Arthur Conan Doyle

“ But if we can indeed show the world that this Pithecanthropus can come to us from the Invisible, and depart again as it came, then the knowledge is so tremendous that even if he tore us to pieces with those formidable claws, it would none the less be our duty to go forward with our experiments.”
“Science can be heroic,” said Mailey. “Who can deny it? And yet I have heard these very scientific men tell us that we imperil our reason when we try to get in touch with spiritual forces. Gladly would we sacrifice our reason, or our lives, if we could help mankind. ”

“ Where was your guide?”
“Yes, Victor,” said Tom Linden, shaking his head at the air above him, “where were you? I’ve got a crow to pick with you. You know, dear,” he added, “just as a doctor can never treat his own case, a medium is very helpless when things come to his own address. That’s the law. And yet I should have known. I was feeling in the dark. I had no inspiration of any sort. It was just a foolish pity and sympathy that led me on when I had no sort of a real message. Well, dear Mary, we will take what’s coming to us with a brave heart. ”

“ There were some strange happenings in Bolton’s Court that night. Some folk thought they had no relation to each other. One or two thought they had. The British Law saw nothing and had nothing to say.
In the second last house, a keen, hawklike face peered from behind a window-blind into the darkened street. A shaded candle was behind that fearful face, dark as death, remorseless as the tomb. Behind Rebecca Levi stood a young man whose features showed that he sprang from the same Oriental race. For an hour—for a second hour—the woman had sat without a word, watching, watching.... ”

“ No, no, not dead, lady! We are far more alive than you are. All the fun and frolic are with us!” She spoke in a high, clear voice and perfect English.
“Shall I show you what we do over here?” She began a graceful, gliding dance, while she whistled as melodiously as a bird. “Poor Susan could not do that. Susan has had no practice. Lucille knows how to use a built-up body.”
“Do you remember me, Lucille?” asked Mailey.
“I remember you, Mr. Mailey. Big man with yellow beard.”
For the second time in her life Enid had to pinch herself hard to satisfy herself that she was not dreaming. ”

“ Malone had listened with interest and then with a growing indignation. Now he suddenly took fire.
“Look here, Polter,” he said, turning his chair towards the company, “it is fools and dolts like you which are holding back the world’s progress. You admit that you have read nothing of this, and I’ll swear that you have seen nothing. Yet you use the position and the name which you have won in other matters in order to discredit a number of people who, whatever they may be, are certainly very earnest and very thoughtful.” ”

“ Surely man need not trouble himself with grotesque speculations as to the nature of life beyond the grave. We had enough to do in this world. Life was a beautiful thing. The man who appreciated its real duties and beauties would have sufficient to employ him without dabbling in pseudo sciences which had their roots in frauds, exposed already a hundred times and yet finding fresh crowds of foolish devotees whose insane credulity and irrational prejudice made them impervious to all argument. ”

“ The medium’s head had fallen forward and his deep snoring showed that he was already in trance. Every face was turned towards him, for the wonderful process of materialisation was going on before their very eyes. At first it was a swirl of light, steam-like vapour which circled round his head. Then there was a waving, as of white diaphanous drapery, behind him. It thickened. It coalesced. It hardened in outline and took definite shape. There was a head. There were shoulders. Arms grew out from them. Yes, there could not be a doubt of it—there was a man, an old man, standing behind the chair. ”

“ His deep organ voice—such a voice as only a man with a fifty-inch chest can produce—rose and fell in a perfect cadence which enchanted his audience. He was born to sway any assembly—an obvious leader of mankind. In turn he was descriptive, humorous and convincing. He pictured the natural growth of animism among savages cowering under the naked sky, unable to account for the beat of the rain or the roar of the thunder, and seeing a benevolent or malicious intelligence behind those operations of Nature which Science had now classified and explained. ”

“ Jones shuddered at the beginning it was the turn of his audience to shudder afterwards. Granting his own claim, he had proved clearly that an Atlantean spirit might be a portentous bore. He droned on with platitudes and ineptitudes while Malone whispered to Enid that if Alasha was a fair specimen of the population it was just as well that his native land was safely engulfed in the Atlantic Ocean. When, with another rather melodramatic shudder, he emerged from his trance, the chairman sprang to his feet with an alacrity which showed that he was taking no risks lest the Atlantean should return. ”

“ If he is in touch with angelic beings, let him give us a philosophy, which is higher than mortal mind can evolve. This false show of science, this camouflage of ignorance, this babble about ectoplasm and other mythical products of the psychic imagination was mere obscurantism, the bastard offspring of superstition and darkness. Wherever the matter was probed one came upon corruption and mental putrescence. Every medium was a deliberate impostor. (“You are a liar!” in a woman’s voice from the neighbourhood of the Lindens.) ”

“ Not for publicity, mind you, but just for your own good— though we don’t shrink from publicity, either. I have physical phenomena seances at my own home without a professional medium, and if you would like . . .”
“There’s nothing I would like so much.”
“Then you shall come—both of you. I don’t have many outsiders. I wouldn’t have one of those psychic research people inside my doors. Why should I go out of my way to be insulted by all their suspicions and their traps ? They seem to think that folk have no feelings. But you have some ordinary common sense. That’s all we ask.” ”

“ The next instant Linden was upon them, his fists flashing out with terrific force. Mailey, who had boxed in his youth, stopped one blow, but the next beat in his guard and he fell with a crash against the door. Lord Roxton was hurled to one side, but Malone, with a footballer’s instinct, ducked his head and caught the prizefighter round the knees. If a man is too good for you on his feet, then put him on his back, for he cannot be scientific there. ”

“ The spade-shaped Assyrian beard showed tangles of grey amid the black, his eyes were a trifle less aggressive, his smile less self-complacent, his voice as monstrous as ever but less ready to roar down all opposition. Yet he was dangerous, as all around him were painfully aware. The volcano was not extinct, and constant rumblings threatened some new explosion. Life had much yet to teach him, but he was a little less intolerant in learning. ”

“ Enid and Malone felt every sense upon the alert and every nerve on edge as they gazed out into the gloom.
“Nothing doing, Mother,” said Bolsover at last. “It’s the strange company. New vibrations. They have to tune them in to get harmony. Give us another tune, Mr. Smiley.”
Again the harmonium droned. It was still playing when a woman’s voice cried: “Stop! Stop! They are here!” ”

“ This is not my only medium of expression and I am due in Edinburgh in a few minutes. But be of good heart, young man. I will set my assistant with two extra batteries to increase your vitality so far as your system will permit. As to you, sir,” to Challenger, “I would implore you to beware of the egotism of brain and the self-concentration of intellect. Store what is old, but be ever receptive to what is new, and judge it not as you may wish it, but as God has designed it.” ”

“ Like many men who override the opinions of others, Challenger was exceedingly sensitive when anyone took a liberty with his own. Each successive incisive sentence of his opponent had been like a barbed ban{224}darillo in the flanks of a foaming bull. Now, in speechless fury, he was shaking his huge hairy fist over the chairman’s head in the direction of his adversary, whose derisive smile stimulated him to more furious plunges with which he butted the fat president along the platform. The assembly had in an instant become a pandemonium. ”

“ But the clever Malone, aided and abetted by Enid, still put forward the idea that his presence would be a protection against fraud, and that he would be able to point out to them how and why they had been deceived. With this thought in his mind, Challenger gave a contemptuous and condescending consent to the proposal that he should grace with his presence a proceeding which was, in his opinion, more fitted to the stone cabin of a neolithic savage than to the serious attention of one who represented the accumulated culture and wisdom of the human race. ”

“ Malone waved a deprecating cigarette.
“Bolsover seances and others like them are, of course, things of no moment to the real psychic. They are like the rude foundations of a building which certainly help to sustain the edifice, but are forgotten when once you come to inhabit it. It is the higher superstructure with which we have to do. You would think that the physical phenomena were the whole subject — those and a fringe of ghosts and haunted houses — if you were to believe the cheap papers who cater for the sensationalist. Of course, these physical phenomena have a use of their own. ”

“ That little bird of a woman had made her nest in the big man’s heart. He had all the tenderness and chivalry which the strong can have for the weak. By yielding everything she had won everything, as a sweet-natured, tactful woman can. And when she died suddenly from virulent pneumonia following influenza, the man staggered and went down. He came up again, smiling ruefully like the stricken boxer, and ready to carry on for many a round with Fate. But he was not the same man, and if it had not been for the help and comradeship of his daughter Enid, he might never have rallied from the blow. ”

“ I assure you, Malone, that the talk of black magic and of evil entities is not an invention of the enemy. Such things do happen and centre round the wicked medium. You can get down into a region which is akin to the popular idea of witchcraft. It is dishonest to deny it.”
“Like attracts like,” explained Mrs. Mailey, who was quite as capable an exponent as her husband. “You get what you deserve. If you sit with wicked people you get wicked visitors.” ”

“ Malone had, as a fact, disengaged his hand in the darkness and was jotting down in shorthand the sequence of events.
“What shall I speak of?”
“Of love and marriage,” suggested Mrs. Bolsover, nudging her husband.
“Well, I will say a few words on that. I will not take long, for others are waiting. The room is crowded with spirit people. I wish you to understand that there is one man, and only one, for each woman, and one woman only for each man. When those two meet they fly together and are one through all the endless chain of existence. ”