Wandering about Denver that day, “staring like a locoed steer,” as he
afterward expressed it, Harkness came to a stand in front of a doorway
and looked at a man who had emerged therefrom. The man was William
Sanders, but he passed on without observing Harkness.
“What’s he doin’ up here?” Harkness queried, as he watched the
familiar figure disappear in the crowd.
Sanders had gone, and to get an answer to his question Harkness stared
at the doorway, and the building, a somewhat imposing edifice of
brick, situated on one of the principal streets. It was given over to
offices of various kinds, he judged; but what fixed his eye was a sign
with a painted index-hand pointing to it.
“Madame Manton, Seer, Fortune teller, Palmist, and Clairvoyant.
Fortune telling and astrology. The past and the future revealed. Lost
articles found, dreams interpreted, lovers re-united.”
There was a statement below this, in much smaller letters, setting
forth that Madame Manton, who was a seventh daughter of a seventh
daughter and from birth gifted with miraculous second-sight, had just
returned to America after a prolonged stay in European capitals,
during which she had achieved marvellous successes and had been
consulted on important matters by the crowned heads.
Harkness did not know whether to connect the egress of William Sanders
from that doorway with this fortune teller or not, but the vagaries of
his intellectual condition impelled him to enter. Following the
direction of the pointing hand, he was soon climbing a stairway which
led to the door of this professed mistress of the black arts. Here
another sign, with even more emphatic statements, greeted him. On this
door Harkness hammered lustily.
“Come in!” said a voice.
Harkness tried the knob with fumbling fingers, then set his massive
shoulders to the panel, and was fairly precipitated into the room
where a rosy half-light glowed from a red lamp, and the sunlight,
showing through heavy red curtains, conjured queer shadows in the
corners. At the farther end of the room sat a woman. She was robed in
red, and her chair was red. A reddish veil hid her face. But the hand
she extended was small and white, and flashed the fire of diamonds.
Harkness was so taken aback that he was almost on the point of bolting
from the room. But that would have savored of a lack of courage, and
his drink-buoyed mind resented the imputation. He would not run, even
from a red fortune teller. Seeing a chair by the door he dropped into
it, stared at the woman, and not knowing what else to do took out his
red handkerchief to mop his red face. The odor of cinnamon drops
floating out from it combined with that of the whiskey and filled the
room.
“If you will be kind enough to close the door!” said the woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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