In Liberty of April 9 Madame Marcia told how she came to be consulted, early in 1920, by Mrs. Warren G. Harding, and how, from Senator Harding's horoscope, she predicted to his wife both his election to the Presidency and his death while in office.

Shortly after her return from the Chicago convention Mrs. Harding phoned me to come to her home, "to meet some one." This proved to be her husband, the handsomest man I ever saw. He shook hands with me, smiling.

"Tell him," she said, "the significance of the sign Scorpio under which he was born."

As I began to do so, Mr. Harding was amused. In listening to me he was simply humoring her.

"You must not exhaust your strength in a nation-wide campaign tour," I warned him. "You don't have to."

He laughed. "In a hotly fought campaign, you advise me to stay in ray back yard because Scorpio says so?"

"That is precisely what you should do," I insisted. "But why the back yard? Why not the front porch?"

Well, all the world was to talk and write about his unique and triumphant front-porch campaign, wasn't it? And he was elected just as I had said he would be, and his wife continued to come to my little house in Washington for guidance in everything she did.

Then suddenly her visits ceased. I knew why. A newspaper article had hinted that she felt the nation could not be run properly without the aid of a certain "old soothsayer." Then, one morning, a tall well dressed stranger came to tell me that "Jupiter" wanted to see me. Jupiter, you will remember, was the nickname by which I had first known her. The tall man showed me a Secret Service badge. He would come for me with a car.

The car proved to be a rickety broken-down flivver, and we joggled up, not to the front door of the White House, as she had promised, but to the side-street entrance to the Executive Offices. In an upstairs room Mrs. Harding greeted me cordially, then formally introduced my escort as Harry Barker, her personal Secret Service man. The moment he closed the door behind him, she gasped:

"Oh, Marcia, I had to see you! I am surrounded by traitors! Terrible things are happening. I must know who are Warren Harding's friends and who are not. I have a plan. I will let you know when I am ready for your help."

One night Harry Barker called me up, and came for me in the flivver. I found Mrs. Harding lying on a couch. She held up a sheaf of papers.

"I have a list here," she said, "of the men who are closest to the President. I want you to write out the horoscope of each one. I should have had you do it before the Cabinet was formed. That's where I made a great mistake. I pray God it may not be too late now."

How she had achieved it I never knew, but beside each name she had the birthplace, date, and time — the data necessary for drawing a horoscope. I took the list home and worked for days. At last I had them all finished.

"I will study each one myself, alone," she said.

I returned, at her request, three days later.

"The most immediate and dangerous menace that I can see centers around this one man." She held up the horoscope of a man very close to the President. "What is he doing — right now? Try clairvoyance, Marcia."

I became clairvoyant. After a time I saw this man standing on a hill in a barren country ... gradually other bare hills appeared ... one hill stood out rising like a dome ... and, all of a sudden. I was gazing into a vast field of oil wells.

"I knew it!" she all but screamed. "They are trying to keep it from me, all this scheming about oil leases. They lie to me. Why? I am frightened...."

Then she named another person on very intimate social terms with the President. "I am as afraid of him as I am of that other man," she said. "But I'll save Warren Harding from them all — if it kills me!"

Some days later it seeped out, through backstairs gossip, that President Harding and one of his closest friends had had a terrific quarrel, and that the President had lost his temper and had ordered this man out of the White House and away from Washington.

One day a woman I had known for years — we'll call her Jean Stark — came to my consulting room. "I'm here to ask a favor, Marcia," she said.

She was an aloof person, and mysterious.

"What is it?" I inquired.

"I've known President Harding for years, and yet I never get an invitation to any of the affairs in the White House. I want you to see that I am invited."

The next time I was with Mrs. Harding, I spoke of it.

"What's this woman's name, Marcia?" she asked.

"Jean Stark."

Did you ever see a panther leap? Well, you should have seen Mrs. Harding jump up! She raged at me:

"Where is she? Where is she?"

"I told her Jean had a fine position with the very official whose horoscope she had picked from the list.

"Ah-ah! She'll get out! I'll see to that!"

But this was one thing that this strong-minded woman found it expedient not to "see to" at once.

Jean Stark came to me again. "Marcia, I must see the President. His secretary, George Christian, won't let me in. And it means everything to him! Everything!"

In the end, we went together in my car to the Executive Offices. Harry Barker ushered us into a room next to the President's private office. From under her raincoat Jean Stark drew out a long thick envelope.

"Here, you give that to me," I commanded. "How do I know what you've got in it?"

Greatly excited, she drew me to one side, clutched my arm, and whispered in my ear. I realized at once the grave importance of her errand. But I wasn't taking any chances. I called Harry Barker and told him to find out if this envelope should be given to the President.

I knew he would go straight to Mrs. Harding.

Perhaps thirty minutes passed before the door of the private office opened to us. The President took my hand cordially. Then he caught sight of my companion.

"Warren," she began, "I must see you. You must give me an appointment for an interview — "

Just then Harry Barker entered the room, saluted, and said, "Mr. President, a package for you."

President Harding took it without a word, and drew from it four legal-looking documents. His face was inscrutable. He gave them a glance, then restored them to the envelope and gave it over to George Christian.

"Make the appointment for Saturday afternoon," he bade him, then waved his hand toward me and went out.

I was standing with my hand on the President's chart. I looked at the clock. "He is dead."

I told you I would tell what became of the four missing oil leases — leases involving the honor of some of the President's closest associates. Well, you now know all that any one knows — that is, any one now alive.

Mrs. Harding never mentioned Nan Britton to me. But one day she did say: "Marcia, it has been a source of grief to Warren Harding and me that we have had no children. Is there any way you can possibly tell me whether he would be capable of being a father?"

I didn't know what she was after. From his chart, it appeared that when he was comparatively young he must have had a serious accident. She recalled that he had been thrown from a horse. I also, as she demanded, tried clairvoyance. As the result, I am convinced that Warren Harding was not the father of Nan Britton's baby.

Death stalked in the very air we breathed in Washington during the last months of the Harding regime. The famous "little white powder" began to be whispered about. And Mrs. Harding came to know, for I told her, that among the traitors in whom her husband reposed unwise confidence were some who dealt death.

One day she sent for me hurriedly. "Marcia," she sobbed, "what is going to happen to Warren Harding?"

A man known to be very close to the President had been found dead in his bathroom the night before.

"You must take back what you predicted to me! You must! Study your chart again! Be very careful!"

I studied it for hours. At last I had no choice but to say to her: "He will die by poison. He may live out two years of his term. No longer."

One day three men of evident culture and position came to me. They knew I could get a message to Mrs. Harding — and that message was that the President was to be poisoned that night at a dinner in the home of an intimate friend! I never knew how she succeeded in keeping him away from that dinner, but she did.

It was when I gave her this message that I told her I could come no longer to the White House. The only fee she ever paid was the five-dollar fee on her first visit.

On July 30, 1923, when the news came that the President was ill with ptomaine poisoning from eating crab meat, I spent the whole night studying his chart. No other member of the party was ill, you remember. All had eaten identical food. The stars told me that Warren G. Harding was entering the House of Death.

The next morning a well known newspaperman, Mr. Harry Hunt, came and asked me about the President.

"He will die at 10.30 P. M. on August 2," I said.

Mr. Hunt replied, shocked, "Oh! No!"

"You take this to your editor, but tell him not to publish it until after the death," I told him.

Well I knew that the same murderous hand which had tried to strike him down at dinner in Washington had now stretched itself across the continent.

Whose hand was it? Well, I will say this much: Of all the horoscopes Mrs. Harding had me read, none even approached in fiendish ingenuity and cunning the horoscope of one believed to be still alive, incarcerated.

On August 2 a large company gathered in my home, Mr. Hunt and his wife were present I was holding a clairvoyant session. A gentleman left the house, returned, and said, "Marcia, what about the President?"

I was standing with my hand on the President's chart. I looked at the clock and, accounting for the difference in time between Washington and San Francisco, I said:

"He is dead."

The gentleman said, "The bulletin says he is better."

Just at that moment a newsboy cried through the window, "Extra! Extra! The President is dead!"

And I crumpled to the floor in a faint.

Publication Date: April 9, 1938