Chapter X: Book II: I (6)

"The X-ray is a mode of motion, as light is a mode of motion, but the waves of light move in such a way as to clash with and weaken those of the X-ray; so we argue that the mode of motion, through which disembodied souls manifest themselves, being far subtler than the X-ray, is neutralized--though by no means destroyed--by the motion called light. Furthermore, there seems to be a reluctance on the part of the invisible ones to have the actual processes scrutinized. I once laid a pencil on the table and asked for a visible action of writing, vainly, so long as it was completely exposed, but upon being covered with a silk handkerchief it plainly rose and wrote. It could be distinctly seen moving beneath the cloth. Sir William Crookes had a similar experience, except in his case he saw the pencil move, prop itself against a ruler, and try three times to write--all in the light. I have seen letters form on an exposed surface of a slate, I have had hands appear through a curtain and write in the light, but the power must always be generated in shadow."

Kate shuddered. "Woo! It gives me the shivers to think of such things. Will anything as wonderful happen to-night?"

"I cannot tell--the conditions are severe, but I think we will have something. Viola?" he called, softly.

"Yes," she answered, faintly.

"Would you like us to sing?"

"No--I'd rather you'd all talk. Perhaps they will let me take part in the demonstration to-night. They promised to do so, you remember."

Weissman recounted some of the experiences Zöllner had enjoyed in Germany shortly after the Fox sisters became so celebrated in America. "Crookes and Wallace and several others went into the whole question at that time--the world rang with the controversy. But the clamor passed, the phenomena passed. It is like an epidemic, it comes and it goes, and in the end is humanity the wiser? No."

"Yes, it is," broke in Clarke. "We are just that much more certain of the indestructible life of the soul--every wave of this spirit-sea leaves a deposit of fact on the beach of time, makes death that much less dreadful. We make gains each decade. Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Alfred Russel Wallace, Lombroso have all been convinced of the reality of these phenomena. Surely such men must influence the thought of their time. Experimental psychology is on the right road--"

Morton was suffering with the girl, whose hand was beginning to tremble beneath his palm. She no longer replied to his questions, but that she was still awake he knew, for he could hear her sighing deeply, so deeply that the sound troubled him almost as if she were weeping. His impulse was to rise and turn on the light and give over this trial, which could only end in humiliating her. "Her temerity is a part of her malady," he argued. "It has arisen through years of misconceived petting and nursing on the part of her mother. Up to this moment her performances have always been in the presence of friends and relatives, or for the consolation of those eager to believe, and therefore easily deluded. Every sitter has conspired to practically force her into an elaborate series of deceptions, each deceit being built upon and made necessary by the other. It is pitiful, but she now believes in herself--that is pathetically certain. Otherwise she would not have yielded herself so completely into the hands of an inexorable investigator like Weissmann. She must take the consequences," he ended, with grim closing of the lips. "We must be cruel in order to be kind. This night may be her salvation."

Weissmann was replying to Mrs. Lambert. "I do not care for a return of my dead, madam; what I wish your daughter to do is quite simple. I would like her to move a particle of matter from A to B, without a known push or a pull--that is to say, by a power not known to science--as Zöllner claimed Slade was able to do for him."

"She can do it," cried Clarke. "She can move a chair from A to B without bringing to bear any of the known forces. She can suspend the law of gravity. She can make a closed piano play, and she can read sealed letters in an ebony box tightly closed and locked."

"You claim too much, my friend," replied Weissmann, ironically. "We shall be satisfied with much less. If she will change one one-hundredth part of a grain from one scale to another, under my conditions, I will be satisfied. The most wonderful phenomena taking place in the dark have no value to me."

Mrs. Lambert interposed. "Please don't argue--it prevents the coming of the spirits."

Both men felt rebuked and the group again settled into silence. Suddenly, Kate began to laugh, "Isn't it childish? Really, Morton, if our friends could see us sitting around here in the dark, as we are now, they would roar. Why should it all be so silly, Mr. Clarke?"

"It is _not_ silly if we take the right view. We must sit together in order to get into harmony. We further these conditions by sitting in subdued light with fingers touching. Song adds still more to this concert of thought. Nothing is really silly or prosaic--all depends upon the minds of those--"

He was in the midst of an elaborate defence of spirit methods when Viola's hand began to leap as if struggling to be free. She moaned and sighed and writhed so powerfully that her chair creaked. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she cried, gaspingly.

"Is she trying to free her hands?" Morton asked himself, with roused suspicion. "Is this a ruse to cover some trick?"

Mrs. Lambert spoke quietly. "She is going! Sing something, Anthony."

Clarke began to hum a monotonous tune, while Morton, bending towards the girl, listened to her gurgling moans with growing heartache. "She seems in great pain, Mrs. Lambert. Don't you think we'd better release her? I do not care to purchase sensation so clearly at her expense."

"Don't be alarmed, she always seems to suffer that way when some great manifestation is about to take place."

The poor girl's outcries so nearly resembled those of a death struggle that Kate at last rose. "Turn up that light! She is being strangled!"

"Please be silent!" said Clarke, almost angrily. "Take your hands from her, gentlemen! You are too 'strong'--and do not startle her! Be quiet everybody!"

Morton took his hand away in anger and disgust. "All this is a ruse to weaken our grasp upon her," he thought. "Even the mother, so serene, so candid, is aiding the deception."

"Things will happen now," remarked Mrs. Lambert, confidently; "she is giving herself up at last."

The girl drew a long, deep, peaceful sigh, and became silent, so silent that Morton, leaning far over, with suspended breath, his ear almost to her lips, could detect no sound, no slightest movement, and listening thus he had for an instant a singular vision of her. He seemed to see her laughing silently at him from a distant upper corner of the room, and for the moment secured a glimpse into a new and amazing world--the world of darkness and silence wherein matter was fluid, imponderable, an insubstantial world peopled, nevertheless, with rustling, busy souls.

A sharp rapping began on the cone, a measured beat, which ended in a clang, which startled Kate into a shriek. "Who is doing that?" she asked, nervously.

"They are here," Clarke solemnly announced.

"Is that you, Waltie?" asked Mrs. Lambert, sweetly.

Three raps, loud and clear, answered "yes." A drumming on the cone followed, and Mrs. Lambert, her voice full of maternal pride, remarked: "Waltie is the life of our sittings--he's _such_ a rogue! You must be a nice boy to-night--on account of these very distinguished men."

"Rap, rap!" went the cone.

"Does that mean 'all right'?"

"Rap, rap, rap!" Yes.

"Is grandfather there?"

"Yes."

"Does he wish to speak to the gentlemen?"

"Yes."

"Are we sitting right?"

A decided thump--"No."

Guided by the rapping Mrs. Lambert and Kate moved down to the foot of the table, sitting close beside Clarke, thus leaving Morton and Weissmann alone with the sleeping girl. No sooner were they rearranged than the table began to move, precisely as though pushed by the girl's feet. Still guided by the rapping, Weissmann and Morton moved with the table, but retained their threads of silk. Morton's pity had given place to a feeling of resentment at this device to get them farther away, and he drew his tell-tale thread tight across his finger. "If she moves she is betrayed," he thought with hardening heart.

No sooner were they settled than a fumbling sound began in the middle of the table, and the pencil was twice lifted and dropped. Following this the leaves of the writing-pad rustled as though being thumbed by boyish hands.

Kate shivered and cried out: "This is uncanny! Morton, are you doing this?"

"Certainly not," he replied, curtly.

"Do you feel any motion in your thread?" asked Weissmann, in a quiet voice.

"None whatever," Morton replied.

"Then the psychic is not moving."

Again they sat in silence, and after some minutes the fumbling began again and the horn was heard scraping slowly about, as if being lifted with effort only to fall back with a clang.

"Is it too heavy?" asked Clarke.

Three sharp raps replied--an angry "yes"--and then, with a petulant swing, the instrument apparently left the table and floated upon the air. In deep amazement Morton listened for some movement, some sound from Viola, but there was none, not a breath, not a rustle of motion where she sat, and the silk thread was tight and calm. "She has nothing to do with _that_," he said, beneath his breath.

Kate called excitedly, "Oh! It touched me."

"What touched you?" asked Weissmann.

"The horn."

"Did it bump you?"

"No, it seemed to float against me."

Morton spoke out sharply: "Where is Mr. Clarke?"

"Right here on my right," replied Kate.

"What idiotic business!" he exclaimed, mystified, nevertheless.

The horn dropped to the middle of the table, but was immediately swept into the air again as if by a new and more vigorous hand, and a voice heavily mixed with air, but a man's voice unmistakably, spoke directly to Morton, sternly, contemptuously.

"We meet you on your own level. You asked for material tests, and now conditions being as you have made them--proceed. What would you have us do?"

"Who are you?"

"I am Donald McLeod--grandfather to the psychic."

At this moment Morton became seized of the most vivid realization of the physical characteristics of the man back of the voice. In some mysterious way, through some hitherto unknown sense, he was aware of a long, rugged face, with bleak and knobby brow. The lips were thin, the mouth wide, the dark-gray eyes contemptuous. "It is all an inner delusion caused by some resemblance of this voice to that of some one I have known," he said to himself; but a shiver ran over him as he questioned the old man. "If you are the grandfather of the psychic," he said, "I would like to ask you if you think it fair to a young girl to use her against her will for such foolery as this?"

"The purposes are grand, the work she is doing important--therefore I answer yes. She is yet but a child, and the things she does of her own motion trivial and vain. We make of her an instrument that will enable man to triumph over the grave. You will observe that we do not harm her, we take but little of her time, after all. You are unnecessarily alarmed. Our regard for her welfare far exceeds yours. Her troubles arise from her resistance. If she would yield herself entirely, she would be happy."

As the voice paused, Morton asked, "Weissmann, can you hear what is being said to me?"

"Very indistinctly," answered Weissmann.

"What does it say?" asked Kate. "I can only hear a kind of jumble."

Weissmann interjected; "I must ask you, Mrs. Rice, have you tight hold of Mr. Clarke's hand?"

"Yes," answered Kate.

Morton's brain whirled in confusion and conjecture. He believed the whole thing to be a piece of juggling, and yet he could not connect Viola in any way with it, and it seemed impossible, also, for Mrs. Lambert to sit where she was and handle the cone, to say nothing of the ventriloquistic skill necessary to carry on this conversation. He again addressed the voice: "You consider your control of the psychic to be justified?"

"We do."

"Do you know, also, what perilous notoriety, what positive disgrace--from every human point of view--you are about to bring upon her?"

The hidden old man pondered a moment, as if to master a profound contempt, then answered: "We have taken all things into account. When she has grown to years of sobriety she will thank us that we turned her aside from dancing and from light conversation, and from all loose-minded companions. All the sane pleasures are now hers. She is soon to be idolized by thousands. Her playing on the piano, her singing are as the rustle of leaves in the forest compared to her mediumship, which is as a trumpet-blast opening the gates of the city of refuge to let the weary traveller in." The voice weakened a little. "The earth-life is but a school--the real life is here. Besides, when she has completely subordinated her will to ours, when she has given our message--" The spirit grand-sire seemed to falter and diminish. "My power is waning, but I will again manifest. We will try--" The voice stopped as though a door had been shut upon the speaker, and the megaphone dropped upon the table.

"All that is very interesting," commented Weissmann, "but inconclusive. Is it all over?"

"Oh no," answered Mrs. Lambert. "They are uniting upon something wonderful--I feel it."

As they listened the horn moved feebly, uneasily rising a few inches, only to fall as though some weak hand were struggling with it; but at last it turned towards Weissmann, and from it issued the voice of a little girl, thrillingly sweet and so clear that Serviss could hear every word. She addressed Weissmann in German, calling him father, asking him to tell mother not to grieve, that they would soon all be together in a bright land.

To this Weissmann replied in harsh accent: "You assert you are my daughter?"

The voice sweetly answered: "Yes, I am Mina--"

"But Mina could not understand a word of English--how is that?"

The little voice hesitated. "It is hard to explain," she replied, still in German. "I can _understand_ you in any language--but I can only speak as you taught me."

Thereupon he addressed her in French, to which she replied easily, but in her native tongue.

As this curious dialogue went on Serviss was searching vainly for an explanation. "Mr. Clarke, will you kindly speak at the same time that this voice appears?"

Clarke began a discourse, and the two voices went on at the same time. The young scientist then said: "Mrs. Lambert, will you permit Kate to lay her hand over your lips? You understand, it is for the sake of science--"

"Certainly," said Mrs. Lambert.

Here the test failed of completeness, it was so difficult to get the three voices precisely together; but at last it seemed that the child's voice was produced at the same time that Clarke spoke and while Kate's hand covered the mother's mouth.

Thereupon the little voice said farewell, and all was silent for a few moments. The cone rose again into the air and a soft, sibilant voice addressed Mrs. Lambert.

"Oh!" she cried, joyfully. "It is Robert!--Yes, dear, I'm listening. I'm so glad you've come. Can't you talk with Professor Serviss?--He says he will try," she said to the company.

As Morton waited the cone gently touched him on the shoulder, and a moment later a man's voice, utterly different from the first one and of most refined accent, half spoke, half whispered: "We are glad to meet you, professor. I am deeply gratified by your interest in our dear girl."

"Who are you?" he asked, moved, in spite of himself, by a liking for this new personality, so distinct from the others.

"I am R.M. Waldron--Viola's father."

He seemed to wait for questions, and Serviss asked: "How do _you_ feel about your daughter's mediumship? Are you not uneasy when you think of what you are demanding of her?"

The invisible one sighed, hesitated, and replied with evident sadness: "It troubles me to find her reluctant. I wish she were happier in the work. It seems so important to us." Then the voice brightened. "But perhaps it is only for a little while. After the public test--after the truth of her mediumship is made manifest--I think, I hope, we will ask less of her. Perhaps it will be possible to release her altogether for a time; but for the present she is too valuable--" The sentence was lost in a buzz of inarticulate whispering, as if two or three friends were consulting. The opening and closing of lips could be heard, and a stir within the horn was curiously trivial in effect, as if a mouse were at play with a dry leaf.

"If I were to organize a committee of men like Weissmann and Tolman, and other men of international fame, willing to test your daughter's powers, will you give over this public demonstration--this publishing of a challenge?"

Clarke interrupted almost angrily. "Not unless you promise to--"

"Be silent!" commanded Weissmann.

From the horn came a faint murmur, so dim, so far, Serviss could, with difficulty, distinguish the words. "We will consider that. I am going. Guard my girl. Good-bye."

The horn, again seemed to rest, and for a long time no sound or stir broke the silence, till at last Viola began to writhe in her chair in greater agony than before.

"I think she is waking," said Morton.

Mrs. Lambert answered, quickly: "No. Some great event is preparing--when this paroxysm passes some very beautiful test will come."

While Morton and Weissmann were considering this the girl again became silent as a stone, and a moment later a clear, sweet sound pulsed through the air as if an exquisite crystal bell had been struck. Then, while still this signal trembled in his ear, a whispering noise developed just before the young man's face, as if tremulous lips were closing and unclosing in anxious effort to communicate a message without the use of the trumpet.

"Is some one trying to speak to me?" he asked, gently.

Three measured strokes upon, the tiny bell replied, and with their pulsations the room seemed to stir with a new and different throng of winged memories. The very air took on mystery and beauty and a sweet gravity. Matter was for the moment as subtle, as imponderable as soul.

"Who is it?" he asked, and into his voice, in spite of himself, crept a note of awe.

The answer came instantly, faint as the fall of an autumn leaf on the grass.

"Mother."

Kate bent eagerly forward, "Who was it, Morton?"

Ignoring her question Morton addressed the invisible one. "Can't you speak again?"

There was no reply and the whispering ceased. Almost instantly the horn seemed grasped by a firm and masterful hand, and the rollicking voice of a man broke startlingly from the darkness in words so clear, so resonant, that all could hear them.

"Hello, folks. Is this a Quaker meeting?"

"Who are you?" asked Morton.

"Can't you guess?"

Kate gasped. "Why, it's Uncle Ben Roberts!"

The voice chuckled. "Right the first time. It's old 'Loggy'--true bill. How are you all?"

Kate could hardly speak, so great was her fear and joy. "Morton Serviss, what do you think now? Ask him--"

The voice from the trumpet interposed. "Don't ask me a word about conditions over here--it's no use. I can't tell you a thing."

"Why not?" asked Morton.

"Well, how would you describe a Connecticut winter to a Hottentot? Not that you're a Hottentot"--the voice broke into an oily chuckle--"or that I'm in a cold climate." The chuckle was renewed. "I'm very comfortable, thank you." Here the invisible one grew tender. "My boy, your mother is here and wants to speak to you but can't do so. She asked me to manifest for her. She says to trust this girl and to carry a message of love to Henry. I brought one of her colonial wineglasses with me--as a sign of her presence and as a test of the power we have of passing through matter."

For nearly an hour this voice kept up a perfectly normal conversation with a running fire of quips and cranks--recalling incidents in the lives of both Kate and Morton, arguing basic principles with Weissmann yet never quite replying to the most searching questions, and finally ended by saying: "Your conception of matter is childish. There is no such thing as you understand it, and yet the universe is not as Kant conceived it. As liberated spirits we move in an essence subtler than any matter known to you--ether is a gross thing compared to spirit. Your knowledge is merely rudimentary--but keep on. Take up this work and my band will meet you half-way. My boy, the question of the persistence of the individual after death is the most vital of all questions. Apply your keen mind to it and depend on old 'Loggy.' Good-by!"

Kate was quivering with excitement. "Morton, that settles it for me. That certainly was 'Loggy.' Oh, I wish mother could have spoken."

Morton's voice was eager and penetrating as he said: "Mrs. Lambert, I would like to place my hand on your daughter's arm again, I must be permitted to demonstrate conclusively that she has had nothing to do with the handling of the horn."

"I will ask the 'guides.' Father, can Professor Serviss--"

Three feeble raps anticipated her question.

"They say 'yes'--but they are very doubtful--so please be very gentle."

Serviss rose, his blood astir. At last he was about to remove his doubt--or prove Viola's guilt. "Doctor," he said, and his voice was incisive, "take the other side and place a hand on her wrist. That will be permitted?" he asked.

Three raps, very slow and soft, assented.

Clarke interposed. "I am impressed, gentlemen, to say: Let each of you put one hand on the psychic's head, the other on her arm."

"We will do so," replied Weissmann, cheerfully.

With a full realization of the value of this supreme test of Viola's honor, Morton laid his right hand lightly on her wrist. At the first contact she started as though his fingers had been hot iron, and he was unpleasantly aware that her flesh had grown cold and inert. He spoke of this to Weissmann, who replied: "Is that so! The hand which I clasp is hot and dry, which is a singular symptom." Then to the others: "I am now holding both her hands. One is very hot, the other cold and damp and I feel no pulse."

"She is always so," Mrs. Lambert explained. "She seems to die for the time being."

"That is very strange," muttered Weissmann. "May I listen for her heart-beat?" Three raps assented, and a moment later he said, with increased excitement: "I cannot detect her heart-beat."

Clarke reassured him. "Do not be alarmed. She is not dead. Proceed with your experiment." There was a distinct note of contempt in his voice.

As Morton laid his hand upon the soft coils of her hair Viola again moved slightly, as a sleeper stirs beneath a caress, disturbed yet not distressed--to settle instantly into deeper dream.

"We are ready," called Weissmann. "Whatever happens now Miss Lambert is not the cause. Take Mr. Clarke's hands in yours--"

"Mrs. Lambert's also," added Morton.

"Our hands are all touching," answered Kate.

"Now, let us see!" cried Weissmann, and his voice rang triumphantly. "Now, spirits, to your work!"

Clarke laughed contemptuously. "You scientists are very amusing. Your unbelief is heroic."

As they stood thus a powerful revulsion took place in Morton's mind, and with a painful constriction in his throat he bowed to the silent girl, and with an inconsistency which he would not have published to the world, he prayed that something might happen--not to demonstrate the return of the dead but to prove her innocence.

As he waited the pencil began to tap on the table, and with its stir his nerves took fire. A leaf of paper flew by, brushing his face like the wing of a bird. A hand clutched his shoulder; then, as if to make every explanation of no avail, the room filled with fairy unseen folk. Books began to hurtle through the air and to fall upon the table. A banjo on the wall was strummed. The entire library seemed crowded with tricksy pucks, a bustling, irresponsible, elfish crew, each on some inconsequential action bent; until, as if at a signal, the megaphone tumbled to the floor with a clang, and all was still--a silence deathly deep, as if a bevy of sprites, frightened from their play, had whirled upward and away, leaving the scene of their revels empty, desolate, and forlorn.

"That is all," said Clarke.

"How can you tell?" asked Kate, her voice faint and shrill with awe.

"The fall of the horn to the floor is a sure sign of the end. You may turn up the gas, but very slowly."

Stunned by the significance, the far-reaching implications of his experiment, Morton remained standing while Weissmann turned on the light.

Pale, in deep, placid sleep, Viola sat precisely as they had left her, bound, helpless, and exonerated. She recalled to Morton's mind a picture (in his school-books) of a martyr-maiden, who was depicted chained to the altar of some hideous, heathen deity, a monster who devoured the flesh of virgins and demanded with pitiless lust the fairest of the race.

Of her innocence he was at that moment profoundly convinced.

XIV

PUZZLED PHILOSOPHERS

While he still stood looking down upon her Viola began to moan and toss her head from side to side.

"She is waking," cried Mrs. Lambert. "Let me go to her."

"No!" commanded Weissmann, "disturb nothing till we have examined all things."

"Make your studies quickly," said Morton, his heart tender to the girl's sufferings. "We must release her as soon as possible."

Weissmann was not to be hastened. "If we do not now go slowly we lose much of what we are trying to attain. We must take her pulse and temperature, and observe the position of every object."

"Quite right," agreed Clarke, "Do not be troubled--the psychic is being cared for."

Thus reassured the two investigators scrutinized, measured, made notes, while Kate and Mrs. Lambert stood waiting, watching with anxious eyes the changes which came to Viola's face. Weissmann talked on in a disjointed mutter. "You see? She has no pulse. The threads are unbroken. The table is thirty inches from her finger-tips. Observe this pad, forty-eight inches from her hand--and which contains a message."

"Read it!" demanded Kate.

He complied. "'_You ask for a particle of matter to be moved from A to B without the use of any force known to science. Here in this wineglass is the test. Oh, men of science, how long will you close your eyes to the grander truths._'"

"That is from father," remarked Mrs. Lambert.

"It is signed 'McLeod,' and under it are two words, 'Loggy' and 'Mother,' each in different handwriting."

"Give it to me!" cried Kate, deeply moved.

"And here is the wineglass," replied Weissmann, extracting from among the books a beautiful piece of antique crystal.

Kate took it reverentially, as if receiving it from the hand of her dead mother. "How came that here?"

"You recognize it? It was not left here by mistake?"

"Oh no. There are only four of them left and I keep them locked away. I have not had them out in months."

Clarke smiled in benign triumph. "That is why they brought it--to show you that matter is an illusion and to prove that dematerialization and transubstantiation are facts. That was the bell we heard."

"Morton, what do _you_ think? How could--"

But Morton was bending above Viola and did not heed his sister. The girl's eyes were opening as from natural slumber, and he said, gently: "I hope you are not in pain? We will release you in a moment."

She smiled faintly as she recognized him. "My arms are numb, and my feet feel as if strips of wood were nailed to my soles," she answered, wearily, "and my head is aching dreadfully; but that will soon pass."

"She always complains of her feet," the mother explained. "She can't walk for quite a little while afterwards."

"You poor thing!" exclaimed Kate. "You are a martyr--that's what you are."

Viola looked up with sweet and anxious glance. "Did anything happen? Did your friends come to you, Mrs. Rice?"

"No, but several voices spoke to Morton."

"I'm sorry no one came to you. I've been a long way off this time," she continued, with dreamy, inward glance, "into a beautiful country from which I hated to return. I wouldn't have come back to you at all only a thread of light tied my soul to my body and drew me down to earth in spite of myself."

"What was it like--that far country?" asked Morton.

She pondered sleepily. "I can't tell you--only it was very beautiful and I was happy. Every one lived in the light with nothing to fear. I had no memory of the earth--only of my body which I was sorry for. There was no death, no cold, no darkness up there. I was very happy and free."

"You should be free and happy here," answered Morton, gravely. "Come, doctor, can't we free her now?"

"Yes, you may do so," he replied, still busy with his note-book.

The young host, with a feeling of having been unnecessarily brutal, ripped the tape loose from the floor, and Kate slipped the loops from Viola's ankles. Then, leaning on her hostess's arm, she rose slowly, smiling brightly, her weakness most appealing. "I hope a great deal happened--it means so much to me. I want to talk, but I can't now, my head is too thick. You must tell me all about it pretty soon."

"A great deal happened--you are quite clear of any connection with it."

Her face lit with placid joy. "Oh, I'm so glad! It must be very late," she added, turning to her mother.

"Yes, and we must be going," responded Mrs. Lambert, nervously. "Mr. Pratt will be impatient."

"I wish you'd stay with me to-night," pleaded Kate. "It was all so wonderful. I can't let you go. Please stay! Both of you. You're too tired to go out into the raw air."

"Oh no, we can't do that--not to-night," Viola answered, decisively.

Morton threw back the doors. "Kate, take Miss Lambert into the dining-room and give her something to drink. She is quite exhausted. Let me steady you," he said, tenderly, touching her arm. "You fairly reel with weakness."

"I will be as well as ever as soon as my blood begins to circulate," she bravely answered, and his touch quickened her pulse miraculously.

As soon as Weissmann had finished taking his notes and measurements, he locked the door of the library and joined them all in the dining-room, where they were sipping coffee and nibbling cake. Morton was sitting beside Viola (who had entirely regained her girlish lightness of mood), and was chafing her cold hand in the effort to restore the circulation as well as to remove the deep mark the silken thread had made about her wrist.

"We shall be obliged to shut out all young men from our committee," the old scientist jocularly remarked, as he stood looking down at them. "Lovely psychics like you would put the whole American Academy of Science in disorder."

Clarke, raging with jealous fire, turned to Weissmann in truculent mood. "Well, Dr. Weissmann, how do you account for these phenomena? To whose agency do you ascribe these marvels?"

"Spooks!" answered the old man, with cheerful promptness.

Clarke reeled before this laconic admission. "What! You agree? You admit the agency of spirits?"

"Certainly--unless I say Miss Lambert wriggled herself out of her skin, which would not be nice of me, or that you are the greatest ventriloquist in the world. No, I prefer to compliment the spirits."

Clarke's face darkened. The old man's face and voice were too jocose. "I see you do not value our wonderful experiences to-night."

Viola, pinching her sleeve about her wrist, looked up roguishly. "I couldn't possibly wriggle out of my gown, could I, Dr. Weissmann? And if I did, how could I get the tacks back without a hammer?"

"Precisely. You would be more burglarious than the ghosts which walk through the key-holes," he answered.

"And the little girl who spoke German--who was she?" asked Kate.

The hour that followed was a delicious one for the young people, for they had come at last to some sweet and subtle understanding. As she recovered the use of her limbs Viola glowed with joy of Morton's change of attitude towards her. He, on his part, was puzzled by this mood. It was as if she had been vindicated to herself--liberated from some dead body of doubt.

Clarke glowered in silence; disapproving, with manifest disdain, the levity of the scientists, and resenting bitterly Viola's growing trust and confidence in Serviss. Each moment his anger took on heat, and he found it hard to reply even to his hostess, who tried to interest him in a deeper discussion of the evening's marvels. He seemed to have but one desire--to get away and to take Viola with him.

"Tell me," said Viola to Morton, "did papa speak to you?"

"A voice purporting to be your father spoke a few words."

"He is very nice. Didn't you think so?"

"The voice was very gentle and refined, and expressed a very tender regard for you."

She sighed. "I have never heard my father's voice, for he always comes when I am in my deepest trances. They say that I will be permitted some day to hear all the voices through the cone--I only hear them now in an interior way."

"Do you really suffer as you seem to do?" he asked, the echo of his pity still in his tone.

"Not after I am really gone. Did I groan?"

"Horribly! My heart was filled with remorse--"

"I'm sorry. It doesn't really hurt me--physically. You see I am perfectly well again. And yet I hate more and more to give myself up. I can't explain it, but I seem to be losing more and more of _myself_--that is the thought that scares me. I hate to think of being so helpless. It seems to me as if I were becoming like--like a hotel piano--for any one to strum on--I mean that any one in the other world--It is so crowded over there, you know!" Her brows drew together in momentary disgust.

"I _don't_ know, but it must be so if all the myriads of past humanity are living there. If I had my way you would never sit again," he declared, most fervently.

"I wouldn't mind so much," she went on, "if I were not marked out for suspicion--if people would only talk to me of nice earthly things part of the time as they would to any other girl--but they never do. Everybody wants to talk to me about death and spirits--"

"That's what gives edge to my remorse," he interrupted. "Here am I doing the very things you abhor. To think that we who have made such a protest against your slavery could not allow you one free evening! I will not say another word on these uncanny subjects."

"But I _want_ to talk of them to _you_! I wanted to tell you all about myself that day we rode up to the mine--but I could not."

"I wish you had. It might have made a great deal of difference in your life--and mine. I have been thinking of that ride to-night, as we sat in the darkness. If I could, I would keep you as girlish, as gay, as you were that day. This business is all a desecration to me. I love to think of you as you were then--when you laughed back at me in the rain. I wish we were both there this minute."

She smiled. "You forget the time of night!" Her face grew wistful. "I've been getting homesick for the mountains lately--and yet I like it here. I love this beautiful room. I adore your sister. I know I could have a delightful time if only my guides weren't so anxious to have me convert the world."

"I grow more and more conscience-smitten!" he exclaimed. "To think we should be the ones to tie and torture you, and at our first dinner-party!"

"Please don't blame yourself. It was not your fault; grandfather insisted on talking with you, and I--I wished it very much." Her face grew radiant with pleasure. "Oh, I'm so glad you made it a test-sitting!--I want you to believe in me. I mean that I don't deceive--"

"I am sure of that."

"There are so many things I want to talk with you about--but not now--it is late."

Clarke, who had grown too restless to remain seated, interrupted a story which Kate was relating, and rose, saying, harshly: "It is time for us to be going. Pratt will lock us out if we don't."

The cloud again fell on Viola's face--her little hour of freedom from her keeper was over. Morton felt the change in her, and so did Kate, who fairly pleaded with the mother to remain. "It is late and you are tired, and after this wonderful evening you ought not to go back to that gloomy place."

Mrs. Lambert looked at Clarke, whose reply was stern. "No, we must return."

Something very sweet and intimate was in Morton's voice as he found opportunity to say to Viola: "I don't like to think of you returning to that gilded mausoleum. It is a most unwholesome place for you. You are too closely surrounded with morbid influences."

"I know it. I dread to go back--I admit that. I suppose Mr. Pratt is a good man, I know he does a great deal for the faith, and he is very generous to us, but oh, he is so vulgar, so impertinent! He bores me nearly frantic by being always at my elbow. I shudder when he touches me as if he were some sort of evil animal. Mother can't realize how he annoys and depresses me, and Anthony insists that we must endure it."

"I wish you'd stay here!" he exclaimed, impulsively. "Accept my sister's invitation--it would give us such an opportunity to talk of this sitting. Come, let me send for your trunks."

She shrank a little from his eager eyes, and Mrs. Lambert again interposed. "It is quite impossible, professor; perhaps some other time."

Viola yielded to her mother and went away to get her cloak, and Morton turned to Clarke. "One of the conditions of my promise to organize a committee is this: you and Pratt must be excluded from the circle."

Weissmann echoed this. "Quite right! That we demand."

The clergyman's face hardened. "You ask the impossible. It is necessary for me to be present at each sitting. I have the right to be there as the historian of the case. Furthermore, I add to the strength of the manifestations--that I have fully demonstrated."

"I appreciate your position, but in order to avoid criticism, to make the tests perfect, it will be necessary to hold the sittings either here or at Weissmann's, and to exclude every one connected with Miss Lambert. In no other way can we convince ourselves or the public."

Clarke's face was darkly stubborn. "Then you will have no sittings. My challenge will go forth next Sunday afternoon, and one of the unchangeable clauses of that challenge will be this: the sittings must take place in Pratt's library and I must be present."

"I hope you will not insist on that," Morton further urged; "for Miss Lambert's sake you must not. To incorporate such terms in your challenge will brand her as an impostor and you and Pratt as her confederates. In this statement I think you will find her 'controls' agreeing. They were undecided to-night, but when they consider carefully they will see that my advice is sound."

Clarke's eyes were aflame. "You have my terms. Accept them or refuse them, as you please."

Viola, returning, extended her hand to Morton with a trustful smile. "I've had a beautiful evening."

"To say that after we have tied you hand and foot till you were numb, and kept you in the dark all the evening, is very gracious of you. I feel very much the brutal host. But you must come again. I swear Kate shall not pester you next time."

Kate was indignant. "Well, I like that! when _you_ were the one crazy to experiment. Of course they're coming, coming to stay to-morrow night, and any one who dares to talk ghosts to her will be sent to bed."

And so in a hearty, cordial clangor of farewells they got out into the hall, and Morton, seeing Viola in her handsome cloak, her eyes shining, her face once more gay and smiling, was again filled with wonder at her astounding resiliency of mood. It was as if two sharply differentiated souls alternated in the possession of her body.

Clarke, wearing a cape overcoat and a soft hat, was far less admirable in appearance than when, with head uncovered, he sat within. He resembled a comic picture of an old-fashioned tragedian--a man glad to feel the finger of remark directed towards him, but his face was bitter, his eyes burning with anger, his lips white with pain.

Serviss relented as he studied him. "You'd better take Britt's trail and return to the mountains," he said, kindly. "This is a bad climate for you."

"My work is here," he replied, curtly. "I have no fear," and so they parted.

Weissmann was sitting in silent meditation in one corner of the dining-room when Serviss returned. "Well, master, what do you think of to-night's performance?"

Weissmann replied, in ironical phrase: "Hearing in civilized man is vague and indefinite. Spooks do well to limit their manifestations to a sense which most powerfully appeals to the imagination."

Morton spoke with great earnestness. "Weissmann, that girl could not move a limb. She positively remained where we put her. So far as I am concerned, to-night's test eliminated her from the slightest complicity, and I confess it rejoices me greatly; but who was responsible for the prestidigitation?"

Weissmann replied, slowly: "It is very puzzling," and fell into a muse which lasted for several minutes. At last he roused to say: "Well, we will see. Next time Clarke and the mother must be eliminated."

"You don't think evil of her?" exclaimed Morton.

"She is very anxious, you know--"

Kate put in her word. "It's all very simple," she said; "the spirits did it. You needn't tell me that Clarke or Mrs. Lambert got up and skittered around the room doing those things. I held their hands--and know they didn't get away. Besides, how did that glass come there? and how could they make those voices sound so natural? What is the use of being stupidly stubborn? If you treat Viola fairly she will confound your science."

"You base all this on one imperfect test?"

"I don't know what you'd call a _perfect_ one. Anyhow, that child is absolutely honest."

"I hope you are right, Kate; but there are some serious discrepancies--even in to-night's performances. Nothing took place which I could not do sitting in her chair with my hands free."

"But her hands weren't free! If there is any virtue in cotton fibre or steel she remained precisely where we set her at the beginning."

"But to admit that one book was moved from its place is to admit that a force exists unknown to science."

"But what are you going to do? Did you do it? Or did I? Did Clarke reach from where he sat and manipulate the horn? Who brought the old wine-glass from the china-closet? No one entered from the outside--that is certain. And then the things 'Loggy' said?"

"What do you think, Dr. Weissmann?"

Weissmann looked up abstractedly. "If Clarke performed these feats to-night he is wasting his time in any profession but jugglery. You said the cone touched you?" he asked of Morton.

"Several times."

"To do that he must have left his seat."

"I am perfectly sure he did not," replied Kate, firmly.

Morton insisted. "He must have done so, Kate--there is no other explanation of what took place. It was very dark and the rug soft. There is another important point--all of the books came from within a radius of a few feet of the psychic, so that if she _were_ able to rise and free her hands--"

"Which she did not do," answered Weissmann. "She remained precisely where we put her; but we should have nailed Clarke to the floor also."

"How about the child who spoke German?" asked Kate. "Was she--"

Weissmann replied slowly, with a little effort, "I had a little girl of the name Mina who died at eight years of age."

Kate's voice expressed sympathy. "I didn't know that. She must have been a dear. The voice was very sweet. I could almost touch the little thing."

"I do not see how Clarke or any one here knew of my daughter or her name. Clarke may be a mind-reader. The voice did not prove itself."

"Neither was 'Loggy' quite convincing," said Morton. "And yet I cannot understand how those voices were produced. Our imaginations must have been made enormously active by the dark. As scientists we cannot admit the slightest of those movements without the fall of some of our most deeply grounded dogmas. What becomes of Haeckel's dictum--that matter and spirit are inseparable?"

"There is matter and matter," replied Weissmann. "To say that spirit and flesh is inseparable is to claim too much. We can say that we have no proof of such separation, but Crookes and others claim the contrary. It is curious to observe that we to-night have trenched on the very ground Crookes trod. I am very eager now to sit with this girl--the mother and Clarke being excluded."

"Of one thing I am more than half persuaded, and that is that Clarke is a mind-reader; for how else could he know the things which the supposed ghost of my uncle recounted?"

"It is very puzzling," repeated Weissmann, deep-sunk in speculation; and in this abstraction he took himself silently away.

Kate, with an air of saying, "Now that we are alone, let's know your real mind," faced her brother with eyes of wonder. "Morton, what do you honestly think of it? Viola had nothing to do with it, did she?"

"No; but are you absolutely sure Clarke did not get loose and do things?"

"Mort, I was never more alert in my life, and I _know_ he didn't move out of his chair."

"But think what it involves!"

"I don't care what it involves. So far as the senses of touch and hearing go, Clarke remained seated every minute of the time, and I certainly held both his and Mrs. Lambert's hands the whole time while the books were being thrown."

"Well, there you are. Somebody did it." He shrugged his shoulders in an unwonted irritation.

"Why not say the spirits did it all?"

"Because that is unthinkable."

"Sir William Crookes and Dr. Zöllner, you say, believed in these disembodied intelligences--"

"Yes, but they belong to what Haeckel calls the imaginative scientists."

"You needn't quote Haeckel to me, Morton. If I believed what he preaches I would take myself and my children out of the world. I don't see how a man can look a child in the face and say such things. I can't read any of your scientific friends straight along. Their jargon is worse than anything, but I pick out enough to know that they don't believe in anything they can't see, and they won't go out of their way to see things. Do you suppose I'm going to believe that Robbie is nothing but a little animal, and that if he should die his soul would disappear like a vapor?"

"I can only repeat that the converse is unthinkable. There is no room in my philosophy for the re-entrance of the dead."

"Why not? It's all very simple. We're creatures of our surroundings, aren't we? Now, sitting there in the dark to-night, it seemed to me that the people we think of as dead were all about me. It scared me at first; but, really, isn't it the most comforting faith in the world? I've always liked the idea of the Indian's happy 'hunting-grounds'--and this is something like it."

He smiled shrewdly. "That performance to-night and this conversation would make a pretty story to lay before the president of Corlear--now wouldn't it?"

"How do you suppose he will take your going into this investigation?"

"I don't know, but I think he'll 'fire' me instanter."

"Well, let him try it! He wouldn't _dare_--"

"Oh yes, he would, if he thought I was hurting the institution. See what they did to poor little Combes, who mildly claimed to be able to hypnotize people."

"Yes, but he made himself ridiculous in the papers."

"You mean the papers made him ridiculous. Couldn't they do the same with Weissmann and me? Think of a big, sprawling, sketchy drawing in the _Blast_, with Weissmann glaring at a strangely beautiful young lady in scanty gown--his hands spread like claws upon the table, while another younger man (myself) catches at a horn floating overhead. Oh yes, there are great possibilities in to-night's entertainment. May I ask you, Mrs. Rice, to be more than usually circumspect?"

"You may, Dr. Serviss."

He rose gravely. "Very good. Now I think you would better go to bed."

"I wish your Mr. Lambert would come."

"So do I. I'm afraid he is going to ignore my summons. Unless I hear from him to-morrow I shall consider him craven or indifferent."

"What will you do then?"

His brows contracted into a frown. "I don't know. She should be freed from Clarke's immediate influence, but I don't see how I can interfere."

"I can't believe that she really cares for him; in fact, from things she said to-night, I think she fears him. He was furiously jealous of you, I could see that. And I must say you gave him cause."

He turned and looked at her in affected amazement. "Where are you heading now?"

She laughed. "Where are you drifting, my boy? I never saw any one more absorbed, and I can't say I blame you; she was lovely. Good-night." And so she left him.

Sitting thus alone in the deep of the night, the flush of his joy at the proof of Viola's innocence grew gray and cold in a profound disbelief in the reality of his experiences. "_Did_ anything really happen?" he asked himself. Returning to the library with intent to study the situation he mused long upon the tumbled books, the horn, the tables, and the chairs. He put himself in Viola's seat in the attempt to conceive of some method whereby even the most skilful magician would be able to pull out tacks, rip stitches, and break tape--and then--more difficult than all, after manipulating the horn, reseat himself and restore his bonds, every tack, to its precise place. And his conversation with "Loggy," most amazing of all, came back to plague him. What could explain that marvellous simulation of his uncle's chuckling laugh?

Yes, Viola was clearly innocent. It was impossible for her to have lifted a hand; that he decided upon finally--and yet it was almost as difficult for Clarke or Mrs. Lambert to have performed all the tricks, "Unless Kate"--he brought himself up short--"in the end, my own sister, is involved in the imposture," he exclaimed, with a sense of bewilderment.