The Argosy — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Thought-Reading at Lady Clanjamfry’s. III «Says he doesn’t know my aunt. I pressed him, but couldn’t get him to promise,” at which Colonel Lyndhurst looked exceedingly relieved, and promising to call for his companion at half-past ten o’clock, he and Lord Curzon went their separate ways. Meanwhile ‘Tom Barrington had turned in at a well-known library and theatrical agency, and re-emerged in a short time with a card in his hand which bore an address that he constantly perused as he walked eastward. Arrived at Piccadilly Circus, he crossed the road and dived into a narrow street leading to Golden Square, and was con- sequently lost to the gaze of the fashionable world. Ve THE thought-reader at Lady Clanjamfry’s soirée was a little foreign faced Jew, brown and wiry as a Frenchman, without a single Teutonic trait to correspond with his German name. He stood in the centre of a red carpeted dais, which his hostess had erected at one end of her big drawing-room and in front of the boudoir door; the boudoir serving as a green-room. Lady Clanjamfry has, as everyone knows, a most effusive manner, which enables her to fill up what might otherwise prove awkward pauses, when, as often happens, she fails to identify people by their right names. She has a very large circle, and is perpetually exercising some new hobby round it. To-night she has swooped upon a lumi- nary of the Church and an eminent physician, and has dragged them to two arm-chairs behind the experimentalist on the dais. ‘‘We must have men of note, you know; one accustomed to direct the souls and the other the bodies of his fellow-creatures. Now what we want to compiete the chain is, the Professor says, a man of mind, of intellect; also, if possible, a soldier, a commanding nature. Ah, Colonel Lyndhurst, is that you? You are the very man we want to make our little experiment complete! You must positively oblige me by joining those two gentlemen on the platform as Herr Von Bosch- mann’s committee. We have none of us forgotten your wonderfully clever book on—on—the habits of the Afghans, wasn’t it? I know it enthralled me!” And poor Lyndhurst, before he could assert either his detestation of all forms of occult power or the real topic of his book, found him- self on the dais too, alongside of the Clerical Celebrity and the Eminent Physician, who glared ferociously at him as the acknowledged ‘“‘ man of intellect.” “For goodness sake take my place, Curzon,” he expostulated. ‘I would not be here of my own will for anything you could give me!” But Curzon only shook his head, and with an innocent air asked if he looked like a ‘manwith a mind?’ After which he slipped into a seat near his aunt, and the business of the soirée began. “You will, please, tie this handkerchief tightly about my face and CONnnicloolKs (CO) am