“The last time you was Napolen Bonopart.”

He stared wonderingly at those marks made by no mortal hand.  He thrilled with a vast elation; and yet instantly a suspicion formed that here was something to his discredit, something one wouldn’t care to have known.  He had read as little history as possible, yet there floated in his mind certain random phrases, “A Corsican upstart,” “An assassin,” “No gentleman!”

“I—­I suppose—­you’re sure there can’t be any doubt about this?”

He looked pleadingly at the Countess.  But the Countess was a mere psychic instrument, it seemed, and had to be told, first of the question—­he produced it with a suspicion that she might doubt his honesty—­and then of the astounding answer.  Thus enlightened, she protested that there could be no doubt about the truth of the answer; she was ready to stake her professional reputation on its truth.  She regarded Bean with an awe which she made no attempt to conceal.

“You had your day,” she said significantly; “pomps and powers and—­and attentions!”

Bean was excitedly piecing together what fragments of data his reading had left him.

“Emperor of France—­”

But some one else had rung the third bell, perhaps one of those scientists coming to be dumfounded.

“He was,” the Countess replied hurriedly, “the husban’ of Mary Antonett, an’ they both got arrested and gilletined in the great French revolution.”

He was pretty certain that this was incorrect, but the Countess, after all, was a mere instrument of higher intelligence, and she now made no pretence of speaking otherwise than humanly.

“An’ my controls say they’ll leave me in a body if I take a cent less ’n three dollars.”

One of the controls seemed to be looking this very threat or something like it from the medium’s sharpened eyes.

Bean paid hastily, thus averting what would have been a calamity to all earnest students of the occult.  The advertisement, it is true, had specifically mentioned one dollar as the accustomed honorarium, but this was no time to haggle.

Napoleon!

“Don’t furgit the number,” urged the Countess, “an’ if you got any friends, I’d appreciate—­”

“Certainly!  Sure thing!” said the palpitating one, and blindly felt his way into the night.

The same stars shone above the city street; the same heedless throng disregarded them; disregarded, too, the slight figure that paused a moment to survey the sky and the world beneath it through a new pair of eyes.

Napoleon!

IV