shrill dismay: “Leo!”
The company turned simultaneously and with
confused cries and questions got to its feet.
Slight and under normal height, panting,
sweating, haggard, his face livid, eyes terrified,
hatless, and with clothing dishevelled, Leo
Beilinsky, alias Leo the Blood, sank back
against the door, one hand pressed to his side
just below his labouring heart. The other,
holding an automatic pistol, described a ges-
ture of supplication. Red snapped over-shoul-
der a profane demand for silence. Leo's
broken phrases became audible.
“. . . Croaked a bull down the street . . .
coming out of Bennie's place, Corbin and En-
nistried to jump me . . . Corbin got it.” He
gesticulated meaningly with the pistol. “En-
nis took after me . . . Looks like a frame-up
. . . cops everywhere I turned . . .”
Red demanded furiously: “What in hell’d
you come here for?”
“No place else to go . . . cornered, I tell
you . . . Listen!” The Russian held up a
hand and, bending an ear to the door, heard


- - - -
- -
- -
-
- - -
-
- - -
- º
- -
- -
- - -
- -
- -
- -
-
- - - -
-
-
- -
- -
- - - -
- - -
- - -
-
-
- -
-
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- -
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-
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|
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--
|-
|
|
|
-
==
*
-
-
º:
-
º
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-
--
-
-
-
“Her ears were deafened with Red's profane instructions t
get herself out through the window without more delay.





THE DARK MIRROR 39
signed, stood clear of the crush, watching the
panels of the door tremble under a storm of
kicks and blows.
Fear was absent from her temper, but she
was shaken by impotent exasperation and sad
with regrets. This meant an end to every-
thing, not alone to these associations which
barely an hour since she herself had planned
to forsake, but to all her hope of happiness
with Mario. For she had not the remotest
doubt but that she, with at least a majority of
the others, would be arrested, jailed and, on
the evidence of complicity in past exploits
which the police spy, Harry the Nut, would
be able to lay before the District Attorney,
sentenced to a term of years in one or another
of the State penitentiaries. It were idle, in-
deed, to hope for any better fate, in view of
the strong likelihood that others of her asso-
ciates—Inez and English Addie almost surely
—would turn State's evidence.
And long before she had served out her time
Mario would forget her; or, even if he did not,
would never, never by any chance, make a
woman with a criminal record his wife.
And this was what came of indulging her
keen delight in excitement and adventure.


40 THE DARK MIRROR
If only she had listened to Mario in time
Seconds dragged like minutes, and the door
still held. She began to catch at straws of
hope: only three now remained in the room,
Charlie the Coke—already with one foot across
the sill, whimpering and mouthing curses be-
cause of inability to crowd into the press upon
the fire-escape—Red, and herself.
The hammering on the door stopped. She
wondered why. Charlie contrived to jam his
terror-racked body out through the window.
Red caught Leonora by a shoulder, roughly
enough if in a rare impulse of chivalry, and
tried to thrust her out after Charlie. But the
crush on the platform was still too dense. She
heard a dull crash and, swinging round, saw
the door, its lock shattered by the impact of a
brawny shoulder, slam back against the wall.
The policeman who had broken it in stumbled
and sprawled full length upon the floor. The
plain-clothes man, Ennis, leaped in over his
prostrate body. Her ears were deafened with
Red's profane instructions to get herself out
through the window without more delay. She
made a vain attempt to obey, and had half
succeeded when a rattle of shots sounded and,


THE DARK MIRROR 41
looking back, she saw the man Ennis pitch
forward on his knees, then fall prone. The
policeman, scrambling up pistol in hand, re-
ceived the balance of the clip in Red's auto-
matic, and sank slowly down upon his side.
Screaming with horror, the girl fell back
from the window. Red shouldered past her,
climbed out, turned and caught her by the arm
and dragged her after him, still screaming like
a madwoman. She tripped, her head struck
heavily against the bottom of the window sash,
and the lights dimmed weirdly and burned
out, leaving only darkness impenetrable, and a
strange hush pierced by thin echoes of eldritch
shrieks . . .


CHAPTER TWO
THE ANTAGONISTS
I. PRISCILLA
OUSING on an elbow, Priscilla
R Maine found herself awake, with a
racing heart, a throat swollen with a
strangled cry of horror, and a mind through
whose painted murk the reflection of a
woman's screams ran like a thread of purple
light.
Yet here was only darkness, with silence
absolute . . . -
Drugged with lees of dream, her wits at first
refused to take hold on reality; and sinking
back she lay in motionless suspense between
dream and waking—save she panted and was
shaken by the panic of her bosom—till staring
vision cleared sufficiently to recognise, over-
head, the rectangle of a skylight framing a
violent gloom so deep that it made no impres-
sion on the shadows that enwrapped her.
42


THE DARK MIRROR 43
With a low gasp of relief that was half a
sob of fright as well, she sprang up from the
divan, stumbled to the wall, and after a mo-
ment's groping flooded the studio with milky
radiance from an inverted dome.
Still thrall to terror, she stood with a hand
on the electric key, dazed eyes identifying one
after another objects which lifelong associa-
tion had made common and kindly in her sight.
And in a passion of gratitude she embraced
the reassurance inherent in the atmosphere of
that richly furnished, spacious and silent stu-
dio, her father's workshop till his death and
ever since her own.
It was true, then: she was safely restored to
her own intimate environment, where nothing
resembled even remotely that frowsty room
where murders had been done. She had mere-
ly dreamed a dream, one more of those amaz-
ingly real dreams which she had learned to
accept without protest as phenomena of slum-
ber unavoidable, singularly harmless, and on
the whole rather amusing.
So at least they seemed till this night when,
for the first time, stark tragedy had stalked
unbidden and unheralded, rending with ruth-
less hands the flimsy texture of illusion and


44 THE DARK MIRROR
rendering the dream more fact to her than this
awakening, more true, and so much the more
terrible.
Pressing palms to temples that throbbed
and burned intolerably with their content of
thoughts acrawl with fright and horror, she
made her way to the bathroom and bathed her
face with cold water, then with cologne till,
in the sensory reaction of stimulated flesh and
nerves, she began to feel measurably more
calm and self-possessed, more Priscilla Maine
than “Leonora” . . .
A twittering telephone recalled her to the
studio. Receiver to ear, she said, “Yes? Who
is it?” and heard the agitated cries of the elder-
ly kinswoman whom she called aunt and with
whom she had her home.
“Priscilla! Where have you been all eve-
ning? I've been half frantic . . . Why didn't
you let me know?”
“I haven’t been anywhere, dear — only
asleep, here in the studio.”
“But I called the studio twice, and Central
said you didn't answer.”
The girl succeeded in mustering an accent
of mirth. “I’m sure I didn’t, Aunt Esther.
So Central must have told the truth.”


THE DARK MIRROR 45
“But—one would think the bell 25
“It was one of my famous sound sleeps,
dear. You know how impossible it is to wake
me up when I'm sincere about sleeping. Well,
this was one of those times.” She heard a
complaining vague murmur—“that dreadful
studio”—and laughed lightly. “Please don't
be cross, Aunt Esther; I didn't go to do it,
honest I didn't! Mrs. Morey left in the mid-
dle of the afternoon—she had a tea on, or
something—and about half after five I stopped
painting and thought I’d lie down and rest a
little before coming home. And now it's
. .” She consulted and frowned reprovingly
at her wrist watch. “I think my watch must
be wrong. What time is it?”
“A quarter to eleven 22
“Really? Then it hasn't stopped. I felt
sure it was much later.”
“It’s late enough for you to be alone there,
in that horrid place. Do hurry home. I’ll
send Arthur with the car at once.”
“Please.”
She donned hat and cloak before a mirror
in whose insusceptible depths she saw, set in
her own hat and individual coiffure, the face
of the girl whom in her dreams she knew as


46 THE DARK MIRROR
Leonora; and yet it was likewise the face of
Priscilla Maine. Vainly with importunate
eyes she questioned that counterfeit of two
countenances. How could this thing be? Was
she one woman waking and another when she
slept? Was there in her a dual personality
such as reading had taught her to accept as a
psychological possibility? Did two natures
struggle within her, one prevailing in her hours
of slumber, and not always even then?
That train of speculation she was afraid to
pursue too far . . .
II. THE PORTRAIT
BESIDE the mirror, a long pier glass, stood
a heavy studio easel holding a full-length can-
vas, an unfinished portrait of herself in the
Zingara dress she had once worn at a costume
dance. Begun long ago, on a day when a
model failed her, and carried out inconsecu-
tively, “when she felt in the mood,” the
painting now neared completion; a little
more work on draperies and background,
and it would be ready for exhibition. In-
specting it critically, with fault-finding eyes,
she saw that her work was good, almost as


THE DARK MIRROR 47
good as her father's. She could give herself
no higher praise; and she was hard to please
when her own work was in question. But
here, incontestably, she had done well: the fig-
ure on the canvas lived; its striking pose was
instinct with almost insolent vitality; the face
was aglow with zest in life, the eyes seemed
transiently arrested in an instant of gay impu-
dence altogether charming.
Her troubled gaze turned back to the mir-
ror's faithful presentment of a slender, modish-
ly gowned young worldling, the finished prod-
uct of a fashionable upbringing, a little proud,
reserved, thoughtful, exquisite . . . Priscilla
Maine.
But the girl on the canvas was Leonora.
And in her self both lived. But which was
which? Which false, which true? Was the
life she knew, the life of Park avenue and
Fifth, of teas, dinners, theatres, dances—re-
lieved only by these days in the studio, her hap-
piest, when she was painting—was this life
reality or illusion? And that dream life of
which she caught only fugitive glimpses, fas-
cinating, tantalising, terrible, and related to
nothing within the scope of her experience—
was the dream life perhaps the life of fact?


48 THE DARK MIRROR
She shook a head baffled, bewildered, and
faint with wondering.
The door bell interrupted. She answered,
finding as she had expected that the chauffeur
was waiting to escort her to the town car which
he was obliged to leave at the mouth of the
Alley. She was glad of his company, when
she had put out the lights and locked the studio
door, for the Alley was indifferently illumi-
nated and seemed rather grimly desolate at
that hour. Their heels struck uncannily loud
echoes from its uneven flagging. Its door-
ways were deep pockets of ambiguous shadow.
Anything might happen there after dark, Pris-
cilla told herself, and none be wiser before
morning. She knew a moment of sympathy
with Aunt Esther's distrustful animosity
toward “that dreadful studio life.”
If Aunt Esther only guessed how infinitely
more dreadful was that other life which Pris-
cilla knew in dreams . . .
But no one guessed. Instinctive reticence,
jealousy of her privacy, reluctance to be
thought different, and fear of having her san-
ity questioned as she herself too often ques-
tioned it, had guarded the girl's secret and
kept it inviolate.


THE DARK MIRROR 49
As the car turned through Eighth street,
then north upon the Avenue, studiously dissi-
pated Greenwich Villagers were seeping into
the café of the Brevoort, all yearning to be
“different.” She envied them desperately,
whose one desire was to be normal, common-
place, an everyday girl with no secret eccen-
tricity to stand between her and love.
She had long since made up her mind she
must never marry while this dream life con-
tinued to exert its occult influence upon her.
To risk transmitting to her children a mental
taint or lesion was unthinkable. So, though
she met love or its likeness as often as a woman
will who has not only grace, beauty, and charm
of breeding, but secure position and comfort-
able fortune, resolutely she had put love aside,
not infrequently at dear cost to herself in
nights of sleepless mutiny.
Now of a sudden she remembered the man
Mario (or was he merely a shadow?) and in a
poignant turn of reminiscence recalled his lu-
minous and compelling eyes, the potent mag-
netism of his presence, and felt anew the pres-
sure of his lips on hers.
On hers? Or Leonora's?
She cringed low in the corner of the seat, as


50 THE DARK MIRROR
if fearful lest curious eyes detect the waves of
colour that burned her cheeks. For in the
memory of that kiss she found a sweetness in-
effably precious. And in the knowledge that
his love was dedicated to that other Self, Pris-
cilla suffered the first bitter pangs of that tor-
ment which spares not body, mind or soul, and
which is jealousy.
But how should she be jealous of Leonora,
if Leonora were herself?
Was it to be her fate to love one shape of
dream and hate another?
III. PHILIP FOSDICK
ABOUT three in the morning, finding she
could not sleep, she slipped into a dressing
gown, and went to her desk, where for two
hours she wrote steadily, setting forth in
minute detail, as memory served, every item,
incident and circumstance of her dream. Thus
she found temporary distraction and ease of
mind. Unaware of weariness till she had
written the last word, immediately that was
penned she found herself heavy with drowsi-
ness so urgent it would hardly wait for her
head to find its pillow.


THE DARK MIRROR 51
Toward noon she awoke and rang for her
maid. A pleasant langour tempted to indo-
lence. She adored breakfasting in bed, and
did so today with a relish somehow sharpened
by a mischievous sense of playing truant, of
cheating life's inordinate demands. Not the
least inclination toward work influenced her
decision not to visit the studio at all that day,
or the dozen diverting plans she made for frit-
tering the hours away.
Recollection of the dream recurred tardily
and sluggishly, like the images that reluctant-
ly take shape on an under-exposed photo-
graphic film, and when sharpest and most defi-
nite seemed pale and unimportant in that warm
flood of sunlight which bathed her bed cham-
ber, as little worthy of consideration as a
wraith of nightmare. But it served to pique
her curiosity and, when she had bathed, she
took back to bed what she had written in the
night and read it with care and, toward the
close, something like resuscitation of those
emotions which she had known during the
dream itself as well as after waking up.
Putting aside the manuscript, she lay a long
half hour in pensive idleness, something dis-
trait. In the end she was aware of an im-


52 THE DARK MIRROR
perative need for enlightenment. The thing
had grown too serious, was figuring too large-
ly in her life; if its influence was not to prove
altogether ill, she must have comprehension of
its nature to give her heart courage.
In all the world she knew but one person in
whom she could conceive it possible to repose
such confidences . . . -
She took the telephone from the bedside
stand.
Merely to hear that low-pitched, agreeable
voice with its ineradicable tinge of humour was
comforting. Her clouded countenance was
lighted up by a smile of gratitude—and of af-
fection, too.
“Philip, dear! Do you know I haven't seen
you for ages?”
“That's brazen blague, Priscilla. You know
I know it and nightly bedev my pillow with
tears because you haven't called me up during
the day.”
“Don’t be silly. Nothing can excuse the
way you've been neglecting me.”
“It’s your own fault: you will insist on
drenching the springtime of your life with tur-
pentine and varnish, overlooking the most im-
portant things entirely.”


THE DARK MIRROR 53
“What do you consider the most important
thing in life? Yourself?”
“No: you. And next to you, letting me
make love to you.”
“But, Philip, you do it so poorly, you're so
professional; you transfix me with the pene-
trating eye of diagnosis and prescribe: ‘Love
me!’—for all the world as if love were bread
pills or distilled water in a bottle labelled
‘Shake well before using'ſ And I really don't
feel run down enough . . .”
“I see. You want love slipped over on you
. . . like bribing the cook to put a philtre in
your coffee.”
She laughed delightedly: “That's it,
Philip! Subtly does it.”
“Thanks for the tip. I'm making a note of
it. So don't be surprised if you wake up one
fine morning and find yourself madly in love
with me.”
“I won’t be; and I wouldn't even mind—”
“Priscilla!”
“But I’m not now. So don't lose your
head.”
“Why not, when my heart—?”
“Please! I called up to ask a very serious
question.”


54 THE DARK MIRROR
“Shoot.”
“What's a psycho-analyst, Philip?”
“Well, I'm one—a cross between a quack
and a confidence man.”
“I know; but what do you do when you're
duly functioning as such?”
“You mean, how do I make a living?”
“No-only what do you do to make people
pay you fat fees.”
“Why, I pry into their souls, if they happen
to have any, and ferret out all their secrets—
those they purposely try to keep from me, and
those they themselves don’t know anything
about.”
“Do many people have secrets they don't
know about?”
“More often than not we suffer from the
pressure of secrets buried so deep in the sub-
conscious we don't even suspect their exist-
ence.”
“How do you do it, Philip—find such things
out?”
“By low cunning mostly, Priscilla; I ask
apparently innocent questions that ain’t, and
lay traps and beguile patients into giving them-
selves away, in various ways no real gentleman
would stoop to.”


THE DARK MIRROR 55
“And what happens then?”
“Why, naturally, when I’ve dug up the
scandal, found out what it is that makes the
soul sick, I talk to the patient like a Dutch
uncle, show him how foolish he is to let him-
self be affected by things past mending, and
tell him how to overcome his weakness. Some-
times even that isn't necessary; secrets thrive
in the dark, you know; expose them to the sun-
light and, as often as not, they shrivel up and
vanish right under the patient's very eyes. In
which case there's no use arguing: he's already
cured.”
“I see . . . Philip: will you do me a favour,
psycho-analyse me?”
“What's the good? I did that long ago.”
“Really, Philip?” Misgivings put a tremor
into her voice. “What did you find out?”
“That you're the dearest, sweetes 3-
“No-please! I'm in earnest.”
“Hello!” He was impressed. “What's
up?”
“I think I’ve got a buried secret, and I want
you to exhume it and see what it's made of.”
“Are you serious?”
“Desperately.”


56 THE DARK MIRROR
“Mm . . . What are you doing this after-
noon?”
“Having you to tea, if you can come.”
“I’ll come whether I can or not. But what
about Aunt Esther? We can’t have a third
present if we're to talk confidences.”
“Let’s have tea at the studio.”
“Same objection: Ada Moyer »
“I’ll get rid of her somehow. She's perfect-
ly human, Philip, and knows quite well she's
only there as a lay figure, a sop to Aunt
Esther's prejudices about the disgracefully
unconventional life of an artist I perversely
insist on leading—for a few hours every day.”
“Right-o! The studio. What time?
Four?”
“Please. I’ll be waiting—and so glad to
see you, Philip.”
“There!” the eminent psycho-analytic physi-
cian complained, “there you go, taking all the
joy out of life. Just when I'm figuring that
the fee I’ll exact of you ought to buy me a
Rolls-Royce, you spoil it all by overpaying me
in the beginning.”
“How, Philip?”
“Didn't I hear you promise to be glad to
see me?”
-


THE DARK MIRROR 57
IV. LovE?
ADA MoyFR was a pretty, vivacious, fluffy
little woman, thoroughly mondaine and con-
tented with herself, her husband, her world.
Entirely lacking in any special aptitude for
painting, she dabbled in oils a bit, partly
because it afforded her an outlet for much
superfluous energy that might otherwise have
got her into mischief, partly because she
was fond of Priscilla, believed her by way of
being a genius, and was glad to lend the girl
the show of chaperonage without which she
must have had a difficult time of it with Aunt
Esther. But Mrs. Moyer was as apt as not
to absent herself from the studio for days at
a time; and on this afternoon Priscilla found
nothing to indicate that the other had been
there at all.
Glad to be spared the necessity of explain-
ing that she wanted to be alone with Philip
Fosdick, the girl moved alertly round the
room, superintending the preparation of tea
by the maid she had brought with her, placing
the table and the chairs the way she wanted
them—setting the stage for a scene which, she


58 THE DARK MIRROR
felt instinctively, might affect most intimately
all her days to come. In spite of this tolerably
grave consideration, she was in a most cheerful
mood, more than once caught herself humming
the latest irresistible fox-trot, and when she
stopped to think about it appreciated that the
pleasure of anticipation was largely responsi-
ble for her good temper. She was always
pleased when Philip was about. He was, she
thought, the dearest man she knew. He never
failed to amuse her, to bring out in her all her
best and most engaging qualities; and con-
sciousness of the love he had for her was some-
thing she would not willingly have forfeited.
She was only sorry she didn't love him in re-
turn; at least, not in the way Philip wanted
and deserved to be loved; but in her own way,
with a very quiet, undemonstrative and endur-
ing affection, a vastly different thing from
what she might have given had she not set her
face so steadfastly against love and all its arts
. vastly different, too, from such love as
had thrown Leonora into the arms of Mario
She paused, a slight frown puckering her
delicately lined brows.
Strange how the memory of that caress had


THE DARK MIRROR 59
power to tug at her heart strings! Stranger
still that anything as fantastic as that shadowy
love of shadows should seem so real, more real
than all else in the content of her dream, even
its culminating tragedy . . . more real, in-
deed, than anything in this world of reality
wherein she moved and lived and had her
being . . .
In a long stare she comprehended the studio
as with strange eyes, perceiving afresh the sub-
stantial beauty of its time-mellowed furnish-
ings: the well chosen pieces of period mahog-
any shining with contented lustre; the hand-
some draperies of rich stuffs matchlessly col-
oured and toned, brocades, tapestries, embossed
velvets, illuminated leathers of antique Span-
ish artistry; the framed canvases on its walls
and those unframed others that turned to them
bashful faces, standing on the floor; the fine
old rugs whose collection had been her father's
hobby; the darkly polished floor darkly mir-
roring all things that caught the light; the
great wide fireplace with its massive dogs of
brass; the book-shelves laden with well-bound
works on art; the wide, mullioned window in
the south wall whose heavy draperies she had
thrown back to let in the sun.


60 THE DARK MIRROR
Was all this, with its so intimate associa-
tions with humanity, like humanity itself no
more than such stuff as dreams are made of?
It was none of it so real to her as Mario's
kiss . . .
She gave a gesture of doubt and anxiety.
If this were not love, what was it? Not san-
ity: how could one love a phantom? . . . She
began to regret the weakness which had moved
her to call up Philip Fosdick. How could she
bring herself to confess this secret even to him?
How keep it hidden from him? How hope to
deceive that keen insight which had lifted him
to his present high place in the ranks of psycho-
pathologists? She was anything but proficient
in deception and concealment; life thus far had
afforded her too little reason for mastering
such accomplishments.
She sang no more, but awaited Philip's com-
ing with more misgivings than she liked.
W. CONFESSION
PHILIP Fosdick had a way of exorcising
constraint and implanting confidence even
in those who had no special liking for him.
And Priscilla was genuinely attached to him,


THE DARK MIRROR 61
more so than she knew. When he took her
hands and held them well apart while he
looked her over with shrewd, humorous, indul-
gent eyes, she found it impossible to refrain
from answering his smile with one in kind.
And when she saw how well he looked, how
very much alive and alert—mentally and physi-
cally Philip always seemed to concert pitch
and never to know a let-down—hesitation and
doubts were swept away like leaves before an
autumnal wind.
“I suspected it,” he announced, nodding
sagely: “you're a fraud—and thank God for
that! I've been quite upset about you ever
since you telephoned, 'Cilla. But nobody ever
looked so wholesomely lovely as you who “let
concealment, like a worm i' the bud, feed on
her damask cheek.” Now give me tea, please,
and tell me All.”
She made a little moue of petulance. “I
knew you'd laugh at me!”
“I hoped I would.”
Philip flopped boyishly into his favourite
chair, helped himself to a cigarette, and
watched Priscilla narrowly while she sugared
his cup with the traditional two lumps, added
the slice of lemon, and drowned both in tea.


62 THE DARK MIRROR
Never had she seemed more beautiful or more
perfectly poised. Impossible, he told himself,
there could be anything amiss with a creature
of such radiance! Some girlish notion, noth-
ing more serious . . .
“Well?” he demanded with mock brusque-
ness when she gave him his cup. She hesitated
with her adorably shy smile. “Come now!
I'm called in as a physician; so this is business;
let's get it over with.”
“Give me time to think.”
“Against the rules. How can I unmask
your shameful duplicity, whatever it is, if I
give you time to build up barriers? Besides,
you’ve had all afternoon to make up your mind
what you wanted to tell me. Now—out with
it!”
So there was nothing for it but compliance.
“How long have you known me, Philip?”
“Let me see . . . To the best of my recol-
lection, since you were about a year old; I re-
member coming into the nursery unexpectedly
and finding you—”
“Never mind! You've known me all my
life.”
“And loved you all mine, barring the first


THE DARK MIRROR 63
ten years, during which you were as yet non-
existent.”
“Have you ever observed anything in me
that led you to believe I was abnormal in any
way?”
He contemplated a frivolous reply, but see-
ing the gravity in her eyes refrained.
“Never!” said Philip solemnly.
“Well, there is something . . . Philip: I
have dreams.”
“That's good. You look so angelic I was
beginning to be afraid you really weren't hu-
man; and I’d much rather love a woman than
an angel, 'Cilla.”
“But the strangest dreams . . . Let me tell
you. And please don't laugh, Philip. It isn't
any laughing matter.”
He drew the soberest face of sympathy im-
aginable. “Go on.”
“As far back as I can remember, I’ve every
now and then had a special sort of dream that
seemed very real to me. Even as a little girl
—though then, I think, they weren't so defi-
nite . . . But when I began to grow into long
dresses, the dreams took on a certain form
they've kept ever since.”
“Form?”


64 THE DARK MIRROR
“Well, perhaps the best way to describe
them is to say that they're not ordinary dreams
at all, confused, you know, and meaningless.”
“Few dreams are meaningless, if one knows
how to analyse them.”
“But these are different this way: they're
like chapters from another life; as if one picked
up a book, opened it at random, and read part
of a story that had neither beginning nor end
but still intelligible form, much like life, where
one incident grows naturally out of another
. . you know.”
“That's clear enough.”
“And in all these dreams I seem to see my-
self, precisely my identical self in looks at least,
living through events and adventures in sur-
roundings such as I’ve never seen but only
read about.”
“Such as ?”
“What I fancy slums must be like. The
self I see in dreams belongs there—dresses,
acts, talks precisely like a girl who's never had
any advantages to speak of, much education
or contact with the pleasant side of life. All
the same she is myself . . . much as if I put
on some disguise so complete it disguised even
my speech and habits of thoughts, even my


THE DARK MIRROR 65
sentiments and impulses. This girl does and
says things I never could and, awake, have
never thought of. But to her they seem quite
right, the natural and right things to do and
say. The truth is, most of the time she's rather
self-satisfied and pleased with everything—
the life she leads, the people she knows, the
fun she has-everything.”
“I understand.” Now unfeignedly in-
trigued, Philip had abandoned all pretence of
treating the matter lightly, and was sitting
forward, cigarette smouldering between his
fingers, his eyes intently searching Priscilla's
face. “Tell me something about the content.
of these dreams. Go back as far as you can
>>
“My first memories are very vague,” Pris-
cilla told him; “I don't recall being impressed
that they were strange or in any way real.
They were childish and simple impressions of
another little girl who was rather unhappy
most of the time. I think she lived with an
old woman—a wretched old witch of a woman
who was cruel to her, seemed to hate her and
enjoy beating her—in a mean little flat some-
where. The old woman used to tell fortunes
with cards in the front room. But all that's


66 THE DARK MIRROR
very vague now. I don't remember much
more, except that the little girl used to play a
great deal in the streets.”
“But when she-or you—grew up, the
dreams became more real?”
“Yes: about that time something happened
to the old woman, I presume she died, and the
girl was left alone to look out for herself. I
don't know what she did for a living because
Inever saw her except at night. Then I would
meet her, or rather find myself with her in
the Street of Strange Faces . . .”
A questioning look obliged Priscilla to
break off here and explain about the river, the
Dark Corner, and the Street.
“And then we,” she resumed—“or she-
would start off and have curious experiences.
She'd meet people she knew, sometimes people
I knew, too, through being with her when she'd
met them before, but not always; and interest-
ing things would happen. I'm afraid she's a
bit of a flirt, Philip, but I never knew her to
do or think of doing anything wrong till late-
ly. Then, somehow she fell in with a rather
tough set. One of them was a sort of des-
perado, a gang leader such as one sometimes


THE DARK MIRROR 67
reads about in the newspapers, named Red
Carnehan »
“So you remember names!”
“Oh, perfectly; places, too. If I ever saw
them, if there really are such places, I should
know them instantly, I’m sure . . . And this
Red Carnehan fell in love with her, and they
became engaged—I guess. She was brighter,
more intelligent than he, and she planned
things for him to do, with his gang—robberies
and such things, as far as I know—and how to
escape the consequences. Another man,
named Mario, loved her, too; but he wasn't
one of Red's gang; in fact he was bitterly
opposed to her having anything to do with it,
and always begging her to give it up and
marry him. But she was afraid of Red, and
always refused. I think she always meant to
marry Red Carnehan until last night . . .”
Priscilla paused and was so long silent, star-
ing at the floor, lost in thoughts and emotions
conjured up by this near approach to her latest
dream, that Philip found it necessary to
prompt her.
“What happened last night?”
“The dream that frightened me so I had to
tell somebody and thought of you.”


68 THE DARK MIRROR
“Then, tell me . . .”
She rose, crossed to a desk, came back with
the manuscript.
“I’d rather you'd read it, if you don't mind,
Philip. I wrote the story out last night, as
clearly as I could remember. And here it is
. . . But first, tell me what you think.”
“I don't know yet, Priscilla. It's apparent-
ly the most extraordinary case that has come
under my observation since I’ve been prac-
tising.”
“You—you don't think it means—insanity,
do you?”
His laugh reassured even more than his
words. “Bless your heart, no! The insane
don't have coherent dreams, or talk about them
intelligibly. Don't worry about that . . .
But, frankly, I don't know what to think.
There must be an explanation, because noth-
ing in nature is without its cause. But in this
case it's something that will want a deal of
hunting, I'm afraid; and we'll have to get all
our facts together before I can even hazard a
guess. Now let me read, please.”
He concentrated so completely over the
manuscript that he seemed utterly forgetful of
her presence, and did not so much as look up


THE DARK MIRROR 69
when, after a time, weary of studying his ex-
pression without knowing what thoughts
moulded it, Priscilla rose and began to wander
restlessly about the studio.
It seemed that he would never finish read-
ing . . .
WI. THE EVENING PAPER
SHE was standing to one side of the south
window, abstractedly looking down over Mac-
dougall Alley, when she heard Philip utter a
startled exclamation and jump up from his
chair.
Turning she saw him approaching, the scrib-
bled pages of her narrative crushed in his hand,
his face dark with amazement.
“This is more than extraordinary,” he de-
clared — “it’s impossible, incomprehensible!
. . . Priscilla, tell me; have you by any chance
seen the afternoon papers?”
Premonition started a hand fluttering
toward her bosom. “Why . . . no.”
“You’re sure?”
“But of course, Philip!” And then, alarmed
by his look of doubt—“What is it? Why do
you ask?”


70 THE DARK MIRROR
“Half a minute.” Philip crossed to the con-
sole table near the door, where he had left his
hat and stick and a folded newspaper, and
came back with the latter, hastily shaking out
its sheets. “I remember noticing a news story
on my way here,” he said abstractedly, as he
scanned the columns—“story curiously like
yours in some respects—about some gangster
or other on the lower East Side who shot a
detective in the street last night, then took
refuge in a restaurant, and escaped after shoot-
ing two others. I’m not sure the name's the
same, but . . . Ah!” The backs of his fingers
tapped the paper smartly. “Here it is . . .
You see.”
A headline smote her understanding like a
blow in the face:
“GANG MURDERS ON LOWER
EAST SIDE” -
But the text swam illegibly under her blurring
gaze. Even Philip's voice seemed remote, at
times barely audible.
“Yes, the same names: Leo Bielinsky, the
gangster, a Russian suspected of being a Bol-
shevik agent—naturally; all Russians are:


THE DARK MIRROR 71
nowadays—Ennis and Corbin, plain-clothes
men—Ristori’s restaurant. No mention of
Mr. Carnehan, though, or anybody else except
the proprietor of Ristori’s, who swears he
never saw Bielinsky before last night. Ap-
parently your friends made a clean getaway,
too—”
Priscilla caught his arm with imploring
hands.
“Philip! It isn't true! It can’t be! Tell
me it isn't—!”
Seeing her face of waxen pallor, her dilate
eyes in which horror flickered, he dropped the
newspaper, freed his arm gently, and took her
hand in the firm, calming and encouraging
clasp of the physician.
“Steady, 'Cilla, old girl, steady on! Of
course it isn't true—not the way you mean.
There's an explanation somewhere short of
witchcraft, and I’ll find it for you, Priscilla,
I’ll dig it out if I have to chuck my practice
to the dogs and give the rest of my life to the
job!”


CHAPTER THREE
THE HAUNTED WOMAN
I. CATECHISM
HERE was an interlude of which she
| retained no memory more than a con-
fused impression of a time of stress
and conflict, of struggling with all her might
to hold fast to reason, sustained throughout, it
may be saved, by a sense of Philip's sympathy
and strength . . .
A crisis was reached and passed. Growing
more calm—or rather more numb than calm—
Priscilla found herself in a roomy armchair
with a serious-faced Philip Fosdick seated
squarely in front of her, holding her two hands
in a grasp so compelling that it narrowly es-
caped being painful, and talking steadily in
even, persuasive accents, infinitely soothing
and heartening.
“There!” He was alert to the first indica-
tion of returning self-control. “You’re better
72


THE DARK MIRROR 78
already. Now rest quietly till you've got your-
self well in hand, and remember always I’m
standing by.”
“Have I been silly, Philip?” She essayed
an apologetic smile, disengaging her hands to
make instinctive dabs at her hair. “Hysteri-
cal?”
“Not a bit. You're not that sort. You had
a shock, enough to stagger anybody, but you've
reacted famously, and now all you need do is
sit tight and consider this thing coolly and
sensibly.”
“But how can I?” Look and gesture were
once more distracted. “Why, I don't even
know whether I’m myself or where I am—”
“You do: you know you're right here, in
your own studio 22
“How can I be sure? I thought I was, last
night, but it seems I wasn't—I was, heaven
knows how far away, in that dreadful place,
when that happened—not here at all!”
“Rubbish: you were here asleep, here where
you woke up. You merely dreamed you were
elsewhere—with what psychic provocation re-
mains to be seen. There are such riddles
a-plenty still to be solved in the phenomena of
somnambulism, in spite of the long strides


74 THE DARK MIRROR
we've made of late years in psychical re-
search.”
Tight lipped, eyes intent, she nodded, then
shook her head. “I hear you—or think I do
—and seem to understand. But how is one to
know what to think? Are you Philip Fosdick
or a figure in a dream? Which am I, Priscilla
Maine or Leonora?”
“You’ll know before we finish: that's a
promise, 'Cilla. Look at me, please, and
listen: You've had a singularly coincidental
dream which, coming as a climax to a long
series of dreams quite as singular, seems past
understanding. But it isn't. Nothing in life
is. There's an explanation, a perfectly simple
and natural one, for everything, and it can be
got at if only we go after it in the right way.
I daresay this case 'll demand a lot of patience
and time and some tolerably stiff thinking;
but its cause is waiting to be found and can't
elude us if we stick at it, keep our heads, and
never say die. Which is precisely what we're
going to do, you and I.”
Words and manner carried a measure of
conviction. She searched his face and found
it, as one always found it, a face to inspire
confidence and hope, a strong face boldly yet


THE DARK MIRROR 75
finely modelled, thoughtful of cast, and illu-
minated by the most honest eyes she had ever
seen, the face of a strong man, sincere, faith-
ful and dependable.
“Thank you, Philip,” she said. “I’m trying
to believe, but you don’t know how hard it is.”
“That's where you're wrong: I do know; I
understand perfectly. On the other hand, I
know there's nothing unnatural in nature,
there can’t be; and therefore we can’t fail to
solve this problem except through your lack
of faith in me. If you'll trust me, help me all
you can, be absolutely frank—”
“I’ll do my best . . . Of course, I’ve got
to; I'll never have a minute's peace till I know
the truth. Ask me anything you like, and I'll
tell you the truth if I know it.”
“I’m sure you wil 23.
“But, Philip: tell me one thing first.” . . .
She faltered and looked uneasily aside. “You
don't . . . you don't think I'm—wrong any
way—mentally, I mean?”
Fosdick laughed with calculation, a laugh
that scouted the suggestion and at the same
time was indulgent.
“Absolutely not. You've got the rightest
mind I know. But you're anything but ob-


76 THE DARK MIRROR
vious, 'Cilla, you're as complex a personality
as any I’ve ever known. You're strongly in-
tuitive—or more or less what we term psychic
—sympathetic, impressionable, susceptible to
influences that work on you without your
knowledge. You'd have to be, or you couldn't
paint so well. You may mix your paints with
brains, as Whistler advised, but you apply
them with emotion; I mean you feel, and paint
what you feel more than what you see; other-
wise your pictures would be mere cut and dried
reports of surfaces. Artists are like that, the
good ones, who do work worth while, whether
it's painting or sculping or writing or acting
or fiddling or anything creative. With such
people the subconscious is very thinly veiled
by the conscious, whereas with most of us, sim-
ple-minded and unimaginative creatures, con-
sciousness is an indurated husk, tough and
stubborn. That's one reason why I'm promis-
ing you we won't have much difficulty locating
the seat of your troubles. Whatever it is, the
truth is known to your subconscious self, and
that is bound to tell us, soon or late.”
“But how, Philip?”
For the first time since he had shown her the
newspaper Priscilla's tone and manner were


THE DARK MIRROR 77
unaffected by mental strain. Fosdick sup-
pressed a glimmer of satisfaction, seeing he
had succeeded in so interesting her that she
was less sensible of what rightly or wrongly
she considered a menace to her reason, than of
the fascinating problem it presented.
“If we fail to get at the trouble by straight
analysis—collecting, dissecting and comparing
known facts—we'll catch the subconscious be-
traying itself. It always does, 'Cilla. No mat-
ter how jealously it may try to hoard its secret,
it can't help flirting with the temptation to dis-
cuss it indirectly, and so in the end it always
lets the cat out of the bag. That's what makes
my job so interesting: one never knows what
word or phrase, gesture of nuance of expres-
sion, will give the clue one needs. So if we
fail to make visible progress in direct examina-
tion, be sure that some time, when we're least
expecting it, the subconscious will prompt you
to drop the hint that will lead us straight to
the heart of the mystery.”
She nodded eagerly, already well persuaded
and only too anxious to believe.
“How shall we begin?”
“Feel strong enough to have a go at it now?


78 THE DARK MIRROR
Good! Then let's get our facts in order, first
the things we know beyond dispute.”
Philip produced a pocket book, found a fair
page, and at its top penned the notation:
“Priscilla Maine—age, 21.”
“Where were you born?”
“Here—in New York. At least I presume
I was. Does it matter?”
“Can't say as yet.” Philip's words followed
his fountain pen: “Your father was Henry
Hobart Maine, of this city; a portrait painter;
made a great deal of money, inherited more;
was forty-eight when he died, five years ago,
leaving you, his sole heir, a handful of millions.
Your mother died when you were born, if my
memory serves.”
“Yes.”
“Her name?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
Philip's brows lifted. “Didn't your father
tell you?”
“Never.” The girl's eyes clouded. “He al-
ways seemed so distressed when my mother was
mentioned, I learned not to ask questions.”
“Then he never told you anything about
her?”
“No. Neither did anybody else.”


THE DARK MIRROR 79
“Odd. Must have been something uncom-
mon to make him avoid the subject with his
own child. Ever strike you that way?”
“Sometimes.” Priscilla hesitated, looking
down at a forefinger which traced a pattern on
the arm of the chair. . . . “Does it seem heart-
less of me, I wonder? I was always so happy,
life was so kind, father so thoughtful never to
let me know an unsatisfied wish—I'm afraid
I never bothered about my mother much.”
“That's human enough. Still, somebody
must know . . . Your Aunt Esther?”
“I’m afraid not. She married before father
did, and went to England to live and never
came back till her husband died, a few years
ago. She isn't really my aunt, you know.”
“Distant cousin, I believe?”
“A third cousin—but the only living rela-
tive I have.”
“Did she ever mention your mother?”
“Only once, and then only to say she under-
stood father's married life wasn't a happy,
one.”
“Didn't she say why?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Somebody must,” Fosdick repeated testily.
“Now if only my father were living . . .”


THE DARK MIRROR 81
read, anything about the harsh and seamy
sides of life.”
“Does all that matter?”
“Everything matters, young woman. Re-
member: you're now a Case. To continue
.” Philip hesitated, eyeing her with a
frown of whimsical apprehension. “I know
you've never been engaged, but whether you've
ever been in love . . .” Priscilla coloured, but
shook her head. His eyes narrowed. “Hon-
our bright?”
“Oh, I’ve had crushes, of course; every girl
has; and I’ve always been awfully fond of
you—”
“Fond!” he groaned.
“I’ve been afraid of love, Philip, because of
these dreams. It didn't seem right to think of
marrying with such a cloud hanging over me.”
He grunted impatiently, scowled at his note-
book, shrugged, pursued: “The dreams began
in childhood, you say, and were infrequent and
formless until about your fifteenth year. Then
they began to seem real, and therefore to play
an important rôle in your life, to occupy your
thoughts more or less and exercise a secret in-
fluence on all your motives and actions. You
made up your mind you were ‘not like other


82 THE DARK MIRROR
girls,” and that made you timid about contract-
ing close friendships or giving anybody your
confidence. . . . I presume you never kept a
diary, or any record of the dreams? You
couldn't give me any idea how often they oc-
curred . . . at what intervals?”
“No . . . I never thought . . .”
“Pity. It might be helpful if we could
prove periodicity, even eccentric. However,
if they go on . . . That's one thing you must
promise me: always tell me as soon as you've
had a dream; let me talk to you about it before
the impression has a chance to fade; and always
write it down, too, the way you did this one.”
“I will—of course.”
“You’ve never consulted anybody else—?”
“Never a living soul.”
“Not even your father?”
“Not even him.”
“Too bad: there's no outlet so helpful as
talking about one's troubles. Everybody
ought to have at least one confidant.”
“I couldn't talk to anybody, I simply
couldn't risk their thinking me—queer.”
“I understand . . . Now let's see if we can
get a line on this from another angle. How


THE DARK MIRROR 83
were you feeling yesterday? Any way un-
usual?”
“Restless and unsettled—couldn’t seem to
keep my interest fixed on anything for ten min-
utes at a time—otherwise very well, rather
jolly, you know, inclined toward a lark of some
sort.”
“What did you do with yourself all day?”
“Nothing much. I had a model in the
morning, but didn't like what I was doing and
let her go before noon. In the afternoon I
worked on my portrait of myself till the light
began to change and 23.
“Didn't know you were painting your own
portrait, 'Cilla. May I see it?”
“Why, of course!”
II, AUTO-HYPNOSIS
DELIGHTED, as always when someone she
liked showed interest in the work she loved so
well, the girl forgot her preoccupation in a
twinkling and, jumping up, gaily linked
Philip's arm and led him across to the tall can-
vas beside the pier glass.
“There!” she laughed—“did you know Pris-
cilla Maine could be like that?”


84 THE DARK MIRROR
Impressed by his first glance, Philip merely
uttered a thoughtful “Hmm!” and in silence
studied the portrait with an intelligent appre-
ciation not unmixed with wonder.
Priscilla released his arm and stepped back,
pleased by this mute tribute, pleased as well
to have her own overnight impression con-
firmed, experiencing that rare, warm glow of
gratification which only an artist knows when
he looks upon his handiwork and finds it good.
Well drawn and modelled, daringly yet sen-
sitively painted with an unerring sense of col-
our and values, the girl in gipsy dress was
amazingly spirited and convincing. There was
arresting challenge in that impudently tossed
head with its laughing mouth of scarlet and
dark eyes agleam with charming insolence un-
der lowered lashes.
“Well done,” said Philip simply.
“I’m so glad you like it, Philip. Harkness”
—she named a dealer known to both—“wants
to show it in his galleries.”
“I like it immensely, only . . . I can't get
over an odd notion that it isn't you. The like-
ness is extraordinary—I remember well the
night you wore that costume—and yet, some-
how . . .”


THE DARK MIRROR 85
“You see it, too?” Philip turned to her with
a sharp glance. She laughed consciously. “I
didn't myself till last night, after I’d waked
up. Then with the dream fresh and real in
my thoughts, I saw I'd painted not myself but
that other Self. The girl you see there isn't
Priscilla Maine, not the Priscilla you and I
know; she's Leonora.”
“Good Lord!” Philip looked grave. “Were
you thinking of her while painting?”
“No-not consciously, not that I remem-
ber.”
“And yet, without your knowledge, you
must have been . . .”
He moved nearer the picture to examine it
more closely.
“It brings everything back so clearly,” the
girl mused; “it gives me the strangest feeling
of unreality, makes me wonder which is which;
which the living woman, which the shadow
The voice behind him trailed off into a pen-
sive murmur. And for longer than Philip ap-
preciated there was unbroken silence while he
stood frowning at the portrait in the abstrac-
tion of conjecture, one after another weighing
theory and surmise and rejecting all, vainly


86 THE DARK MIRROR
ransacking memory for precedent with which
to compare this case. -
He made a movement of exasperation and,
simultaneously becoming conscious of the still-
ness, looked round to see the girl posed in a
stare, gaze steadfast at the portrait, her look
dull and remote: head thrown back a trifle,
hands hanging with palms exposed in a gesture
curiously appealing, her respiration abnor-
mally slow and deep.
Fosdick took a quick step to her, crying:
“’Cilla!” She seemed not to hear. He said
in sharp insistence: “Do you hear, 'Cilla?
Come out of it!” That broke the spell. She
roused like a sleeper wakening: intelligence
slowly reinformed her countenance. Sighing
softly, she drew a hand across her eyes, then
with an uncertain smile extended it to him.
Philip clasped it between his own.
“Now what?” he demanded with brusque
good humour.
“I’ve had the funniest sensation . . . I was
thinking about the painting, wondering if, per-
haps, I'd done something extraordinary and
weird, painted my own soul into the figure on
the canvas—you know—so that it really lived
and was me while I was merely a shell of flesh


THE DARK MIRROR 87
and blood . . . and suddenly it seemed to me
my fancy had come true, that I was really
there on the canvas looking into the room here,
seeing myself, I mean seeing Priscilla Maine,
and wondering about her and about you, as
if I’d never known either of us, as if I were a
stranger in my own studio . . . Do you un-
derstand, Philip? It must sound so wild and
silly . . .”
“It doesn't,” he said quietly. “But I think
we'd better stop looking at the picture for a
while. Besides I want another cup of tea, and
you need one.”
Retaining her hand, he led the girl back to
the tea table, made her sit down, then resumed
his own chair.
With obvious effort Priscilla busied herself
with the tea things; her bewildered look per-
sisted.
“What was it, Philip? What made me feel
that way?”
“Auto-hypnosis — a mild phase — super-
induced by excitement and fretting. Nothing
to worry about. And still . . . Frankly, I
don't like it. I wouldn't care to have it happen
too frequently. It's no good encouraging that
sort of thing; each time it happens it breaks


88 THE DARK MIRROR
down resistance, makes you only the more sus-
ceptible to the next suggestion. If I were
you, I'd drop that portrait, put it out of sight
and mind till we’ve settled this question—
opened it up and let light into its darkness,
and so relieved your doubts and fears.”
“Perhaps you're right,” Priscilla demurred,
“but—I don't know. It makes me unhappy
to have unfinished work on hand. I'm afraid
I won't forget, even if I do turn its face to the
wall. Don't you think I might better finish it
up, and get it out of the studio altogether?”
But Philip's disapproval was manifest.
“Please!” she begged her prettiest. “It only
means another day or two; then I can let
Harkness have it and forget all about it.”
“I can't say yes, 'Cilla. I shouldn't be at
all surprised if it turned out that the portrait
was wholly to blame for last night's experi-
ence, I mean for the peculiar content and trend
of your dream.”
She was frankly puzzled and said so.
“The power of suggestion it has exerted on
your thoughts,” he explained. “Till yesterday
you never expressed it even to yourself; but
subconsciously, I haven't any doubt, the
thought has always been at work, that it wasn't


THE DARK MIRROR 89
yourself you were painting but the heroine of
your dream story, another woman of a differ-
ent life with an independent spirit and men-
tality. And then—of course, all this is sheer
guesswork—there are associations inherent in
the concept of gipsy girl and a gipsyish exist-
ence, romantic, adventurous, full of dangers,
twists and turns and thrills: such thoughts
may well have dictated the character and
course of the dream, though you were never
actively aware of thinking them.”
“I wonder . . .” Priscilla sipped her tea.
“Maybe you're right . . . But still I don't see
why I shouldn't go on with the painting. Just
one more day, Philip—”
“Confound you!” Philip exploded with an
irritated laugh—“you know how hard it is for
me to refuse you anything. But it's no good
this time, 'Cilla. I won't have you agitating
yourself with that painting till you've entirely
recovered poise. For that matter, it would be
better for you to keep away from the studio
altogether for a few days. You've been living
entirely too much within yourself. You want
distraction, amusements, to break up this habit
of morbid introspection. Get out and about,


90 THE DARK MIRROR
see people, go to restaurants and plays and
dances more—”
“How can I enjoy such things with this
trouble ?”
“That's just it. Until we find the explana-
tion, which may take time, you're bound to
keep worrying unless you go out more into
the world. I’m in earnest about this, Priscilla:
promise to keep away from the studio for at
least three days.”
“If you insist,” she conceded with a sus-
picion of a pout—“I presume I’ve got to do
as the doctor orders.”
“Then that's settled,” Philip asserted with
reckless complacence.
III. THE PREscRIPTION
PRISCILLA had a pensive moment. “Hypno-
tism?” she echoed her thought: “I wonder if
that's one way . . . Do you think you could
get at the truth, Philip, if you were to hypno-
tise and then cross-examine me?”
“I’d rather not except as a last resort. Hyp-
notism demands such complete surrender to
the will of the hypnotist, it tends to undermine


THE DARK MIRROR 91
the independence of the ego which is essential
to the right development of the individual.”
“But what else can we do?”
“Many things . . . To begin with, I want
to take this story home with me and go over it
word by word. As it stands, in its intrinsic
significance, it's an absolutely unique human
document, utterly artless and honest. The
clue we need may be in it, in some unconscious
betrayal of repressed emotion or desire; it
may lie hidden in some turn of phrasing, even
in some unusual word, the word you wouldn't
ordinarily use to express your thought. Such
things can only be got at through close study.”
“What else?”
“Oh, plain sleuthing, for one thing—like
digging into the mystery of your parents' mar-
riage, finding out why they were unhappy,
and especially who your mother was and what
sort of family she had behind her—whether,
in short, it's possible that you've inherited
some psychic tradition. There are families, for
instance, that hand down from generation to
generation the clairvoyant tendency we know
by the name of second sight.”
“You don't believe in such things—you, a
modern scientist!”


92 THE DARK MIRROR
“The more modern the scientist, 'Cilla, the
more open his mind. I may not be wholly
credulous, but I won't deny anything I can’t
disprove. People have been burned as witches
who only made use of natural laws of which
their day was ignorant but which science today
recognises and openly utilises for the common
good. . . . Finally,” Philip added, “we may
find the police useful.”
Priscilla started sharply. “The police!” she
repeated in a tone of protest.
“Why not?” Philip tapped the manuscript
of the dream story. “Don’t forget we have
here an amazingly circumstantial and convinc-
ing narrative, with names and places plainly
stated. Now if you actually did, through
some freak of psychic activity—‘travelling
clairvoyance,” or whatever it is—have first-
hand knowledge of this Bielinsky business
. . . Well, his isn’t the only name mentioned.
And if you remembered his accurately, and the
plain-clothes men, Ennis and Corbin, and Ris-
tori's—why shouldn't the others be real names
of real persons as well? English Addie and
Inez, Harry the Nut and Charlie the Coke,
Red Carnehan . . .”
Struck by a circumstance whose significance


THE DARK MIRROR 93
had till now escaped him, he paused for
thought, unheeding the signs of disconcertion
betrayed by Priscilla.
“I say! If you dreamed true, neither of the
policemen who entered that upstairs room
lived to tell what they found there. Then
Bielinsky is credited with two murders of
which he's innocent. I fancy Police Head-
quarters will be deeply interested if I can per-
suade them Red Carnehan was the author of
the killings in Ristori’s!”
Priscilla's cup and saucer clattered.
“You mustn't!” she cried, her eyes wide, her
features drawn with dismay. “You mustn't
do that, Philip! Don't you understand—don't
you know what will happen if you do? Red
wouldn't hesitate an instant if he thought
I’d—if he thought Leonora had told. He'd
croak—I mean, he'd kill her, Philip!”
“Oh, come!” Philip put down his cup and
tried to speak reassuringly. “You’re taking
this too seriously 32
“I’m not. It is serious: it's life or death!”
She was suddenly on her feet, gesticulating in
a manner utterly out of character. Philip got
up to face her, and tried to interrupt, but she
wouldn't listen. “It’s the way they do with


94 THE DARK MIRROR
squealers—informers, that is—people who tell.
I know what I’m talking about. They kill
them, or get them killed!”
“Easy, 'Cilla. Don't lose your head.”
She didn't even hear. “Red's suspicious al-
ready,” she declared. “He’s rowed a lot with
Leonora about Mario. He told me . . . I
mean, I remember his telling Leonora he
thought Mario was a dick—a detective—and if
he caught her talking to him again, or anything
happened to make him think she'd talked too
much, he'd kill her first and Mario next.”
She threw out hands that shook with pas-
sionate anxiety. “Promise me you won't go
to the police, Philip—for my sake, for Le-
onora's, for Mario's!”
“For Mario's sake?” Philip's eyes dark-
ened. “To be sure: I'd forgotten about Mario.
And he seems to be rather a more important
personage than I–’”
“I—she loves him, Philip—and he loves
Leonora. And his influence is good for her.
I know, if you won't tell—I don't know how
I know, but I do—Mario will find a way to
save her, he'll get her away from those others
and marry her and make her good, and make
her happy, too. Give him—give both of them


THE DARK MIRROR 95
a chance, Philip! Please! If anything should
happen to either of them, I »
“Priscilla!”
The imperative tone shocked her into mo-
mentary silence. But her attitude remained
that of supplication, she still trembled in fran-
tic anxiety and besought his generosity with
pleading hands.
“It shall be as you wish,” Philip told her.
“Do you understand?”
“You won't—you promise not to go to
Headquarters?”
“I promise. For the time being, at least,
I’ll keep away from the police—but on one
condition . . . Are you listening?”
“Yes—yes, Philip—”
“You must stop this fretting—take things
quietly. And you must come away from the
studio with me at once. I’ll see you home, and
this evening—if Aunt Esther will have me—
I'll drop round for dinner. After that, if
you've nothing else arranged, we might do a
play. If you like, I’ll scare up some others
and make it a box party, and afterwards we
can drop in at the Club de Vingt for a dance.
What do you say?”
The panic in her eyes gave way to daze, then


96 THE DARK MIRROR
to dawning comprehension. She smiled feebly,
her hands sketched a sign of apology and
chagrin.
“I’ve been silly again! What have I been
saying, Philip?”
“It doesn't matter. Will you give me this
evening and do your best to help me enjoy it?”
“It sounds awfully jolly, and I’m sure it'll
do me heaps of good. Philip”—her eyes were
dangerously kind—“don’t think me ungrate-
ful. You're so good to me. You're such a
dear . . .”
“I know,” said Philip with a rueful smile.
“But I hope that won't be my only epitaph.”


CHAPTER FOUR
THE HAUNTING PORTRAIT
I. IN THE AIR
y | WHAT was the year of the impetuous
Spring: March brewed weather whose
golden graciousness she stole from
May, April brought times of summer heat,
such as that afternoon when Priscilla fell
asleep in the studio and dreamed her dream of
terror. Days followed as rare, unseasonable
enough but sweet with the warm delight of
youth anticipating the richness of maturity,
with nights of wonder whose winds walked
suavely beneath skies of velvet, purple, dense
and soft. Topcoats and heavy wraps went
early and unmourned to limbo, summer furs
appeared to stress the delicacy of summery
frocks. Shop windows bloomed with displays
of sheer and dainty fabrics exquisitely tinted,
like beds of exotic flowers under glass. In be-
tween them the Avenue saw confused and dis-
97


98 THE DARK MIRROR
tracting shows of living flowers, drifting up
and down, eddying in groups, pausing lightly.
And by day and night as well the Town aban-
doned itself to such frivolity as had no prece-
dent in the maddest chapters of its history.
Between twelve and twelve it was difficult to
secure a table at any of the more favoured
restaurants unless one had been thoughtful
enough to make reservation long in advance.
Plays offering the sorriest of entertainment
prospered beyond relief. At one in the morn-
ing rushing tides of motor cars rendered the
passage of Fifth avenue as perilous as at five
in the evening. The more retiring social life
was proportionately more gay and restless, its
brief post-Lenten season incandescent with a
brilliance unparalleled in the memory of the
most elderly idler. Everywhere there was end-
less feasting, dancing, coquetry, laughter, love
in idleness. Announcements of engagements
popped in well-nigh continuous fusillade; and
after dark all the kindly shadows in the parks
were murmurous with the voices of humbler
sweethearts. Love was in the air, as omni-
present as the dust of gold sprayed into the
night by flaming sky-signs. It found few im-
mune, none quite insensible to the preoccupa-


THE DARK MIRROR 99
tion it imposed so generally. Even Priscilla,
though she made no sign . . .
II. ANALYSIS
LovE worried Philip Fosdick with relent-
less importunity, whether he were behind the
desk in his consultation room, doing his best
to give his best to those unfortunates who
sought him out to lay open distressed hearts
and bespeak his sympathy and healing coun-
sel, or whether he sat in solitude cudgelling his
wits for insight into the mystery that shadowed
the happiness of the woman he loved.
The problem mocked his shrewdest efforts.
Practice and study, personal contact and ob-
servation together with close examination of
cases recorded by others, had long since made
him, as he believed, familiar with every phase
of psychosis, hysteria, and neurosis, as well as
with these psychic phenomena which will at
times develop in persons of seemingly normal
idiosyncrasy, from simple dreaming to som-
nambulism in all its guises, with hallucination,
trance, ecstasy, telepathy, and telaesthesia, and
the various forms of hypnosis.
However nearly akin they might be to more
2679:05A


100 THE DARK MIRROR
than one of these, what Fosdick for want of a
better name continued with Priscilla to term
her “dreams” persisted in defying classifica-
tion by virtue of a perverse sort of intrinsic
uniquity. For they were in no sense true
dreams, having none of the features peculiar
to those fantastic inventions of the mind un-
censored by waking consciousness. They were
utterly without traceable relation to anything
in the memory of the subject or her personal
circumstances and environment. Nor were
they, as is every ordinary dream, a jumble of
condensed and disfigured impressions unintel-
ligible but to the trained perceptions of the
analyst. On the contrary they were, as com-
municated to Fosdick, coherent, dramatic, pic-
turesque, convincing reports of happenings
which, if they fell short of the rounded com-
pleteness of the invented story, were strikingly
like reels inconsecutively viewed in some
cinema of entrancing interest.
Further: Priscilla was not hysterical, neu-
rotic, or anaemic. Neither was she of unsound
mind. Hallucinations, trance and ecstasy take
shape only in the miasmata of insanitary men-
tal and physical states. The man who since
her earliest days had adored and watched over


THE DARK MIRROR IOI
her, knew few minds more clear of vision, un-
prepossessed by illusions, or capable of
straight, honest reasoning. But it was not
more sane than her well nourished, groomed
and guarded body.
To a certainty, however, the “dreams” were
telepathic. And Fosdick had already seen
they could be stimulated by auto-suggestion
—as when Priscilla had suffered a sense of
translated identity while puzzling over her por-
trait of “Leonora.” So, too, without ques-
tion, they fell within the definition of telaes-
thesia as “any direct sensation or perception
of objects or conditions independent of the
recognised channels of the senses, and also
wnder such circumstances that no known mind
earternal to the percipient's can be suggested as
the source of the knowledge thus gained.”
But in either case the link was missing; there
was no “known mind” with which Priscilla’s
could conceivably communicate with such inti-
mate sympathy whilst she slept, but only
“Leonora’s.”
But was “Leonora” anything more than a
fancy born of subliminal recognition by Pris-
cilla of the fact that she was the vessel of a
dual personality? Or, if there were a real


I02 THE DARK MIRROR
Leonora, what was the nature of the affinity
that linked her mind with Priscilla’s?
Indisputably Leonora was to Priscilla a liv-
ing fact, a dissociate personality leading an
independent and factual existence. On the
other hand, constantly by word of mouth and
in writing Priscilla referred to Leonora as her
“other Self”—a plain and direct lead to the
solution expressed by the term dual personal-
ity. And (as Philip had told the girl) in the
unconsidered, spontaneous phraseology of a
naïve subject the key to the riddle may fre-
quently be found.
And yet, Fosdick had repeatedly to remind
himself, the projection of a secondary per-
sonality through any considerable distance in
space, or the creation of a new and strange en-
vironment for its activities, was a phenomenon
as yet even to be suggested by the most pre-
tentious charlatan or the most credulous
pseudo-scientific student of the psychic.
Nevertheless, he felt constrained provision-
ally to adopt the hypothesis of dual personal-
ity and upon it base the beginnings of his
survey.


THE DARK MIRROR 103
III. THE AMATEUR SLEUTH
DREDGING the past for the truth about
Priscilla's mother brought to light nothing
that seemed helpful. In twenty-odd years
New York itself had changed almost beyond
recognition and the constitution of its society
had been made over again and again till few
of the original elements remained. Then, too,
the memory of man is peculiarly brief con-
cerning the troubles of others. Henry Hobart
Maine, one of the most successful of Ameri-
can portrait painters and in his day a conspicu-
ous figure in the social life of the city, never-
theless had made few close friends, and of these
only one had survived him by a year or two—
Philip's father. Priscilla’s “aunt,” Mrs.
Trowbridge, being duly pumped, proved to be
as ignorant as the girl had said she was con-
cerning the marriage of her kinsman. She
knew indefinitely that “there had been
trouble”: its nature, its cause, its outcome, were
alike outside her knowledge and alien to her
interest. Apparently she had never been any-
thing more than she was to-day, an amiably
self-centred soul, comforted and sustained by


104 THE DARK MIRROR
those delusions of personal importance which
are so essential to the insignificant.
From other sources, by dint of guarded and
seemingly casual but persistent gossiping in
the lounges of clubs frequented by the elder
generations, Fosdick learned that Maine had
been regrettably guilty of a romantic indiscre-
tion in marrying a woman of a world outside
his own. But her very name had been forgot-
ten. He found, indeed, nobody who remem-
bered Mrs. Maine, and but few who recalled
the tradition of a hot-blooded, high-spirited
creature whose hopeless impatience of re-
straints and conventions defied all Maine's
half-hearted attempts to reconcile his wife with
his friends and mode of life, till, discouraged,
he disappeared with her and for some years
absented himself utterly from New York.
Concerning this period of his life nothing def-
inite was known; there was a suggestion that
he had devoted it to travel in South America.
But it was certain that he had returned with a
girl child and without a wife. This last was
presumed to have died, though there were
whispers to the contrary, that “incompatibil-
ity” had dictated a separation. Maine never
made any explanation but, it appeared, quiet-


THE DARK MIRROR I05
ly resumed his place and thenceforth devoted
himself steadfastly to his profession and the
care of his daughter. A gentleman of grave
presence relieved by a whimsical turn of
speech, with eyes tolerant and humorous,
yet with a hint of pain lurking ever in their
smile: Philip remembered him well. He lived
to see Priscilla give promise of carrying on the
torch of his genius, even as her dark loveliness
foreshadowed something of the furore it was
destined to create. . . .
Disappointed but not discouraged, Fosdick
turned to other avenues of investigation.
Bound by his pledge to Priscilla not to con-
sult the police, discreet employment of chan-
nels of information provided by a wide ac-
quaintance among newspaper men neverthe-
less brought him all Police Headquarters knew
about the Bielinsky affair. The man, it
seemed, had been sought in the first instance
on a warrant charging him with violation of
the Espionage Act in spreading Bolshevik
propaganda. Nothing was known concerning
the party in the room at Ristori's by way of
which the Russian escaped after adding two
murders to his score. The proprietor of the
restaurant, held as a material witness, stoutly
º
*}.


I06 THE DARK MIRROR
denied knowing Bielinsky or any of the ten-
ants of the private dining room, all of whom
had, he insisted, left some time before the
tragedy. The name of Red Carnehan had
not been mentioned in connection with the
crime. There was, however, such a person, a
notorious gang-leader of the lower East Side.
Considering it essential that he should learn
more of Mr. Carnehan and his friends, and
perceiving but one way to gain that informa-
tion without breaking his promise to Priscilla,
Philip adopted it without more hesitation.
On the following morning, Priscilla, calling
up his office, was informed that Dr. Fosdick
had been suddenly called out of town on a case
of vital importance.
IV. MERE PAINT AND CANVAs?
AFTER one week of gadding about, of shop-
ping and theatres and dances and motoring,
Priscilla felt quite fed up with distractions.
She was as fond of amusement and personal
success as any girl that ever breathed, but not
so constituted as to be able to fritter time away
forever without a qualm of conscience—that
scourge and consolation in one of the creative
temperament. In short, she wanted to get


THE DARK MIRROR 107
back to her work, and wouldn't be happy till
she did.
And why not? she demanded when she failed
to get Philip on the telephone and secure his
professional permission to return to the studio.
“A few days” of trifling was all he had stipu-
lated; and those few had served. She dreamed
no more of Leonora or Red Carnehan or
Mario. Today, all that, indeed, seemed re-
mote and unimportant. What though she had
dreamed a nightmare which coincided so mys-
teriously with actual events as to scare her
nearly out of her wits? After all, it was at
worst a dream; and in this delightfully sub-
stantial and matter-of-fact world, coincidences
don't count with anybody except novelists hard
up for a plot. . . .
She found Ada Moyer pottering with a
hopeless daub of a still life, spent most of the
morning giggling and gossiping, carried her
off to the Ritz for luncheon, and left her there
with some friends who needed a fourth at
bridge: an arrangement perfectly agreeable to
Priscilla; it was hard enough at any time to
settle down to work after a spell of idling, it
was the next thing to an impossibility with
Ada on the premises.


I08 THE DARK MIRROR
The quiet of the empty studio was soothing
and grateful. Through windows wide to the
slow moving airs of that sultry afternoon
drifted the drone of the quarter, a sound rest-
ful in its implication of a community tranquilly
seeking to justify itself with works. Priscilla
sighed contentedly, wheeled the heavy easel
over to its stand beside the pier glass, shrugged
into a paint-smeared smock, and in the next
fifteen minutes did nothing whatever but sit
in a chair before the self-portrait, in stirless,
intent study of her work. -
Again it seemed good in her sight, decidedly
the best thing she had ever done; and yet she
was dissatisfied; something was wrong, some-
thing was missing without which it could not
prove convincing.
The head she must not touch, lest one mis-
judged stroke mar the excellence of its spirited
gesture. Neither could she see any way to
improve her painting of the figure. The folds
of the skirt needed some little attention, not
much, possibly half an hour's work. S. . . No:
the fault was in a background treated in a
fashion too academic and tame to suit, that
brilliant counterfeit of life.
At length, rising, Priscilla took up her pal-


THE DARK MIRROR I09
ette and from fat shining tubes squirted upon
its satiny surface sleek coils of colour, cad-
mium, burnt sienna, orange vermilion, black,
ultramarine, a tiny blob of crimson lake. Then
with swift, sure brushwork she overlaid the in-
sipidity of the original background with an
impressionistic scheme of soft, deep tones of
night relieved by hints of tawny lights.
For hours she worked steadily, absorbed,
till a premature change in the light broke the
spell. With a slight frown of annoyance she
looked up to find the frosted glass of the north-
light overcast with pale blue shadow. A sec-
ond glance through windows whose draperies
were motionless in the heavy air discovered the
western sky dark with beetling cliff on cliff of
slaty cloud.
No matter: her task was ended, and sooner
than she had thought it would be. A few days
more and she could varnish. . . .
She put aside brushes and palette, shut the
windows (through which now a cold, strong
draught was blowing) drew the draperies
close, and returned to the chair before the por-
trait.
The concentration of the working mood was
still strong in her. For some time she re-


II0 THE DARK MIRROR
mained in quiet contemplation of the tremen-
dous improvement she had wrought in the
canvas, without appreciating the true signifi-
cance of what unconsciously she had accom-
plished; for those sombre, atmospheric depths
with their remote play of lights now framed
the figure of Leonora truly in its native back-
ground.
The slow, thoughtful smile provoked by this
discovery merged slowly into a look of ab-
straction ever more profound as reverie led
her insensibly back to memories of the Street
of Strange Faces whose dim reaches stretched
away indefinitely behind that painted shape of
dream. The effect of return to old associa-
tions grew strong, she could veritably see, she
could almost smell and hear the Street . . .
She knew a period of mental uncertainty, of
daze and wonder, out of which grew the sensa-
tion she had once before experienced of con-
fusion of identity with the woman in the por-
trait. Inexplicably something impalpable yet
essential seemed to go out from her to the
other, with whose spiritual essence it blended
intimately, so that for the moment she had no
true existence save upon that painted surface,
where she paused, hesitant, doubtful, confused,


THE DARK MIRROR III
as on some dark strange threshold, before pass-
ing on and away into a vague half world, a
place of vast and shapeless spaces where there
was neither light nor darkness, wherein con-
sciousness grew faint and the sense of Self was
blotted out entirely . . .
W. REYOND THE THRESHOLD
OUT of nothingness, out of a sort of inert
chaos, spectral walls like veils of mist took
shape, closed in, added unto themselves a floor
and ceiling, assumed a semblance of stability,
became a box-like room wherein her spirit was
pent in a mood of sluggish and melancholy
mutiny: a room hatefully familiar to her in
its every hideous detail: its poisonous wall-
paper, stained ceiling and threadbare linoleum,
its iron sink in the corner, its rude chairs and
common table cluttered with soiled crockery
and a gas-stove linked to an overhead jet by
frayed tubing, its shelf from which hung ar-
ticles of dejected clothing, its shaky iron bed-
stead with sagging springs and the lumpy mat-
tress upon which her Self lay, half dressed and
half conscious, too bored to care whether she
waked or slept . . .


II2 THE DARK MIRROR
Weariness and disconsolation were eloquent
in her posture as she rested on her side, a hand
between her head and the emaciated pillow,
and written legibly in bluish shadows under
listless eyes, in sallow cheeks whose normal hue
was clearest pallor barely warmed by glowing
health, in the unstudied disarray of her masses
of fine black hair, in the sullen cast of her firm
lipped mouth.
A mutter of far thunder swelled and died.
The girl moved only her eyes, looking up to
a window that revealed the storm-black sky.
What mattered it to her whether or not it
rained? She was condemned, apparently, to
endless imprisonment in this dismal place
whose threshold her foot had not crossed in so
many days she had lost count of them.
She shuddered and once more lay still, sur-
rendering to the enervation of thoughts that
pursued one deadly round, discovering never
one new thing to lend them animation.
The room grew dark, the sky more savage.
A sword of lightning slashed the gloom, and
again distant thunder boomed and grumbled
into silence.
By the pert tin clock whose stridulation was


THE DARK MIRROR II3
the only voice her hiding place had heard in
days, the hour was barely five.
She wondered why she had taken the trouble
to look. What was the use of it, this keeping
count of time? What was time indeed but
waste, one long-drawn torment of waiting in
idleness and impotence for the sign that never
came to set her free?
She could have shrieked for sheer exaspera-
tion of ennui without alloy. She told herself
that anything were better than such a fate as
this. Why not shriek till her cries fetched the
police? Or, better still, arise, go forth, and
court arrest? A cell in the Tombs were pref-
erable to this place of proved security. Was
she less a prisoner here than she would be
there?
But she did not shriek, she did not move,
she did nothing, but remained as she had been
on awaking from the desolating stupidity of
unneeded sleep, so still she scarcely seemed a
living, breathing being.
More lurid lightning, a deeper diapason of
thunder, again that breathless hush . . .
Of a sudden she left the bed and in one
soundless bound gained the middle of the floor,
where she paused in the crouch of a hunted


114 THE DARK MIRROR
thing at bay, her wide gaze fastened to the
door.
Through a wait so long that she concluded
her hearing must have been at fault, she heard
nothing. She relaxed, drew a deep breath—
and grew rigid with alarm when she heard the
noise repeated, a stealthy knocking on the
panels.
Putting out a bare arm, she caught up a
cheap red cotton kimono and wrapped herself
in it, then moved to the door in stockinged
feet.
Now that fumbling knock was unmistakable,
and with an ear to the crack between door and
frame she seemed to detect a panting murmur:
“Nora! . . . Nora! . . .”
She called guardedly: “Who's there?” A
voice of greater confidence replied: “Me—
Charlie—le' me in!” She drew a bolt and
turned the knob, distrustfully opening the door
a few inches with a shoulder to it, prepared to
slam it shut with all her might should she find
cause to think she was being tricked. In the
outer murk, the pale contour of a face she knew
was just discernible. She stood aside and let
its owner enter. He came in with shuffling
feet, sidling, and slouched against the wall, his


THE DARK MIRROR II5
limbs a-quiver with the jerking palsy of the
drug addict. She welcomed him curtly, with a
scowl.
“Well? What do you want?”
The Coke returned a twisted, placating gri-
IIla Ce. -
“I don’t want nothin'. Red sent me to tell
yuh he wants yuh.”
“Red!” She caught her breath sharply.
“Where—?”
“I dassent tell. He made me take me oat'.
But he wants yuh.”
“When? How?”
“T'night. He says it's all right. Ristori's
kep’ his trap shut. Th' bulls ain't wise to Red
and Leo's hang-out. He wants yuh shou'd
come to him t'night.”
“He does?” There was a trace of challenge
in her tone that was less disguised when, after
brief deliberation, she demanded: “Suppose
I don't? What if the bulls pipe me in the
street? Suppose I don't come?”
The dope slave shuffled spasmodically.
“Red says yuh’re to—”
“So you say. But how do I know he does?
How do I know Red sent you here to tell me


II6 THE DARK MIRROR
that? How do I know this ain't some dodge
the Nut put you up to-or Inez?”
“Hones' tº Gawd, Nora, yuh got me
wrong!” the Coke protested. “I ain't seen
the Nut, nor Inez either, sinst that night. Red
sent me.”
“Prove it.”
“How'm I gonna do that?”
“Go back to Red and bring me something
to prove he sent you—that silver ring he wears
—anything.”
“I would, Nora”—the protestation was con-
vincingly earnest—“but I dassent. Red’ll
half kill me if I go back without yuh. Be-
sides, it ain't safe, goin' there too offen. The
bulls might see and follow me.”
“Well, what about me? What if they see
and follow me? I suppose it's all right if I get
pinched along with Red and Leo.” The girl
gave a gesture half impatient, half defiant.
“Nothing doing. You tell Red I said so.”
“Red says, tell yuh if yuh don't come t'night
somepin yuh won’t like'll happen to that Wop
what's stuck on yuh.”
Mario! . . . Her lips framed without utter-
ing the name. She retreated a pace, convul-


THE DARK MIRROR 117
sively tightening the fist that clutched the folds
over the kimono above her bosom.
“What—what are you talking about?”
“What Red said to tell yuh. Take it from
me, Nora, yuh better do like he says. Some-
body's been givin' him an ear-full about yuh
an' that Spanish gu 23
“Spanish guy?” she echoed shrilly. “I don't
know what you're talking about!”
“Maybe so, maybe not.” The Coke licked
his lips with a furtive tongue. “Anyhow he's
sore. If I was yuh, and didn' want no more
trouble I’d do like Red says.”
After a while the girl said sullenly: “How
am I going to find him if you won't tell me
where he is?”
“I’ll take yuh there. Red said I should.
It's all right, Nora—yuh don't hafta be
afraid 25
“Don’t worry about me. What time—?”
“Ten o'clock tonight.”
“Where'll I meet you?”
“In the room upstairs at
A lurid flame of lightning dried speech upon
his lips. Terrified, he cowered back to the
wall. Darkness fell. Thunders shook the ten-
ement on its foundations, crash upon rippling


118 THE DARK MIRROR
crash. Half stunned, the girl felt the leash
upon her senses slipping. Her hands caught
wildly at nothingness . . .
WI. THE STORM.
BoDY and soul seemed welded into one
taut string vibrating in agonised re-
sponse to the fury of the tempest: she
found herself standing far from the chair
in front of the easel, in quivering af-
fright gazing overshoulder at the featureless
long rectangle of the portrait in the shadows.
Rain sluiced the skylight in windwhipped
waves, with a crisp, tearing noise. Thunder
rocked the skies, ripped and raved, rumbled
away in lessening reverberations. A lull fell,
loud with the monotonous drum of rain upon
the roof. Then without warning the gloom
was abolished by a ghastly lilac glare—and the
face on the canvas started out of its dark back-
ground with an uncanny look of life, the gay
mockery of its smile distorted into grinning
malice. Instantaneously blacked out as thun-
der once more smote and rattled, it lingered
stubbornly before the vision of the girl, like the
sun blot that hangs before dazzled eyes. She


THE DARK MIRROR II9
was fain to switch on the lights to lay that
ghostly leer.
Even then she dared not look again. With
head averted, she swung the easel round so that
the painting faced the wall.
Still she was ill at ease in the company of the
thing. She could not forget how that cold
electric blaze had seemed to wake the painting
into goblin life, transient but terrible. The
memory of its jeering smile persisted. Like
a spectre unseen but importunate at her shoul-
der, round a corner of her consciousness, de-
nied but insistent, the notion lurked of the
work of her own hands turned monster, pre-
ternaturally inspired with a spirit of fatal ani-
IIlllS . . .
She had a crawling shiver of superstitious
dread. Commonsense was powerless to com-
fort her with its assurance that she had merely
had one more hypnotic hallucination induced
by auto-suggestion. Instinct insisted com-
monsense for once was wrong, that there was
more in this than the human mind, fettered to
the claims of natural laws, could comprehend
or cope with. Surely supernatural forces were
here at work . . .


120 THE DARK MIRROR
She strove without success to cast out that
thought. . . .
Comparing her wrist watch with memory
of the hour marked by the clock in Leonora's
refuge, she reckoned her lapse from full wak-
ing consciousness had not lasted longer than
five minutes: in that scant spell her soul had
journeyed far, tarried a while in communion
with another, and returned with a freight of
fears, of doubts, and cares, that threatened the
stability of her reason; in those few moments
the work of a week had been undone. She
stood now where she had been immediately
after the last preceding dream, poised perilous-
ly near the verge of derangement, haunted by
a shape of fear no whit less awful if it were
after all only the creature of her imagination.
No: in even worse case; for then she had
only her own self to fear for; while now (so
she conceived) the lives of others hung in the
balance, lives as real to her as her own, though
she knew them through the medium of dreams
alone.
Within five hours her other self must go to
keep an assignation with a murderer. Fancy
pictured Leonora stealing through streets of


THE DARK MIRROR 121
sinister shadow to that rendezvous with a fate
inscrutable . . .
But not for Leonora was all this torture of
solicitude. Through unhappy mischance Ma-
rio had been marked for Red's enmity. And
where Red hated, tenure of life was treacher-
OllS . . .
Now it was revealed to her that, however in-
explicable the affinity of their souls, however
dissimilar their circumstances and irreconcila-
ble their ways of thought and standards, in
this respect Leonora and Priscilla Maine were
one: in love of Mario.
Acknowledging this incredible fact without
protest, Priscilla told herself she had loved
Mario always, ever since that time, long past,
when he had first figured in her life of dreams.
And contemplating the prospect of living
through the night to come, under whose im-
penetrable cover Mario and Leonora must
work out their dark entangled destinies, while
she waited, powerless to help or hinder, in an
ignorance irremediable and maddening, Pris-
cilla felt a shadow fall athwart her under-
standing, as black and cold as Death.


THE DARK MIRROR I28
Resigning herself, then, to a drenching, the
girl locked up and scampered through swim-
ming streets to Fifth avenue—where she wait-
ed three minutes that seemed ten till a trudg-
ing bus consented to pick her up. At the up-
town end of her journey, likewise, she had two
blocks to run, from Fifth avenue to Park,
before she got home with hat, suit, furs and
temper all demoralised.
While her maid prepared a bath, she begged
off by telephone from a dinner engagement
to which she had long been looking forward.
Tonight she felt it would be impossible to hold
her own, with anxiety on account of Mario
and Leonora forever at her elbow, a gibbering
spectre.
A hot bath and the ease of négligé should
have lent her some tranquillity, but did not. She
made the merest pretence of dining from a
tray in her room. She could not forget . . .
Past seven: in less than three hours Leonora
must start upon her journey . . .
And she could do nothing . . . nothing!
. . . but wait and wonder and wring useless
•hands . . .
The evening aged with desolating delibera-
tion, the tension of anxiety became madden-


124 THE DARK MIRROR
ing, the need to know a consuming preposses-
sion. By nine Priscilla was beside herself, pac-
ing madly to and fro, the creature of exquisite
torments, hagridden by premonitions so awful
she dared not name them even to herself.
A little before ten an inexplicable change in
the texture of her emotions made her aware
that the peak of her transports had been
reached and passed. Of a sudden she found
herself more calm, not with the calm of mis-
givings set at rest, rather with that of courage
dauntlessly addressing itself to a forlorn hope.
Intuition divined the explanation: In that
strange, deep sympathy which made them one,
her mental and emotional processes faithfully
reflected Leonora's; what agonies of doubts
and fears she had suffered tonight were but
replicas of those which Leonora had suffered.
But now the time of waiting was no more:
Leonora had left her hiding place and, com-
mitting herself bravely to her dark adventure,
had found relief in action.
If only she might be with Leonora tonight
as she had so often been, seeing what she saw,
doing what she did, knowing what she knew,
participating in every reaction of her wits and
perceptions . . .


THE DARK MIRROR 125
But the barrier of Priscilla's waking con-
sciousness stood out between them like a wall
unscalable, not to be undermined, impregna-
ble except through accident, through some cas-
ual combination of mood and humour to which
she had not the key.
Only if she could sleep, it was possible, she
might dream .
Darkening her bedchamber, she went to the
window, opened it, and tarried a little in its
recess, looking out.
Rain was still falling, torrential, lancing the
night with its myriad slender, silver, slanting
jets, brimming gutters, flooding sidewalks,
blackening and burnishing roadways to the
semblance cf rivers of ink that mirrored a mul-
titude of lights. The air, not cold but saturate,
carried a pungent smell of cleanliness. Motor
cars went sedately, ripping their tires crisply
from the wet. Under ebony umbrellas, foot-
farers forged blindly into the wind or scudded
briskly before it. The mutter of traffic was
muted to inconsequence by the unbroken crepi-
tation of falling water.
She thought of Leonora struggling through
that scouring tempest to an unknown
bourne . . .
-


126 THE DARK MIRROR
The clock struck ten.
She turned back to her bed, threw herself
down upon it without undressing, and closed
her eyes. Immediately she opened them again:
there could be no sleep for her till mind and
spirit were fagged out altogether.
She lay unmoving, wide eyes staring blindly
into the tempered darkness.
On her dressing table the convex crystal of
a French clock caught a clear beam from some
street light and was transfigured into the like-
ness of a little captive moon of dead white
glare. Upon this, the brightest spot in the
room, Priscilla's gaze focussed naturally. For
minutes on end she watched it, in a phase of
lethargic fascination which was rewarded when
the little moon began to grow, to spread out,
its cold light filling the room, the world, and
all the spaces of her consciousness, so that
spellbound perceptions grew faint, then failed,
and she was no more aware of herself as Pris-
cilla Maine, an individual entity, but only as
a pinpoint of anonymous being adrift in the
measureless incoherence of infinity. . . .


THE DARK MIRROR 127
II. THE STREET
SHE had neither raincoat nor umbrella:
demoniac squalls hailed such defenceless
prey, and gusts of pelting drops stung
the bare flesh of her face like birdshot. Long
before she managed to weather the corner and
found herself in the street, her thin cloak was
soaked through and so was all beneath it, her
shoes were squelching, her sodden skirts, har-
ried by the wind, were clinging tenaciously to
her legs, making progress incredibly difficult.
Yet she did not mind, but found a kind of sav-
age delight in battling with the elements, gain-
ing ground against their malicious will. Fol-
lowing long confinement to that room of un-
speakable boredom there was compensation
and to spare in this false sense of freedom,
in the mere fact that she was at last at large,
enough to render her indifferent to damaged
clothing as well as to the clammy discomfort
with which it plastered her chilled body. She
leaned her slim young body against the wind
and gladly fought it for every breath and step,
she relished keenly the wet sweetness of the
air, the gurgle of rushing gutters, the lillipu-


I28 THE DARK MIRROR
tian drumfire of the rain, the motley cheer of
weeping windows. But for these last one
might pardonably have taken the Street for
part of some drowned city peopled by grey
ghostly shapes, figures glimpsed darkly through
sweeping waves of rain as they scurried from
curb to curb, lumbered down the wind or, like
Leonora, plodded doggedly against its howling
opposition. But few such were visible at any
time: humanity braved the elements that night
solely under the lash of elemental appetites,
such as the necessity of beer, and then made
its excursions as brief as might be. Even the
police hugged shelter. .
A night of terror, she thought, with a shiver
as much of dread as of cold, pausing in the
lee of a corner to regain her breath before re-
newing contest with the storm; a night when
anything might happen . . .
Resolutely she put that thought behind her;
she did not dare to be afraid. And lest she be
tempted again to think and falter, she spurred
herself pitilessly on once more.
At length she turned aside into a sullen
street, ill lighted, wholly desolate in all its
visible length save for the shining welcome of
saloon windows on the ground floor of a di-


THE DARK MIRROR I29
lapidated dwelling in the middle of the street:
beacons marking the end of the first stage of
her journey.
III. THE HOP-JOINT
THE saloon, a boozing ken of the lowest or-
der, occupied quarters first intended for a
shop. Empty show windows, flanking a dou-
ble doorway, were backed by screens of ma-
chine-carved wood stained to mock mahogany
and hung with beer lithographs. To one side,
under a sign—gilt lettering on a black ground:
“Family Entrance”—a single door stood open
on a short hallway which led to a dreary room
behind the bar, where local sots of both sexes
sat in sodden congress over tables sticky with
dregs, their feet scuffling in coarse, damp saw-
dust. To the right of this door a window with
a ledge broke the sidewall, communicating with
the bar for the convenience of neighbouring la-
dies and other fastidious souls who, rather than
risk social contamination by entering a com-
mon bar-room, fetched empty pails of tin and
carried them away filled with nourishment for
home consumption. To the left a constricted
staircase ascended to regions of uninviting


I80 THE DARK MIRROR
darkness. Leonora, however, mounted with
confidence and, finding a blank shut door at
the top, planted a confident finger on a push-
button which she could not possibly have lo-
cated by sight.
A venomous buzz responded. Shuffling feet
drew near the door, in which a grille opened,
letting out a shaft of strong light which fell
squarely on the girl's face.
She said coolly: “’Lo, John. Le’ me in.”
The head framed in the square of the grille
uttered a noise, inarticulate, something be-
tween a grunt and a growl. A chain bolt rat-
tled. The door swung inward. Leonora en-
tered, paused, faced the guardian of the por-
tal—a Chinese, aged, shrivelled of face,
shrunken of body, impassive—whom she ad-
dressed with the brusque insouciance of old
acquaintance.
“Charlie anywheres about?”
With racial economy of gesture the Chinese
jerked a thumb toward the rear of the house,
and turned to refasten the door. Leonora
moved down the hall, disdainfully sniffing
tainted air, and entered a large room whose
atmosphere was mephitic with the unforget-
table, sickly sweet fumes of opium. Here, in


THE DARK MIRROR I31
half curtained bunks or on thin mattresses upon
the floor, in a forbidding half light furnished
by a single, closely shaded lamp, perhaps a
dozen men and women lay in uncouth postures,
deep in drugged stupors. One only was in
apparently complete possession of her wits:
the woman Inez of whom Leonora had seen
nothing since that fateful night at Ristori's.
Inez alone recognised in any way this addi-
tion to the company, looking up with a sullen
face from her seat on the edge of a mattress
on which lay, with limbs asprawl and face of
ghastly pallor upturned to the dim light, his
mouth half open, his eyes half closed, the thick
stem of an opium pipe dangling from limp fin-
gers, the man whom Leonora had come to
Imeet. -
In a seizure of dismay so overpowering as to
blind her completely to the sneer of gratifica-
tion which Inez sought in vain to dissemble,
Leonora dropped to her knees beside the man
and shook his shoulders with frantic hands.
“Charlie!” she cried in a voice urgent with
fright and entreaty—“wake up, Charlie! For
God’s sake, wake up!”
The man's head rolled from side to side with
horrifying limpness, his lips moved tremu-


I32 THE DARK MIRROR
lously without closing, otherwise he made no
sign. So complete was the eclipse of sensibil-
ity in him that nothing survived but the auto-
matic functioning of his physical system. He
might have been lifeless, he had better been
dead.
Not one person in the room so much as
turned a head when the cries of the frantic girl
disturbed the quiet, not even Inez; for though
she had mastered her betraying smile, that one
had no need to stir in order to watch Leonora.
Evil exultation continued to inform her cold
eyes as long as they were unobserved; but Leo-
nora found them quick with specious sympathy
when, at length appreciating the futility of her
efforts, she loosed her hold on Charlie's shoul-
ders and sank on her heels.
“My God!” she said, with a stricken face—
“what’m I going to do?”
“What's the trouble, dearie?” Inez spoke
with cloying sweetness, but the other was too
far gone in despair to notice, or to care if she
had noticed. “Anything I can do to help?”
“I don’ know”—Leonora shook her head
slowly—“guess not.”
“Whyn't you tell me and find out?” Inez
leaned across the body of the drug victim and


THE DARK MIRROR I33
placed a coarse red hand affectionately over
Leonora's. “You can trust me, I guess.
We're all in this mess together, ain't we?”
“It’s only Red,” Leonora responded dully.
“He said for me to come to him tonight. He
sent word by Charlie—said I’d got to come to-
night. Charlie promised he'd meet me here
and show me the way. He wouldn't tell me—
said Red made him swear not to. I don’t see
why . . . But I wish to God Charlie'd kept
his word to me like he did to Red.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was afraid of this.” She nodded at the
unconscious man. “Charlie promised me he
wouldn't smoke more’n two pipes.”
Inez laughed shrilly. “Guess he must've
had six,” she declared: “I rolled three pills
for him since I came in.”
“And now he's down and out,” Leonora pur-
sued, “and I don't know how to find Red, and
he won't take any excuses . . . Inez, I’m
scared!”
“You poor kid!” Inez tightened her clasp
on Leonora's hand. “But you don't have to
worry. I'll take you to Red.”
“You?” Leonora cried, staring. “How
d'you know?”


I34 THE DARK MIRROR
“Oh, I been there half a dozen times at
least.”
The smile of conscious triumph, which Inez
could not suppress, was unspeakably offensive,
and brought back vividly to mind the rivalry
which had always existed between them and
which had flared up into open hostility at their
last rencontre. Hot resentment kindled in
Leonora's eyes, hot colour flushed her cheeks;
but she dug teeth into her underlip and grim-
ly fought down the impulse to give her anger
tongue. Not only was that precisely what
Inez wanted, but it might prove fatal. There
was more than pride at stake, there was the
life of him who loved her and whom she loved.
Nothing, indeed, but that love of hers for Ma-
rio had broken down her will to refuse Red's
summons: only the threat of Red's vengeance
wreaked on Mario had made her supple to the
gangster's will. And now, if she quarrelled
with Inez, that one would never show her the
way to Red. Anything (she repeated, in her
secret thoughts) might happen . . .
“Leo told you,” she muttered.
“Sure he did,” Inez agreed cheerfully. “You
don't suppose Leo's leary of me like Red is


THE DARK MIRROR I35
of you, Nora dear? Why, I've known all
along where them two was layin' up.”
Long lashes drooped to veil Leonora's
smouldering eyes. Inez's malicious smile
flashed and faded. The other clenched her
hands into tight fists, then opened them. She
looked up, pride conquered and trampled un-
der foot by love.
“Inez,” she pleaded simply: “I got to see
Red tonight or . . . I don't know what'll hap-
pen. Please take me to him, Inez!”
The woman delayed her response for a mo-
ment, that she might relish the full flavour of
her triumph. Then, jumping up, she said:
“Sure I will, dearie. C'mon: le’s go.”
IV. THE ROOFS
AGAIN the night, the wind, the rain, the la-
borious transit of dim, weltering streets . . .
Elbow to elbow, heads bowed, the two
women trudged in tight-lipped silence, for the
gale was greedy of their breath, and save in
screams they could not make themselves heard
above its clamour. Avoiding main travelled
streets, Inez led through a tortuous maze of
murky backways, till they came to a sinister
block of towering, teeming tenements, into


I36 THE DARK MIRROR
which, plucking Leonora by the sleeve, she
turned.
In the unsavoury lower hall Leonora spoke
incredulously: “Not here?”
Inez gave a negative gesture: “I should
say not. Acrost the roofs . . . You don't
suppose I’m such a simp as to lead a dick to
the right door, do you?”
“You don’t think we’re followed?” Leonora
demanded in quick alarm.
Inez nodded emphatically. “I know we
was.”
“Who was it? Could you see?”
“Nobody I ever seen before; a new bird, I
guess, from some uptown precinct. Coarse
worker, too: he must've spotted you first,
'cause he was waitin' when we came out, and
trailed us all the way.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“What's the use? You know now, don’t
you? It wouldn't 've done you any good to
know in the street, as long's I knew and had
sense enough to lead him wrong, like this.
. . . C'mon.”
They began to run up long flights of stairs
lighted only by single gas jets low-turned on
every other landing, and noisome with stratified


THE DARK MIRROR 137
stenches of evil cookery and things worse yet;
the predominating race tenanting each suc-
cessive floor indicated by its dominant efflu-
vium, were it garlic, boiled cabbage, fried fish,
or the subtle, penetrating, undisguisable odour
of opium smoke. Gusts of voices lifted in rude
laughter or more commonly quarrelsome issued
from doorways that stood as a rule wide. Once
there was a sound of weeping, too, sickening
dull wails of some woman cruelly used. And
always the inevitable squalling of children fret-
ful in unhappiness. . . . On the top landing
Inez paused to peer over the rail. “That's
him,” she panted, nodding.
Leonora joined her. At the bottom of the
gloomy, deep well of the staircase the fore-
shortened figure of a man was visible, his up-
turned face a mere blur of flesh color. But
something individual in the pose caught Leo-
nora's eye and prodded what she took for some
memory half erased.
“That's no dick,” she declared impulsively.
“How d'you know?”
“I don’t know, but somehow I do. Seems
like I must've seen him somewheres before.”
“Well, if he ain't no pussyfooter, what for’s
he followin' us?”


I38 THE DARK MIRROR
“I don't know,” Leonora repeated vaguely.
“Maybe I'm wrong . . .”
She was not, as the Self knew that journeyed
with her, though she did not suspect its com-
Pany. . . .
An iron ladder rose to a trap door through
which they crawled out upon the roof.
Here the blackness was oppressive, relieved
only by a dull reflection of the city's glow
on the low hung canopy of cloud; and the
tempest had unhindered sweep. Time and
again vicious blasts all but carried the two
women off their feet. Rain driving in vast
sheets half blinded them and rendered their
passage of the roofs doubly perilous. They
slipped, stumbled, blundered, bruised their
bodies against unseen obstacles, their shins
upon low copings dividing house from house
(for the roofs were fortunately all on a level)
and more than once by the narrowest of mar-
gins escaped pitching headlong to death at the
bottom of some dark airshaft.
Leonora had lost all sense of reckoning
and was beginning to wonder how Inez could
hold on so confidently when this last stopped,
knelt, and began to tug at the heavy hatch of
another trap door. Leonora assisting, between


THE DARK MIRROR I89
them they threw it back, and descended a sec-
ond iron ladder into a hallway indistinguish-
ably unlike that which they had just left. But
Inez seemed to recognise it instantly.
“It’s all right,” she whispered harshly, paus-
ing half way down the ladder when Leonora
stood on the landing below. “The door on the
left, at the back. You know the high sign. I'll
be shutting this trap. Look sharp—before
somebody lamps us!”
She climbed back a couple of rungs to wres-
tle with the hatch, while Leonora, turning to
the door designated, saluted its panels with
the peculiar rap which alone would be acknowl-
edged by Red.
For some time she waited, hearing no sounds
from the far side of the door, hearing indeed
nothing other than the bluster of the storm
and Inez petulantly anathematising the clumsy
and obstinate hatch. Presently the thing fell
into place with a crash, and the girl turned,
looking to see Inez drop to the landing and
surprised that she did not, but with a surprise
no sooner conceived than smothered in a great-
er. For the door swung open suddenly, and
a voice she knew, for whose accents she had


I40 THE DARK MIRROR
hungered ceaselessly for days on end—neither
Red's voice nor Leo's—cried in amazement:
“Leonora!”
And looking up into the face of the man
Mario, the girl uttered a broken cry of wonder
and gladness. She did not understand how
this thing had come about, that she should find
here the man she loved where she had thought
to find that other whom she feared with fear
so profound that it was twin with hatred. But
it didn't matter; in the stunning joy of that
surprise, nothing seemed to matter except that
chance had led her at last to Mario, in spite of
all her struggles to keep away from him, to
deny love and self lest she entangle him as
well in the toils of her misfortunes.
She went as naturally to his arms as a child
in trouble to the arms of its father: Inez, Red,
Leo, the police—everything—forgotten in the
happiness of that meeting.
Gently drawing her across the threshold,
Mario shut the door between them and the
world.
W. THE HAVEN
“So you have come to me . . . at last!”
She lifted her rain-sweet face from the warm


THE DARK MIRROR 141
haven of his shoulder, blindly yearning toward
his lips . . . and remembered. Fear lanced
that ecstasy like pain. With a convulsive
movement she wrenched away her lips and
struggled from his arms.
“Leonora!” he protested—“what is it?”
“Red!” she gasped, staring wildly round—
“Leo—where are they?”
“How should I know? What are those two
to me—to us?”
“Where are we?”
“In my rooms, as you see . . . well beyond
the reach of those cutthroats!”
“But”—a dubious hand faltered to her cheek
—“I came here to meet Red. He sent for me.
Inez brought me.”
“Then Inez led you amiss, dear—no:
aright!” His arms again enfolded her. “And
thank God for that!”
Confused, she fell into a silence, misgivings
benumbed by wonder. Impossible to couple
the thought of Red, or any similar association,
with quarters of such strange quality, all but
impossible to credit the fact of their existence
in that shabby tenement of sorry fortunes or,
indeed, anywhere within the boundaries of a
neighbourhood so mean. Incredulity yielded


142 THE DARK MIRROR
only to recognition of the plan of the rooms,
something reduplicated four times on every
floor of every building on the block. But here
taste and means had transfigured the common-
place into an abode of such luxury as the girl
had seldom dreamed of—indeed, had never
seen but in the pages of illustrated magazines.
In this main room, dark hangings disguised
the walls, with framed paintings like glowing
windows open on exotic landscapes, and
shelves heavy laden with volumes in rich bind-
ings. An antique Chinese rug of exquisite
artistry hid in part a polished dark floor of
parquetry. Upon a library table of old Span-
ish oak books, manuscripts and objets d'art
were lustrous in the warm light of a lamp of
wrought brass. Wide-armed chairs of deep
upholstery in leather offered caressing invita-
tion to weary limbs. An atmosphere of studi-
ous repose soothed excited sensibilities.
A bedchamber partly visible through one
open door offered a strong contrast of almost
Spartan simplicity with soberly tinted walls, a
narrow day bed of mahogany and unpreten-
tious chairs and dressing table to match this
last.
Through still another door a glimpse of


THE DARK MIRROR 143
white enamelled walls, stainless porcelain and
nickeled fittings proved that a civilised bath-
room had there been installed, in a building
whose every other tenant was content with such
facilities for personal cleanliness as were af-
forded by the common kitchen sink.
The girl shook a bewildered head.
“And you’ve lived here all along, Ma-
rio—!”
“Here I have come to rest, Leonora, worn
out with the weariness and disappointment of
fruitless searching for you. Since that day
when you did not call me up and meet me, as
you promised, but disappeared without word
or sign—I have been half a madman. How
could you torture me so?”
“I didn't mean to—I couldn't help myself.”
“Where have you been?”
“Not far . . . hiding.”
“From the police? Because of that business
at Ristori's? You were involved in that?
Carnehan, too, and all those others, as well as
Bielinsky?” She nodded to every question.
“I feared this! Tell me what happened. Why
did you not come to me first of all?”
“I was afraid ->


144 THE DARK MIRROR
“Afraid of the man who loves you, whom
you love? You do love me, Leonora?”
“Yes,” she murmured—“yes, with all of me,
Mario.”
“Then why p'
“I was afraid of Red. He swore he'd have
you murdered if I ever spoke to you again.”
“That, then, was the only reason why you
wouldn't communicate with me, send me one
word to say you still lived, you were well, you
thought of me?”
“I didn't want anything to happen to
you . . .”
“Yet death itself were preferable to such
torments of doubt!”
“I know, Mario, I know. Wasn't I suffer-
ing the same way? I wanted you so much, I
needed you, I thought about you all the time,
dear, day and night . . .”
There was an interlude.
“If there'd been any chance,” she resumed
when it was possible for her again to speak...
“But if I’d written you, or called up, or tried
any way . . . I was watched every minute. I
didn't dare, dear . . . for your sake.”
“And I thought you had deserted me . . .
Ah, forgive me!” -


THE DARK MIRROR 145
“Red's sure you train with the cops, and he
and Leo are desperate. They've had it all
fixed for days to lay up in a safe place over
in Jersey, but they can't make a getaway; the
bulls are watching too close, they're all over.”
“But why Carnehan? The papers said
nothing of him in connection with the affair,
only the man Bielinsky.”
“It was Red done up those two at Ristori’s.
Leo wasn’t even in the room. Because Red
killed 'em both, we all beat it without anybody
seeing us except Ristori. He was in the hall,
just outside the door, and saw everything. And
nobody knows how much he's talked, but the
cops have been at him ever since. Maybe he
didn't tell anything, like the papers say. May-
be he got the third degree and spilled every-
thing he knew. Then there's Harry. He's
gone South—I mean, disappeared—and if he
once gets where he thinks he's safe, he'll squeal
sure as death. Likely he has already. Only
Headquarters knows, and it isn't saying.
Sometimes, you know, they have sense enough
to work that way, keep all they know under
their hats and pretend they're gunning for
somebody besides the bird they're really after.
So now it's maybe Red they're laying for on


I46 THE DARK MIRROR
the quiet, all the while they're kicking up this
row about Leo, making out they think he's the
only one . . . Don't you see?”
“All but why you had to hide . . .”
“Because I was in the room when it hap-
pened. Ristori saw me. Harry knew I was
there. Besides, the cops are looking for any-
body who knew Leo—and they know I know
him. If they get me on the carpet, and then
a warrant's sworn out charging Red with mur-
der, no matter if I haven't peeped a word I'll
get the credit for squealing.”
“I see now. My poor, hunted love!” Mario
gave a gesture of decision. “No matter. Now
you are with me, there is no more to fear. . . .
All that is ended!”
In those eyes that looked up so hungrily to
his, doubt contended with desire to be per-
suaded.
“I wish I could see how it’s ended . . .”
“Because you have come to me, because I
shall take you away with me tonight—far, far
from these haunts of crime and terror—and
make you my wife!”
“Oh, if you only could—l”
“What is to prevent?”
She hesitated, then cried in passionate pro-


THE DARK MIRROR 147
test: “I can't, Mario, I can’t. The risk’s too
big. I tell you, you don't know Red. He
never gives up. He'll follow us to the end of
the earth. It isn't me alone—it's you. How
can I do anything I know’ll mean your death?”
“Never fear!” The Spaniard had a short
laugh of scorn. “Do you imagine that good
Mr. Carnehan will remain long at liberty, now
that I know what you've just told me?”
For a long moment she said nothing, but
after one short step back from him stood star-
ing with widening eyes of dismay and protest.
“You don't mean you'd squeal, Mario!”
“Why not?”
“It means the Chair for Red p'
“Shall that stop me when your life and hap-
piness are at stake? Am I to let the life of a
thug continue to stand a constant menace to
the woman I love?”
She started forward and caught the lapels of
his coat with frantic hands. “Mario, you
mustn't! You mustn't go to the cops!
It's death, I tell you—yours and mine.”
He shook his head with a compassionate smile
that only served to excite her to a higher pitch
of distracted pleading. “Mario! if you do,
they'll get us, they'll get both of us—sure!”


I48 THE DARK MIRROR
“But every word you say proves there is no
room for the three of us in this world. It is
his life or ours . . . Resign yourself, Leonora.
No argument can move me.”
“But you can't, Mario—you can't! I won’u
let you. I won't be the kind of a girl that’ll
squeal on a pal!”
“It is no fault of yours, dear, if I make
proper use of information which came to me
by chance.”
“No, Mario—please!” she sobbed. He
shook his head. She flung angrily away, then
swung back, her countenance ablaze. “Do you
think I'd go away with you if you did that—
marry you—go on loving you, even? Well,
you're wrong, you're dead wrong, Mario. Get
me right: I love you but . . . You do like you
say, and I’ll see you damned !"
WI. RECALLED
SoMEw HERE a tiny bell began to ring.
At first no more than ghostly echo in the
dimensionless and silent vast which lay between
intelligence and body, that shrill small voice
gained strength of its very perseverance, be-
came a thin thread of importunate sound, call-


THE DARK MIRROR I49
ing, calling without pause or pity, till it fairly
ground its character into that indefinitely dis-
sociate mentality; a telephone was ringing.
The body resting on the bed in that dark-
ened chamber stirred uneasily and flung out a
hand of ineffective protest. The noise persist-
ed relentlessly. The somnambulist started up
on an elbow, made as if to rise, sank back again
with a sigh of relief when the ringing was sud-
denly interrupted.
She lay with open eyes, unwinking, in a con-
fusion of divided consciousness aware of the
snug darkness of that room so intimately her
own, of the rain clashing outside the window,
of the wan light streaming in from the street,
of the blank, moonlike face of the little clock
upon the dressing table; and at the same time
living intensely in that distant place where two
wills were contending, striving each to impose
upon the other its conception of what was right,
fair, just, and inevitable.
It was as if her mind were a photographic
plate upon which two scenes had been devel-
oped: one wherein her common self of every-
day was resting securely at home, one in which
that wild other self of her dreams disputed


I50 THE DARK MIRROR
hotly with the man she loved, in surroundings
strange to both selves till that hour.
Of the two scenes, the stranger was the
stronger; all her interest was centred therein,
and all other things were negligible beside the
issue of that struggle, since that issue must be
(this she knew the passionate certitude) noth-
ing less than life or death, life with love or
death with shame.
And she was racked with the imperative need
of making Leonora understand that Mario
was right, that no good could come of standing
out against him, that nothing but good could
come of yielding to his insistence, the fruit of
his great love and greater wisdom. Percipi-
ence of her bodily environment was waning
swiftly: with all her strength she was willing
herself back to Leonora . . .
The telephone began again to gibber, in
short, strident bursts of sound demanding her
heed.
She faltered, hesitated, looked back. In bit-
ter resentment, she understood she could go no
further, accomplish nothing, till that insensate
thing had been silenced.
And no time to waste: Leonora needed her
too much. She must respond . . .


THE DARK MIRROR I51
In sleep-waking, the girl roused with meas-
ured movements that cost her incalculable ef-
fort, sat up on the side of the bed, drew the
telephone to her. It continued to chatter an-
grily till the receiver was actually at her ear
and she had said: “Hello?”
Out of the enigma of night Philip Fosdick's
voice cried: “Priscilla!”
She answered without emotion: “Yes?”
“It is I–Philip.”
In the same toneless voice, she said: “Yes,
Philip.”
“Did I wake you up? Sorry! I had to.”
“Yes . . .”
“Listen to me, Priscilla: I’ve seen Leo-
nora! I saw her in the street, followed her for
blocks, lost her when she entered a tenement;
and now I'm on the watch, waiting for her to
come out. I had to be sure you were at home
—safe—so I called up from a pay station.
Are you all right?”
“Yes, Philip.”
“Are you quite awake? You don't seem to
understand. I tell you, I have seen Leonora—
the girl you dream about—a living woman so
like you I couldn't at first believe it wasn't you
in disguise!”


152 THE DARK MIRROR
“Yes, Philip.”
“So now you needn’t worry any more. I’m
on the right track at last. The problem will
be solved in no time, once I clap my eyes on
that girl again.”
“Yes, Philip.”
“Priscilla! Can't you say anything else? Is
anything the matter?”
“No, Philip . . .” She pursued in the same
level accents, speaking slowly, as if with dif-
ficulty finding words: “I am quite all right
. . . I . . . am safe with Mario now . . .
Mario will take good care of me. Good-night.”
Without waiting for his reply, she hung up
the receiver, replaced the telephone on the bed-
side stand, sighed, and again stretched out
upon the bed.
Immediately deep sleep enfolded her senses
like a warm cloud of darkness, and her soul
fared forth once more on its far quest.
VII. SURRENDER
OUT of that blank void grew light and shade
in a nebulous swirl of formless patches. Ef-
fort to adjust one's senses to such confusion
induced sensations of fatigue, frustration, and


THE DARK MIRROR I53
some vertigo. With one's eyes open it was
worse. One shut them and so found slight
relief. The swirl continued. Only by slow
degrees did it subside. It seemed long before
one dared open eyes again. The first thing
recognized was the concerned dark face of
Mario . . .
She was in one of the big leather chairs.
Mario knelt with an arm round her shoulders,
lifting them forward a trifle that she might
drink with more ease from the glass of dark
red wine which he was offering her.
“What . . .?” she essayed in a husky
whisper.
“Drink before you try to talk.” His tone
was tenderly imperative. With an insistence
as gentle he pressed the glass to her lips. She
found a dazed smile for these solicitous eyes,
yielded, and swallowed a mouthful of wine of
a sort she had never tasted, fruity, aromatic on
the tongue, warming, invigorating. She drank
again, gratefully draining the glass.
“Excellent!” Mario let her head back to
the cushion, rose, put the glass aside, returned.
“You feel better, stronger, eh?”
She nodded, but her smile was still bewil-
dered.


I54 THE DARK MIRROR
“What happened, Mario?” I felt so funny,
all of a sudden, just when the telephone began
to ring: and then . . . I don't seem to remem-
ber.”
“The telephone has not rung, Leonora.”
“But I heard it!”
“A ringing in your ears, perhaps. Don't
you know you fainted?”
“Fainted!” She started indignantly. “But
I never in my life! Why should I faint? I’m
all right.”
In proof of this assertion she sank weakly
back.
“You are overwrought.” Mario drew up
a chair and sat down. “For days you have been
living at high nervous tension, never knowing
what fatality the next hour might bring forth.
Tonight, against your wish and judgment, you
came out to meet a man you fear and loathe-
braving the peril of arrest as well as the bru-
tality of this storm. Your clothing is wet
through, you are shivering. You suffered a
shock at meeting me by chance. Then we
quarrelled . . .” He lifted her hands to his
lips, one after the other. “The sum of such
physical, nervous and emotional stress was too
}


THE DARK MIRROR I55
much, Leonora: you fainted without a sign of
warning. I caught you barely in time.”
“I suppose I must've, if you say so, Mario.
. . . But I don't understand. I remember
our rowing—”
“Think of that no more,” Mario pleaded
and, at the same time, insisted. “You and I
must never quarrel. There can be no excuse
for misunderstanding when our hearts are
one.” She nodded meekly. “Tell me one
thing only,” he pursued. Her eyes promised.
“Who is Philip?”
“Philip?” Her look was completely blank.
“I don't know any Philip . . .”
“You are sure?” Intent search of her face
satisfied him. “Strange! In your faint, you
spoke that name, as if you were talking in your
sleep you said distinctly: ‘Yes, Philip'; and
again: ‘No, Philip . . . I am safe with Mario
now.’”
“I don't know.” She drew a hand over per-
plexed brows. “And yet . . . it's funny . . .
like an echo, what you say I said.”
“No matter.” With decision, the Spaniard
dismissed the puzzle, took her hands in a firm
grasp and held her eyes with a gaze earnest
and commanding. “For the present forget


I56 THE DARK MIRROR
all that, forget everything but that we are
united now and forever. Nothing—nothing,
Leonora—can come between us now. We can-
not permit it, we will not. Love such as ours
is not to be denied or paltered with upon any
conceivable consideration. As I am wholly
yours, so you must henceforth be mine; and to
us all the rest must be ‘such stuff as dreams
are made of.’ You understand that, Leonora?
I have your promise?”
His will seemed to beat in waves upon her
understanding; she felt unable to entertain one
independent thought. Nor could she wish to.
Never since childhood had she so surrendered
to domination. But now . . . She knew a
strange, dear joy in submitting. She bowed
her head, then lifted it to show him adoring
eyes.
“Yes, Mario . . .”
“So that is settled!”
Mario got up and strode into the bathroom.
Water began to gush loudly into the tub. He
brought back a light, warm robe of fleecy stuff.
“You are cold and wet; a hot bath will make
you another woman. Then put this on. Mean-
while, I will find dry clothing for you, and a
cab. Tonight you sleep uptown: the best and


THE DARK MIRROR 157
quietest hotel in the city will be the safest. In
the morning I will call for you, we will go to
get the license for our marriage. By noon you
will be my wife. By nightfall we will be far
from New York.”
They kissed. Mario lifted her to her feet.
“The door latches of itself. If anyone
knocks, pay no attention. I shall be back in
a few minutes, and have my key.”
In a staring daze, utterly an unthinking
puppet of love and gratitude, she saw him go.
The sense of his personality lingered, precious
and compelling: she did not feel alone.
She moved slowly toward the bathroom, un-
conscious fingers loosening her sodden blouse.
Finding the tub nearly full, she shut off the
taps. Only with the silence that followed did
appreciation of her solitude come home.
The glow of happiness ebbed from eyes and
face and heart, intimations of terror stirred and
began to writhe like serpents in the background
of her thoughts.
Till then, in her wonder and delight, she had
accepted without question the easy explanation
that Inez had lost her way upon the roofs and
brought her to the wrong house.
Even so: Red must be hidden somewhere


I58 THE DARK MIRROR
in the same block of tenements. Suppose he
were to learn where she was now . . . Sup-
pose Inez had not blundered, but deliberately
and with malicious intent had led her to Mario,
then had gone to tell Red . . .
Intuition linked the poles of fact and sur-
mise, completing the circuit of conviction. In-
stantaneously Leonora perceived with hideous
clearness that Inez had planned this in revenge
for the long series of defeats she had suffered
in their rivalry, something for which Inez alone
had been in the first instance responsible. It
was Inez who had made Charlie hit the pipe
too often, thus clearing the way for this su-
preme trick of treachery. This made it plain
why Inez had not followed to the door to Ma-
rio's flat, but had climbed back to the roof and
shut the trapdoor. Now Leonora no longer
guessed, she knew Inez had gone straightway
to tell Red that Leonora, refusing to answer
his call, had taken refuge with Mario instead.
Beyond shadow of reasonable doubt, Red
was even now on his way to make good his
threats.
What if he were lurking in the hallways of
the house, or in the dark of the street outside


THE DARK MIRROR 159
the door? And Mario going unsuspiciously to
his death . . .
Perhaps it was not yet too late to scream a
warning down the stairs . . .
Madly Leonora ran to the door, tore with
trembling fingers at the latch, and threw it
open—to find Red standing on the threshold,
a shape of grimmest menace, his slender, fe-
line body poised alertly, an automatic pistol in
the hand at his right hip, an evil snarl twisting
his cruel lips, murder in eyes whose glance shot
directly past the girl to the room beyond.
Before she could lift a hand the man darted
in, caught her arm and sent her reeling to the
middle of the room, and kicked the door to be-
hind him.
She staggered against the table and caught
hold of it to save herself a fall. Carnehan was
at her side before any sound could issue from
lips which his hard palm sealed brutally. His
pistol nuzzled her bosom.
“One peep out of you—!” he rasped. Cun-
ning eyes raked the room suspiciously.
“Where's that damn' wop?”


I60 THE DARK MIRROR
VIII. CARNEHAN
SHE tried to speak, but a dry mouth and a
constricted throat refused their office. She
could only shake her head, in dumb fright,
with piteous eyes.
With a grunt of impatience the gangster re-
leased her, flung across the room in two cat-like
bounds, stopping to peer in through the doors
to bedchamber and bathroom and satisfy him-
self that Mario was skulking in neither.
He came back at a slow prowl, with staring
menace in his eyes and a mirthless grin.
“Where is he?” He seized her arm in a grasp
intentionally savage. “Whyn't you answer
me?”
Pain unsealed pale lips on which her whisper
rustled: “I don't know >>
“That’s a lie!”
Her wrist suffered a more violent wrench.
She cried out in protest: “Please, Red! I
don’t know—hones’ I don’t know where he’s
gone. He went out just a minute ago—”
“What for?”
“He—he said he'd get me some dry things to
put on. Mine's all soaked.”


THE DARK MIRROR I61
“Well”—a grimace made the man's face ter-
rible—“then he'll be back before long. I’ll
wait—thanks!”
“For God’s sake, Red p.
“Ah, shut your trap!” He cast her arm free
violently, and stood back. “So you thought
you could gyp Red Carnehan and get away
with it! You little fool!”
She attempted no reply. The first spasm of
consternation passing, the faculty of concen-
trated thought returned. To this what is termed
the courage of despair contributed measurably.
As far as she herself was concerned, Leonora
despaired. But she was not solely concerned
with self.
She entertained not the faintest hope of es-
caping her fate at the hands of Red Carnehan.
Whether she lived or died, she conceived,
didn’t matter. But it was otherwise with Ma-
rio. Him she must save somehow, by some
heroic exercise of wit and spirit . . .
Yet in the beginning she cast about in vain
for ruse or wile that might serve. Alone, de-
fenceless, in the company of a man armed and
determined, murder in heart and mind: a man
insane with jealousy and hatred, alike bred of
sheer fear, the fear of the assassin living mo-


162 THE DARK MIRROR
ment by moment in the shadow of arrest: what-
could she do against such odds?
She could think of nothing, positively noth-
ing. And yet, she knew, there must be some
way out. If only she could find it . . .
She knew herself to be clever, far cleverer
than Red—as she had once boasted to his face.
Her wits had yet to fail her, however extreme
or exigent the occasion. Give her time to think
and she could circumvent him. But now that
one essential element, time, was lacking. Im-
possible to guess how soon Mario might re-
turn. And then there was Red's impatience to
be reckoned with . . .
Her look of a trapped animal faded; in its
stead her face reflected concentration of
thought amounting almost to abstraction. She
seemed to consider Carnehan out of a fathom-
less composure, as she might one factor in an
engrossing problem in whose solution she was
vitally interested.
This change in her annoyed the man intol-
erably. Not only was any semblance of indif-
ference offensive, but he had learned to dis-
trust the girl's moments of thoughtfulness. If
his intelligence was not of a high order, he had
at least cunning, with acumen enough to feel


THE DARK MIRROR I63
and fear the finer mettle of her mentality. In-
stinctively he sought an outlet for his exasper-
ation in a break of lurid blasphemy.
“Whyn't you say somethin’?” he concluded,
gesticulating wildly with the pistol. “What
you standin’ there for, dumb's a cat. Whyn’t
you try to come clean by lyin’?”
She responded quietly: “What's the use?
Even if I told you the truth it wouldn't do
any good. You've made up your mind—”
“You said it. I'm wise, and I’ve got you
where I want you. If you think you can put
anything over on me now—well, try it. That's
all: try it. I wish you would.”
She shrugged wearily, then enquired in tone
of moderate curiosity: “Where's Inez wait-
ing for you?”
“How d'you know ?” He was obvious-
ly posed. “What's Inez got to do—?”
“You know well enough it was her told you
I was here.”
“Well . . . what if she did?”
“Nothing—only she brought me here first.”
“Like hell p.
“Yes”—the girl ignored the interruption—
“I didn't even know where he lived, no more'n


I64 THE DARK MIRROR
I knew where to look for you. So Inez framed
me, just to put me in bad with you.”
“Ah, tell't to Sweeny.”
“Ask Charlie, if you don’t believe me—ask
him after he comes to at Sing Ho's tomorrow.
He'll tell you he promised to meet me there
tonight and bring me to you. But when I got
there, Charlie was dead to the world. Inez said
he must've had six pills at least; she'd cooked
three for him herself. Then she said she'd
show me the way to where you and Leo was
laying up; and when I said all right, she
brought me here, left me at the door and blew.
And then . . . What could I do? I didn’t
know where to find you, and I was cold and
wet and tired.”
Her statement carried conviction. Against
his wish the man believed her; and because it
was against his wish he was the more irritated
and chose to deny his belief. His glare was
ugly.
“So that's the stall, is it?”
“You ask Charlie. He'll tell you the truth
—you needn't look to get it out of Inez—only
he'll tell you too late.”
“What do you mean, too late?”


THE DARK MIRROR 165
“Too late to stop you making a damn' fool
of yourself.”
“How's that? How’m I goin’ to make a
damn’ fool out of myself?”
“I don't know yet; but I hope you don't
think I’m such a flat as to think you've come
here tonight just for a friendly talk.”
“You’re dead right there!” His laugh rang
with brutal scorn. “I’ll say I didn't come for
no friendly talk with him and you.”
“Well . . . what did you come for?”
She confronted him with sullen yet fearless
eyes. His own shifted. He had little stomach
for plain speech. The instinct of his kind
was strong in him, to kill, if he could, what
he feared. But to declare his purpose openly
in anticipation, to discuss it in cold blood with
an intended victim, was more than he had bar-
gained for. Inarticulately resentful of such
squeamishness in himself, he looked furtively
aside, licking his lips; and discovered the de-
canter of Madeira which Mario had left un-
stoppered on the table, after opening it for
Leonora.
Thus reminded that he had drunk nothing
for nearly an hour—whereas, ever since they
had taken to hiding, he and Bielinsky had sub-


I66 THE DARK MIRROR
sisted mainly on raw red whiskey—Carnehan
brimmed an ordinary drinking glass with the
wine and drank it in one long draught, grateful
for its pungent warmth, deluded by its mellow
smoothness.
Now Madeira may not wisely be taken on
top of rye whiskey. Conscious of reinforced
bravado, the man leaned against the table, his
back to it, leering truculently.
“What did I come for? Oh, I dunno. What
d'you think?”
“You’ve threatened me often enough, if you
ever caught me with him again . . .”
He nodded in a heavy humour. “You got
right, kid. No girl of mine can pass me up
for any stool pigeon or dick that ever lived—”
“He isn't.”
“And get away with it. You wait—you'll
see!”
She shut her eyes. In spite of herself she
shuddered. He laughed with gratification,
and her eyes reopened of a sudden, passionate-
ly unafraid, seeking first the pistol in his hand,
then his face.
“You’re going to . . . kill me, Red!”
“I’ll say I am.”
In spite of his shamefaced smirk, he meant


THE DARK MIRROR 167
it in deadly earnestness. She had another
shudder, but fought it down without releasing
his gaze.
After a minute she said: “Very well: I'm
ready, only—”
He interrupted: “You’re worse'n ready;
you're in a heluva hurry. His turn comes
first, yours next. Get me?”
“But”—she implored his credulity with
clasped hands extended—“I tell you, you're
wrong about him, Red. He hasn't got any-
thing to do with the cops—honest to God, he
hasn't!”
“Maybe you think so—”
“It’s the truth, Red. Kill me, if you've got to
—I guess you think I’ve earned it—but don't
go making any mistake about him—”
“I ain’t.” The Madeira was working pow-
erfully. A flash of unwonted insight visited
his sodden intelligence. “You wouldn't be
beggin' for that pill if you wasn't stuck on him.
And that's enough. Bull or no bull, he ain’t
goin' to live to say he stole Red Carnehan's
girl!”
“You’re wrong, Red—you're all wrong,”
she protested wildly. “And anyhow, what


THE DARK MIRROR I69
But there was an accent of doubt in his jeer-
ing retort, and in the look he gave the girl as
well. Far gone in befuddlement, he was un-
sure of himself, unsure of anything within the
scope of his perceptions, and uneasy. What
if Leonora were telling the truth about Inez?
Inez whom he secretly despised, Leonora who
was worth a score of Inez's sort . . .
“How do you mean she's fooled me twice?”
he demanded thickly.
“First, when she made you think I cared
anything about anybody but you, Red.” The
girl inched nearer, playing to perfection a part
upon which her life depended—her life and
Mario’s. “She was the one told you about Ma-
rio—lied to you, told you I was seeing him
often—a man I hardly knew, hadn't spoken
to a dozen times in all my life. And you swal-
lowed everything she had to say against me,
you believed the first whisper you heard against
me—instead of coming to me and finding out
the truth for yourself. Why, Red, before to-
night I never have seen that man anywheres
but in the street, and then only to pass the time
of day! But you'd take anybody's word in-
stead of mine, you'll believe anybody except
the girl that loves you!”


170 THE DARK MIRROR
Her hands came lightly to rest upon his
forearms. He gave them no welcome but
made no move to repulse them. The uncer-
tainty in his eyes was giving way to another
emotion, one which the girl knew too well. She
moved still closer, and one hand stole slowly
up to his shoulder.
“Won't you be fair to me, Red? You know
you're everything to me. But what's Inez to
you that you've got to let her come between
us and spoil everything? We were so happy
before you listened to her lies . . . Please,
Red, please!”
There was an instant's pause, vibrant with
the passion of her purpose and his doubts. But
that very moment of indecision told her she was
winning—had already won.
Her arm moved round his neck, drawing his
head down. He resisted stubbornly, but of a
sudden yielded. With a low cry he crushed her
to him. The hard stubble of his beard, un-
shaven for three days, rasped her sensitive skin.
The reek of his breath was sickening as he
sought the fragrance of her mouth. But she
steeled herself, repressed her shudder of repul-
sion, let him have his way, even mustered a
show of response that contented him. For if


THE DARK MIRROR 171
her flesh crawled, her heart sang: she had won.
He had dropped his pistol; it lay unheeded on
the table beside them. She nestled more close-
ly into his embrace, breathing broken terms of
endearment in answer to his half-coherent
words. The movement brought her nearer the
table and the pistol, almost between it and
Carnehan. He did not seem to notice. She
debated the next move, trying to scheme some
way to free a hand without exciting his suspi-
cions, so that she might grope behind her until
her fingers found the weapon . . .
What sound it was that startled him,
whether a footfall on the stairs or a door bang-
ing on one of the lower floors, she never knew.
But the man lifted his head sharply, listening,
and his embrace relaxed.
He muttered: “What was that?”
“I didn't hear anything, Red . . .”
With no more warning she thrust him vig-
orously from her. Altogether taken by sur-
prise, he stumbled backwards, grasping at the
air, his face a tragicomic mask of maudlin stu-
pefaction, until the wall behind him brought
him up. At the same time understanding
smote him like a thunderbolt. He pulled him-
self together and started for her, but ducked


I72 THE DARK MIRROR
smartly and again fell back on finding himself
under the threat of his own pistol.
But the reaction was involuntary, dictated
by instinct more than by conscious fear. Drink
and rage had put him well beyond the influence
of that emotion. He could not grasp the pos-
sibility of her carrying out that threat implicit
in her attitude. He knew only that he had
been tricked and must be revenged.
For a little neither spoke nor moved. The
girl was motionless, tense, her eyes dark with
settled purpose in a face abnormally pale with
excitement. The man stood in a semi-crouch-
ing pose, swaying slightly from side to side:
shoulders bowed, head thrust forward, murder
glimmering in bloodshot eyes. A dull growl-
ing issued from his half-open lips. Abruptly,
making nothing of the pistol, he charged head-
long.
She had not dreamed he would dare . . .
The pistol exploded in a wavering hand, and
its shot went wide; but its fire scorched the face
of the beast and added the pang of physical
pain necessary to make his madness blind lust
to kill.
His body crashed into hers with terrific force.
Both reeled back against the table. Ponderous


THE DARK MIRROR 173
as it was, this last swung out of place. The
lamp toppled, rolled upon its side, and went
over the edge with a noise of splintering glass.
The girl, borne bodily back across the table,
lay kicking and struggling while Carnehan's
hands closed round her slender throat. Some-
how she had lost hold of the pistol. Her inef-
fective fingers tore at wrists of steel.
A gust of hot air rose round her head. She
saw Red's face fitfully illumined by a bluish
glare. The glass reservoir of the lamp had
broken, and the oil, spreading upon the rug,
had caught fire of the flickering wick. She
redoubled her efforts, but the pressure upon
her windpipe was cruel beyond description, her
brain was reeling, so was all the world. Dark-
ness was closing in upon her like a black
fog. . . .
Then something happened, something mi-
raculous intervened. Too dazed to compre-
hend, at first conscious only of the freedom of
her throat, she was caught up and carried
swiftly away.
Set upon her feet, she found herself in the
hall, at the head of the stairs, Mario supporting
her with an arm. To his anxious enquiry, she


I74 THE DARK MIRROR
returned a ghastly smile and a feeble shake of
her head.
“What happened?” she creaked in a voice
she did not know as her own.
“I returned—thank God!—in time!”
“But Red g"
“Knocked senseless—back there—”
Through the open doorway she caught a
glimpse of a room that seemed a well of raging
flames, violet, orange and green. Then Mario
picked her up again and started down stairs.
On the first landing she heard him shouting
the alarm of fire. She struggled, and he put
her down, but held her hand and dragged her
with him as they plunged down flight after
flight.
Before they had accomplished half of that
descent, the house was buzzing like a hive of
enraged bees. On the lowermost landing they
had fairly to fight their way through the crowd
of panic-stricken tenants swarming out of their
cells.
A motor cab was waiting at the curb. Mario
hustled her into the vehicle, followed, and
slammed the door. Evidently the driver was
already instructed: he made off without delay.


THE DARK MIRROR 175
Leonora collapsed, sobbing weakly, upon the
bosom of Mario.
IX. AT MIDNIGHT
AND sobbing as though her heart must
break, the girl Priscilla came back to herself
in the ordered and luxurious security of that
quiet home on Park avenue.
But it was some time before her bemused
wits were able to grasp the singular circum-
stances that attended this return, or this awak-
ening—whichever it was. She had been re-
called too suddenly, too harshly, from that
- weird realm of her life in dreams to the sane
world of her waking existence. Everything
seemed so unnatural that only the natural could
have seemed abnormal in her understanding;
and at first she found nothing strange in the
fact that she, who had lost consciousness in
darkness, quiet and solitude, should regain it
in a confusing glare of light, see the intent,
anxious countenance of Philip Fosdick bending
over her, as he sat on the edge of the bed, hold-
ing her by the shoulders, and hear the bleating
of her Aunt Esther, who stood beside Philip,
kneading together vague and futile hands.


178 THE DARK MIEROE
each other and are going to be married and
. . . Oh, it's so impossible, so mad, so silly of
me! But I can’t help it. I’m jealous, Philip
—I’m wild with jealousy—jealous of a thing
of dream!”


I80 THE DARK MIRROR
thoughts constantly preoccupied with the rid-
dle of Leonora and Priscilla Maine.
So he was relieved when the clock struck
twelve, and for once he enforced inflexibly his
Trule to see nobody after office hours but by
appointment.
Alone, he tilted back in his chair, clasped
hands behind his head, and focussed his gaze
upon remote abstraction. A look of pain
lurked in the clear and steady eyes of grey,
disconsolation in the set of his firm, thin-lipped
mouth: the débâcle of a love, for many years
the ruling motive of his life, foreshadowed in
his meditation.
Not for an instant had he forgotten the con-
fession of love for Mario implicit in Priscilla's
confession of jealousy of Leonora.
From the first sensitive to the girl's roman-
tic interest in this man, Fosdick had seen in it
no cause for active concern so long as Mario
remained no more ponderable than a figure in
a dream. But now it appeared that, like
Leonora, whom Fosdick had seen in the flesh;
like Bielinsky, known to and wanted by the
police; like the gunman Carnehan whose
haunts Fosdick had been frequenting in search
of a key to the riddle: like all these folk,


THE DARK MIRROR I81
Mario was a thing of flesh and blood, and so
perilous to all Fosdick's hopes of happiness,
and Priscilla's, too.
For Mario, in love with if not already mar-
ried to Leonora, was lost to her already. How-
ever heavily it might cost her, Priscilla must
resign herself to renunciation. And then . . .
- Time would have to do the rest, with its magi-
cal hands of healing and obliteration. In time
Priscilla would forget, and be healed, and
would find herself anew. And then another's
turn would come.
He had been patient now these many years,
he could be patient a little longer. And while
he waited he would be helping her; he who
alone could help her to forget. For her dreams
must cease, they must be stopped by one means
or another, so that the figures of Mario and
Leonora might no longer haunt and torment
her. It could be done, they could be stopped,
it was a question of means merely. Fosdick
pondered two, alike distasteful: drugs and
hypnotism. Sincerely Fosdick believed he
chose the lesser evil when, taking a pad of
blanks, he jotted down a formula for a sedative
which he hoped might give the girl nights of
dreamless sleep without harmful reaction.


I82 THE DARK MIRROR
*
The assistant who answered his summons
took the prescription to be filled, and at the
same time announced a Mr. Andrews, calling
by appointment. -
Ushered in, he sat himself in the easy chair
beside Fosdick's desk, mumbling a cigar and
nursing a rusty derby on his knees: a common-
place citizen incarnate at the mean of his un-
remarkable mediocrity, distinguished by noth-
ing whatever more than an utter lack of dis-
tinction; the sort of man who, as we say, would
pass in a crowd—unseen.
To Fosdick's pleasant query: “Well, An-
drews, what luck?” he replied mildly: “Guess
I got your party located all right.”
“So soon?” Fosdick's manner betrayed
some excitement. “Where?”
“Hotel Walpole,” Mr. Andrews stated in a
voice exasperatingly matter-of-fact.
“You’re sure?”
“Well, she answers your description. Regis-
tered about twelve last night. Seemed all
fussed up. Wore a long cloak and no hat. A
dark-complected guy that come with her fixed
up for her room and everythin'—paid in ad-
vance, because she didn't bring no baggage—
and beat it as soon's he'd said good night.”


THE DARK MIRROR I83
“Under what name did she register?”
“Nora O’More.” Mr. Andrews produced a
slip of tracing paper from a worn leather wal-
let. “I took a copy off the register.”
Fosdick studied briefly the traced signa-
ture: a round, firm, but unformed hand.
“Is she at the Walpole now?”
“Nope—she flew the coop with the dark-
complected guy about ten this mornin’. He
called for her with a tourin’ car, a Pierce-Ar-
row, a Jap chauffeur and a skirt what looked
like a lady's-maid. The doorman at the Wal-
pole says he noticed particular because he never
seen a Jap chauffeur before.”
“Did he remember where they told the chauf-
feur to drive?”
“They didn't. That seemed to be all fixed.
The dark bird hands your party into the car,
and the Jap has her goin' before the porter can
nip his tip.”
“He didn't notice the license number, I pre-
sume?”
“Nope, he didn't.”
Fosdick frowned thoughtfully for a mo-
ment. “Did you call up the Marriage License
Bureau?”
“Uh-huh, but nobody like them parties has


184 THE DARK MIRROR
applied there today for permission to hitch.
If they shows up later, one of the clerks is a
friend of mine, he'll gimme a buzz.”
“Where do people go, as a rule, when they
want to marry in a hurry and without pub-
licity?”
“Jersey City, gen’ly; sometimes Stamford,
Conn.”
“Wish you'd get in touch with both places.”
“Sure.”
Fosdick hesitated, then reminded himself of
other appointments.
“I presume there's nothing more . . .
“Nope, only—yunno that Carnehan?”
“Did you find him, too?”
“Yeah,” said Mr. Andrews placidly—“in
the Morgue.”
“Hello!” Fosdick sat up with a start.
“How did that happen?”
“He kicked off in a ten’ment fire last night.
Maybe you seen the notice about it in this
mornin's papers?”
“About the fire, yes; but xx.
“Well, a guy I know down to P'leece Head-
quarters gimme the noos. It seems Carnehan
and Bielinsky—Leo the Blood, what shot up a
harness bull and a coupla plain-clothes at Ris-


THE DARK MIRROR 185
tori’s a while ago, yunno—anyway he got the
credit for all of the shootin’; but it seems
somebody slipped Headquarters the tip it was
Carnehan bumped off the detectives, only
Headquarters wasn’t lettin' on it knew, hopin'
Carnehan'd maybe think it was all right to
come up for air, and do it . . . Well, anyway:
them two is layin' up in a flat in one of them
ten’ments. Bielinsky just manages to get out
before the staircase caves, and is spotted and
pinched when he tries to sneak through the fire
lines. He says Carnehan was slow gettin' to
the stairs, account of him bein’ stewed, and
this mornin’ they takes Leo to the Morgue
and shows him the stiffs they'd dug outa the
ruins and he identifies one as Carnehan.”
“But are the police satisfied with his identi-
fication? I understand the members of these
gangs are rather loyal to one another. Bielin-
sky may have lied to give Carnehan another
chance.”
“Oh, I dunno. I guess Headquarters
must've figured it was Carnehan before they
called on Leo. Only my friend says they finds
this body in the ruins of the ten’ment next
door, where the fire started, instead of the
house where these two birds was hidin’. But


I86 THE DARK MIRROR
that's easy explained if Carnehan tried to get
away acrost the roofs. Yunno them old-law
ten’ments: fire-traps, that's all. Once a blaze
gets goin' in one of them, they go like a stack
of packin' boxes. And that gale last night
helped a lot . . .”
II. RESIGNATION
WHEN he called, late in the afternoon,
through some blessed accident Fosdick found
Priscilla alone, a graceful, pensive shape of
charm beside the tea table in the very English
drawing-room which the doggedly Anglicized
taste of Mrs. Trowbridge had created in an
otherwise uncompromisingly American resi-
dence.
And she had a brave smile of welcome for
him, although he fancied it a trifle forced; for
the effort she was making to keep a stiff upper
lip seemed only too apparent to his solicitous
regard.
“Philip, I do believe you're never on time!”
“Seldom if ever,” he asserted solemnly.
“One must sport a professional mannerism or
two, you know, to hold the confidence of one's
clientele, if one simply won’t wear a beard or
tote a shabby black bag.”


THE DARK MIRROR 187
“I almost think,” he said, “I’d prefer the
beard, plus punctuality, this afternoon at least.
Next to sitting through a musical comedy, I
don't know anything more enervating than
waiting for the doctor's call.”
“I’m sorry, 'Cilla,” he protested contritely.
“I really was more keen to get here than you
could possibly have been to see me.”
“Don’t be too sure.” Philip found some-
thing almost pathetic in this fugitive flash of
her rare coquetry. “I was lonely, waiting, with
no company but my thoughts.”
“But not unhappy?”
“No-o,” she admitted dubiously, giving him
tea—“nor happy, either; rather, I should say,
resigned.”
His narrowed eyes questioned eloquently.
She responded with another sad little smile:
“You see, Philip, they—they're married.”
“How do you know?” His eyes were wide
enough now.
She shook her head. “I can't tell you, but
I do. It was just before noon. I was in my
room, alone, wondering—trying to think things
out some way. And suddenly—there's no ex-
plaining—I knew it had happened. It was
nothing like a dream: I haven’t the remotest


188 THE DARK MIRROR
idea how or where they were married, I only
know they were.”
He studied her closely, detecting no trace
of hysteria in her manner. She was rather
more pale than usual, but at the same time
more composed than in several days. There
were melancholy shadows beneath her eyes, but
the eyes themselves were calm, clear and
direct.
“Tell me as nearly as you can . . .
. She overcame a reluctance: “I slept well
enough, after you left last night, heavily but
without dreams that I remember: but I woke
up with a sense of strain, a tension of nerves,
as if subconsciously waiting for something to
happen. It got worse as the morning wore
on, though I fought it as hard as I knew how,
and I had a feeling of suppressed excitement,
too. And then—as I say—about noon, the
tension snapped. Without the least warning
it was gone, there was nothing left, just empti-
ness—you know—desolation. And after a
little time of that, peace of a sort: the feeling
one has when something terribly important
that's been a long time hanging fire is at last
settled, even if it's settled disappointingly. So
I knew”—the least suspicion of a tremor crept
»


THE DARK MIRROR I89
into her voice—“it was over and done with,
they were married, the thing was finished.”
“Weren't you glad?”
“In a way, yes. I had a sense of happiness,
but it wasn't mine, it didn't rise in me, it was
her happiness I was sharing. Then even that
left me, nothing remained, only the forlorn-
est loneliness, Philip . . . as if I’d lost some-
thing I could never regain. I presume I have.
Somehow I’ve got a notion I shall never see
Leonora again, even in my dreams. Do you
think it's possible I'll never dream again—that
way?”
“I hope so, 'Cilla—with all my heart!”
She sat very still for a time, gaze downcast
to the hands that held her teacup.
“I suppose I hope so, too,” she said faintly.
III. MoTHER o'MoRE
“I’ve got news,” Fosdick offered. Priscilla
looked up sharply, under knitting brows.
“Though, I imagine from what you’ve told me,
it will seem less news than confirmation—in a
way.” He was quick to satisfy her movement
of impatience: “There's every reason to be-
lieve Leonora spent last night, after the fire,


I90 THE DARK MIRROR
at the Walpole, and Mario called for her there
this morning, about ten o'clock, with a motor
car. He had a Japanese chauffeur and another
woman with him, presumably a maid. Ap-
parently the man has means of his own.”
“He has, I think. But how do you know all
this?”
“I had a man, a private detective, make the
rounds of the hotels, first thing this morning
—on the off-chance that Mario had acted on
his suggestion, if you remembered it correctly,
of putting Leonora up for the night at the
best and quietest place in town.”
“You employed a detective, Philip? After
your promise—!”
“Hold on, 'Cilla! I promised I wouldn't go
near Police Headquarters or let the truth leak
out about what happened at Ristori’s. And I
was better than my word. In the beginning I
sleuthed for you all on my own—spent the
better part of three days snooping around the
lower East Side in a slop-shop suit, unshaven,
my nails in mourning, till I got what I was
after, established indisputably the fact that
your dreams were true telaesthetic visions—
clairvoyant—whatever you care to call them—
anything but hallucinations of a disordered


THE DARK MIRROR I91
mind. More than that, I proved that Leonora
was as real a creature as you are, not a sort
of secondary personality you'd been project-
ing more or less involuntarily into phases of
life utterly outside your comprehension and
experience.”
“I know, Philip.” She leaned forward to
touch his hand in gratitude. “Don’t think me
unappreciative. If you only knew what it
means to have my heart lightened of that
fear p'
“Then I don't think you ought to complain
if I turn over routine investigation work to a
private detective, a man of absolute discretion
who is not in the Police Department, who
hasn't even heard your name, who thinks I’m
interested in this Leonora for reasons purely
personal to myself.”
“I don’t complain, Philip. I was surprised,
and at first didn't understand. You see—I
presume I’m too much Leonora or she's too
much me—but I can't somehow help sharing
her feelings. She was wretchedly afraid the
police might send Red to the electric chair on
information they'd got through her—”
“They'll never do that now,” Philip inter-
rupted. “Carnehan is dead.” The girl uttered


192 THE DARK MIRROR
a little cry, something between pity and
thanksgiving, and sank back, staring. “Yes.
His body was found in the ruins of the tene-
ment house this morning. Bielinsky, who was
arrested fleeing the flames, identified the re-
mains. . . . So that fear passes, 'Cilla.”
She rested her head wearily against the back
of the chair and shut her eyes. “So that fear
passes,” she repeated in a whisper. A little
shiver ran over her body. “I can't think it's
wrong of me to be glad . . .”
“It isn't. It's only human.”
“But a death so frightful p'
“Don’t think about that, think how good it
is that you—that Leonora need no longer fear
death at every turning.”
“Do you suppose she knows?”
“It's in all the evening papers. She must
learn of it sooner or later, wherever she is.”
“Then—then your man didn't find out
where they went from the Walpole?”
“No. But the presumption is, they went
either to Jersey or Connecticut to get married,
as people do when they want to avoid pub-
licity. I fancy they'd do that, to leave no clue
for Carnehan—not yet knowing there was no
more necessity.”


THE DARK MIRROR 195
Far better let your subconscious slumber—far
better you should forget rather than remember
too much!”
“Yes,” she assented, uncertainly, and nodded
with wistful eyes. “I want to forget if I can,
as quickly as I can.”
“You must. You must try. It would be a
good thing if you never dreamed again of
Leonora.”
“But one can’t control one’s dreams!”
“I’m not so sure. I believe it might be done.
I can help a little, I think—but really it all
rests with you.”
“I suppose so .
tent. “But what to do?”
“It’s a matter of will power simply. You
can do it if you will, but you must want to
heart and soul.”
Her face was at once dark with thought and
flushed with hope—beyond all telling sweet.
“But I do, Philip—I want so much to for-
get, more than you know. I want so much to
think there's nothing strange about me any
mere, I’m just a normal human being like any
other girl. I want never to think again . . .”
She caught herself up in confusion and did not
complete the thought. More subdued, she con-
2x
-
She was puzzled, in-


I96 THE DARK MIRROR
tinued: “I promise faithfully to do all I can,
whatever you think best.”
“Well, as I say, it's all up to you. You've
got to make yourself mistress of your own
mind, make it think what you want it to think
and forget and disregard everything else, no
matter how insistently it may claim attention.
If thoughts of Leonora press upon you, there's
only one thing to do—put them firmly aside,
force yourself to concentrate on something else,
your work by choice. Keep yourself constant-
ly occupied, constantly doing and going, keep
every minute filled. Paint every day till you're
tired out; but don't stop then. When you've
worked till you feel ready to drop, play till
you can’t think, and then as you drift off to
sleep fix your thoughts steadfastly on some-
thing like your work. On no account permit
yourself to drowse off wondering about Le-
onora. It may, it will come a bit hard at first,
but it can be managed all right if you'll stick
at it and never say die. And once you've mas-
tered the trick of thought control, you'll find
it tremendously profitable in so many ways.
You'll paint better, for one thing. It will give
you no end of self-confidence to feel your mind
is your servant, not your master.”


THE DARK MIRROR 197
“My work will help,” she agreed. “I’m so
glad you want me to keep on. Somehow I was
afraid you wouldn't.”
“On the contrary, you must paint as if your
life depended on it.”
“Then you think there's no more danger—
in the studio—associations—?”
“Not since this afternoon,” he said smiling.
“The portrait is no longer there.”
“My portrait gone!” Distress vibrated in
her voice. “What has become of it?”
“Harkness has it.” Fosdick laughed,
pleased by her bewilderment and at the same
time apprehensive of the effect of his confes-
sion. “You see, you left the studio key on
your dressing table last night; I saw it there
and borrowed it. This afternoon I took Hark-
ness to see the portrait, and he was so enthu-
siastic—it's really fine work, you know—he in-
sisted on carting it off with him then and there.
Inasmuch as that was precisely what I wanted,
I let him have his way.”
“But Philip!—I’m not sure it's fit to be
shown yet!”
“Harkness is.”
“And it must be framed ”
“Trust Harkness to see to that, too. . . .


I98 THE DARK MIRROR
It's no use, 'Cilla. I had to get that thing out
of your way, and if I had waited for your per-
mission it might have meant weeks of delay.
Oh, I know you—like every artist, never satis-
fied with your work, always wanting to keep
it by you and study it and put on finishing
touches it doesn't need. But now that the por-
trait's disposed of, you may use the studio as
freely as you like. . . . Which reminds me:
here's the key.”
She took it from him brusquely, at once an-
noyed and gratified, her face slightly flushed
with the one emotion, her eyes luminous with
the other.
“I like your impudence!”
“We strive to please.”
Divided between anger and mirth, she com-
promised by giving free rein to both, so that
resentment was swiftly swept away in laugh-
ter.
“Philip, you are incorrigible!”
“I have to be, to get my own way.”
IV. AFFINITY
IT was the philosopher Kant, they say, who
found that he could abolish from his conscious-


THE DARK MIRROR I99
ness even the torture of gout by concentrating
his attention steadily upon an impersonal sub-
ject: a discovery which so stimulated the medi-
cal imagination of his time that the modern
school of psychotherapy, or healing by hyp-
notic suggestion, had then its beginnings.
Cold force of intellect working in the tran-
quillity of provincial life enabled the thinker
of Königsberg to forbid his mind to recognise
the living fact of pain. Priscilla Maine had
neither. Her ways of thought were no more
undisciplined than those of most young women
of her caste and generation; but, it is true, the
course of education through which she had
progressed, comfortably enough, had not so
much trained her mind as fallowed it for train-
ing. Her understanding was quick, she
thought clearly enough for all her purposes,
but inconsecutively and for the most part in-
differently. And her surface life alone teemed
with distractions; innumerable interests of no
particular moment constantly claimed consid-
eration, and got it, wasting her time and
fatiguing her capacity for constant mental ef-
fort. Only when contemplating her work or
pondering this mysterious liaison that linked
her life with Leonora's was she prone to pro-


200 THE DARK MIRROR
tracted spells of reverie. And reverie may by
no means be confused with ratiocination.
Then, too, it is easier far to endure and even
to forget an anguish of the flesh than it is to
deny the hunger of the heart. Strangely the
kiss of Mario on the lips of Leonora had awak-
ened the woman that had so long slept in Pris-
cilla Maine. And now she was bidden to for-
get not only him but self as well! It was hard.
Our emotions have a power to rack us beside
which the mutiny of flesh diseased or torn with
wounds is slight to insignificance.
The girl suffered atrociously at first. But
nobody knew; or Philip Fosdick alone sus-
pected something of what she was going
through. He could not know all, for even to
him she said little or nothing, and went sweet-
ly through her days with a high head and eyes
of lying calm. But he was sick with sympathy
for her and so in some measure quick with in-
tuition. He too had known . . . -
He helped her more than she knew, indeed,
for he contrived to devote to her more time
than a physician had any right to, with so many
patients leaning heavily on him for comfort.
Anything but an ardent lover in his outward
attitude, who knew too well his time was not


THE DARK MIRROR 201
yet, he was nevertheless a persevering one, and
never permitted Priscilla to forget that his
love enveloped her as the sea a swimmer, that
it was something as sustaining as the sea, as
deep and as abiding. She was aware, and
glad, and grateful, daily more so.
And though he refused to experiment with
obvious forms of hypnotism such as mesmeric
gestures and the induced trance, he worked in-
sidiously upon her by suggestion, not so much
at the expense of her spiritual independence
as to its re-establishment and invigoration. It
was never, “You must, for it is my will”; but
always, “You can if you will”—though far
more subtly. . . .
Now a word of encouragement disguised as
abstract philosophising, again a hint buried in
some amusing anecdote of his practice, at an-
other time an innuendo thrown out in casual
commentary on human relations: all shrewdly
calculated to make her thoughtful; thus grad-
ually self-confidence was built up in her anew,
she began to perceive the truth, like a light
dim at the far end of a tunnel, that nothing
mundane transcends the power of the in-
formed, self-regulated and applied will, that
not even the mortal ache of longing can with-


202 THE DARK MIRROR
stand it. So vaguely she began to apprehend
a coming time when, instead of flying from her
sorrow, it might be to a state more unhappy
yet, she would be able to face it, even to out-
face it unafraid, its master and her own.
IBut that was only toward the end . . .
Meanwhile she was faithful to her word,
faithfully regulated her life in accordance with
the scheme suggested by Fosdick. She
started a portrait of Ada Moyer and worked
at it steadily every morning, and in amazingly
few sittings managed to make the painted can-
vas body forth the impish charm of that lady,
her irresistible gay impudence. This in spite
of the fact that Ada posed poorly and per-
vaded the studio with an atmosphere of in-
fectious irresponsibility that was most de-
moralising to a serious-minded artist—and did
Priscilla no end of good.
In the afternoons she laboured more soberly
but no less successfully upon a composition
employing two professional models, a mother
and daughter—painting famously well, with a
decision new in her work, with a dashing tech-
nique whose secret she had newly surprised and
whose manipulation proved an abiding joy.
In between there were luncheons at Avig-


THE DARK MIRROR 203
non, Del's, the Ritz, with the women of her
world, and others with professional workers
like herself in dingy, amusing little holes of
restaurants with which that part of Greenwich
Village immediately adjacent to her studio
was riddled. And after the light failed there
were teas, motoring and bridge parties, din-
ners, the theatre, dances . . .
Alike to work and to play she gave herself
without reserve, entering with unwonted ani-
mation (though nobody thought it feverish)
into whatever diversion the hour offered. And
if at times there was an undernote of sadness
in her laughter, shadowed wistfulness in her
eyes, weariness in her gesture, she was the first
to notice and swift to dissemble. So that none
remarked any change in her, more than an ac-
cess of loveliness and charm at once elusive
and insistent, and she was more than ever
sought after, importuned, courted, wooed. A
dozen conquests were added to her score in
that too brief lull. A dozen men, amiable, per-
sonable, suitable partis, men she liked, forgot
all other women and haunted the ways she
most frequented, keen to earn the guerdon of
her smile; every one of them ready to marry
her out of hand if she showed the least tendency


204 THE DARK MIRROR
to take him seriously. But she seemed alto-
gether unaware of them, save as friends, and
moved sedately among them, adorably pretty,
tantalizingly desirable, exasperatingly de-
tached. In those days she liked all men and
loved none . . . none but one . . .
Not Philip Fosdick.
With herself she was honest and unpretend-
ing: If Mario was never for her, she was for
no one else. She thought about it as little as
she might, because she appreciated the hope-
lessness of her case, and wanted desperately to
be her own self once more, rid of this restless
longing, free to devote herself and her life to
all that was left to her in life, all that really
mattered now—her work. But she could not
readily forget . . .
That would take time. She was patient in
confidence of ultimate emancipation. Already
she had gained much. The question of her
sanity no longer harassed her. More: she had
ceased to dream of Leonora.
Or rather, she no longer remembered what
she dreamed. She wakened every morning
from a night whose dream content was blank
—if she had dreamed at all. She was far from
satisfied, however, that she had ceased to


206 THE DARK MIRROR
must be living with her husband: a wilderness
Eden of tree-clad slopes and far flung crests,
of mountain meadows and rolling valleys, of
murmuring brooks, rushing torrents, crashing
cascades, and placid little lakes nestling in the
bosom of hills . . . all vague and indistinct,
as if revealed through veils of dusky mist . . .
A world apart from the experience of this
girl whose closest contact with the primitive
had been in summers spent in the park-like
Berkshires or in summer cities by the sea such
as Bar Harbor and Newport. Yet she felt
singularly on terms with this imaginary setting
she had conjured up to frame the happiness of
Leonora, singularly sure that, if she ever found
it by any chance, she would know it and be at
home therein.
But with all her heart she hoped that might
never be. That land frightened her inexplica-
bly. In its spreading panoramas of tangled
wildwood that slept, walled in by silent, brood-
ing hills, under a silent, brooding vault of blue,
she divined instinctively something like a men-
ace, something sinister and dread. The travel-
ling shadows cast athwart that land by wind-
swept clouds were to her like shadows of pre-
monitions inexpressibly cruel.


208 THE DARK MIRROR
ers, sports skirts and white buckskin shoes was
prosecuted with unexampled ferocity.
Theatres that had sheltered weaker sisters
of the season's dramatic spawn of a sudden
doused their flaming signs and showed dark
faces of disgruntlement to the swarming
streets.
Mrs. Trowbridge, having arranged to take
over the Southampton cottage of a friend who
was going abroad, forthwith devoted herself
to such pernicious activities as (1) quarrelling
with the servants who balked at the idea of
leaving the city, (2) discharging the ingrates
and negotiating for others to replace them,
(8) shopping for goods she didn't need, (4)
packing, (5) unpacking, (6) repacking, and
(7) shrouding the furniture in summer cere-
cloths until the Park avenue house took on the
cheerless atmosphere of a tomb troubled by
tenants who would not be decently dead.
Priscilla, preoccupied with personal inter-
ests, her unhappiness and the work that seemed
its only antidote, was careless whither they
went for the summer, or when, or how, so long
as the change were not permitted to hinder her
painting, and asked only to be let alone till
she finished her two latest canvasses.


THE DARK MIRROR 209
Twice she begged for postponements, which
were grudgingly conceded, and ultimately,
badgered beyond endurance by her aunt's in-
sistence that she name a definite day when she
would be willing to go, flatly declared she
wouldn't budge a foot out of Town before she
had at least completed the portrait of Ada
Moyer.
Mrs. Trowbridge heard the accent of finality
and gave in at discretion—but with pursed lips.
Her opinion of Art and all its works was
low. True: it had always been low. But now
it was lower.
Fosdick, observing Priscilla in a threefold
capacity, conceded the conquest of his admira-
tion as a sportsman: the girl was putting up
the gamest fight conceivable, against crushing
odds.
The physician in him saw with satisfaction
the seemingly successful working out of his
prescribed régime. Even the sedative which,
by his order, Priscilla took every night on go-
ing to bed, was doing its work without any ap-
parent ill effect: to the contrary, indeed, since
her dreams no longer distressed the girl. Still,
it would be over-sanguine to consider the case
already closed with a cure.


210 THE DARK MIRROR
And the lover remained in suspense, hoping
against hope with an uneasy heart . . .
The commonplace man Andrews pursued
the commonplace tenor of his ways, without
suspicion that a private detective was consid-
ered the most romantic figure in present-day
civil life, or indeed that he was anything more
than a simple man with a job and very much
on it.
He turned up no trace of Leonora after her
departure from the Walpole in company with
Mario. If those two had married, they had
managed the business with the utmost circum-
spection and secrecy.
He reported no progress in his search for
traces of “Mother O'More”—assuming that
such a person had ever existed.
And he complained, with something as near-
ly approaching expression of personal feeling
as he ever betrayed, that to be refused permis-
sion to question Leonora's former associates
cramped his style somethin' fierce.
But on this point Fosdick was firm—bound,
indeed, by pledge to Priscilla. With ample
reason to believe that one or two if not more
of the Carnehan gang were police informers,
potentially such if not actually in the pay of


212 THE DARK MIRROR
weather. If Priscilla wanted to finish the por-
trait she would have to bring it down to the
Moyer country home and work on it there.
This being manifestly unreasonable—Ada
knew quite well it would be impossible to du-
plicate the lighting of the studio—Priscilla felt
constrained to point out candidly how selfish
Ada was. And they bickered until they part-
ed, each huffed to the verge of tears.
In the afternoon the little girl posing with
her mother was restless and fretful. The
mother was too listless to call her to order.
Priscilla, divided between sympathy for the
child and a perfectly human desire to smack
her, at length threw down palette and brushes
in despair and dismissed the models for the
day.
Anyhow, she consoled herself, she had shop-
ping to do. . . .
The shops were crowded, the salespeople ir-
ritable and irritating. She found nothing that
suited her. Between three and four she gave
up trying and, thoroughly out of humour,
started to walk home up the Avenue.
In spite of the lateness of the season the
sidewalks were well thronged and the roadway
so crowded with motor cars that the trite old


THE DARK MIRROR 213
conundrum that has no answer—where does
all the money come from?—presented itself
with new force.
In front of the Harkness Gallery a little
knot of people had collected, creating an eddy
in the tides of foot traffic. Priscilla hesitated,
then with quickening pulses added herself to
the group before the show window, working
her way into its heart, where she obtained an
unobstructed view of her work.
For it was true, what she had surmised:
Harkness had already put the portrait of Le-
onora on exhibition. And already it was at-
tracting a conspicuous amount of attention.
When the first thrill of surprise passed, Pris-
cilla realised something that was nearly actual
happiness—that warming glow which the crea-
tive temperament alone can know when its
work is shown and is liked and, best of all, in
its own eyes seems worthy.
It is such rare moments that bring to the
artist full meed of compensation, though life
has been unkind in every other wise.
Enchanted, Priscilla stood before her paint-
ing with eyes that shone and cheeks aglow, an
exquisite emotion welling in her bosom.
Nearby a man spoke in the language of the


214 THE DARK MIRROR
studios, praising the portrait to a companion.
And Priscilla heard and was exalted.
When she dared trust herself to do so, she
looked round cautiously, seeking to identify
that kindly critic whose appreciation was so
much the more acceptable because he spoke
with the tongue of understanding.
A small chuckle was struggling in her throat.
She could not help wondering what the man
would think could he know how dangerously
near he was to being publicly kissed by a
strange woman. . . .
But the chuckle expired in a strangled gasp.
The dancing eyes steadied to a fixed stare.
The colour in her cheeks ebbed more swiftly
than it had come.
She began to wonder if her heart would ever
beat again, if she would ever find strength to
move from that spot where terror had trans-
fixed her.
Her veering glance had been arrested al-
most as soon as detached from the portrait by
the sardonic and insolent regard of one who
stood at a slight distance, though in the same
group: a man whose face she had never seen
yet knew; the man whom she knew only by the


THE DARK MIRROR 215
style under which he passed among his criminal
kind—“Harry the Nut.”
And he knew her, as his meaning sneer wit-
nessed.
Nor was this the worst: beyond his shoulder
a second face showed, colourless and drawn
with passionate malice: the face of the woman
Inez.


CHAPTER SEVEN
RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH
I. FOREBODINGS
NLY with the four walls of her own
O room shutting out the world was Pris-
cilla able to take up the task of re-
building equanimity out of a chaos of shattered
nerves and scattered wits.
By sheer force of will she made herself re-
construct and review that adventure which had
loosed panic upon her in the crowded street
and driven her, a hunted thing, to seek refuge
in flight from the hostility of those who had
walked bodily out of the phantasmagoria of
her dreams, like ghosts by some black magic
materialised in flesh and blood.
Nevertheless they had been curiously meta-
morphosed in process of materialisation.
There could be no question as to their iden-
tity; but they singularly were and at the same
216


THE DARK MIRROR 217
time were not the Inez and Harry the Nut
whom Priscilla had known in dreams.
It is surprising how painstakingly the atten-
tion will record immaterial minutiae in moments
of shock. In all respects but one Priscilla's
impressions of the rencontre on the Avenue,
from the instant of recognition until the time
when she found herself in a hansom cab, se-
dately jogging homeward, many blocks north
of the Harkness Galleries, were confused and
inconsecutive.
She remembered turning suddenly, spurred
by a sharp impulse of unreasoning affright;
she had hazy memories of madly elbowing her
way to the curb, of the amazed faces of those
she jostled, of the stupid red countenance of
the cabby who reined in to her shrill call, of
coming back to herself in the cab to realise, on
the evidence of the narrow mirrors inset beside
the doors, that she was (as Mrs. Trowbridge
would have put it) a sight for all beholders,
with her strained white face and dazed, set
eyes . . .
But the look and attitude of Harry and
Inez had been etched indelibly upon the tablets
of her memory by acid fear.
She could see now, as clearly as she had then,


218 THE DARK MIRROR
the blazing hatred in the black eyes of Inez,
the supercilious and derisive malevolence in
Harry's.
As definitely she retained the details of their
appearance; which was something vastly dif-
ferent in the case of both from the time of
Leonora's knowledge of them.
The Nut, for one, had won his nickname as
much for his weakness for flashy if expensive
clothing as for the silly-ass manner which he
commonly affected, finding it useful in his busi-
ness. But today he was well, if perhaps too
much, dressed. A black morning coat with
striped grey trousers, white linen waistcoat and
spats, radiant topper and varnished shoes,
makes a perfectly correct costume for after-
noon on the Avenue. For all that, on a day
of summer heat it is undeniably conspicuous.
In the case of Inez the transformation had
proved even more startling. The Inez whom
Priscilla had seen with the eyes of Leonora
was prone to shoddy finery and strident colour
schemes, and displayed lofty contempt for
trifles such as buttons missing or hanging by
a thread, grease stains, shoes down at the heels,
skirts that cleared the ground at the same ele-
vation fore and aft. Whereas today she was


220 THE DARK MIRROR
pass his revenge upon Leonora, to punish and
to silence her.
But why need that so affect Priscilla? She
was not Leonora: so what had she to fear?
What though Inez and Harry had mistaken
her for Leonora? She was not, she was mere-
ly one who resembled Leonora strangely and
still more strangely was sib to her in spiritual
affinity. A woman of another world entirely,
occupying an established position in an ordered
and solid state of society, she was secure against
any offence which wrong-headed malice might
offer her.
Suppose they did believe her to be Leonora:
their first essay at acting on that belief would
inevitably be set at naught by the discovery
that they were in error.
She had nothing, positively nothing, to fear
from them.
And yet—she was afraid, fear crawled in
the back of her mind, outside the bright arena
of common-sense, like a snake in a shadowy
thicket. . . .
She pondered the riddle for a long time be-
fore it was revealed to her that her fear was
not for herself but for Leonora.
Whatever that secret tie which linked their


THE DARK MIRROR 221
natures, it was so strong, so close, that she
could not contemplate anything that threat-
ened Leonora, however vaguely or remotely,
without experiencing a distress so deep and
true that it was hardly to be dissociated from
an emotion purely selfish.
Imagination called up again those faces that
had glared at her in the crowd, two masks of
evil lighted from within by a hatred deadly
and implacable.
As long as those two remained at large, Pris-
cilla knew, so long would the happiness, if not
the life, of Leonora be in jeopardy.
She tried to think of something she could do
to confound them, frustrate them, reduce them
to impotence.
But she knew so little, her life had been too
well sheltered, she could not imagine how to
deal with creatures of their sort—recourse to
the police being out of the question since it
must necessarily involve Leonora.
A chiming clock reminded her that it was
half after four, while at five she was to take
tea with some friends who were leaving town
the next day. With every wish and reason to
disappoint them, she bestirred herself and
made ready to go. It would never do to let


222 THE DARK MIRROR
herself be cowed and overcome by minor
alarms. There was in her mind foreboding of
greater trials to come . .
II. MR. CHILVERS
WITH what she later chose to think unpar-
donable stupidity, she perceived, utterly with-
out misgivings, that a maid was answering a
ring at the front door; and she paused on the
lower landing, a few steps above the entrance
hall, fumbling with a stubborn glove button,
waiting for whoever it was to state his business
and get out of the way.
In some surprise she saw the maid approach
the foot of the stairs with a silver tray on which
lay a card.
Discovering her on the landing, the maid
paused, looking up.
“A gentleman to see you, Miss.”
Wondering, still unsuspecting, Priscilla
went on down.
A man standing near the front door, con-
tentedly inspecting his image in a mirror,
straightened up with a well-feigned start and
came quickly toward her.
“Miss Maine!” he exclaimed in a rather high


THE DARK MIRROR 223
voice, clipping his words after a fashion which
he believed to be English—and carrying it off
fairly well—“I say, what rippin' luck! Fancy
findin' you in!”
Completely nonplussed, she stared blankly
into his eyes, ignoring the chamois-gloved hand
he proffered.
“You don’t remember me?” He uttered a
little giggle. “Why, of course you do! Harry
Chilvers—met you at the Lathom's a few
weeks ago.” He slapped his leg lightly with
a stick which he carried with his topper in his
left hand, and giggled again with an accent of
triumph. “Now you remember—don't you?
Saw you on the Avenue this afternoon, and
thought I'd call on the off-chance of findin’
you in. Merely passin' through Town, got in
yesterday, off to Newport tomorrow, you
know. . . . Awfly jolly to see you, really.”
She was able to say coolly: “How do you
do?”—and with a nod aside dismissing the
maid, turned toward the door of the drawing-
room. “Won't you come in?”
“Charmed!”
The soi-disant Mr. Chilvers ambled amiably
into that place of morbid hospitality, with its
drawn shades and its furniture that sulked


: 224 THE DARK MIRROR
under dust-cloths with an air of bitterly resent-
ing any intrusion upon their privacy.
Priscilla halted in the middle of the room, a
table at her back. She commanded a view of
the entrance hall; the maid had disappeared—
she devoutly hoped was out of earshot.
“What can I do for you?” she asked quietly,
looking down at the card to refresh her mem-
ory—“Mr. Chilvers?”
Tall, slender, carrying the art of his tailor
admirably, the man paused before her in an
attitude of raffish ease. With an ironic smirk,
he jerked his head toward the doorway.
“Safe to talk here?”
“I cannot imagine,” Priscilla uttered slow-
ly, “why it should not be.” She met his stare
steadily, calmly. “Unfortunately I do not re-
member you, Mr. Chilvers. Nor am I ac-
quainted with the Lathoms. I have an engage-
ment for five o'clock . . .”
“Really?” Mr. Chilvers drawled. “Couldn't
put it off, I presume—now could you?”
She lifted a wrist to consult her watch. “If
you have anything to say to me, I can give you
two minutes.”
With unblushing effrontery Mr. Chilvers
closed in, caught hold of her wrist and bent his


226 THE DARK MIRROR
Chilvers, you know. Don't remember ever
wearin’ an alias I took such a fancy to.”
“I don't understand you. Won't you be
kind enough to go?”
“Presently, me dear—all in good time.”
The Nut unceremoniously whisked away a
dust-cloth and sat down in the chair it had
hidden. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Nora—
Priscilla, I mean,” he observed with a look of
admiration; for the moment forgetting to be
British. “You sure do get away with the
grande dame stuff to the Queen's taste. Not
to mention this house, and that limousine at
the door . . . I take it, that's yours, too?
Mind tellin' me how you do it, and how long
you’ve been doin' it? Just between ourselves,
both members of this club . . .”
“Evidently,” said Priscilla, “you are mis-
taken about me, Mr. Chilvers. I don't know
you, and have no wish to.” She moved a step
toward the door. “Good afternoon.”
Mr. Chilvers did not budge, but wagged a
reproachful head.
“I say, Nora, don't be so up-stage. What's
the use? I understand perfectly how annoyin'
it is and everythin'; but you know, the game's
up—it is as far as Inez and I are concerned,


THE DARK MIRROR 227
at any rate—so you might as well accept the
situation gracefully, come down to earth and
be sweetly reasonable.”
“I tell you,” Priscilla began, “I am not the
person you 32 -
But Mr. Chilvers, talking steadily, cheer-
fully, and with persistence, talked her down.
“There's no sense your bein’ afraid of my
blowin' on you, or Inez, either, you know, Nora.
That wouldn't be pally, would it? Wouldn't
be business, either. We admire your work,
we admire it no end, so much so that we're all
in a sweat to know how you do it, and get in
on the graft ourselves. With all the coin that
this lay-out stands for, surely you can spare a
little for old friends who are just makin' a
fresh start in life. . . . I’ve taken little Inez
on as an apprentice, you know. We're work-
in’ the hotels. She's a sweet child when you
get to know her, and so bright, you've no idea,
far too bright to be wasted on the life she was
leadin’ before that little show of ours down-
town busted up. Still, I must admit she
hasn't got your brains, and she's a bit amateur-
ish as yet. She shows promise of class when
I've broken her in, but that's goin’ to take time,
and meanwhile the pickin's ain't as easy as you


228 THE DARK MIRROR
might think. So we're terrible glad to find
you so well fixed and anxious to lend us a
helpin’ hand.”
“Please!” Priscilla insisted. “I don’t under-
stand you in the least. I must ask you to ex-
cuse me—”
“Ah, cut it!” An ugly light glimmered in
the rat-like eyes. “Chuck it, Nora. Don't
tempt me to pull any rough stuff; it ain't the
little thing I do best, somehow I haven't got
the polish you might expect. But I’ve got you
where I want you and you're goin' to come
through like a dear girl or I'll . . .”
He paused, his cruel smile playing round
thin, hard lips: “How would you like me to
tip off Red Carnehan where to look for you?”
“You can't!” the girl protested wildly.
“He’s dead »
“Really?” Mr. Chilvers puffed contentedly
on his cigarette. “Sure about that?”
A baffling twinkle in his look, coupled with
the innuendo, annoyed and confused her.
“What do you mean?” she demanded, instinc-
tively lowering her voice and taking a step
toward him.
“Nothin'. I'm merely enquirin', are you
sure Red's dead?”


THE DARK MIRROR 229
»
“It was in the papers
“Oh, I know Leo identified a body as Red's.
But nobody's proved to me that Leo didn't
tell an awful naughty fib for the sake of a
friend.”
“You mean—you think—Red's alive?”
“Well, if I were you, my dear, I wouldn't
take any chances except on a sure thing. You'd
be frightfully cut up—if I may use the expres-
sion—if Red turned up one of these fine days,
alive and kickin’ and lookin' for his girl.”
She gave an uncontrollable gesture of dis-
may, which Mr. Chilvers noted with a grin.
“Sort of gives one to think—doesn't it,
Nora? And, anyway, I guess this crabs the
mistaken identity stall for good. You won’t
try to sling that bunk again with your dear
old side-kick, Harry the Nut, will you?”
She gasped and was silent, discountenanced,
appreciating how hopelessly she stood com-
mitted.
Impossible now to deny to this man that she
was Leonora . . .
Of a sudden she felt herself uplifted by a
vast sense of relief. In a twinkling doubts and
fears and indecision were all swept away; all
that misery of uncertainty, heartache and


230 THE DARK MIRROR
dread which had been her portion for many
days abolished by the magic wand of a settled
purpose which had been, as it were, thrust into
her hand. Now she had something to do,
something to live for, something to fill the
emptiness that love denied had made in her
life.
Now she desired no longer to undeceive the
man who sat leering in mean exultation over
her discomfiture. Let him continue to believe
that she was Leonora, and make what profit
he could of that belief. If she could not have
that happiness of which Leonora unwittingly
had despoiled her, she could at least protect
Leonora's happiness and conserve it by taking
upon herself the punishment Leonora other-
wise must suffer at the hands of her forsaken
associates, by way of penalty for her defec-
tion.
Exalted by a sublime spirit of self-sacrifice,
she faced Mr. Chilvers with a decision and con-
fidence that would have made him uneasy had
he been less infatuate in the triumph of his
low cunning.
As it was, not till long after he had left did
he recall that look, try without avail to fathom
it, and become suspicious.


THE DARK MIRROR 23L
The slamming of the outer vestibule door
disturbed them. Priscilla turned hastily to
peer out into the hall. On the filet lace that
covered the glass of the front door the vague
silhouette of Mrs. Trowbridge showed. She
was unconsciously affording Priscilla a few
moments of grace by fumbling for her keys.
“Please!” An imperative gesture brought
Mr. Chilvers to his feet, somewhat to his own
surprise. “You must go now—or you'll spoil
everything.”
“Papa comin’?” he enquired with a knowing
look.
“My aunt. I daren't present you to her.
You must go.”
“Well—but how about our next little chat?”
“Anywhere you say, any time > *
“I say the Plaza. Four o'clock tomorrow
afternoon. We'll have tea. Mind my drag-
gin' Inez along?”
“No-surely not. But don't delay now.”
Mrs. Trowbridge's key grated in the lock.
Mr. Chilvers deftly flicked the stub of his
cigarette into the empty fireplace, took up his
hat and stick, and moved gracefully out into
the hall.
“Remember: the Plaza at four. And don’t


232 THE DARK MIRROR
stand me up—not unless you're lookin’ for real
trouble.”
“I’ll be there.” The front door swung open,
admitting Mrs. Trowbridge. Priscilla gave
the criminal her hand. “Then good afternoon,
Mr. Chilvers—and thank you for calling. I'm
so sorry I have to rush off to keep my appoint-
ment.”
“Don’t mention it. Charmed to have had
the pleasure of seein’ you, even for a moment.”
Mr. Chilvers bowed with empressement and
glided sleekly away, with a second bow ac-
knowledging the frozen presence of Mrs.
Trowbridge.
The door closed behind him. Aunt Esther
bore down on Priscilla with supercilious brows.
“My dear child! who was that strange crea-
ture?”
“That?” Priscilla laughed with a note of
hysteria. “Oh, nobody of any consequence—
just an acquaintance—an artist of a sort.”
“An artist? I thought as much!” The good
woman sighed. “I did hope you wouldn't bring
such people to the house, but I presume . . .”
The nose of defied convention sniffed sus-
piciously an atmosphere that was no doubt
somehow tainted by an unholy presence.


THE DARK MIRROR 353,
Priscilla laughed, and for the first time in
days with a genuine ring of mirth.
“Don’t worry, dear,” she offered vaguely;
and added with more decision: “By the way,
I’ve been thinking it's selfish of me to keep you
in Town in this heat. Besides, Ada Moyer
won't pose again till some time next autumn.
We might as well go down to Southampton as
soon as you can manage. . . .”
III. THE THREAT OF THE WILD
IN the morning she dreamed once more of
Leonora . . .
But now the way of the dream with her was
something new; perhaps in that it was more in
true sense a dream, less an involuntary essay in
telaesthesia. For all that, it had its element of
clairvoyance, as the outcome was to prove.
Now, however, and for the first and only
time Priscilla seemed to figure solely in the
rôle of an observer, physically uninvolved,
spiritually independent; merely one who stood
apart a little, looking on; as one may view the
traffic on a stage, understanding the passions
which rule the players without any sense of
personal implication in their web. . . .


234 THE DARK MIRROR
What instinct had foreshadowed in the
dream proved true: The scene was in a the-
atre of the hills, set high upon a wooded moun-
tain flank, overlooking a deep wide valley, the
soft green velvet of whose forest carpeting was
threaded by slender silver streams and dotted
with little shining lakes.
The day was young. Long shadows like
translucent smoke rested upon the drenched
grass of a clearing hedged about by the fluted
columns of a forest dark and close and still,
the dwelling place of ancient mysteries.
Sunlight, flashing level across the eastern
ridges, struck squarely a bungalow set in the
clearing, a rambling structure that hugged the
earth, the primitive crudity of its undressed
logs belied by every refinement civilisation
could contribute: awnings to shield windows
whose shadowy depths were framed in dra-
peries of gay chintz; a spacious veranda whose
floor was as neatly joined as a ship's deck, fur-
nished with wicker rest chairs and tables; beds
of old-fashioned flowers, a flaming border for
the edges of the veranda; a gravelled walk that
led through a breadth of well-groomed lawn
to the mountain road; at the back of the bun-
galow and somewhat to one side, a log garage


236 THE DARK MIRROR
only when, restless with waiting, she turned
for a moment to look out over the valley that
swept below, abrim with fluid blue shadow, in
all its far sweep never one hint of another hu-
man habitation.
Then her face sobered for an instant, she
had almost a look of fear. . . .
It was swiftly dissipated by a sound of foot-
steps. Mario came out of the bungalow.
Clothed far more formally than she, in a
costume better suited to city streets, he carried
a small, locked attaché case, chamois gloves, a
hat. Evidently he was bound upon a journey.
As evidently Leonora was not to go with him.
Silently they embraced. . . .
Piloted by a Japanese boy in a white jacket,
the motor-car rolled out of the garage and to
one side of the veranda, where it stopped. The
Japanese jumped down and, leaving the door
open, effaced himself. Mario and Leonora, he
with an arm round her waist, moved across the
lawn to the car, into which he tossed his at-
taché case, lingering for a last caress.
She clung to him as if she could never bring
herself to let him go. Touched, responsive, he
made but the gentlest efforts to disengage. At
length, however, he had to remind her:


238 THE DARK MIRROR
“You’re not afraid g”
“What of? There's nothing but these
woods, and I'm only scared of them—a little—
because I never saw anything like them before
in all my life. I’ll get over that—I’ve got to
get over a lot of foolishness—just give me
time . . . Now I won’t have you miss that
train! . . .”
She ran down to the road to watch the car
till a turning took it out of sight.
She stood listening till the hum of its motor
was blotted out by the abiding stillness.
For the day was very still, being windless.
From the chimney of the kitchen at the back
of the bungalow a shaft of fine blue vapor as-
cended almost without a tremor. In the
weight of the sun's rays there was the threat
of a day of heat, which Nature seemed to have
resigned itself to suffer without complaint.
Now she could hear nothing but the far caw-
ing of a community of crows, a sound infinitely
desolate.
Then even that ceased, her straining ears
were disconcerted by the silence of the forest.
She did not understand. Such silence fright-
ened her. It surged in wave on wave upon her


THE DARK MIRROR 239
senses, like a sea seeking to stun and engulf
them, to obliterate them altogether.
She cast hunted glances roundabout: at the
sky that arched over her like a soundless bell;
at the far blue hills that stood a mocking bar,
rier between her and the world she knew; at
the deep well of the lonely valley; at the sur-
rounding forest that seemed, like something
animate, awaiting the signal for some sinister
occasion, watching her meanwhile with the
myriad cold and savage eyes hidden in its
dusky fastnesses, threatening momentarily to
rouse out of its portentous immobility and
close in, overpower, grind her to pulp. . . .
And of a sudden she could no more endure
her isolation there in the sunlit open, and she
turned and fled wildly to the friendly close-
ness of the house.
IV. TRANCE
LIKE a claptrap illusion of the cinema the
shadows of her dream dissolved into the sub-
stance of her waking life. But that terror
which had clutched at the heart of Leonora in
the wholesome freedom of the hills lived on in
the heart of Priscilla, coming awake in the in-


240 THE DARK MIRROR
violable and confined security of her bed-
chamber.
It lay upon her soul like a cloud of darkness
that no will of hers might lift. She appealed
in vain to reason, to common sense. The in-
articulate menace of the woods that had been
so eloquent to the senses of Leonora continued
to oppress Priscilla with a premonition of pre-
destined evil, from whose imminent fall there
could be no escape.
She rose, bathed, dressed, breakfasted, all
mechanically; greeted her aunt, listened to her
animated exposition of plans for getting out of
Town on the second day following, responded,
answered questions, all in a sort of daze; her
abstraction becoming so marked that it at
length registered even upon the perceptions of
Mrs. Trowbridge.
“It’s a good thing Ada Moyer came to her
senses when she did,” that lady observed with
tart satisfaction. “The heat's affecting your
head already.”
Priscilla had not sufficient spirit to frame .
a rejoinder.
Prepossession with that feeling of impend-
ing disaster weighed more and more heavily
upon her mind as the day aged. More and


THE DARK MIRROR 241
more strongly she felt herself incapable of
coping with the routine duties of its course.
She went to and fro like an automaton, aware
of one thing only: that danger of some sort
threatened Leonora, that she was powerless
to avert it—who could not even name it.
What otherwise had held place of first im-
portance in her consideration, her encounter
with Harry Chilvers of the day before and
her appointment to meet him at the Plaza to-
day for tea, was displaced, relegated to a status
of least consequence, then forgotten altogether.
At four o'clock, indeed, she was pacing up
and down the waiting room of Dr. Philip Fos-
dick, digging nails into her palms and teeth
into her underlip in the endeavour to keep from
giving away to hysteria.
In his sympathy, in the wisdom of his coun-
sel that had never failed her, Priscilla thought
to find at least temporary comfort, if not her
sole hope of salvaging her reason. The ten-
sion of nameless dread was becoming more
than she knew how to bear unaided.
She sought Fosdick on impulse, suddenly,
abandoning every other interest. The voice
that answered her telephone call said that Dr.
Fosdick was “out on calls” but would be back


242 THE DARK MIRROR
at four. Priscilla arrived at his office at half
after three. With a punctuality almost unex-
ampled for him, Fosdick strolled in at twenty
minutes to five, to find his waiting room ten-
anted by a semi-distracted woman, hagridden
by fears she could by no means formulate in
words, and so nerve racked that she was unable
to control voice or gesture.
One glance at her face of suffering, one
look into those eyes of pitiful appeal—Fosdick
drew her into his consultation room. There
she collapsed utterly, going with childlike
trust into his arms, hiding her face in his shoul-
der, shaken by that tempest of emotion against
which her last, slight guard had been beaten
down upon his arrival.
He let her rest so, holding her lightly, gen-
tly patting her hands, murmuring words of
reassurance, till the first and fiercest transports
spent themselves, then set himself to rebuild
her self-control with every resource at his com-
mand.
It was slow work. Not till she was seated,
holding his hand with one that clung desperate-
ly, her other hand engaged in dabbing her
eyes with a wet wisp of linen and lace, did he
venture to question her.


THE DARK MIRROR 243
It was soothing to be able to talk without
reserve. At the same time the sense of terror
was ever with her, like a spectral presence lurk-
ing just behind her shoulder, defeating with
inexorable persistence every effort to consign
it to forgetfulness. She told her story eagerly,
but in fragments only; she was powerless long
to follow any one train of thought because, in-
variably, when she seemed on the very verge
of losing herself in the interest of narration,
a chill breath of fear would numb her confi-
dence, her eyes would film with daze, her
voice break in the middle of a sentence, her re-
laxing grasp on Fosdick's hand tighten con-
vulsively, her thoughts falter into momentary
incoherence.
Again and again he needed to exert himself
to the utmost in order to restore the mean bal-
ance of her self-command. Only the tender-
ness and solicitude of the lover allied with the
knowledge, the patience, the compassion of the
physician served. . . .
“But what am I to do?” she demanded in
a calmer phase. “I tell you, Philip, I can't
stand it; I can't go on like this knowing she's
in deadly peril, not knowing what to do, know-
ing she needs me, not knowing how to get to

º


244 THE DARK MIRROR
her, to help her. . . . It isn't imagination,
Philip—it's so. I know it's so, that she's in
danger, threatened, afraid; something in me
knows and shares her sufferings and won't—
can't be still. If I only could get at that
knowledge somehow, drag it out of me—be-
cause it's there—I feel it's there”—one hand
touched her bosom—“struggling to find ex-
pression, wanting nothing better than a chance
to explain itself. . . . Philip, won't you help
me?”
His head described a slow sign of regret.
“I’m doing my best, Priscilla—”
“I mean, hypnotism—”
“No-”
“You must, Philip, you must! You can’t
refuse me, you can't let me go on in this tor-
ment when it's so simple for you, who know
how, to relieve my mind. I'm not afraid of
being hypnotised by you. You've explained
everything so clearly, I know it's nothing but
the utilisation of a natural means to remove
the barrier between the two states of conscious-
ness, so that the imprisoned subconscious can
find expression. Philip, you won't refuse me
this once? You see what this thing is doing to


246 THE DARK MIRROR
She lay quietly, looking up into his face,
interested, intent, a trifle diverted.
“You are more at ease already.”
It was less enquiry than statement of fact.
Her drooping lids assented.
“When do you begin ?”
“Presently. First you must rest.”
“How do you do it, Philip—with passes of
the hands—?”
He smiled: “I fancy that won't be neces-
sary, so long as I have your confidence.”
“Oh, you have!”
“I know. But don't talk—don't think any
more than you can help. Keep your eyes fixed
on mine, but don't keep it up if it tires you.
As soon as it's an effort, shut your eyes. Now
remember: avoid thinking”—the pressure on
her forehead became more gently urgent—
“simply rest.”
His touch, his tone, his presence, were all
soothing. Already she was pleasantly aware
of slackening nervous tension. In her eyes
a vague smile formed.
“Drowsy?”
Her lips framed but did not utter the word
“no.” She was not in the least sleepy, but
deliciously at ease. The weight of his hand


THE DARK MIRROR 247
on her forehead was like an imponderable force
of obliterating influence. It needed no effort
to refrain from thinking, it was the easiest,
therefore the natural thing to do. Conscious-
ness was slowly retreating into a boundless
space of inertia. She had no desire to restrain
it . . .
She did not know that her eyes had closed
of their own accord, and spent a moment in
idle speculation concerning the singular dis-
appearance of Philip's face.
He had not moved, she knew; his hand still
rested on her forehead. But his voice sounded
far away:
“Sleep . . .”
She wondered that he should bid her sleep or
wish her to. Perhaps it was because he thought
it would better prepare her for the ordeal of
the hypnotic trance—if it were any ordeal.
But it was odd that he should not understand
she was now finding a rest more exquisite than
one could possibly find in sleep . . .
“Sleep . . .”
Iteration of that monosyllable excited no
more interest. She had become completely en-
grossed with the phenomenon of respiration,
her own breathing, its tempered, constant ebb


THE DARK MIRROR 249
ness and containment and independence pass-
ing anything known in waking life.
In this Nirvana, an unawed initiate of the
arcana of existence, the soul dwelt in exalted
abstraction, in a phase of sublime self-suffi-
ciency, freedom, and peace. . . . But not for
long; how long, there could be no computing;
consciousness of measured time had been abol-
ished by contact with eternal verities. Never-
theless the period of that detachment was not
unlimited, it had an end, there was at length a
necessity imposed upon the soul, a summons,
a calling to it from out the vast which it could
by no means ignore.
And the I that was the essence of the girl
bestirred itself and arose and, shedding with-
out effort the trammels of its content, went
forth, seeking.
In this there was no faltering, no reluc-
tance, neither question nor doubt, there was in-
deed no choice: the call had sounded and re-
sponse might not be delayed. The call was
from Leonora; it was the soul of Leonora,
voiceless and inarticulate, calling to its own,
calling without rest through the void from a
far and unknown bourne.
And the spirit to which its soundless call


THE DARK MIRROR 251
But there was likewise sorrow and dread
that had neither of them any form, so that
there was not any sort of rest. But as if the
very fact of their reunion forbade them rest,
the one that was two stirred and rose up again
and once more committed itself to the toil and
fatigue of search, whipped on and on by the
lash of a necessity that had no name but was
none the less inexorable and pitiless . . .
But this time the search found an end . . .
There was in a forest a pool, a dark, still
pool in a forest dark and still. Huge boughs
of ancient trees, weighed down with their bur-
den of interwoven foliage, overhung the water,
darkening its face to blackness with their shad-
ows, shedding a twilight in between, a half-
light of limpid green.
The air of this place was sluggish, dank and
warm and without movement, it was heavy
with the cloying sweet breath of mould.
Neither was there any movement in the pool,
though its still black plaque was broken by a
white, cold, wet face upturned, the face of a
drowned woman whose clothed body was
vaguely revealed by the stained element in
which it was suspended.
To the smitten spirit of Priscilla it was


CHAPTER EIGHT
THE DAY OF GRACE
I. TEMPTATION
EAD . . . she is dead . . . Leonora
is dead . . .”
The words, barely audible, hardly
more than moans, breathed from the lips of
the woman lying in hypnosis. Fosdick, sitting
by her side, on the edge of the couch, bending
over her, conned her face intently. The long
lashes were fluttering, tears welled from under
lowered lids, the lips writhed with grief. She
moaned again, an inarticulate pure note of woe
passing speech, and shuddered in her trance.
He captured her two wrists as her hands
twitched up, groping as one's hands will who
walks in darkness, and imprisoned them gen-
tly in the clasp of one of his own. The other
he pressed again upon her forehead.
“Priscilla!” he called in an even but urgent
voice—“come out of it! Forget your vision.
See nothing . . . Do you hear me?”
253


THE DARK MIRROR 255
slow and deep respiration of natural slumber.
Fosdick sighed in relief; but his counte-
nance continued grave with care, the brows
knotted, the lips compressed, the eyes har-
bouring a look of pain.
He moved over to his desk and dropped
wearily into the chair, made as if to draw
the telephone to him, hesitated. Resting an
elbow on the desk, he bent his head upon his
hand, covering his eyes, and for some moments
sat in a state of sore perplexity and indecision.
What was his duty?
It was in his power to renew in Priscilla
the condition of hypnotic susceptibility long
enough to erase by suggestion, all waking
memory of her vision. By so doing he might
spare her much suffering, much distress; the
pity and horror of that lonely death, and the
mystery of it, would not prey upon her sensi-
tive and susceptible nature. And, believing
Leonora still to be living happily with the man
Mario, her husband, Priscilla might in time
grow reconciled, school herself to renunciation,
forget, and ultimately rebuild her life upon
the foundation of a saner, surer love.
On the other hand, Fosdick knew, no will
of his, no wile, no power known could cast


256 . THE DARK MIRROR
out memory of that vision from her uncon-
scious mind. There it must live on, in repres-
sion but deathless and mutinous, demanding
always that acknowledgment which was its
right, always denied; and inevitably in some
fashion for that neglect it would avenge itself
upon the girl.
So may we all purchase forgetfulness of
things that sadden us, things that hurt, memo-
ries of failure, omissions, blunders, losses, sins:
but if we purchase we must pay the cost.
Nature has no mercy for those who would
ignore her; such insolence goes never unre-
quited. . . .
But if Priscilla were permitted to come back
to herself with full knowledge of what she had
seen in her trance: believing Leonora dead,
what would the effect be upon her life?
She would be sad, she would mourn, it would
be long before her days would be undarkened
by shadows of dread and distrust.
But she would not dream, there would be
no more journeys of the spirit through the
hollowness of night and space in futile search
for that affinity which had gone out of life.
Against this the consideration warred that,
no longer needing to reckon with the claims


258 THE DARK MIRROR
shadows beneath her eyes, a hint of weariness
about her mouth, the mouth of a child pun-
ished for no fault that it understands, and a
faintly perceptible contraction between her
eyebrows.
Fosdick gave a gesture, infinitely unhappy,
of renunciation.
He bent over and let his lips touch lightly
her hair, the nearest approach to such a caress
he had offered Priscilla since her childhood.
She never knew . . .
When Andrews came in, a folding screen
shut off the couch and its occupant from the
rest of the room; Fosdick was behind his desk,
amiable, keen, composed. -
“Well, Andrews?”
“G’daft'noon, doc.” Mr. Andrews seated
himself, balanced his hat on his knee, and re-
inserted in his mouth the unlighted cigar which
had been removed in deference to an influential
client. “Just blew in from up State—Dutchess
County,” he announced. “The party you're
interested in-”
“Mother O’More?”
“Yeah: she's up there in a private inst’ution
for the aged. Bought her way in 'bout ten
years ago. Seems she gets an annuity from


THE DARK MIRROR 259
some insurance company, enough to pay for
her board and keep. Must be a sick insurance
company; the old dame's a hunnerdaneighty
if she's a day and ain't much as thinkin' of
kickin’ out.”
“Did you see her to talk to?”
Mr. Andrews corrected gravely: “I seen
her to talk to her, but that's as far's I got.”
“Is her mind clear? I mean, do you think
she remembers—?”
“Remembers? Say, that old lady remem-
bers more'n you and me 'll ever forget. Her
mind's as clear's consummy soup in a French
table de hôte.”
“Won't she talk? Why?”
“Cussedness,” Mr. Andrews opined—“or
else she's been paid to keep her trap shut. I
got a hunch she bought that annuity with hush
money.”
“Will anything make her talk, do you
think?”
“Jack might.”
“Jack who?”
“No, not Jack anybody—just jack—coin,
yunno—money.”
“Oh!” Fosdick's smile swiftly faded into


260 THE DARK MIRROR
a look of thoughtfulness. “Presume I’d better
see her myself.”
“Would, if I was you. She hasn't got no
use for me atall—spots me for a detective at
sight and spits like a mad cat every time I
opens me mouth.”
“Where do you say she is?”
“Place near Pawling—there's the add-ress.”
Mr. Andrews gave Fosdick a slip of paper.
“Visitors’ hours every afternoon, three to five.”
“I’ll see her tomorrow,” Fosdick said.
“Meanwhile, you can be working on another
lead. There's reason to believe the girl I'm
looking for—this Leonora—is or has been for
several days living up in the Catskills, in a pri-
vate camp, probably rented, somewhere back
of Kingston. Her husband came down to New
York today, according to my information and
belief, and is returning tonight. He drove
from the camp to Kingston in a car, which he
probably left in a garage near the railroad sta-
tion. That may help you to trace him.”
“I’ll run up there tonight, be on the job first
thing tomorrow. If I have any luck I'll give
you a Long Distance buzz. But I dunno . . .
If you're goin' to run up to Pawling in the
aft'noon, you won't be back till after dinner.


THE DARK MIRROR 261
I might be back myself by that time. Mebbe
I'll be waitin' for you.”
III. AFTERMATH
MR. ANDREws presently took himself off.
Fosdick glanced at his watch, turned to the
screen, folded and set it aside.
Priscilla had not yet moved, but by every
sign the subconscious monitor was reminding
her that the half hour had elapsed. Her breath-
ing was less regular, the silken lashes were
restless upon her cheeks. While Fosdick
watched they lifted, disclosing confused eyes.
Recognising him, she smiled uncertainly.
Fosdick uttered her name in a reassuring
voice, took her hands, and helped her to a sit-
ting position.
“How do you feel?”
“I don't know,” she said in a low, puzzled
tone. “All right, I guess, but . . . There's
something wrong . . . Have I been asleep?”
“Yes. Didn't you know?”
She shook her head impatiently, staring at
the floor, struggling to recollect loose ends
of memories.
“You—you hypnotised me, Philip?”


262 THE DARK MIRROR
“Yes, 'Cilla.”
“Was it difficult?”
“On the contrary, you proved one of the
most willing subjects I’ve ever had—went off
like a shot, practically at the first suggestion.”
He filled a glass with water from the silver
pitcher on his desk; but when he took it to her,
she was on her feet, her eyes desperate.
“Philip!” she cried gustily—“she is dead—
Leonora—!”
“I know; that is, I know you think so; you
told me.”
She did not answer, she was heedless of the
meaning of his words; but as if instinctively
feeling it intolerable that another's eyes should
pry into her grief, brushed aside the glass of
water, and with a stricken face stumbled past
him to a wide and deeply recessed window.
For several minutes she stood there, her back
to Fosdick, looking out blindly, slender shoul-
ders shaken with silent sobs, a hand with a
handkerchief dabbing at her eyes.
A wise physician, Fosdick offered no phrases
of false comfort, but was patient.
That the storm of her emotions spent itself
swiftly, that it was not long before she was
able to talk calmly, was no revelation of heart-


THE DARK MIRROR 263
lessness, but largely the work of the sugges-
tion implanted in her while she was in hypnosis.
“The pity of it,” she said after a little time:
“O Philip! the pity of it! She was so happy
—and now she is dead.”
“Perhaps.”
Priscilla swung sharply round. “Why do
you say that? I know—I saw her—I saw her
lying drowned in a pool ->
“I know, you told me.”
“But how could I?” She was startled out
of her sorrow. “I haven’t had time, I’ve only
just remembered 3x
“You told me while in the hypnotic trance.
I questioned you and you told me all you knew,
everything you experienced. You were talk-
ing almost continuously until I threw you into
normal sleep. So I heard about your vision.”
“Strangel” she said in a stare of wonder—
“strange I should recall nothing of that.”
“Not so strange; your speech was something
purely automatic; once started, it went on, just
as your heart went on beating and your lungs
inhaling and exhaling air, while your attention
was absorbed in other matters. It's like the
automatic writing that people produce, be-
lieving themselves under the influence of dis-


264 THE DARK MIRROR
embodied spirits. Not necessarily even under
the hypnotic influence; their attention is else-
where, they may be talking or reading on ut-
terly immaterial subjects, while their hand,
without their knowledge, writes and goes on
writing—just so you went on talking.”
“I don't understand. It's—it's incompre-
hensible. Not that I doubt what you say. I
must have told you what I saw, there in the
forest. . . .” Her eyes filled again, tears ran
down her cheeks. She averted her face. “Oh,
the pity of it!” she repeated. “Just when life
seemed about to compensate her for all she had
never had . . .”
“Don’t let go like this, 'Cilla. Remember,
nothing is certain.”
“No-you are wrong. I saw her, I know.”
“You think so.”
“Why do you persist in saying that? Have
my dreams ever proved groundless?”
“We don't know, yet; perhaps some of them
were. But this wasn't one of what you call
your dreams; it was a vision, possibly a hallu-
cination, in hypnotic trance. It may have been
a true phenomenon of telaesthetic communica-
tion; assuming that Leonora was really dead,
your spirit may have found some means, by


266 THE DARK MIRROR
ly, or did you see a fantasy conjured up by
your own imagination influenced by fear?”
“If I could only think that, Philip p'
“Why not try?”
But he was arguing against his own convic-
tion, his argument lacked conviction. Her
drooping head described a movement of rejec-
tion.
“No,” she said, “the trouble is—I know.”
Appreciating that in her present temper
contradiction or contention would only serve
to excite her, Fosdick dropped the subject
temporarily, and used the telephone to order
his car from the garage.
“I’m going to take you home now,” he told
Priscilla. “Now about tonight: have you any-
thing on?”
“Don’t ask me to do anything tonight,
Philip!” she protested. “Night after night
I’ve gone about with an aching heart, to please
you, because you thought it would do me good.
But tonight—I simply couldn't.”
“I agree. I was merely going to advise can-
cellation of any engagements you might have.
You must rest, get a long and sound night's
sleep.”
“If I can . . .”
*


268 THE DARK MIRROR
cuse anybody of murder? It might have been
suicide—”
“Oh, no,” she interrupted almost scornfully
—“never! Why should she do such a thing?
She was so happy, she loved Mario, he loved
her devotedly.”
“Or an accident, perhaps . . .
She seemed to try to adopt this theory, she
pondered it at length, but in the end could not
accept it. -
“No,” she declared; “it was neither suicide
nor accident, it was what she had been afraid
of all along, death by violence . . .”
32
IV. DEFIANCE
LATE in the evening the telephone interrupt-
ed the supervision of her packing, with which
Priscilla was endeavouring to divert her weary
thoughts—and with no great success.
Her maid being busy at the moment, Pris-
cilla answered in person, and suffered a slight
shock when she heard the studied accent of
Mr. Harry Chilvers—so completely had she
forgotten the man.
“Hello: put me through to Miss Maine, will
you?”


THE DARK MIRROR 269
Priscilla countered with the stereotyped
query: “Who is calling, please?”
But she was too indifferent to disguise her
voice; and Mr. Chilvers chirped briskly:
“Oh, hello, Nora! This is Harry. What
happened to you this afternoon? Forget our
date for tea? Or did something get in your
way?”
Quite evidently Mr. Chilvers was prepared
to be a good fellow and overlook that slight.
But Priscilla replied with an apathy noth-
ing short of cynical:
“Miss Maine is not at home.”
An oath of resentful incredulity was cut in
two as she clicked the receiver into its hook;
but the picture suggested, of the Nut raging
at a mute and unemotional telephone, failed to
excite even the ghost of her smile.
The death of Leonora had bereft the man
of all claim upon her consideration, rendering
him hopelessly incompetent for harm. He had
become nothing to her, less than nothing. The
incident served merely to remind her that she
had neglected to tell Fosdick about the fellow, S__
his effrontery, the insolence of his ill-veiled
threats.
Not that it mattered: she could tell Philip at


272 THE DARK MIRROR
shopping, Mr. Chilvers waylaid her in the car-
riage entrance.
He saluted with a wide flourish of his beam-
ing topper and a smirk of poisonous amia-
bility.
“Saw your car up the street,” he announced
cheerfully—“thought perhaps you wouldn't
mind givin' me a lift.”
She stopped, reading darkly his shrewd,
narrow, rat-like face, reading the threat and
triumph in those small, black, close-set eyes,
surmising that without a public scene there
could be no escaping the interview he de-
manded.
“But really you ought to speak to that maid
of yours,” he proceeded, unabashed. “She had
the impudence to tell me this morning you'd
left town for the summer.”
She shrugged, and in silence led on out to
the sidewalk. Her car was waiting across the
way. Seeing her, the chauffeur pulled round
to the curb.
Mr. Chilvers slipped a gallant hand under
her arm to help her in, but before he could
follow Priscilla pulled the door to. Immedi-
ately his manner changed. Scarlet with anger,
he laid a hand on the ledge of the window.


274 THE DARK MIRROR
to me! I am not Leonora. My name is Pris-
cilla Maine. I have lived all my life in New
York, in the Park avenue house which be-
longed to my father. Should we ever meet
again, don't presume on the acquaintance I
have permitted you to claim but which is now
closed. And before you threaten me again, let
me advise you to find out the truth about Pris-
cilla Maine.”
She put her finger on the telephone button.
“Let go of the door, please,” she said, look-
ing calmly into his infuriated eyes. “Will you
oblige me? Or shall I send my chauffeur to
ask the policeman over there to step this way
for a moment?”
Mr. Chilvers opened his mouth, but shut
it without speech. A second attempt was more
successful.
“If you think you can put it over on me like
this—!”
But Priscilla was already speaking into the
telephone:
“All right, Arthur; to the studio, please.”
The car swept forward so suddenly that Mr.
Chilvers was almost dragged off his feet be-
fore he remembered to loose his hold.
Satisfied that she had seen the last of him—


THE DARK MIRROR 275
he would hardly find a second opportunity to
annoy her that day, or neglect to make the
enquiries she had advised; and tomorrow would
see her well beyond his reach, in Southampton
—she sank back in the seat and once more de-
livered up body and mind and soul to melan-
choly. -
At the mouth of the Alley she dismissed the
car. “Mrs. Trowbridge will use you for the
rest of the afternoon,” she told Arthur. “I’ll
call a taxi to take me home when I’m ready.”
Her business in the studio proved more ex-
acting and fatiguing than she had anticipated.
It was a matter of several hours before she
had finished sorting out and packing up tubes
of paint, bottles of medium, brushes, palettes,
unpainted canvases on stretchers, her sketch-
ing umbrella, easel and stool. And yet it was
work no one could have done for her; no ser-
vant could have known what she needed to take
down to the country with her, what to leave
behind.
The afternoon was as unseasonably warm as
any that spring had brewed. Weary to start
with, she worked steadily, heedless of the pas-
sage of time. It was something past six, when
pausing to survey the result of her labours, she


CHAPTER NINE
THE CHANGELING
I, TRANSLATION
- S on that first occasion when sleep had
A stolen upon and overcome her una-
wares in the studio, her unclosing eyes
comprehended only darkness absolute.
Unlike that time, when she had roused in-
stantaneously, self-consciousness springing
suddenly, full witted, full powered, clear, out
of nightmare thralldom, now she awoke slowly
and at expense of effort almost painful: senses
and perceptions struggling long and arduously
to break the embrace of a lethargy so deep and
undisturbed that the self-sense had lain in it
benumbed and stifled, like a seed that slumbers
in the pent darkness of the earth against the
coming of the spring.
And even as the seed, at a time secretly ap-
pointed, at the urge of an instinct inscrutable
to man, quickens in its sleep and sends forth
277


278 THE DARK MIRROR
blind shoots to fumble for the light, so the be-
ing of the girl stirred in its stupor and sent
forth its torpid senses. But there the figure
fails: they found no light. . . .
In the confusion of those first waking mo-
ments she believed herself to be at home, in
bed. -
But the darkness of her bedchamber had
never been sheer; there was always a diffused
glow from the lights in the street to temper it.
Then she remembered, dully, the studio and
the weariness that had weighed upon her in the
afternoon.
She must have slept several hours at the
least reckoning, for it had been broad daylight
when she lay down, the evenings were long, and
it was now, judging by the blackness of it and
the silence, dead of night.
But she looked in vain for the violet tinted
rectangle of the north-light.
And mysteriously the windows were shut
which had been open when she stretched out
to rest while the kettle boiled. For there was
not only an utter absence of light but a smoth-
ering lack of fresh air. She could not remem-
ber a time when the atmosphere of the studio
had been so close. Worse than merely close,


THE DARK MIRROR 279
indeed: it was foul, gravid with stagnant smells
unfamiliar to her nostrils: a pungent odour
of stale fermentation, a rank aroma of tobacco
smoke, and with these a stealthy and subtle ef-
fluvium, cloying, insiduous, insinuative, at once
flattering and disgusting, sinister and seduc-
tive . . . -
There were lesser odours, too, in multitude,
and there was a grim pitch of heat, to help
make the atmosphere suffocating.
Her lungs starving for clean air, she lay for
some time stupidly contemplating the exertion
that would be needed to rise and open one of
the windows. Somehow she could not seem to
nerve herself to it.
She was feeling actually ill, squeamish. Her
limbs were stiff and heavy, her hands hot, her
cheeks and forehead afire, a prickling sensation
afflicted her body, she was athirst and the taste
in her mouth was evil; and when she moved
her head upon the pillow, pain like a brutal
blow crashed from temple to temple and back
again and again, forcing feeble groans past
her lips.
Nevertheless conditions such as these were
unendurable. At whatever cost, she must have
water and fresh air. . . .


THE DARK MIRROR 281
her couch encountered the coarse ticking of an
uncovered mattress, instead of the silken rug
that clothed the divan.
Slowly it was borne in upon her that she was
neither in her bedchamber nor in her studio.
This conviction struck home to her under-
standing with a shock that brought her to her
feet. And for a long minute she stood sway-
ing in the darkness while the agony thundered
in her temples, flashes of weird light seared
her eyeballs, and moans found a way through
her clenched teeth . . .
What had happened? Where was she-and
who?
Was she Priscilla Maine delirious?
Or was she Leonora—yet once again that
puppet of her life in dreams, embarked upon
some new and still more terrible adventure?
But Leonora was no more . . .
What then? Did people deranged by illness
suffer such awful hallucinations and at the
same time know that they were impossible, un-
real, insane inventions of an unhinged mind?
She took a blind step into obscurity, and an-
other, blundered into a chair and knocked it
over with a clatter.
While she waited, dashed, hands clutching


284 THE DARK MIRROR
manner jailed, at the mercy of this truculent
vixen. No later than this afternoon she had
been Priscilla Maine: tonight she was cast for
the rôle of Leonora. Reconciliation of reason
with propositions so paradoxical was impos-
sible, the mental effort agony. Both hands
clasping her tortured head, as if to prevent its
splitting asunder, the girl stared at Inez with
distraught eyes in a haggard countenance.
“Thought you'd pay the old place a visit,
did you? Found Fift' avenue and all too rich
for your stummick, I presoom. How's it feel
to be back on the farm? Like Old Home
Week, I guess.”
Again Priscilla tried to speak; but her
tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. The
sounds, when at length they came, were unrec-
ognizable as her own voice.
“Water,” she croaked—“in pity's name—
water!”
Momentarily the other seemed of a mind to
refuse her. A grin of gratification formed
on the hard-lined mouth. Then, perhaps be-
cause she saw she would get no satisfaction
from her prey otherwise, she decided to indulge
her.
“All right, dearie; I’ll fetch you a nice long


THE DARK MIRROR 285
drink. Back in a minute. Just make yourself
perfectly at home.”
Deftly unfastening the door, Inez slipped
out.
Priscilla swayed back to the bed and sat
down, temporarily in total subjugation to her
thirst and the promise of its assuagement; all
other perceptions in abeyance, only the sense
of hearing alert for sounds of returning foot-
steps, tinkling ice in a glass . . .
She was kept waiting a cruel time . . .
Whether prompted by need for stealth or by
common hatefulness seeking to prolong her
torments, Inez chose to return noiselessly.
Priscilla, sitting with drooping head, had no
warning till she heard the door close softly.
Then, seeing Inez posed with her back to it, a
large goblet of thick glass held high, the girl
lurched to her feet and toward her.
“Please!” she begged huskily.
With a quick movement Inez placed the
glass on the little table and met Priscilla with
a straight-arm blow on the bosom that drove
her reeling back to the bed, whose uprights
she grasped to save herself a fall.
“Don’t be in such a sweat. You'll get your


286 THE DARK MIRROR
drink, all right—when you've done what I
want you to.”
“What—what do you want me to do?”
Inez tossed toward her a bundle of garments
she had brought under an arm. “I want that
suit you've got on—it's too damn good for you
—and your rings and that brooch and every-
thin'. Hand 'em over and you can have your
drink.”
“I don't understand. You can't—it can’t be
possible you mean to rob me?”
“Say, lis'n.''” With the stride of an infuri-
ated animal, Inez crossed to her and stopped
with her shrewish face thrust forward pugna-
ciously, not six inches from Priscilla’s. “I’m
goin' to have them swell duds and jools if I
have to rip 'em off your back with my own
hands—and the skin off your face, too. Get
me? I mean every word of it. You're goin’ to
come down to where you belong this minute,
and you're goin’ to look the part, too, or my
name ain't Inez. You've come the haughty
over me for the last time. It's my innin's now,
and when I'm finished with you everythin' 'll
be perfectly even between you and Inez, for-
ever and ever—a-men!”


THE DARK MIRROR 287
She read her answer in terrified eyes, and
leered exultantly.
“Well, what about it? You goin’ to shuck
them clothes, or do you want me to help you?”
With trembling, awkward fingers Priscilla
began to pluck at the buttons of her blouse.
Inez retreated to the table, picked up the
glass, and rattled the ice musically within it.
“Hurry, dear heart!”
Priscilla removed coat and blouse and
stepped out of her skirt, then lifted her hands
for the glass. Her tormentor warned her off.
“Wait—a—min-ute! You're forgettin'
them rings.”
Silently the girl stripped her fingers, drop-
ping their jewels into the greedy palm. Noth-
ing mattered, so that she earned that drink of
water.
But yet once again was she put off.
“Don’t crowd me so! I might get nervous
and spill somethin'. . . . Climb into them
clothes I brought you first—and if I was you,
I wouldn't waste no time, neither. Can't tell
when Harry or someone 'll bump in here and
catch you with nothin' on but your pretties.
And be thankful I let you keep them . . .”
For an instant, indeed, the woman seemed


THE DARK MIRROR 289
“I wish I were,” Priscilla groaned. “Where
am I?”
“Meanin' to insinuate you don't know? Ah,
forget it!”
“How did I get here?”
“I guess maybe that's somethin' you don't
know.” Inez laughed spitefully. “And I
don't mind tellin': Harry followed you down
Fift' avenue 'safternoon and seen where
you stopped, up in McDougall Alley. Then
he got Charlie and left him to watch you while
he 'phoned for the rest of the bunch. When it
got dark and everythin’ was quiet, they picked
the lock, found you doin' a Rip van Winkle
that looked good for twenty year, give you a
shot of the hop to make sure you wouldn't
wake up at the wrong time, and brought you'
down here in a taxi. That's your history up
to date. Cheer up: the worst is yet to come.
And when it comes—grab this from me—in-
nocent li'l Inez is goin’ to have a ringside seat.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
The words were barely audible; but the ter-
magant heard. Her sneer darkened.
“Well, if you gotta know: the bunch's out-
side makin' up their minds what to do with
you. I haven't got no idear what they'll fine’ly


THE DARK MIRROR 291
served only to render her thirst more intense:
a matter of spiteful calculation, in all likeli-
hood: even though diluted, alcohol in any form
is no quencher of thirst, rather the contrary.
Inez had not, however, reckoned with its stimu-
lating properties: Priscilla was no less un-
happy in body and mind, on recovering from
her swoon, but she felt stronger, better able
to think and to work out thought in action.
At present, however, two considerations
dominated all others: her need of water; the
necessity somehow to escape from that place
of terror and abomination.
She got up, unsteadily enough, padded to
the door, and listened there with an ear to the
joint between door and jamb.
Hearing what she believed to be a rumour
of distant voices, nothing else, she laid hold
of the knob and turned it cautiously. A thrill
shot through her heart when the door opened:
Whether by design or inadvertence, Inez had
neglected to lock it!
A peering reconnaissance showed nothing
but gloom immediately beyond the door.
Trembling, the girl opened it wide. The light
from the gas-jet then revealed a length of
malodorous hallway, broken by two more


292 THE DARK MIRROR
doors, both closed. At its far end it turned
off at a right angle. What lay beyond was
unguessable: there was no light.
The air of the hallway was heady with that
subtle, sickly sweet smell, alluring and appal-
ling . . . the breath of death. . . . She had
smeltit before, somewhere, at some time indefi-
nite. . . . At length she knew it: the reek of
opium smoke in the den of Sing Ho, to which
she—or Leonora—had gone that night (so
long ago!) to meet Charlie the Coke.
So that was where they had brought her . . .
The quiet of the house seemed to gain sin-
ister accent from a muted rumble of discussion
that went on and endlessly on, evidently be-
hind one of the two other doors.
She advanced one unshod, timid foot across
the threshold, faltered, took another step and
closed the door behind her, shutting herself out
into untempered darkness, and stole fearfully
on, feeling her way with hands that brushed the
walls.
The attempt was hazardous. In her heart
she believed it fated to fail. But perhaps she
was wrong: she might succeed . . . If not, no
penalty conceivable could be more awful than


THE DARK MIRROR 293
the lot that might be hers if she did nothing,
but supinely waited . . .
Under her tread, light and furtive though it
was, the flooring, poorly laid and sticky with
the accumulated grime of years, creaked loud
alarms. At almost every other step she was
fain to halt and wait, listening, heart in mouth,
her breathing stayed.
She drew near to the farther door. The
voices became more definite. Seemingly sev-
eral persons were closeted in that room, all
talking at once, in discordant dissension. Now
and again one voice or another would momen-
tarily assert itself; but immediately the others
would turn on it as one and cry it down; and
once it was disciplined and taught its place,
the controversy would proceed as before.
The notion came to her, was entertained and
established as an idea fixed, that if she could
only win past that door, the rest would be easy,
an unhindered way of escape would open out
to her. . . .
She was within two paces of success when an
especially violent wrangle ended in the harsh
rasping of chair-legs on a bare, rough floor;
and in a sudden lull heavy heels thumped to-
ward the door. The girl shrank back, instinc-


294 THE DARK MIRROR
tively flattening herself to the wall to one side
of the door. This last was thrown open, letting
out a flood of gaslight and a choking gust of
air heavy laden with tobacco smoke. A man
came out, turning toward Priscilla's recent
prison. Blinded by the transition from light
to darkness, he stopped and, cursing, put out
a hand toward the wall. It touched Priscilla’s
shoulder. She winced with a stifled cry of
fright. Instantly the hand closed cruelly on
her shoulder; its owner uttered an exclamation
of mingled wrath and satisfaction, and with
one ruffianly swing sent her staggering into the
I’OOIII.
Somehow she escaped a tumble, righted her-
self, stood cringing, blinking, trembling.
The door closed with a bang. The accents
of the Nut, destitute for the time of all pre-
tensions to polish, announced:
“Here she is now! Caught her just in time
—tryin' to do a sneak. Who left the door
unlocked on her? You, Inez?”
Coolly the voice of Inez replied: “Maybe
I did—don’t remember.”
“Damn’ careless of you
>>
“Ah, shut up. What difference does it
make? She didn't get away, did she? She
|


-
|×
-
| （）
|×
|×
|-
№.
|-|-
-
into a waiting motor car.
Was this, too, a dream?”
-
- - - -
fted her
li
10
“Once more Mar
Or was it Leonora.





296 THE DARK MIRROR
new part, self-assumed, his bottle-neck shoul-
ders wearing with poor grace the mantle of
Red Carnehan, master of gunmen; three or
four others, remembered as lesser limbs of
Red's gang. . . .
The company sat in silence, staring at Nora
with unfriendly, inquisitive eyes. Standing
before them, like an accused facing a jury of
peers in whose judgment her guilt was already
established, her punishment already decreed,
she was sensible of an oddly reminiscent feel-
ing: all this, she felt, was but the playing of a
scene already familiar through rehearsal; an
effect directly tracing back to that night at
Ristori’s, when Leonora had come belatedly
to the feast.
Precisely so had Leonora on that occasion
faced a prejudiced jury of her kind. Only
the setting was slightly different, the company
decimated, its presiding spirit gone beyond re-
call. . . .
The pause lasted longer than the patience of
Inez. She sat up suddenly and waved an ex-
travagant arm, mimicking the manner of bally-
hoo before a circus sideshow.
“Ladeez and gempmunſ” she proclaimed in
a flat professional bawl: “I have the honour


THE DARK MIRROR 297
to present to you tºnight the only certified
Two-in-One in captivity: Miss Priscilla Maine,
the latest fashion hint from Fift' avenoo, and
plain Nora O'More of this Club. Take a good
look, ladeez and gempmun, at this peerless
freak, the only livin' Two of a Kind. A single
price of admission pays for both—one dime,
the tenth part of a dollar—and your money
back if y’aint sat'sfied!”
IV. RESURRECTION
SoMEBODY chuckled hoarsely. Chairs were
shifted. Asides were exchanged in audible
murmurs. A contemptuous voice declared
loudly: “It’s Nora, all right, all right!” The
Nut bent his mouth to mumble into the ear of
Inez something apparently in the nature of a
remonstrance. She heard him with a surly
face, growled a response which seemed to irri-
tate him exceedingly, and turned scornfully
away. English Addie alone changed neither
her pose nor the moderately dubious expression
with which she was regarding Priscilla.
The latter, drawing upon an unexpected
store of latent spirit, moved forward to the
edge of the table.


THE DARK MIRROR 301
selves. You've got the inside track now—God
knows how you worked it, but you did—you've
got it, you can go where you want and do about
as you please with the Ritz mob. And that
makes it simple for you to open things up for
us. You know what we can do, each one of us;
you can easy slip us a tip now and then and
leave the rest to us. You needn't be afraid of
us givin' the show away as long as you keep
us happy and all like that. All I ask for my-
self, for instance, is a few introductions: I’ll
take care of the rest.”
“I think you must be mad!” Priscilla's
head was swimming again; she was clutching
the edge of the table with both hands in order
to keep her feet. “Was it to tell me this that
you—you—?”
“Precisely,” Harry assented with an amiable
nod.
For an instant she was dumb perforce. Then
the vertigo beginning to pass, and with it the
fear of fainting again; she found fresh confi-
dence and was visited by an inspiration of cun-
ning.
“If I refuse—?”
“You’ll get twenty-four hours to think it


308 THE DARK MIRROR
lost his footing, brought up heavily against the
table. Bottle and glass, escaping his palsied
grasp, crashed to the floor. In a fluttering
breath the blood drained from his face, and left
it livid, leaden and blue. His widened eyes
were fixed in horror.
“What's 'at?” Broken words brushed his
stiff lips. “What's 'at?” He lifted a shaking
arm and singled out Priscilla. His voice be-
came a scream: “Name of Gawd! somebody
tell me—what's 'at there?”
The Nut dropped a soothing hand upon his
shoulder.
“Why, Red—it's Nora!”
“Nora?” the gunman chattered. “I know
it’s Nora! But what's it doin’ here?”
“But, Red!”—in alarm English Addie
ranged up on his other side and laid hold of
his arm—“why shouldn't Nora be here?”
“Why?” He glared madly at the woman.
“Why, 'cause she's dead.”
“But, Red—!”
“Dead, I tell you! I guess I oughta know.
Didn't I croak her meself, up there in the
woods, yest'day aft'noon!” He seemed to real-
ise what he had said and tried to cover it with
hysterical protest. “No: that's a lie! Who


THE DARK MIRROR 309
said I croaked her? I never, she done it her-
self, it was all a accident! I tell you I didn't
have nothin' to do with it—her foot slipped and
she went over the edge before I could catch
her, and I seen her drown! I couldn't help
her, I don't know how to swim, I'd 've pulled
her out if I had! It wasn't my fault—I swear
to Gawd it was all a accident!”
“But, Red you're off your nut!” Addie
reasoned. “Nora couldn't be dead and here at
the same time—”
“She is dead! Didn't I see her drown me-
self? Gawd! I ain't seen nothin' since but her
face when she went under, I ain't heard noth-
in’ but her voice beggin' me not to . . .”
He stammered into incoherence, his chin
sank upon his breast, he glared at Priscilla
with the look of a lunatic. Abruptly he roused,
wild of eye, features working insanely, and
threw off the hands of Addie and the Nut.
“Lemme loose!” he screamed. “Lemme
loose! I croaked her once, but if once ain't
enough, I’ll croak her again and make it sure,
the-’’ *
Epithets unspeakably vile fell like toads
from his slavering mouth. He tugged at a
pocket of his trousers—and suddenly an auto-


310 THE DARK MIRROR
matic pistol was wavering in his hand. With
a choking cry, Priscilla cowered, throwing both
hands out to shield her face. The Nut and
Addie fell upon Carnehan bodily. For a
moment it seemed that they might be able to
hold him. But he fought with the strength of
a maniac. The hold of the Englishwoman was
broken first, she was thrown off shrieking for
help. The Nut clung desperately to Carne-
han's pistol hand, striving to wrest the weapon
from him. Then others closed in, Carnehan
became the core of a swaying, writhing tangle
of bodies.
It was, Priscilla thought, like looking
through a peep-hole into hell. They fought
like wild beasts in a pit, like beasts they
growled, yelped, snarled, snapped, howled,
roared. A haze of dust, beaten up from the
unswept floor by scuffling, shifting, stamping
feet, hung in the gas-light.
The pistol exploded with a detonation ear-
splitting in that confined space.
Priscilla, witless with fright, felt herself
seized and urged toward the door.
“Beat it, child—get out of this as quick’s
you can! I seen from the very first you wasn’t
Nora!”


“He knelt and pressed his lips to Priscilla's, to her fore-
head, her leaden eyes, her languid hands. “Dear heart of
x --
mine,' he murmured—‘dear wife,


312 THE DARK MIRROR
were reluctant to her shaking, uninstructed fin-
gers. At length, however, the last slid back,
she lifted the stout iron latch, the door slammed
open.
Three uniformed policemen, armed with
pistols and nightsticks, charged in. Seeing the
girl, one seized and threw her roughly back
against the wall. She gave a cry of pain. A
voice she knew protested sharply:
“Let that lady go, officer. She is my wife.”
Priscilla turned. Mario was offering her the
haven of his arms. She went into them sob-
bing his name aloud. Other police officers
passed them, running.
As readily as though she had been a child,
Mario gathered her up and strode down the
stairs. Arms round his neck, she clung closely
to him. His breath was on her cheek, she was
aware of his strength and gentleness. Nestling
against his bosom, she was sensible of the un-
hurried, powerful pulsations of his heart . . .
WI. RESCUED
THE reminiscent feeling was now more than
ever strong, more insistent. The old saw
failed: for once history was retelling a fa-
miliar chapter. All that she was apprehend-


THE DARK MIRROR 313
ing, emotionally or through sensory percep-
tion, was mere repetition—all this she had
known before.
Precisely as now had Mario carried her
down the stairs of the burning tenement. The
same raucous babbling had saluted their es-
cape, the same surging rabble disputed their
passage. Once more Mario lifted her into a
waiting motor-car, shut the door and, as the
driver jockeyed a way through the mob, gath-
ered her tenderly into his arms.
Or was it Leonora to whom these things
had one time happened and now were happen-
ing again?
Was this too a dream?
Reality was something as slippery and eva-
sive as a greased tumbler, the effort to recap-
ture and hold fast to it too fatiguing: if this
were but a dream, in those arms, to dream was
Sweet.
Without one regret she resigned herself to
the dominion of the dream; and ability to dis-
criminate between illusion and actuality lapsed
into unlamented abeyance. So with sense of
personality; there was confusion, but it was of
no consequence; whether Leonora or Priscilla,
she was safe with her beloved, and at rest.


314 THE DARK MIRROR
a
In such security instinct for self-preserva-
tion lost purpose and languished; the necessity
for self-assertion was no more, which had sus-
tained her powers against the drag upon them
of narcotic poisoning added to sheer physical
exhaustion; consciousness faded into a phase
of half waking lethargy, in which she was by
turns aware and unaware; and the fiction of a
dream was maintained by impressions of
changing scenes unrelated save through the
constant progress of the car.
Streets mean and grim dissolved as by magic
into a jewelled perspective of Fifth avenue,
bare and still. Darkness closed down and
lifted like a curtain to disclose vistas of black
water veined with rippling lights. These in
turn were blotted out. . . . Veils of shadow
thinned, revealing the purple glimmer of an
open starlight night and the white lance of the
headlights shearing a lane through dim and
silent fields. . . . Hours later (or perhaps
years—or minutes) the car was roaring up-
grade on a forest road like a tunnel, roofed
and walled with leaves whose silhouettes in
the swinging headlight glare had the look of
patterns cut from cardboard and painted an
earthly green. . . . Then in the ghostly cre-


CHAPTER TEN
THE DAY OF RECKONING
* I. THE BUNGALOW
N entering the living room she heard
O a clock strike. Immediately she
paused, counting.
Eight chimes died singing in the scented
evening hush; but she did not stir, her pose
remained that of one arrested sharply in some
act of charming stealth, so delicately poised in
apprehensiveness she seemed scarcely to touch
the floor. The sensitive slender fingers of one
hand brushed with their tips the polished top
of a small mahogany console table. Half
closed, the other rested upon a froth of lace
covering a bosom whose agitation, together
with the quick, curious glances of dark eyes,
alone belied the pale composure of her counte-
Ilan Ce.
The room was quiet, dim with shadows, but
for herself untenanted.
316


THE DARK MIRROR 317
Neither could she see anybody on the veran-
da that was visible through a wide doorway
and low, broad windows.
A slight sound drew her attention the other
way. She discovered a dining room beyond
the living room. Soft-footed, a Japanese boy
in white linen appeared, carrying two can-
delabra of three branches each, and vanished
after placing them upon the round dining ta-
ble, where their rich light fell softly on lus-
trous napery, burnished silver, an iridescent
bowl of cut glass filled with burning roses.
She remarked that there were places set for
two. -
Her regard reverted to the living room. She
thought it delightful in every detail of its un-
pretentious luxury. Riches alone could never
have created it. The wood fire ready laid in
the fieldstone fireplace would presently be
grateful: already there was a hint of chill in
the aromatic, rare air of the hills.
She moved aimlessly to the middle of the
room and paused again. A long breath sighed
on her lips. As she turned uneasily toward
the veranda a duplication of the gesture made
her aware of a mirror on the wall opposite.
She inspected herself gravely.


318 THE DARK MIRROR
Vitality of youth had reacted normally dur-
ing her long sleep. She carried never a sign
of those ordeals which she had undergone in
the last forty-eight hours. The simple frock
which the maid had fetched her unbidden fitted
and became her to admiration. Never, indeed,
had she looked more lovely. This was not her
thought, though her little nod betokened satis-
faction. Nevertheless her eyes betrayed still a
mind troubled and oppressed.
She had waked up without a shadow of
doubt upon her understanding, she recalled
without a break every link in the chain of
events which had brought her to this place, she
was acutely conscious of her anomalous posi-
tion in this household, profoundly disturbed.
But she had said nothing to the maid whom
she had found watching by her bedside; and
the latter, discreet, well-trained, and obviously
unsuspicious, had not ventured a single ques-
tion—had, indeed, betrayed the curiosity which
must have been gnawing her very vitals by
nothing more than a simple expression of her
happiness to see “madame” safely “at home”
again. . . .
A remote droning noise crept into the still-
ness of the evening so gradually that she noted


THE DARK MIRROR 819
it without any astonishment; but when, gain-
ing in volume, it became recognisable as the
sustained growl of a motor-car rapidly climb-
ing the mountain road, she began to tremble.
The car swept swiftly across the far side of
the clearing, swung into the drive that led to
the garage, and disappeared. The throbbing
of its motor was stilled. Impatient footsteps
sounded on the gravel walk. -
Her body was vibrating now like a reed.
Almost the impulse was more strong than her
will, to fly back to her bedchamber, lock her-
self in, refuse to see or speak to him. . . .
How could she face him and tell him the
truth? How break his heart? And not his
alone . . .
Running up the steps to the veranda, he saw
her waiting in the shadows and cried out to her
in the name of Leonora. She could not reply.
Mental rehearsal of what her attitude at this
meeting should be proved valueless. She had
meant to guard against his arms with a de-
cision, an authority, which must command re-
spect and win her time enough to tell him; she
was captive and powerless before she could lift
a hand or articulate one syllable of protest.
The passion of his kisses, the murmuring of


322 THE DARK MIRROR
For her own part, she approached the table
choking with emotion, thoroughly persuaded
she would be unable to eat a single mouthful.
She was no sooner seated than aware that she
was famished—and the romantic sentiments
appropriate to the situation incontinently went
by the board, she ate like the hungry and
healthy young woman she was.
Nothing surprising about that: she had
eaten little breakfast yesterday, no luncheon
whatever; so that the tray of fruit, toast and
tea which the maid had brought to her room
while Priscilla was in her bath broke an actual
fast of thirty-six hours’ duration and served
rather to whet than to blunt a lively appetite.
Furthermore the dinner, perfectly com-
posed, cooked and served by the Japanese boy,
was irresistible.
Opposite her, Mario barely tasted the dishes
set before him. The careworn eyes in that
dark, ascetic face watched her constantly if
covertly. If she looked up from her plate, he
dissembled studiously, his smile flashed eager-
ly. She was none the less conscious of his
anxious expression when she was not looking
—aware and distressed.
Conversation under such conditions was a


THE DARK MIRROR 323
sort of stilted farce, fitful, inconsecutive, in-
consequential. Mario did his best to seem at
ease and be amusing, but his silences were
abrupt, frequent, and long, and his observa-
tions, deriving from matters with which Le-
onora may have been acquainted, now fell on
uninstructed ears. Priscilla's undisguisable
bewilderment at some of his references was to
him bewildering. Naturally enough, he
couldn't understand . . .
Nor was it altogether possible to avoid the
topic uppermost in both minds.
“You slept well?” he inquired.
She smiled: “Famously!”
“I am glad. You show the benefit. I think
you are even more beautiful than you were,
more pale, perhaps, but—how does one say it?
—spirituelle. But it may be I am not a fair
judge; tonight I am so happy, I see all things
couleur de rose.”
His lean brown hand stole across the cloth
to cover hers for a moment. “And you—are
you not glad, dear, to be home with me once
more?”
She said, with difficulty, in a low voice, look-
ing down at her plate:
“I am glad to be with you, Mario.”


324 THE DARK MIRROR
It was true: in spite of everything, she was
strangely glad. But it was wrong of her to
Say SO. . . .
“I myself slept till noon,” he volunteered.
“Then I waited and waited and waited for you
to wake up, but you were sleeping like a child,
you never stirred; one had not the heart to dis-
turb you. Then, when it got so late, and I
could no longer put off going down into the
valley, I gave Martha instructions not to leave
your bedside till I returned or you awakened.”
She wondered: “Why?” -
“I was afraid, I dared not leave anything to
chance. One could not foretell in what con-
dition you would wake up. If anything had
happened . . . I think another disappearance
would have driven me insane!”
She avoided his eyes, and asked, rather me-
chanically, more to say something than out of
desire to know:
“Why did you have to go down into the val-
ley?”
“To telegraph New York and call off the
detectives I had employed to look for you.
Also to tell the villagers you were safely found,
and thank them. They were most kind, those
good people; fully half a hundred of them


THE DARK MIRROR 325
stayed up all night with me, while we searched
the woods; and though many had not had a
wink of sleep, they were still searching yester-
day afternoon when I despaired and deter-
mined to seek you in New York.”
Thus reminded of the sad futility of that
search, she was too deeply disturbed to wonder
why he could not have telephoned to the vil-
lage. . . .
The Japanese served their coffee in the liv-
ing room. It was now quite dark, and the air
though sweet was keen. The fire was burning
but the windows and door were not closed; and
the faintly acrid smell of wood smoke blended
pleasantly with the pungent perfume of the
pines.
Mario placed an easy chair for Priscilla,
made it easier with cushions for her back and
head, offered her cigarettes—and showed sur-
prise when she refused them—lighted one for
himself and threw it away half smoked, and
knelt down beside her chair, resting his elbows
on its arm and capturing one of her hands.
She tried to steel herself against the weak-
ness of the flesh, the protests of her affections,
the enervation of her sympathies, reminding
herself she must be cruel to be kind. But it


328 THE DARK MIRROR
—or a ruse to further his escape. I saw him
last night. He was in that place—”
“I know Carnehan is not dead. But what
is this nonsense you are trying to tell me?”
She repeated: “He killed Leonora. He
met her—”
The man gave a gesture of exasperation.
“But one of us is mad!”
“No, Mario,” she said gently—“neither of
33
UIS
“But I see you—with my own eyes I see you
sitting there, telling me this atrocious thing,
that you are dead!”
“Not I, but Leonora »
“But you are Leonora!”
“I tried, to begin with, to tell you I wasn't.”
“But I see you—I tell you, I see you—”
“It’s true, I believe, I look like Leonora
22
“Look like her?” He laughed shortly.
“You are her!”
“But I am not,” she persisted patiently.
“Please, Mario, please listen to me before you
question my sanity.”
He was briefly silent, in a dazed stare, then
made a sign of impatient deference to her wish.
“Go on,” he bade her thickly.


THE DARK MIRROR 331
den, in peril of your life, and rescue you and
bring you back, you thank me by making up
this preposterous tale, with your own tongue
you tell me to my face you are dead, you at-
tempt to deny the fact of your own existence!
What am I to believe, then? That my eyes
do not see you, my ears do not hear your voice,
my hands within these last few minutes have
not touched your hands, of warm flesh and
blood? That you are a vision, a creature of
my imagination, a ghost? Ah, have done! A
child would not attempt a deception so trans-
parent.”
He turned and moved away. “No, Le-
onora: you ask too much of my generosity!”
“Oh, I am sorry, so sorry, Mario!”
The artlessness of that reiterated cry
brought him back.
“If that is so, if you wish me to believe you
are sorry—then let us have an end to this mad-
ness: admit you are my wife.”
She could only shake her head. . . .
He brooded with a fixed and sullen gaze.
“Why,” he broke out furiously—“if you do
not know me, how is it you know me so well?
When, suspecting the truth—but never how
hideous it was—I followed you back to New


332 THE DARK MIRROR
York yesterday; when I tramped for hours the
streets where I had met and loved and wooed
you and, as I thought, won your love; when at
length I caught sight of Carnehan and dogged
him, from bar to bar, without his knowledge,
until finally he reeled into that infamous place,
and I, suspecting he might have had you im-
prisoned there, got a detail of police from the
station round the corner; when we broke in,
and I found you half demented with fear, and
you saw me and came running to my arms:
when that happened—if you were and are not
Leonora—how did you know who I was, how
came you at sight to cry out my name, Mario?”
She begged his charity with clasped hands.
“If you will only listen, I can explain.”
With a curt nod he consented, turned his
back to the fire, folded his arms. His eyes held
a sardonic gleam.
“I am listening.”
She made impulsively to speak, but uttered
never a sound. Her heart misgave her. The
story she must tell, if she were to explain, was
even more preposterous than that which he was
refusing to credit. It would only earn his
deeper scorn. Her eyes turned blank, her face
expressionless.


THE DARK MIRROR 337
“But you have just admitted that you still
love me!”
She endured his gaze with an adorable
bravery.
“I have always loved you—ever since Le-
onora loved you—and as well.”
“Then you still insist—?”
“I am not your wife, I have never seen you
before tonight except—”
She stammered into silence. If it were hu-
manly possible to render the situation more
impossible than it was, she could achieve that
by rounding out the phrase that had died on
her lips: “except in dreams.”
“Except ?”
“Please don't ask me. I can’t tell you—
not tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps. Mario:
please be kind to me now, let me go.”
His hands fell away from her shoulders.
“Perhaps you are right,” he said heavily. “If
this goes on, I myself must go mad!”
“Then be pitiful to me, be still more kind.
Take me to New York tonight, take me to my
aunt, Mrs. Trowbridge—”
“What?” His tone changed again, becom-
ing thick with resentment and suspicion.
“You are at that again? Undeceive yourself:


THE DARK MIRROR 339
-
“You love me?”
She made no answer. With a hand beneath
her chin, he lifted her face to his, but her look
discountenanced him, he hesitated.
“Please, Mario, not my lips—not again to-
night—not till we understand each other bet-
ter.”
He let her go. She found herself on the
threshold of the bedchamber. She looked back.
To see him standing where she had left him,
his arms slack, his head fallen forward, chin to
chest, crushed by his vast disconsolation—that
wrung her heart.
But what must be, must . . .
III. THE CAPTIVE
THE key was on her side of the door: she
was none the less a prisoner.
No illusions obscured her insight into Ma-
rio's mind toward the woman whom he mistook
for his wife and believed to be temporarily un-
balanced through hysteria—and with such am-
ple excuse that Priscilla would be the last to
quarrel with him on the score of either miscon-
ception.
In his understanding she was his wife and


THE DARK MIRROR 341
be an affair of days, possibly of weeks; where-
as Priscilla had not hours to spare.
She knew, even as the door closed behind
her, what she must do, and when. Her mind
was made up to make good her escape before
morning.
The mere suggestion was appalling. She
dared not dwell long upon the difficulties it
presented lest resolution weaken. To her own
knowledge of her whereabouts, she was lost
completely—going on Mario's information ten
miles from nowhere. But there was a road: a
road must lead somewhere. She was young
and strong enough to walk ten miles if she
must, farther at a pinch. And the occasion
was extreme: she dared not let herself be de-
terred by any obstacle or any danger, real or
fanciful.
She was too desperately in love . . .
She could hear Mario in the living room,
pacing to and fro; she could picture to herself
the man in the torment of his solicitude for
her, fretted by mystification and the feeling of
frustration. She imagined that her pulses
throbbed in time with those unhasting, unrest-
ing footfalls. The temptation to go out to him


342 THE DARK MIRROR
and comfort him was all but stronger than her
instinct for self-preservation.
What did it matter whether Priscilla Maine
survived or perished, so that he were not made
unhappy?
After all, what did she care whether he loved
her by this name or by that, so that he loved
her?
Leonora was no more. Carnehan's confes-
sion had confirmed Priscilla's clairvoyant
knowledge of her death. No harm would be
done to any living soul if she took his love for
Leonora and made it her own; Mario himself
would not be wronged; for the dead could have
loved him no better than the living did and
would, and all his sadness would become glad-
ness and his sufferings be assuaged.
Aware—though she denied it—of the abyss
that yawned for her, she was constrained by
sheer might of will to put away thoughts such
as these.
She had need to remind herself there could
be no enduring happiness in a love that was
won by fraud. . . .
With determination she attacked the prob-
lem: How to escape?
Her bedchamber had three windows and,


THE DARK MIRROR 343
aside from that which opened on the living
room, two doors, of which one gave access to
the bathroom, the other to Mario's room, which
in turn opened on the living room again.
With infinite stealth she closed and locked
that door. -
Two of the windows looked out on the front
of the bungalow, the third on the side. All
were fitted with wire screens to be raised and
lowered like ordinary glazed sashes. But the
wood had swollen since their installation: she
could not budge any one of them. And when
she thought of cutting the wire out of the
frame, she found no tool better suited to her
needs than a pair of curved manicure scissors.
Her only way out, then, was through the
living room. And Mario was there. She
would have to be patient. If he felt as little
disposed for bed as she, after her day-long
sleep, she would have long to wait.
She ransacked Leonora's slender wardrobe
without finding any clothing more suitable for
her flight than the dress she had on. Ap-
parently Leonora had found time to do but
little shopping for herself. She had not needed
many things to wear, so far from civilisation.


346 THE DARK MIRROR
cramped, she heard no more sounds beyond
either.
The night grew bitterly cold.
Discomfort as much as impatience at length
overruled timidity and caution. Warily open-
ing the living-room door, she found Mario
seated in a chair, facing her.
IV. FLIGHT
HE had placed the chair within a yard of
the door. His feet, as he sat with legs ex-
tended, ankles crossed, were almost on the
threshold. She could hardly pass without step-
ping over them. He made no offer to move.
Indeed, he did not stir a finger. His hands
were clasped before him, his head rested on the
high back of the chair, his face was masked in
deep shadow, the deeper for the fire directly
behind him, across the room, whose ruddy dy-
ing glow furnished the only light.
It was a long minute before his measured
breathing revived her courage. She sidled out
noiselessly in her stockinged feet, watching him
suspiciously. But the sleep that follows an
emotional crisis, always profound, annulled the
precautions he had taken to prevent precisely
what was happening.


THE DARK MIRROR 347
At the edge of the veranda she delayed long
enough to take her slippers from the pockets
of the motoring wrap and put them on. Then
she stepped down to the soft turf and sped
swiftly round the bungalow to the garage.
Its doors were open—as she already knew,
for a view of the garage was commanded by
the side window of Leonora's bedchamber.
Cold moonlight, slanting in, picked out the
blind lamps of the car and the bright work of
bonnet and windshield.
With a thumping heart she slipped into the
driver's seat and groped for the lighting and
ignition controls on the dash. The luck seemed
to be with her now; the switchboard had not
been locked. The first button her fingers found
loosed a slashing white beam upon the purple
and tarnished silver of the night. She switched
the headlights off hastily, that they might not
betray her before she had acquainted herself
with the starting mechanism. Mario might
wake up at any moment to find himself watch-
ing an open door; she must make sure of every
move in advance. Once she had started the
motor, concealment would no longer be possi-
ble, everything would depend upon speed and
precision.


348 THE DARK MIRROR
And when all was ready she had to wait a
little while before she could still the nervous
agitation of her hands.
Her foot depressed the starting pedal, and
in the great hush the willing drum of the mo-
tor reverberated like a long roll heralding the
Trump of Doom. Simultaneously meshing
the gears in first speed, Priscilla let the clutch
in somewhat too suddenly. The car jumped
like a startled animal and leaped out of the
garage. She heard, or thought she heard, a
shout from within the bungalow, and in her
haste bungled the shift to second speed, so that
the gears ground and screeched infernally.
Nevertheless, the car moved down to the road
at a swifter, smoother pace.
In passing she saw, out of the corner of her
eye, Mario run out onto the veranda, pause,
then dash madly toward the car. She bore
heavily on the accelerator and made the third
shift smoothly enough, an instant later round-
ing into the road on not more than two wheels.
Angry shouts in the rear told her that Mario
had failed to overtake her. She had mo-
mentarily imagined him making a flying leap
and climbing into the car over the folded top.


THE DARK MIRROR 349
But either he had miscalculated or he was an
inapt student of the cinema.
The moonlight failed as the car shot out of
the clearing, narrowly scraping disaster before
Priscilla remembered to unleash the headlights.
Then she found herself plunging down a
startling grade on what was really nothing
more than two parallel wheel tracks, on either
side of a strip of grass, between forest walls
that crowded the car so closely it could by no
chance have passed another.
To a moderate store of amateurish driving
ability alone she owed not one but a dozen
breath-taking escapes. The road twisted and
turned in a way to test the ability of a skilled
hand at the wheel, in the first few miles seldom
running straight for as much as two hundred
yards. The grade grew by degrees less dan-
gerous, however, the road less serpentine; there
were presently stretches of almost level run-
ning. But the unbroken ranks of trees told
her nothing, and she could only surmise that
she had gained the valley, or was near it, from
the fact that she encountered occasional up
grades, some so steep as to necessitate shift-
ing to a lower speed.
After a time the road forked, and perhaps


THE DARK MIRROR 351
fast where it had stopped. She shut off the
ignition and got down to investigate, stepping
into mud above her ankles. The sole result of
her attempt to back out had been to bog down
the wheels nearly to the hubs. When she her-
self tried to move, the mud retained her slip-
pers. She had to climb upon the running board
and fish for them with her hands.
When she had strained the motor for a few
more minutes without encouragement, she gave
up the hopeless struggle and cried a little into
her muddied hands.
She had run at least twenty minutes at a
very tolerable pace before this mishap halted
her. It would take Mario, travelling afoot, at
least an hour to cover the same distance. She
reckoned the chances three to one against his
finding her; she couldn't count on his intuition
advising him that she had twice taken the
wrong turning.
The unhappy alternative was hers, to remain
in the car till she was found—if she ever was
—or to pick her way back through the pitch-
dark forest to the first fork in the road, either
to wait there to be recaptured by Mario, or
else to push on into the valley, or wherever the


THE DARK MIRROR 355
which an unpleasant odour exhaled, several
empty whiskey bottles and one half full, empty
cigarette cartons and a vast litter of cigarette
stumps. A frying pan on the sheet-iron stove
held a rasher of bacon in a pool of coagulated
grease. There were tumbled blankets on a
rickety cot in the corner.
The girl saw none of these things; or if she
saw them, they meant nothing to her. As if
her strength had only sufficed to sustain her
to the shelter of a roof, she dropped to the floor
and lay there, panting and sobbing and quak-
ing like a child that has been brutally punished.
Within three minutes a man came running
up the trail. He was young, slender and wiry
of stature, and wore an aged red sweater with
a pair of khaki trousers. His face was of a
glowing scarlet shade and dripped with sweat
which ran down into his eyes and was at least
in part the cause of the monologue of profan-
ity which clogged his laboured breathing.
He lumbered on wearily, like one who has
run a long distance, ever and anon looking
back over shoulder as if he feared pursuit. His
right hand held an automatic pistol of heavy
calibre, ready for instant use.
At the door of the shanty he paused, shut


THE DARK MIRROR 357
point blank, at a distance of not more than
five feet. Yet when the fifth shot had been
fired the girl was still standing, unharmed,
staring blankly at him.
Then he went utterly insane with fear. One
word—“Leonora!”—was his shrieked valedic-
tion to the world. His pistol held a sixth car-
tridge. He thrust the muzzle between his
teeth and pulled the trigger.
As Carnehan fell, Fosdick with the detective
Andrews and the man Mario broke into the
shanty.


366 THE DARK MIRROR
mould herself to his ways of life. They quar-
relled hideously, I fancy. She wanted to leave
him, and he wouldn't listen to it. Remember:
they were desperately in love.
“Eventually they left New York on a for-
lorn hope, planning to establish themselves in
some part of the country where they were not
known and try to build up a life together.
That was a foreordained failure. Your fa-
ther was miserable away from his home and
his friends. At last your mother took her fate
in her hands and ran away. She took with her
Leonora, leaving you to your father.”
“Leonora was my sister!” -** * *
“You were born twins, in California, several
months before your mother ran away. . . .
Your father used every possible means to try
to find your mother and induce her to return
to him, but she eluded him till the end; she
died, it would seem, a year or so later, leaving
Leonora in the care of her aunt—Mother
O'More. These letters were addressed to your
mother in her care. It would appear they were
never answered.”
But Priscilla was no longer listening; and
perceiving this, Fosdick paused.


THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.