"You gave me a lot for my money," he growled.

"Waal, it aren't my show," she drawled. "I'm no spirit medium. You take
chances. Some'll sleep right along and never hear nothin'. Others, like
yourself, are different and get the whole thing."

"Who's the old gentleman?--does he hear it?" asked Jim.

"There's no old gentleman at all," she answered coolly. "I just told
you that to make you feel easy like in case you did hear anythin'. You
were all alone on the floor."

"Say now," she went on, after a pause in which Shorthouse could think of
nothing to say but unpublishable things, "say now, do tell, did you feel
sort of cold when the show was on, sort of tired and weak, I mean, as if
you might be going to die?"

"How can I say?" he answered savagely; "what I felt God only knows."

"Waal, but He won't tell," she drawled out. "Only I was wonderin' how
you really did feel, because the man who had that room last was found
one morning in bed--"

"In bed?"

"He was dead. He was the one before you. Oh! You don't need to get
rattled so. You're all right. And it all really happened, they do say.
This house used to be a private residence some twenty-five years ago,
and a German family of the name of Steinhardt lived here. They had a big
business in Wall Street, and stood 'way up in things."