"Very clever, Madam la Lune," I observed. "Harcourt phones you I'm on my way and tells you what to do. I'm supposed to come in and swallow it all. Well, I'm not interested in that game. All I want to know is how you managed to imitate my dog?" Madam la Lune rose and peered at me in the dusk. "White man," she said. "What dog you talkin' about? I ain't seen no dog." The words I had planned to fling at her died in my throat. Fraud or not, she was superb. Her pock-marked face had a haughty dignity and her bearing was that of a great queen. "I'm sorry," I apologized, without knowing why. "I'm in trouble. I hoped you could help me. All I got out of your trance was a child laughing and a dog barking." Her eyes glowed in the twilit room. "What this dog?" she demanded. "You know this dog?" "Yes," I told her. "It's my dog. His name is Ponto. He's a Great Dane and he's at the kennels." "You go, Mr. Tompkins," she ordered me. "You better go fast. That dog--wha's his color now?" "Black," I said. "Yes, black," She rolled her eyes until I saw the whites. "That black dog don' mean no good to you or yours. You keep away fum that dog, Mr. Tompkins. No, suh, I don't want you money. There's no luck with you, white man, with that black dog. I don' know how Ah knows, but Ah does know." As I walked out into the bright cool air of Lenox Avenue, I felt relieved. Madame la Lune was an interesting enough type. She obviously had the primitive sense of second sight, intuition, whatever it is, that let her penetrate behind human appearances. The medium business was just a trade trick. In Africa or Haiti she could have been a witch-doctor with a pet snake. In New Orleans, even, she would be a voodoo priestess. Here in Harlem, she had become a medium. Of course, she was a fraud, but how had she imitated the barking of the Great Dane? Then I laughed so loudly that a passing colored man sheered violently away from me. Of course, that was it. I had been right all the time. This was Harcourt's work. He had recommended Madame la Lune to me and then told her how to behave. Damn his insolence! I stopped dead and only stirred when the violent and prolonged sounding of an automobile horn reminded me that I was standing in the middle of a cross-street. How did Harcourt know about Ponto when he had never seen him? And how could he tell the medium how to imitate Ponto's bark? On the next corner was a dive--a saloon that advertised "Attractions" and from whose doors welled the jungle thumping of Harlem jazz. I slipped in and sat down at a corner table. A tall, colored girl, whose scanty white silk blouse was not designed to conceal anything, came over and leaned down to take my order. "Wha' yo' want, honey-man?" she asked sullenly. The band on the platform let loose with a blast of traps and trombone. "Let's dance," I said.