The Flimflam Affair

13 Sabina

The séance was scheduled to begin at eight o’clock. By arrangement that afternoon, John came in a cab to fetch her shortly past seven. As on her previous visits to the lair of the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses, she had dressed in a dark-colored outfit overlain with a heavy gray cape in deference to the night’s chill. A thin, wind-driven mist writhed among the tops of trees and the upper sections of Russian Hill, gave street lamps an ethereal, wrapped-in-gossamer effect. An appropriate backdrop, Sabina thought wryly, for the summoning of spirits from beyond the veil.

John was in an introspective mood tonight, curiously so since he had been talkative enough earlier in reporting the details of his conversation with Mr. Boggs. Yet he was also more than usually attentive. He sat close to her in the lamplit cab as they rode down Van Ness Avenue, an intimacy she not only allowed but enjoyed. After a few failed attempts to draw him out, she remained companionably silent herself. There was no need for any further discussion of their plans for the evening ahead; all the necessary details were already in place.

A snarl of traffic impeded the hansom’s progress so that it was nearly eight o’clock when they arrived at 3601 Turk Street. Two expensive carriages, a large landau and a smaller, high-wheeled phaeton, were parked in front of the small house; evidently the Buckleys and the Cobbs were already in attendance. The mist was thicker here. Foghorns moaning on the Bay had a lonely, lost-soul sound. When John helped her alight from the cab, the bitter-sharp wind nipped at her cheeks and nearly tore her hat free of its pinnings before she could clamp it down with one gloved hand.

They paused briefly at the gate while he peered at the sign affixed to its post. “Bah,” he muttered under his breath. “How can any sane person believe in such hokum?”

“Self-deception is the most powerful kind.”

He made a derisive noise in his throat, a sound Sabina had once likened to the rumbling snarl of a mastiff.

She said, “If you enter scowling and muttering, you’ll give the game away. We’re here as devotees, not skeptics.”

“Devotees of claptrap.”

“John, need I remind you that Winthrop Buckley is paying us handsomely for this evening’s work?”

His expression smoothed. “Not to worry, my dear. I’ll play my role properly until the time comes for masks off.”

He took her arm as they passed through the gate, mounted the stairs to the lantern-lit porch, and twisted the doorbell. Annabelle appeared almost immediately. She wore the black cowled robe tonight, her braided and coiled hair piled high atop her head, her lips painted crimson; the sharp contrast of the bloody mouth color with her pale skin was surely intended to enhance her otherworldly connection, but to Sabina’s eye it succeeded only in making her resemble an animated corpse.

“Good evening, Annabelle.”

“You have arrived just in time,” the woman said in her sepulchral voice. “The séance will soon begin.”

“An unavoidable delay. This is my cousin, John Milford.”

“How do you do,” John said with a small, polite smile. Playing his role now as promised, not that Sabina had expected otherwise.

Annabelle acknowledged him with a dip of her chin. Then she said, “Enter, friends,” in a not very friendly tone.

Inside, she took Sabina’s cape and John’s Chesterfield and hung them on the coattree. After which she led them to the parlor, announced them, and immediately glided away through the black curtain at the far end.

Professor A. Vargas was among the others gathered there. Like Annabelle, he wore a long flowing black robe and the usual white amulet. Winthrop Buckley, dressed in a tailored suit with a velvet-lapeled coat and a high regency collar, gave no indication of recognition when his bespectacled gaze met Sabina’s. He seemed a trifle ill at ease, as if he wished the evening’s business were already finished. His wife, Margaret, was gray-haired, portly, tightly corseted into a dark blue gown; her attention was entirely focused on Vargas, her gaze as rapt as that of a supplicant in the presence of a saint. The Cobbs, Oliver and Grace, were also well dressed and wore expressions of eager anticipation. The doctor bore a rather startling resemblance to the “literary hangman,” Ambrose Bierce; his blond-haired wife was much younger and decorous in an overly buxom and overly rouged fashion. Despite her demeanor, Sabina had the sense that she was more predatory than devout.

Vargas greeted Sabina with smiling courtesy, pressing his lips to the back of her hand — a familiarity that caused John’s eyes to narrow. Declaration of his false identity triggered a round of introductions, after which the bogus medium fixed him with his piercing gaze.

“I trust that you, too, are a sincere believer in the world beyond the veil, sir?” he said.

“Yes, though I have never attended a séance before. I understand they are quite enlightening.”

“Indeed they are. There are many anxious friends in the spirit world who desire to communicate with the living.”

“Are the spirits friendly tonight?” Mrs. Buckley asked.

“The Auras are uncertain. Angkar perceives antagonistic vibrations among the benign.”

“Oh, Professor!”

“Do not fear,” Vargas said. “Even if a malevolent spirit should cross the border, no harm will come to you or any of us. Angkar will protect us.”

“But will my Bernice’s spirit be allowed through if there is a malevolent force present?”

“Or my brother Gregory’s,” Sabina said.

“Yes,” Dr. Cobb said, “and my cherished mother’s.”

Vargas patted Sabina’s arm reassuringly. “Your impulses have been properly attuned, Mrs. Milford. As have yours, Mrs. Buckley and yours, Dr. Cobb. It is my great hope that each of your departed loved ones will appear, though naturally I cannot be certain until the veil has been lifted and Angkar has been summoned. Have faith, dear ladies, good doctor.”

John’s dislike for the charlatan was well concealed, but Sabina knew him well enough to tell that he was in no way impressed by the man’s pose and glib patter.

To his mind, Vargas was just another confidence trickster to be unmasked and put out of business. His voice was as blandly hopeful as his expression when he asked, “Isn’t there anything you can do to prevent a malevolent spirit from crossing over?”

“Alas, no.” Vargas then repeated the sentence he had spoken to Sabina at their first meeting, word for word. “I am merely a teacher of the light and truth of theocratic unity, merely an operator between the astral plane and this mortal sphere.”

Grace Cobb touched the wrist that protruded from the sleeve of his robe, her fingers lingering almost caressingly. The intimate way in which his fingers caressed hers in return, and the smoldering quality of the look he bestowed upon her, made Sabina wonder if Mrs. Cobb had been one of his conquests. It wouldn’t surprise her to learn that she had.

“We have faith in you, Professor,” the woman said.

“In Angkar, dear lady,” Vargas told her. “Place your faith in Angkar and the spirit world.”

“Oh, Professor Vargas,” Mrs. Buckley gushed, “you’re so wise in so many ways.”

Annabelle reappeared as silently as she had gone. “All is in readiness, Professor,” she announced, and without waiting for a response, glided away again.

“Good friends,” Vargas said, “before we enter the séance room may I accept your most kind and welcome donations to the Unified College of the Attuned Impulses so that we may succeed in our humble efforts to bring the psychic and material planes into closer harmony?”

John paid for Sabina and himself. If he had not been assured of having the greenbacks returned before the evening ended, or of reimbursement from their client if the debunking of Vargas’s flimflam failed to go as planned, he would no doubt have handed them over grudgingly. Mr. Buckley was tight-lipped as he paid; the covert glance he directed at Sabina was a mute plea for the promised success. Only Dr. Cobb ponied up with what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm.

Vargas casually dropped the wad of bills onto a table, as if money mattered not in the slightest to him personally, then led the group out of the parlor, down the gloomy hallway, and into a large room next to the one in which his consultations were held. The “spirit room,” as he called it, contained quite a few more furnishings and props than the other, these of greater variety and a more exotic nature.

The floor was covered by an Oriental carpet of dark blue and black design. More curtains made of the same ebon material as the two swindlers’ robes blotted a pair of windows; the gaslight had been turned down even lower than it had been in the consulting room, creating shadows in corners and along the low ceiling. The overheated air was permeated with the same incense that had tormented Sabina on her previous visits. The unpleasant scent in this room came from a different, larger burner perched on the fireplace mantel — a horsey-looking bronze monstrosity with tusks as well as equine teeth and a shaggy mane and beard.

The room’s centerpiece was an oval, highly polished table around which seven chairs were arranged. Six of them were straight-backed; the seventh was a twin of the high-seated one in which Vargas sat facing his acolytes during their individual consultations, except that its arms were raised on a level with that of the tabletop. In the middle of the table stood a clear-glass jar, inside of which a tiny silver bell was suspended.

Along the walls were a short, narrow cabinet of Oriental design, made of teak with an intricately inlayed top; a tall-backed rococo love seat; and an alabaster pedestal atop which sat a hideous bronze statue of an Egyptian male in full headdress — a representation, evidently, of the mythical Angkar. Atop the cabinet were a silver tray containing several bottles of various sizes and shapes, a tambourine, and a stack of children’s school slates with black wooden frames. Propped against the wall nearby was an ordinary-looking three-stringed guitar. And on the high seat of the armchair lay a coil of sturdy rope Sabina estimated to be some three yards in length.

When everyone was inside and loosely grouped near the table, Vargas closed the door, produced a large brass key from a pocket in his robe, and proceeded with a flourish to turn the key in the latch. After which he brought the key to the cabinet and set it beside the tray in plain sight. While this was being done, Sabina saw John, at the rear of the assemblage, ease back to the door and test it with a hand behind his back to determine if it was in fact locked. It was, for he caught her eye and dipped his chin affirmatively.

Still at the sideboard, Vargas announced that before the séance commenced two final preparations were necessary. Would one of the “friends of Angkar” be so kind as to assist him in the first of these? John stepped forward just ahead of Dr. Cobb.

The bogus medium said, “Mr. Milford, will you kindly examine each of the slates you see before you and tell us if they are as they seem — ordinary writing slates?”

John examined them more carefully than any of the devotees would have. “Quite ordinary,” he said.

“Select two, if you please, then write your name on each with this slate pencil. Once that has been done, place them together and tie them securely with your handkerchief.”

When John had complied, Vargas claimed the bound slates and put them in the middle of the stack. “If the spirits are willing,” he said, “a message will be left for you beneath the signatures. Perhaps from your cousin Gregory or another loved one who has passed beyond the veil, perhaps from a friendly spirit who may be in sympathy with your psychic impulses even though I have not had the opportunity to properly attune them. Discarnate forces are never predictable, you understand.”

John nodded solemnly, as though this gibberish made perfect sense to him.

“We may now be seated and form the mystic circle.”

When everyone had selected and was standing behind a chair, Sabina to Vargas’s immediate left and John directly across from him, both by prearrangement, Vargas again called for a volunteer. This time it was Dr. Cobb who stepped forward first. Vargas handed him the coiled rope and seated himself in the high chair, his forearms flat on the chair arms with only his wrists and hands extended beyond the edges. He then instructed Cobb to bind him securely to the chair — arms, legs, and chest — using as many knots as possible. Sabina and John both watched closely as this was done. Once again their gazes met briefly and both dipped their chins to acknowledge that they had spotted the gaffe in this phase of the professor’s game.

Dr. Cobb, with Buckley’s help, moved Vargas’s chair closer to the table, so that his hands and wrists rested on the surface. Smiling, the fake medium asked them all to take their seats. As Sabina sat down she bumped against the table, then reached down to feel one of its legs. As she’d expected, the table was much less heavy than it appeared to be at a glance. She stretched out a leg and with the toe of her shoe explored the carpet. The floor beneath seemed to be solid, but the nap was thick enough so that she couldn’t be certain.

Vargas instructed everyone to spread their hands, the fingers of the right to grasp the left wrist of the person next to them, thus creating a complete circle. His warm, dry hand closed over Sabina’s wrist; she in turn clutched the moist wrist of Margaret Buckley seated on her right.

“Once we commence,” Vargas said then, “attempt to empty your minds of all thought, to keep them as blank as the surfaces of the slates throughout. And remember, good friends, you must not move either hands or feet during the séance — you must not under any circumstances break the mystic circle. To do so could have grave consequences. There have been instances where inattention and disobedience have proven fatal to sensitives while in a deep trance.”

He closed his eyes, let his chin lower slowly to his chest. And the performance began.