The Tyranny of the Dark Part 39

"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 s.h.i.+ning, 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 gla.s.s 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-gla.s.s 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. Zollner, 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?"