Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (277 page)

Instantly the figure threw up both her hands in a wild gesture of joy. The motion seemed to destroy her equilibrium and she vanished.

“She had not been through before. She could not speak,” said Mrs. Linden, in her business-like way. “It was your mother.”

Malone went back half-stunned to his seat. It is only when these things come to one’s own address that one understands their full force. His mother! Ten years in her grave and yet standing before him. Could he swear it was his mother? No, he could not. Was he morally certain that it was his mother? Yes, he was morally certain. He was shaken to the core.

But other wonders diverted his thoughts. A young man had emerged briskly from the cabinet and had advanced to the front of Mailey, where he had halted.

“Hullo, Jock! Dear old Jock!” said Mailey. “My nephew,” he explained to the company. “He always comes when I am with Linden.”

“The power is sinking,” said the lad, in a clear voice. “I can’t stay very long. I am so glad to see you, Uncle. You know, we can see quite clearly in this light, even if you can’t.”

“Yes, I know you can. I say, Jock. I wanted to tell you that I told your mother I had seen you. She said her Church taught her it was wrong.”

“I know. And that I was a demon. Oh, it is rotten, rotten, rotten, and rotten things will fall!” His voice broke in a sob.

“Don’t blame her Jock, she believes this.”

“No, no, I don’t blame her! She will know better some day. The day is coming soon when all truth will be manifest and all these corrupt Churches will be swept off the earth with their cruel doctrines and their caricatures of God.”

“Why, Jock, you are becoming quite a heretic!”

“Love, Uncle! Love! That is all that counts. What matter what you believe if you are sweet and kind and unselfish as the Christ was of old?”

“Have you seen Christ?” asked someone.

“Not yet. Perhaps the time may come.”

“Is he not in Heaven, then?”

“There are many heavens. I am in a very humble one. But it is glorious all the same.”

Enid had thrust her head forward during this dialogue. Her eyes had got used to the light and she could see more clearly than before. The man who stood within a few feet of her was not human. Of that she had no doubt whatever, and yet the points were very subtle. Something in his strange, yellow-white colouring as contrasted with the faces of her neighbours. Something, also, in the curious stiffness of his carriage, as of a man in very rigid stays.

“Now, Jock,” said Mailey, “give an address to the company. Tell them a few words about your life.”

The figure hung his head, exactly as a shy youth would do in life.

“Oh, Uncle, I can’t.”

“Come, Jock, we love to listen to you.”

“Teach the folk what death is,” the figure began. “God wants them to know. That is why He lets us come back. It is nothing. You are no more changed than if you went into the next room. You can’t believe you are dead. I didn’t. It was only when I saw old Sam that I knew, for I was certain that he was dead, anyhow. Then I came back to mother. And” — his voice broke—”she would not receive me.”

“Never mind, dear old Jock,” said Mailey. “She will learn wisdom.”

“Teach them the truth! Teach it to them! Oh, it u so much more important than all the things men talk about. If papers for one week gave as much attention to psychic things as they do to football, it would be known to all. It is ignorance which stands—”

The observers were conscious of a sort of flash towards the cabinet, but the youth had disappeared.

“Power run down,” said Mailey. “Poor lad, he held on to the last. He always did. That was how he died.

There was a long pause. The gramophone started again. Then there was a movement of the curtains. Something was emerging. Mrs. Linden sprang up and waved the figure back. The medium for the first time stirred in his chair and groaned.

“What is the matter, Mrs. Linden?”

“Only half-formed,” she answered. “The lower face had not materialised. Some of you would have been alarmed. I think that we shall have no more to-night The power has sunk very low.”

So it proved. The lights were gradually turned on. The medium lay with a white face and a clammy brow in his chair, while his wife sedulously watched over him, unbuttoning his collar and bathing his face from a water-glass. The company broke into little groups, discussing what they had seen.

“Oh, wasn’t it thrilling?” cried Miss Badley. “It really was most exciting. But what a pity we could not see the one with the semi-materialised face.”

“Thanks, I have seen quite enough,” said the pompous mystic, all the pomposity shaken out of him. “I confess that it has been rather too much for my nerves.”

Mr. Atkinson found himself near the psychic researchers.

“Well, what do you make of it?” he asked.

“I have seen it better done at Maskelyne’s Hall,” said one.

“Oh, come, Scott!,” said the other. “You’ve no right to say that. You admitted that the cabinet was fraud-proof.”

“Well, so do the committees who go on the stage at Maskelyne’s.”

“Yes, but it is Maskelyne’s own stage. This is not Linden’s own stage. He has no machinery.”

“
Populus vult decepi,
” the other answered, shrugging his shoulders. “ I should certainly reserve judgment.” He moved away with the dignity of one who cannot be deceived, while his more rational companion still argued with him as they went.

“Did you hear that?” said Atkinson. “There is a certain class of psychic researcher who is absolutely incapable of receiving evidence. They misuse their brains by straining them to find a way round when the road is quite clear before them. When the human race advances into its new kingdom, these intellectual men will form the absolute rear.”

“No, no,” said Mailey, laughing. “The bishops are predestined to be the rearguard. I see them all marching in step, a solid body, with their gaiters and cassocks — the last in the whole world to reach spiritual truth.”

“Oh, come,” said Enid, “that is too severe. They are all good men.”

“Of course they are. It’s quite physiological. They are are a body of elderly men, and the elderly brain is sclerosed and cannot record new impressions. It’s not their fault, but the fact remains. You are very silent, Malone.” But Malone was thinking of a little, squat, dark figure which waved its hands in joy when he spoke to it. It was with that image in his mind that he turned from this room of wonders and passed down into the street.

6. In Which The Reader Is Shown The Habits Of A Notorious Crimina
l

WE will now leave that little group with whom we have made our first exploration of these grey and ill-defined, but immensely important, regions of human thought and experiences. From the researchers we will turn to the researched. Come with me and we will visit Mr. Linden at home, and will examine the lights and shades which make up the life of a professional medium.

To reach him we will pass down the crowded thoroughfare of Tottenham Court Road, where the huge furniture emporia flank the way, and we will turn into a small street of drab houses which leads eastwards towards the British Museum. Tullis Street is the name and 40 the number. Here it is, one of a row, flat-faced, dull-coloured and commonplace, with railed steps leading up to a discoloured door, and one front-room window, in which a huge gilt-edged Bible upon a small round table reassures the timid visitor. With the universal pass-key of imagination we open the dingy door, pass down a dark passage and up a narrow stair. It is nearly ten o’clock in the morning and yet it is in his bedroom that we must seek the famous worker of miracles. The fact us that he has had, as we have seen, an exhausting sitting the night before, and that he has to conserve his strength in the mornings.

At the moment of our inopportune, but invisible, visit he was sitting up, propped by the pillows, with a breakfast-tray upon his knees. The vision he presented would have amused those who have prayed with him in the bumble Spiritualist temples, or had sat with awe at the seances where he had exhibited the modern equivalents of the gifts of the Spirit. He looked unhealthily pallid in the dim morning light, and his curly hair rose up in a tangled pyramid above his broad, intellectual brow. The open collar of his nightshirt displayed a broad, bull’s neck, and the depth of his chest and spread of his shoulders showed that he was a man of considerable personal strength. He was eating his breakfast with avidity while he conversed with the little, eager, dark-eyed wife who was seated on the side of the bed.

“And you reckon it a good meeting, Mary?”

“Fair to middling, Tom. There was two of them researchers raking round with their feet and upsetting everybody. D’ye think those folk in the Bible would have got their phenomena if they had chaps of that sort on the premises? ‘Of one accord’, that’s what they say in the book.”

“Of course!” cried Linden heartily. “Was the Duchess pleased?”

“Yes, I think she was very pleased. So was Mr. Atkinson, the surgeon. There was a new man there called Malone of the Press. Then Lord and Lady Montnoir got evidence, and so did Sir James Smith and Mr. Mailey.”

“I wasn’t satisfied with the clairvoyance,” said the medium. “The silly idiots kept on putting things into my mind. ‘That’s surely my Uncle Sam’, and so forth. It blurs me so that I can see nothing clear.”

“Yes, and they think they are helping! Helping to muddle you and deceive themselves. I know the kind.”

“But I went under nicely and I am glad there were some fine materialisations. It took it out of me, though. I’m a rag this morning.”

“They work you too hard, dear. I’ll take you to Margate and build you up.”

“Well, maybe at Easter we could do a week. It would be fine. I don’t mind readings and clairvoyance, but the physicals do try you. I’m not as bad as Hallows. They say he just lies white and gasping on the floor after them.”

“Yes,” cried the woman bitterly. “And then they run to him with whisky, and so they teach him to rely on the bottle and you get another case of a drunken medium. I know them. You keep off it, Tom!”

“Yes, one of our trade should stick to soft drinks. If he can stick to vegetables, too, he’s all the better, but I can’t preach that while I am wolfin’ up ham and eggs. By Gosh, Mary! it’s past ten and I have a string of them comin’ this morning. I’m going to make a bit to-day.”

“You give it away as quick as you make it, Tom.”

“Well, some hard cases come my way. So long as we can make both ends meet what more do we want? I expect they will look after us all right.”“

“They have let down a lot of other poor mediums who did good work in their day.”

“It’s the rich folk that are to blame not the Spirit-people,” said Tom Linden hotly. “It makes me see red when I remember these folk, Lady This and Countess That, declaring all the comfort they have had, and then leaving those who gave it to die in the gutter or rot in the workhouse. Poor old Tweedy and Soames and the rest all living on old-age pensions and the papers talking of the money that mediums make, while some damned conjuror makes more than all of us put together by a rotten imitation with two tons of machinery to help him.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” cried the medium’s wife, putting her thin hand caressingly upon the tangled mane of her man. “It all comes level in time and everybody pays the price for what they have done.”

Linden laughed loudly. “It’s my Welsh half that comes out when I flare up. Let the conjurors take their dirty money and let the rich folk keep their purses shut. I wonder what they think money is for. Paying death duties is about the only fun some of them seem to get out of it. If I had their money . . .”

There was a knock at the door.

“Please, sir, your brother Silas is below.” The two looked at each other with some dismay.

“More trouble,” said Mrs. Linden sadly.

Linden shrugged his shoulders. “All right, Susan!” he cried. “Tell him I’ll be down. Now, dear, you keep him going and I’ll be with you in a quarter of an hour.”

In less time than he named he was down in the front room — his consulting room — where his wife was evidently having some difficulty in making agreeable conversation with their visitor. He was a big, heavy man, not unlike his elder brother, but with all the genial chubbiness of the medium coarsened into pure brutality. He had the same pile of curly hair, but he was clean-shaven with a heavy, obstinate jowl. He sat by the window with his huge freckled hands upon his knees. A very important part of Mr. Silas Linden lay in those hands, for he had been a professional boxer, and at one time was fancied for the welter-weight honours of England. Now, as his stained tweed suit and frayed boots made clear, he had fallen on evil days, which he endeavoured to mitigate by cadging on his brother.

“Mornin’, Tom,” he said in a husky voice. Then as the wife left the room: “Got a drop of Scotch about? I’ve a head on me this morning. I met some of the old set last night down at ‘The Admiral Vernon’. Quite a reunion it was — chaps I hadn’t seen since my best ring days.”

“Sorry, Silas,” said the medium, seating himself behind his desk. “I keep nothing in the house.”

“Spirits enough, but not the right sort,” said Silas.

“Well, the price of a drink will do as well. If you’ve got a Bradbury about you I could do with it, for there’s nothing coming my way.”

Torn Linden took a pound note from his desk.

“Here you are, Silas. So long as I have any you have your share. But you had two pounds last week. Is it gone?”

“Gone! I should say so!” He put the note in his pocket. “ Now, look here, Tom, I want to speak to you very serious as between man and man.”

“Yes, Silas, what is it?”

“You see that!” He pointed to a lump on the back of his hand. “ That’s a bone! See? It will never be right. It was when I hit Curly Jenkins third round and outed him at the N.S.C. I outed myself for life that night. I can put up a show fight and exhibition bout, but I’m done for the real thing. My right has gone west.”

“It’s a hard case, Silas.”

“Damned hard! But that’s neither here nor there. What matters is that I’ve got to pick up a living and I want to know how to do it. An old scrapper don’t find many openings. Chucker-out at a pub with free drinks. Nothing doing there. What I want to know’ Tom, is what’s the matter with my becoming a medium?”

“A medium?”

“Why the devil should you stare at me! If it’s good enough for you it’s good enough for me.”

“But you are not a medium.”

“Oh, come! Keep that for the newspapers. It’s all in the family, and between you an’ me, how d’ye do it?”

“I don’t do it. I do nothing.”

“And get four or five quid a week for it. That’s a good yarn. Now you can’t fool me. Tom, I’m not one o’ those duds that pay you a thick ‘un for an hour in the dark. We’re on the square, you an’ me. How d’ye do it?”

“Do what?”

“Well, them raps, for example. I’ve seen you sit there at your desk, as it might be, and raps come answerin’ questions over yonder on the bookshelf. It’s damned clever — fair puzzles ‘em every time. How d’ye get them?”

“I tell you I don’t. It’s outside myself.”

“Rats! You can tell me, Tom. I’m Griffiths, the safe man. It would set me up for life if I could do it.”

For the second time in one morning the medium’s Welsh strain took control.

“You’re an impudent, blasphemous rascal, Silas Linden. It’s men like you who come into our movement and give it a bad name. You should know me better than to think that I am a cheat. Get out of my house, you ungrateful rascal!”

“Not too much of your lip,” growled the ruffian.

“Out you go, or I’ll put you out, brother or no brother.” Silas doubled his great fists and looked ugly for a moment. Then the anticipation of favours to come softened his mood.

“Well, well, no harm meant,” he growled, as he made for the door. “I expect I can make a shot at it without your help.” His grievance suddenly overcame his prudence as he stood in the doorway. “You damned, canting, hypocritical box-of-tricks. I’ll be even with you yet.”

The heavy door slammed behind him.

Mrs. Linden had rushed in to her husband.

“The hulking blackguard!” she cried. “I ‘eard ‘im. What did ‘e want?”

“Wanted me to put him wise to mediumship. Thinks it’s a trick of some sort that I could teach him.”

“The foolish lump! Well, it’s a good thing, for he won’t dare show his face here again.”

“Oh, won’t he?”

“If he does I’ll slap it for him. To think of his upsettin’ you like this. Why, you’re shakin’ all over!”

“I suppose I wouldn’t be a medium if I wasn’t high strung. Someone said we were poets, only more so. But it’s bad just when work is beginning.”

“I’ll give you healing.”

She put her little work-worn hands over his high forehead and held them there in silence.

“That’s better!” said he. “Well done, Mary. I’ll have a cigarette in the kitchen. That will finish it.”

“No, there’s someone here.” She had looked out of the window. “Are you fit to see her? It’s a woman.”

“Yes, yes. I am all right now. Show her in.”

An instant later a woman entered, a pale, tragic figure in black, whose appearance told its own tale. Linden motioned her to a chair away from the light. Then he looked through his papers.

“You are Mrs. Blount, are you not? You had an appointment?”

“Yes — I wanted to ask—”

“Please ask me nothing. It confuses me.”

He was looking at her with the medium’s gaze in his light grey eyes — that gaze which looks round and through a thing rather than at it.

“You have been wise to come, very wise. There is someone beside you who has an urgent message which could not be delayed. I get a name . . . Francis . . . yes, Francis.” The woman clasped her hands.

“Yes, yes, it is the name.”

“A dark man, very sad, very earnest — oh, so earnest. He will speak. He must speak! It is urgent. He says, ‘Tink-a-bell’. Who is Tink-a-bell?”

“Yes, yes, he called me so. Oh, Frank, Frank, speak to me! Speak!”

“He is speaking. His hand is on your head. ‘Tink-a-bell’, he says, ‘If you do what you purpose doing it will make a gap that it will take many years to cross’. Does that mean anything?”

She sprang from her chair. “It means everything. Oh, Mr. Linden, this was my last chance. If this had failed — if I found that I had really lost him I meant to go and seek him. I would have taken poison this night.”

“Thank God that I have saved you. It is a terrible thing, madame, to take one’s life. It breaks the law of Nature, and Nature’s laws cannot be broken without punishment. I rejoice that he has been able to save you. He has more to say to you. His message is, ‘If you will live and do your duty I will for ever be by your side, far closer to you than ever I was in life. My presence will surround you and guard both you and our three babes.’”