Free The Clairvoyant Countess by Dorothy Gilman Page B

the page had turned.
    “I did it,” crowed Gavin gleefully. “Hey, Jonesy, I did it!”
    “Mr. Faber-Jones, this is Lieutenant Pruden,” broke in Madame Karitska. “Yes, you did it, Gavin. Capital! But Mr. Faber-Jones also had some success, I notice.”
    “Kind of you,” said Faber-Jones, getting to his feet. “Only pushed the page halfway, though, and frankly I’m exhausted.”
    “Me too,” admitted Gavin. “Hi, Lieutenant Pruden!”
    “What have I interrupted?” asked Pruden curiously.
    “A practice session,” Gavin told him eagerly. “It’s great meeting Mr. Faber-Jones, you know, he has the gift too.”
    “Oh? But what have you been practicing?”
    “Concentration,” said Madame Karitska. “The moving of mountains by the use of the mind. In this case, the lifting of a page in a book by sheer concentration of psychic energies. The pages can turn—you saw it yourself.”
    “Incredible,” said Pruden.
    “You can’t just say ‘Move!’ to the pages either,” put in Gavin. “You have to lift them with concentrated
thought
, and boy it’s rough. It’s fun too, though. You ought to try it.”
    Pruden’s laugh was short and doubting.
    “You find it unbelievable?” inquired Madame Karitska.
    “I don’t know,” said Pruden, frowning. “I might have six days ago but—”
    “But what?” asked Faber-Jones, sinking into the couch, obviously tired and ready for diversion.
    “Do not say a word,” said Madame Karitska, “untilI bring out the Turkish coffee I’ve brewed, with a glass of milk for Gavin.” When she had returned and distributed refreshments she sat down and inserted a cigarette into a long holder. “Now tell us what has placed a crack in your imperviousness.”
    Pruden said, “I’d really like to know: you believe the mind has such intensity, such power?”
    “But of course,” she said, amused. “We use only a fraction of its power, we use only a tiny amount of ourselves.”
    “But for instance,” Pruden said, picking his words carefully, “do you believe a man can simply announce that he’s going to die, be in perfect health and—just die?”
    Madame Karitska smiled faintly. “So many diseases are psychosomatic, it happens oftener than you think. I have seen people turn their faces from life, their will to live gone. It may take months or years but they die.”
    He shook his head. “I mean something much faster than that—death in a matter of days.”
    “Ah,” said Madame Karitska, “now that is very interesting. You have met such a situation? You must have met such a situation or you would not be speaking of this?”
    He said ruefully, “I’m still not accustomed to having my mind browsed through but yes, I’ve met such a situation. Heard about it, at least. The patrolman on the block, Bill Kane, has been puzzling over it for days. It seems a man named Arturo Mendez died about two weeks ago. On a Wednesday he told his brother Luis that he would die before the week was out, and on the following Tuesday night he died.”
    “Did they not call a doctor?”
    “On Monday they called an ambulance and he was taken to the hospital. The doctors found nothing organically wrong with him, but the following night he was dead.”
    “Did they perform an autopsy?”
    Pruden nodded. “He died quite literally of a heart stoppage but there was nothing wrong with his heart either.”
    “Then it was precognition,” put in Gavin eagerly. “He knew something was going to happen ahead of time.”
    “No—no, I think not,” Madame Karitska said, and with an intent glance at Pruden, “There is more?”
    He nodded. “Yesterday Bill Kane told me that Arturo’s brother Luis won’t get out of bed now. He’s settled his debts, paid his landlady a week’s rent in advance, and told her that he’ll be dead by Monday morning.”
    “And this is Friday night,” mused Madame Karitska. “I wonder … where do they live, Lieutenant?”
    “Three blocks away on Fifth Street, in