The House of Mystery
"If they could come back they would come, Bulger. Especially those we loved. Not to let us see them, you understand, but to assure us it is all right—that we'll live again. That's what I want—proof—I can't take it on faith." His voice lowered. "Thirty years!" he whispered. "What's thirty years?" The secretary knocked, entered, set a small, steel box on the glass top of the desk. Norcross dismissed him with a gesture, drew out his keys, opened the box. It distilled a faint scent of old roses and old papers. Norcross 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, pretty in a blue-eyed, innocent way, but characterless, too—a face upon which life had left nothing, so that even the great painter who made the miniature from a photograph had illuminated it only with technical skill. "Don't tell me what you think of her," Norcro
...ss said quietly; "I prefer to keep my own ideas. It was when I was a young freight clerk. She taught school up there. 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, he ventured one of his rare pleasantries at this point—"that's why I'm still a stock newspaper feature as one of the great matches for ambitious society girls." Bulger, listening, was observing also. Within the front cover of the case were two sets of initials in old English letters—"R.H.N." and "H.W." His mind, a little confused by its wanderings in strange fields, tried idly to match "H.W." with names.As Bulger stood there, immovable except for the nervous hands which still twisted and worried the telegram, he saw a sign on the building opposite. The first line, bearing the name, doubtless, was illegible; the second, fully legible, lingered for a long time merely in his perceptions before it reached and touched his consciousness. "CLAIRVOYANT," it read. He started, leaned on a table as though from weakness, and continued to stare at the sign. "Who is the cleverest fakir in that business?" he said at length to himself. And then, after a few intent minutes: "When he was a freight clerk—thirty years ago—that was at Farnham Mills—'H.W.'—granite shaft—sure it can be done!"
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