Stolen Away

“Brother,” I repeated, and dropped off to sleep myself, against the window of the Dusenberg; but I didn’t give any psychic readings.

The woman who answered our knock gave me a start. Not because she was wrapped in ash-cloth or wearing a turban or anything: quite the contrary. She was a small, slender woman in her fifties, with dark, graying hair and large, luminous brown eyes; she wore a simple blue-and-white print dress with an apron, and looked about as sinister as milk and cookies.

What gave me the start, frankly, was the delicate prettiness of her face: she had the same sort of fragile beauty as Anne Lindbergh.

Breckinridge must have noticed the resemblance, too, because the lawyer damn near stammered, as he removed his hat and said, “We’ve come as representatives of the Lindbergh family. We have an appointment…?”

She smiled warmly and took the lawyer’s hat. “I’m Gertrude Cayce,” she said. “You’d be Colonel Breckinridge. And the other gentleman?”

“Nathan Heller,” I said.

“Police officer?” she asked pleasantly, gesturing us inside.

“Why, yes.”

She laughed; it was the lilting laugh of a much younger woman. “No, I’m not psychic myself, Mr. Heller—your profession just shows on you.”

I had to smile at that, as we were ushered into a modest, unpretentious home entirely lacking in occult trappings. It was also lacking in luxury. Faded floral wallpaper and a recently re-covered sofa and easy chair were typical of the lived-in look of the place.

She guided us down a short hallway toward a room that had been added onto the main house; here, I thought, I would encounter the mystic trappings of the soothsayer game: we would pass through a beaded curtain into a room where the signs of the zodiac were painted on a wall around which hung weird masks, across an Oriental carpet to a table where a crystal ball was overseen by a stuffed cobra and a swami in a pink turban and caftan holding a black cat in his arms….

But there was no beaded curtain; no curtain at all, or door, either. We entered directly into a cluttered room lit by natural light from windows on two sides that looked out on a dock and the lake. A worn studio couch was against one wall; at one end of the couch was an old straight-back chair with a black cushion, and at the other a schoolchild’s wooden desk chair. Over the couch were countless inscribed photos from, apparently, satisfied customers. The other walls were thick with framed family portraits, prints of Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln, and religious pictures, including a cow-eyed Christ and an etching of the Good Samaritan. Against one wall was an old wooden filing cabinet, near a wooden bric-a-brac rack whose shelves brimmed with seashells, colored rocks, miniature elephants, and various worthless trinkets. A frayed throw rug covered most of the wooden floor.

“This is Edgar Cayce,” she said, gesturing formally, “my husband.”

He was rising from an old, beat-up typewriter at a big, messy rolltop desk. He was as tall and slender as Lindbergh, but not at all stoop-shouldered; he had the perfect build for and general look of a stage magician, but not the demeanor. His hair was thinning and brown, and his round, small-chinned, genial face was at odds with his long, slender frame; he wore rimless glasses, and appeared to be, like his wife, in his mid-to late-fifties. He moved quickly toward us, extending his hand first to Breckinridge, then to me.

“Colonel Breckinridge,” he said; his voice was warm, soothing. That much fit the charlatan mold. “And you are?”

“Nate Heller,” I said. “I’m with the Chicago police.”

He smiled; he had the aura of a friendly uncle. His lips were full, his eyes as gray-blue as the water out the window behind him.

“You take in a lot of territory in your job, Mr. Heller,” he said.

“I don’t usually cut this wide a swath. But the Lindbergh kidnapping isn’t your usual case.”

He grew sober. “No. It is not. Would you gentlemen sit down, please?”

He plucked several wooden chairs from against a wall and we sat in the middle of the room, his wife joining us, like four card players who forgot their table.

“I pray that I can help you, gentlemen,” he said, hands on his knees, his kindly face solemn. “Like all Americans, I have great admiration and affection for Colonel Lindbergh. Of course, I can’t promise anything. My gift is not something I can control.”

“Your gift?” I asked.

Cayce shrugged. “I don’t claim to understand it at all. I only know I do have some kind of strange gift, or power. I put myself to sleep, and words come out of me that I don’t hear at the time and don’t even understand later, when I read them transcribed. I do know, that in the thirty-odd years I’ve been at this, thousands of folks have been healed and helped and not one has been harmed.”

Spoken like a true con man.

“Now you realize, I rarely deal with criminal matters,” he said. “My readings are primarily related to health problems.”