The Return of Peter Grimm Part 8

McPherson leaned back with a sigh of discouragement. Then, with professional insight, he noted for the first time the gallant fight the old man opposite him was making to keep up that obstinate gay courage whose outward expression had so irritated the doctor. And, all at once, McPherson ceased to become the gruff friend and a.s.sumed the role that Ananias's physician probably acquired from his famous patient and which, most a.s.suredly, he has handed down to all his medical successors.

"I see no reason, Peter," said he with judicial ponderousness, "why you shouldn't reach a ripe old age. You're quite likely to outlive me and a host of younger men. Only, take better care of yourself. And,--no matter how many probable years of life a man has before him, it does him no harm to set his house in order. Think over that part of my advice and forget the rest of it."

"Forget the rest of it," echoed Grimm absently. "The rest----"

McPherson hesitated; then as though overcome by a temptation too strong for him to battle against, he blurted out half-shamefacedly:

"Peter--don't laugh at me. I want to make a strange compact with you. As I've told you, you're quite likely to outlive me. But--will you agree that whichever of us happens to--to go first,--shall come back and--and let the other fellow know? Let the other fellow know; so as to settle the Great Question once and for all?"

Grimm stared at him for a moment. Then he set the room ringing with a laugh of whose mocking heartiness there could be no doubt.

"Oh, Andrew! Andrew!" he cried, when he could get his breath. "Still riding your one crazy hobby! And you so sane in other ways!"

"But you'll make the compact?" begged McPherson. "You're a man of your word,----"

"Make a compact to----? Oh, no, no, man. _No!_ I'd be ashamed to have people know I was such a fool."

"But," urged the doctor, "no one else need know anything about it. It'll be just between ourselves."

"No, no, dear old Andrew," laughed Grimm indulgently. "Positively _no_!

I refuse, point-blank. I'll do you any favour in reason. But I draw the line at being dragged into any of your absurd spook tests."

"You sneer at 'spooks,' as you call them," retorted the doctor. "Most people do. Just as people scoffed when Columbus told them there was an America. But how many times do you think _you_ have seen a spook, yourself?"

"A spook? I can't remember that I ever----"

"Yes, a ghost."

"A ghost," repeated Grimm with the utmost solemnity and wrinkling his forehead as in an effort of memory. "I can't just now recall----"

"That's right! Make fun of me! But you can't tell that man is complete--that he doesn't live more than one life;--that the soul doesn't pa.s.s on and on. Smile if you like. Wiser men than yourself have believed it. Why, man alive, every human being is surcharged with a persistent personal energy. And that energy must continue forever."

"Oh, Doctor, Doctor!" exclaimed Kathrien, coming in with a fresh supply of hot waffles. "Have you started on spooks again?"

"Yes, Katje," sighed Peter dolorously. "There can be no possible redeeming doubt about that. He's started."

"And," laughed the girl, "I wasn't on hand to hear him. Have I missed very much of it?"

"No," answered her uncle. "We're still in the painful early stages of the squabble. I'll tell you what I'll do, Andrew: I'll compromise with you. Instead of making the bargain you proposed, I'll stand aside and let _you_ go ahead of me into the next world. Then you can come back at your leisure and keep the spook compact. It'll be quite interesting.

Every time a knock sounds or a chair creaks or a door bangs or Lad growls in his sleep, I'll strike an att.i.tude and say: 'Ss.h.!.+ There's Doc!'"

"Don't guy me, old friend," urged McPherson. "I'm entirely serious. I'll make the promise and I want _you_ to make it, too. Understand, I'm no so-called Spiritist. I'm just a groping seeker after the Truth."

"That's what they all say," scoffed Grimm. "Seekers after the truth! And madly eager to believe everything they hear or read _except_ the commonsense truth. And you, a level-headed Scotchman, old enough to be your own father, actually gulp down such tomfoolery! Next we'll have you chasing around the streets at night, looking with a dark lantern for the bogey man."

"Laugh at me if you like. I know I'm right. I know the dead _are_ alive.

They're here. Right here. They're all about us, watching us, suffering with us, rejoicing with us, trying no doubt to speak the warnings and encouragements that our world-deafened mortal ears cannot hear. I'm not alone in the theory. Some of the greatest scientists--the wisest men of the century--are of the same opinion."

"Dreamers," smiled Grimm indulgently. "Dreamers like yourself."

"Dreamers, eh?" The doctor caught him up vehemently. "_Dreamers?_ You can't call Sir William Crookes, the inventor of the Crookes' Tubes, a dreamer! No, nor Sir Oliver Lodge, the great biologist; or Curie, who discovered radium; or Dr. Lombroso, the founder of the science of criminology. Are Maxwell, Dr. Vesine, Richet, and our own American, Dr.

Hyslop, _dreamers_? Why, even Professor James, the mighty Harvard psychologist, took a peep at ghosts. And, instead of laughing at 'spooks,' the big scientific men are trying to lay hold of them. I tell you, Peter, Science is just beginning to peer through the half-open door that a few years ago was shut tight."

"Trying to lay hold of ghosts, are they?" said Grimm. "I'd like to lay hold of one. I'd lug it to the nearest police station. That's the place for 'em. Just as the asylum's the place for folks who believe in 'em.

When you 'pa.s.s over,' Andrew, you'd better not come back. You won't enjoy prowling around a world where sane people don't believe you exist."

"Peter," reproved McPherson, "I'm sorry--very, _very_ sorry--that you and others like you think it's smart to make a joke of something you can't understand. Hyslop was right when he said Man will spend millions of dollars to discover the North Pole, but not one cent to throw a ray of light upon his immortal destiny."

"And, after the millions of times they've been exposed, you blame me for not joining in your belief in spook mediums!"

"A lot of mediums are humbugs, I grant you. Just as there are fakers in every profession. If there were no such thing as real money, there would be no object in making counterfeits. And some of the mediums have proven clearly that they are capable of real demonstrations."

"They are, hey? What's the use of mediums at all if the dead can really come back? If my friends who have died return to earth, why don't they walk straight up to me and say, 'Well, Peter Grimm. Here we are!' When they do that, I shall gladly be the first man to take off my hat to them and hold out my hand. But as long as they have to employ greasy mediums to make their presence known, and try to prove they are with me by knocking on tables and tipping chairs and scratching on slates, there is only one of two things to believe: Either mediums are fakes, or else folks all become imbecile practical jokers as soon as they die."

"Imbecile practical jokers!" repeated Kathrien, shocked.

"Yes," reiterated Peter Grimm. "That's what I said. And it's a mild way of putting it. Would any sane man play such tricks as the spiritualists attribute to our dead? It shatters every thought of the majesty of death. Would a sane _live_ man walk into my house and announce his presence to me by rapping on a wall or tipping a table or scrawling idiotic messages on a slate or talking to me through some half-educated 'medium'? Would he----?"

"Yes, he would!" a.s.serted the doctor. "He'd do all those things and more, if he couldn't make you see him or hear him in any other way. As to mediums,--why doesn't a telegram travel through the air as well as on a wire? Your friends could come back to you in the old way if you could but put yourself in a receptive condition. But you can't. So you must depend on a non-professional medium,--a 'sensitive'----"

"See, Katje," interpolated Grimm, "he has names for them all. All neatly cla.s.sified like so many germs in a bottle. Well, Andrew, how many ghosts did you see last night? He has only to shut his eyes, Katje, and along comes the parade. Spooks! Spooks! Spooks! Nice, grisly, s.h.i.+vering, spooky spooks! And now he wants me to put my house in order and settle up my affairs and join the parade."

"Settle your affairs?" asked Kathrien puzzled.

"Oh, it's just his nonsense," Grimm hastened to a.s.sure her.

"Andrew,"--he hurried on to turn the subject from dangerous personalities,--"you've seen a whole lot of people pa.s.s over to the Other Side. In fact, your patients seem to have quite a habit of doing that. Tell me: did you ever see one out of all that number come back again? Just _one_?"

"No," answered McPherson reluctantly. "I never did, but----"

"No," cried Grimm in triumph, "and what's more, you never will. Yet you----"

"There was not perhaps the intimate bond between doctor and patients to bring them back to me. But in my own family, I've known of a 'return'

such as you speak of. A distant cousin of mine died in London. And at almost that very instant, she was seen in New York."

"Rubbis.h.!.+"

"Rubbish? Why? A century ago, if any one had tried to describe the telephone, people of your sort would have grunted 'Rubbis.h.!.+' But if my voice can carry thousands of miles over the telephone, why cannot a soul, with G.o.d-given force behind it, dart over the entire universe? Is Thomas Edison greater than G.o.d?"

"Oh, Doctor," gasped the horrified Kathrien.

"And what's more," rushed on McPherson, unheeding, "they can't lay it all to telepathy. In the case of a spirit message giving the contents of a sealed letter known only to the person who has died--telepathy, eh?

Not a bit of it. Here's a case you must have heard of, Peter. An officer on the Polar vessel _Jeannette_ sent out by a New York newspaper, appeared one night at his wife's bedside. She was in Brooklyn. She knew perfectly well that he was on the Polar Sea. He said to her: 'Count!'

Then she distinctly heard a s.h.i.+p's bell and her husband's voice saying again, 'Count!' She had counted 'six' when his voice said: 'Six bells!

And the _Jeannette_ is lost!' The s.h.i.+p, it turned out later, was really lost at the very time the woman had the vision. There! Account for _that_ by telepathy or trickery if you can!"

"A bad dream!" was Grimm's unshaken verdict. "I have them every now and then. 'Six bells and'--suet pudding brings me messages from the North Pole. And I can get messages from Kingdom Come when I've had half a hot mince pie with melted cheese on it for supper. That disposes of your _Jeannette_ case."

"Scoff if you like. There have been more than seventeen thousand other cases which the London Society of Psychical Research has found worth investigating."