Part 52 (2/2)

The exigencies of the moment, and curiosity, combined to make Mrs.

Taylor overlook temporarily that she had been insulted, and she hastened with Teeters to the dying man's side.

Emaciated, yellow, Mullendore was lying with closed eyes when they entered.

”Say, feller--” said Teeters, hoping to rouse him.

Only Mullendore's faint breathing told them that he was living.

Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his damp forehead and withdrew it quickly.

”The po-oo-or soul! I'll sing something.”

”It might help to git _ong rapport_ with the sperrits,” agreed Teeters.

As Mrs. Taylor droned a familiar camp-meeting hymn, Mullendore opened his eyes and looked at her dully:

”Who are you?” he whispered.

Mrs. Taylor quavered, ”I've come to bring the Truth to you.”

Mullendore looked at her, uncomprehending.

Teeters thrust himself in the sick man's line of vision and elucidated:

”Feller, I'm sorry to tell you you ain't goin' to 'make the grade'--they's no possible show fur you--an' Mis' Taylor here, who's a personal friend, you might say, of all the leadin' sperrits in the Sperrit World, has come to kind of prepare you--”

Mullendore's lips moved with an effort:

”There ain't nothin' after this.”

”Oh, my!” Teeters e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in a shocked voice. ”Don't say heathen things like that! If you'd seen half of what I've saw you couldn't nowise doubt.”

”There ain't no h.e.l.l--there ain't no comin' back.” The voice was stronger, and querulous.

Teeters wagged his head in horrified reproach.

”Mis' Taylor, do you think the sperrits are goin' to take holt?”

Turning to the lady who hoped to be his mother-in-law, Teeters's eyes started in his head. He was familiar with weird gyrations of the kitchen table, and messages received through the medium of the ouija board, but he never had seen the mysterious force which Mrs. Taylor referred to as her ”control” evidence itself in any such fas.h.i.+on as this.

With her lank six feet sunk upon the side bench and her supine hands lying limply in her lap, Mrs. Taylor's chest was rising and falling in convulsive heaves; the nostrils of her large flat nose were dilated, and her wide mouth, with its loose colorless lips, was slightly agape. Her eyes were open and staring fixedly straight ahead. Mrs. Taylor was in a trance.

Teeters had long since given over trying to explain what he did not understand, but in a vague way he regarded Mrs. Taylor as an unconscious fakir, whose spiritual communications bore the earmarks of something she had learned in a quite ordinary way.

There was, however, nothing of charlatanry in her present state. Teeters was convinced of that. She caught and held the gaze of Mullendore's dull eyes. Suddenly she stiffened out like a corpse galvanized into life by an electric charge, then again sank back, and said thickly between labored breaths:

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