THE STORY OF IVY (Murder Mystery). Marie Belloc Lowndes
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“—Lexton.”
The name slipped out. After all, why shouldn’t she tell Mrs. Thrawn her name? Yet she was sorry she had done so a few moments later, for the fortune-teller, leaning forward, exclaimed harshly:
“Now for the powder after the jam! I sense that you are engaged in an illicit love affair fraught to you, and to others also, with frightful danger.”
Once more Ivy’s face crimsoned under her clever make-up, but this time with fear and dismay. Her eyes fell before the other woman’s hard scrutiny.
“Wrong is, of course, a matter of conscience, and I know you think you have nothing to be ashamed of. But you are leading a fine soul astray, and evil influences are gathering round you.”
“I know that I’ve done wrong,” faltered Ivy, frightened and perplexed by Mrs. Thrawn’s manner, rather than by her warning.
The other said sharply, “You know nothing of the sort! You’ve not got what I call a conscience, Mrs. Lexton. But a conscience nowadays is a very old-fashioned attribute. Many a young woman would hardly know what to do with one if she had it!”
Ivy did not know what to answer, and felt sorry indeed that she had let this censorious, disagreeable person know her name.
“For your own sake,” went on Mrs. Thrawn earnestly, “break with this man who loves you. For one thing, ‘it’s well to be off with the old love before you are on with the new.’”
“Then there is going to be another man in my life?” Ivy asked eagerly.
“I see a stranger coming into your life within a few hours from now. Whether his valuable friendship for you endures will entirely depend on yourself.”
Mrs. Thrawn got up from her chair.
“As we haven’t much time, I will now look into the crystal.”
She drew down the blind of the one window in the room, and, going across to the writing-table, she took off it a heavy, round glass ball which looked like, and might indeed have been sold for, a paper-weight. Then, moving forward a small, low table, she put it between herself and her visitor.
“Don’t speak,” she said quickly. “Try to empty your mind of all thought.”
Bending her head, she gazed into the crystal, and what seemed to Ivy Lexton a long time went by.
In reality, it might have been as long as two minutes before Mrs. Thrawn began speaking again, this time in a quick, muffled voice.
“I see you both now, you and the dark young man on whom you will bring unutterable misery and shame, and who will bring you distress and disappointment, if you do not break with him now, today. The safe way is still open to you, Mrs. Lexton, but soon it will be closed, and you will find yourself in a prison of your own making, and trapped—trapped like a rat in a sinking ship.”
Again there was a long, tense silence, and again Ivy began to feel vaguely frightened.
The prediction of shame and misery to another meant very little, if indeed anything, to her. But distress and disappointment to herself? Ah! that was another thing altogether. Ivy very much disliked meeting with even trifling disappointments.
Mrs. Thrawn looked up. All the brilliance had gone out of her curious, luminous eyes.
“I fear you will not follow the better way,” she said slowly. “Indeed, I sense that you are making up your mind not to follow it, unless the doing so falls in with your other plans. I see this dark young man’s destiny closely intertwined with your life. He will bear the scars you are about to inflict on him to his grave, and that whether he lives but a few months, or a long lifetime. You do not what you call love him any more. But he loves you as you have never yet been loved, and never will be.”
Her voice softened and became low and pitiful, for the girl who was now gazing at her with a surprised, frightened expression on her exquisite face looked too young to be what the soothsayer believed her to be, that is, already doomed, unless she altered her whole way of life, to suffer terrible things.
“As woman to woman, let me give you a word of advice, Mrs. Lexton. For your own sake try to follow it.”
“I will!” cried Ivy sincerely.
“Do not be afraid of poverty——” And then, as she saw the other’s instinctive recoil, “Poverty does not touch the likes of you with its cold finger,” and Mrs. Thrawn gave an eerie laugh. “If you are wise, if you do what is still open to you to do, you will have ups and downs, but the ups will predominate, and there will always be some man, even when you become what I should call an old woman, who will be proud, yes, proud, to be your banker.”
“Do you see something nice coming for me soon in that glass ball?” asked Ivy nervously.
She longed, secretly, to be told something more of the new man who was coming into her life.
Mrs. Thrawn bent over the cloudy crystal. Then she muttered:
“The pictures are forming. They are coming thick and fast. And—but no, I will not tell you what I see, for what I am seeing may not concern you at all. It may concern the future of the woman who is now on my doorstep——”
And, as she said the word “doorstep,” the old-fashioned house-bell pealed through the house.
Mrs. Thrawn rose and put her crystal back on the writing-table. Then she pulled up the blind.
“We’ve only a few moments left. But I’m going, for my own satisfaction,” she interjected in a singular tone, “to tell your fortune by the cards.”
As she spoke she took a pack of cards out of the drawer of her writing-table, and sank down again into her chair.
“Now, cut.”
After Ivy had obeyed, the soothsayer rapidly dealt out the cards. Then she put down her finger on the queen of hearts.
“This card stands for you,” she dragged her finger along. “And here is the king of diamonds, the man who is coming into your life, and who will give you money, much money. Even so——” she shook her head, “you will never be able to count on him as you can count on the man who is still bound to you, and whom I bid you cast out of your life at once—at once.”
She swept the cards together and rose from her chair.
“I saw trouble in your hand; I saw trouble in the crystal; I saw great trouble in the cards. Yet, Mrs. Lexton, you are not a woman who troubles trouble before trouble troubles you. Even so, unless you follow my advice about your present lover, I see misfortune galloping towards you like a riderless horse.”
“But you do still believe that I’m going to get a lot of money?” Ivy asked pleadingly. “Did the cards tell you that also?”
“Yes, the cards told me that also.”
From outside the door came the sound of footsteps.
“One last word—one last warning. When you came into this room you were not alone, Mrs. Lexton.”
Ivy stared at her. What could Mrs. Thrawn mean? Of course she had been alone!
“You were accompanied, surrounded, by a huge mob of men and women, invisible to you, but visible to me. Are you an actress?”
“I was an actress, for a little while, before I married,” said Ivy, smiling. “And I’d love to go back on the stage, but only as a leading lady, of course.”
“Given certain eventualities, you will become of great moment, of absorbing interest, to hundreds of thousands of people. Men and women will fight over you—the newspapers will record your every movement.”
Ivy smiled self-consciously. This last unexpected prediction gave her a thrill of pleasurable excitement. What could it mean but a triumphant return to the stage, of which she had been hitherto only a humble and