I
THE GREAT GILMORE, founder of the fashionable cult of Purified Thought, known outside the advertising columns as Dr. Buchanan Gilmore, and to a select few as "doc," disposed his white-flanneled legs under an immense mahogany table, armed himself with a jade-handled paper-cutter, and attacked his morning's mail.
The rich, heavy furniture, the tapestries, the thick Persian rugs, the graceful but inconspicuous bronzes, and the gorgeously clad Oriental attendant spoke eloquently of prosperity. The Great Gilmore himself, arrayed from head to foot in spotless white, a single rare jewel winking from his cravat, struck a high, clear note in the midst of this effective stage setting.
It was characteristic of the man that, whatever his surroundings, he managed to be the most conspicuous thing in sight. When he had a chance to set the scenes himself, the effect was irresistible and compelling. A marvelous stage-director was lost in the Great Gilmore, and the shrine of Purified Thought was all that limited money and unlimited taste could make it.
"Really, my dear," said one Denver lady, while breathlessly describing her visit to the eminent savant, "his consultation-room is wonderful! So well is it arranged that one carries away nothing but the sense of simple elegance. Positively, my dear, the man's taste is marvelous! And such a personality! Such an expression of power in his eyes! No, brown, my dear! I remember most distinctly!"
The Great Gilmore, having set his trap for money, used money as a lure. Everything in his office was genuine—that is to say, everything but the man himself. Even the velvet-eyed, catlike servant was a genuine Hindu from over the seas, vainly endeavoring to forget that he had ever been a snake-charmer with a medicine show. Dr. Buchanan Gilmore—doubters might see his diploma displayed in the waiting-room—believed in a "good front" as firmly as he believed in the great truth that for every fleecy lamb born into this world the shears are appointed and the time set.
Gone were the hard days when the "doc" strained his musical voice in order to persuade the proletariat of the kerosene belt to part with twenty-five cents for a bottle of his justly celebrated Snake Oil, a solid gold friendship ring and a silk handkerchief being thrown in with each and every purchase. As Questo the Hypnotist, the vaudevilles knew him no more. Legerdemain, palm-reading, ventriloquism, astrology, and materializing séances he had put sternly, behind him, along with several temporarily assumed names for which he now had no further use.
This grub had become a butterfly, disdaining all but hothouse blossoms. As the expounder of Purified Thought, Dr. Buchanan Gilmore never "gave sittings." He "made appointments." The difference showed plainly in the figures upon the weekly bill, rendered to his clients upon neatly engraved linen bond.
Purified Thought appealed to a rich clientèle. There was in the very name a subtle magic which attracted those whom the doctor was pleased to describe as "the better classes." If he had learned nothing else from his lean and hungry years—his petty-larceny period, he called it—the Great Gilmore had made certain of the fact that the possession of much money does not change human nature. A rich woman, seeking advice in matters of the heart, would accept precisely the same counsel as her sister behind the notion-counter, who spares fifty cents in exchange for an interpretation of the lines in her palm. And the more the rich woman paid for her advice, the more valuable it would seem to be.
Purified Thought was the same old goods. The difference was in the package, and the market was hungry.
The Great Gilmore's mail was a heavy one, for he knew something about newspaper advertising. Some newspaper advertising is for sale, and some is not; and the latter is by far the more desirable. The doctor bought just enough of the first to be sure of the second, and in the news columns he frequently jostled the youngest society bud or the oldest political rascal for prominence. It was an excellent way of getting business, for people are more or less prone to believe that the man who is often in the public prints must amount to something.
The doctor's long, nimble fingers flew as they sorted out the mail, but there was one letter which held him for a second reading. It was written in pencil upon two sheets of dirty, yellow paper, and was postmarked "Canyon City, Colorado." This is what it said:
p. s.—i hav been a bad one in my time wich was long ago but i have repentit of my sins and am leding a beter life but i aint easy in my mind aboutt what i ought to do with that property.
p. s.—if you write the warden dont say you gott a leter from me. this was smugled outside, ask if you can see John Moran privitly. they let others and they ought to let you.
The Great Gilmore leaned back in his chair for a few seconds, and then dropped the letter with a short laugh.
"Some petty larcenist with a tender conscience," he thought. "He'd better send for the prison chaplain."
But the memory of the letter lingered. After he had finished his mail, he took down his telephone, called up the editorial rooms of a local newspaper, and asked for Mr. Dacey.
"Hello, Jimmy!" said he. "Come over to the Brown Palace for dinner to-night, will you? No, nothing special. I'm in for a lonesome evening, and I thought— All right, Jimmy! Seven o'clock!"