The House of Mystery: An Episode in the Career of Rosalie Le Grange, Clairvoyant

y habit of resting them every half-hour or so. The action was merely mechanical; his mind still lingered on the gross earnings of the reorganized L.D. and M. railroad. It was a sultry afternoon

season's languor. They crept over the oily waves at a sluggard

order to look. He wasted thus a minute; and such a wasting, in the case of Robert H. Norcross, was a considerable matter. The Sunday newspapers-when in doubt-always played the income of Robert H. Norcross by periods of months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. Ev

attention was a point in the churchyar

nd M., final independent road needed by his system, had "come in"; within that year, he had closed the last finger of his grip on a whole principality of our domain. Every laborer in that area would thenceforth do a part of his day's delving, every merchant a part of his day's bargaining, for Robert H. Norcross. Thenceforth-until some oth

e wide firmness he covered by a drooping mustache, and the eyes, which betrayed always an inner fire. The trained observer of faces noticed this, however; every curve of his facial muscles, every plane of the inner bone-structure, was set by nature definitely and properly in its place to m

. It was not so much that his full, iron-gray hair and mustache had bleached and silvered. It was more that the cheeks were falling from middle-aged

r very disuse for thirty years had weakened them. In such a cell his consciousness dwelt while he gazed on Trinity Churchyard, and especially upon that modest shaft of granite, three graves from the south entrance. And the watch on his desk

e, he leaned back, looked for a moment on the brazen September heavens above, and sighed. He

side, sir," sai

reeze and bound of a man whose blood runs quick and orderly through its channels. His face, a little pudgy, took illumination from a pair of lively eyes. He was the jester in the court of King Norcross; one of the half-dozen men whom the bachelor lord of railroads admitted to intimacy. A measured intimacy it was; and it never trenched on business. Bulger, like all the rest, owed half of his position to the fact that he never asked by so much as a hint for tips, never seemed curious about the operations of Norcross. There was the time

s mustache lifted a li

o drinks a day; one just before he lef

know where I was last night. If I took a

hardly disappeared before the office-boy entered with a tray and glasses. Simultaneously a clerk, entering from another door as though by accident, swept up the balance

th the siphon, his eyes

asked suddenly. Bulger crossed the r

asked, "Th

y Churc

er caressed a typewriter-" The intent attitude of Norcross, the fact that he neither turned nor smiled, checked Bulger. With the insti

brought out; "lot's of g

y of the

Hamilton's. Ever

marble shaft-not on

nd look, and the reporters were to see you meditating among the tombs, we'd have a scare head to-morrow and a drop of ten p

e paused the fraction of a second, and his eye grew dull. "Wond

all believe in

rose now, and paced the floor, throwing out his feet in quick thrusts. "I'm getting along, Bulger, and I'd like to know." More pacing. Comin

ly some newspaper stuff about them. Seemed rather rem

when we get older. That gravestone now. There's one like it-that I know about." Norcross, with another jerky motion,

lt, box marked 'Private 3,

m, you understand, but to assure us it is all right-that we'll live again. That's what I want-proo

ross looked within for a moment, as though turning the scent into memories, before he took out a locket. He opened it, hesitated, and then extended it to Bulger. It enclosed an exquisite miniature-a young woman, blonde,

re. We were-well, the ring's in the box, too. They took it off her finger when they buried her. That's why-" to put the brake on his rapidly running sentiment,

in old English letters-"R.H.N." and "H.W." His mind, a little confused by its wanderings in strange

by a swift outward gesture of

it was the game. She'd have had the spending of that. And it isn't just to see her-i

o place; he was again the silent, guarded baron of the railroads. He dropped the locket into the box, closed

ss in his normal tone. But his voice qua

ood at fo

saw," responded Bulger. Forthwith, they t

before he unfolded the yellow paper, that it was the important telegram from his partner, the crucial telegram, for which he had been waiting these two days. It must

E, M

month. Then the show will bust. Federated Copper Company will not bite and too late now t

TS

ising and vague standing? Yet Norcross by a word, a wink, could give him information which, rightly used, would cancel all the losses of this unfortunate plunge in t

saw a sign on the building opposite. The first line, bearing the name, doubtless, was illegible; the second, fu

OYANT,"

as though from weakness, and c

ir in that business?" he

ter a few in

ars ago-that was at Farnham Mills-'H.W