THE HEART LINE

He took her hand, testing its quality and texture Page 52

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

Prologue

I The Palmist and Fancy Gray
II Tuition and Intuition
III The Spider's Nest
IV The Paysons
V The Rise and Fall of Gay P. Summer
VI Side Lights
VII The Weaving of the Web
VIII Illumination
IX Coming On
X A Look Into the Mirror
XI The First Turning to the Left
XII The First Turning to the Right
XIII The Bloodsucker
XIV The Fore-Honeymoon
XV The Re-Entrant Angle
XVI Tit for Tat
XVII The Materializing Seance
XVIII A Return to Instinct
XIX Fancy Gray Accepts
XX Masterson's Manoeuvers
XXI The Sunrise

Epilogue

THE HEART LINE

PROLOGUE

In the year 1877 the Siskiyou House, originally a third-class hotel patronized chiefly by mining men, had fallen into such disrepute that it was scarcely more than a cheap tenement. Its office was now frankly a bar-room; beside it, a narrow hallway plunged into the shabby, shadowy interior; here a steep stairway rose. Above were disconsolate rooms known to the police of San Francisco as the occasional resort of counterfeiters, confidence workers and lesser knaves; to the neighborhood the Siskiyou Hotel had a local reputation as being the home of Madam Grant, who occupied two rooms on the second floor.

Her rooms were slovenly and squalid—almost barbarous in the extremity of their neglect. Upon the floor was a matted carpet of dirt and rubbish inches deep, piled higher