garden party was at its height when a blue-black storm cloud with silver edges began to roll up slowly from the northwest over Long Island Sound. No one seemed to notice it. A band was playing on the lawn, and people were dancing in the open space about the long narrow marble swimming pool. On the lower terrace long tables were set out with lemonade and ice cream, and all about through the gardens there were decorated booths where pop corn, homemade preserves and flowers were being sold. Flags were everywhere fluttering from tall poles, to which festoons of colored globes, as yet unlit, were fastened. Trained nurses, and ladies of the hospital committee—the fête was for the benefit of the local hospital—were conspicuous with bright red sashes across their shoulders. They were moving among the crowds, helping every one to enjoy the occasion, but to enjoy it in that special manner that necessitates the spending of money.
Azra, the clairvoyant, was the only person who noted the approach of the storm. She had been doing an excellent business in prophecy.
Magic was more popular that afternoon than sweets or flowers—perhaps because the magic was of the best quality, whereas the flowers were beginning to droop, and the sugar to melt in the still, intense heat.
Azra came of a long and distinguished line of magicians. Her father had been that celebrated Astrologer-Wizard of Waco, who had foretold the Franco-Prussian War, the Great Panic, and the eruption of Krakatua. Her mother, though less conspicuous, had, as a medium, brought comfort to thousands in the '80's. Azra, an adept in many branches of magic, had concentrated upon crystal gazing. She was a woman of commanding appearance—no longer young—tall and large featured. She had been arrested more than once—not for the usual charges made against members of her profession, but on the suspicion of being a man masquerading as a woman; though in the Orient her straight black garment and purple turban would not have been thought necessarily feminine.
She saw the approach of the storm with alarm, for she had ordered herself a new tent for the occasion—very fine—of dark purple plush spangled with gold and silver stars. A drop of water would spoil it; and so when she saw that the storm would inevitably reach them in a few minutes, she ordered her two attendants—tall women like herself, in black draperies—to remove the tent from the circle of the dark cedars and to carry it inside the castle. She herself followed them, bearing the crystal ball aloft in both hands.
Now when Mr. Duncan had lent his garden and grounds to the hospital for their annual fête, he had expressly stipulated that no one—no one at all—should set foot inside the castle itself. The committee had pledged their word; little enough, they said, in return for all Mr. Duncan's kindness; and indeed it was an open secret that the great man intended to leave the hospital a part of his great fortune. But though Duncan had faith in the honest intention of the managers, he took the precaution of posting servants at all the entrances of the castle to turn away inquisitive wanderers. He was an old man and did not like his privacy invaded.
Therefore it was to be expected that Azra, mounting to the paved terrace that immediately surrounded the castle, would have been refused admittance; but, as luck—or perhaps magic—decreed, just as she reached the terrace, the approach of the storm was made evident to every one. The first blast of wind swept the gardens, blowing away the music of the band, upsetting chairs, tearing flags; and the servants, being good-natured people, ran out to help, although the fête was not their affair at all. Azra was left free to enter the great hall unmolested.
This frowning medieval castle of dark red brick had stood for forty years on the southern edge of Long Island Sound not very far from New York. Duncan had built it just after his first spectacular success—the discovery of silver in the Mountains of the Moon. Seen from the Sound—and no Sound boat ever passed without its passengers rushing to the south rail to get a look at this celebrated building—its great size, its castellated towers and turrets, its battlements and inside courts and outside stairways made it look more like an old walled town than a modern dwelling. Seen from near by, the sharpness of its angles and the freshness of its bricks destroyed the illusion of its antiquity; but even from near by it was impressive on account of its mere bulk.