Produced by Al Haines. [Illustration: Cover art] [Illustration: He took her hand, testing its quality and texture Page 52] *THE HEART LINE* _A DRAMA OF SAN FRANCISCO_ _By_ GELETT BURGESS Author of The White Cat, Vivette A Little Sister of Destiny, etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY LESTER RALPH NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT 1907 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY OCTOBER TO MAYSIE WHO KNEW THE PEOPLE AND LOVED THE PLACE IN MEMORY OF THE CITY THAT WAS *CONTENTS* CHAPTER Prologue I The Palmist and Fancy Gray II Tuition and Intuition III The Spider’s Nest IV The Paysons V The Rise and Fall of Gay P. Summer VI Side Lights VII The Weaving of the Web VIII Illumination IX Coming On X A Look Into the Mirror XI The First Turning to the Left XII The First Turning to the Right XIII The Bloodsucker XIV The Fore-Honeymoon XV The Re-Entrant Angle XVI Tit for Tat XVII The Materializing Seance XVIII A Return to Instinct XIX Fancy Gray Accepts XX Masterson’s Manoeuvers XXI The Sunrise Epilogue *THE HEART LINE* *PROLOGUE* In the year 1877 the Siskiyou House, originally a third-class hotel patronized chiefly by mining men, had fallen into such disrepute that it was scarcely more than a cheap tenement. Its office was now frankly a bar-room; beside it, a narrow hallway plunged into the shabby, shadowy interior; here a steep stairway rose. Above were disconsolate rooms known to the police of San Francisco as the occasional resort of counterfeiters, confidence workers and lesser knaves; to the neighborhood the Siskiyou Hotel had a local reputation as being the home of Madam Grant, who occupied two rooms on the second floor. Her rooms were slovenly and squalid—almost barbarous in the extremity of their neglect. Upon the floor was a matted carpet of dirt and rubbish inches deep, piled higher at the corners, uneven with lumps of refuse, bizarre with scraps of paper, cloth and tangled strings.