Mystic London by Charles Maurice Davies (best mystery novels of all time .txt) 📖

to inquire whether she did or not, because, if she got out of the ropes, it was easy enough to get on the chair and make faces.

"Of course the cui bono remains. The professors make money by it; and Miss Cook can make at most, only a little mild and scarcely enviable notoriety. A satirical old friend of mine, when I told him the above facts, chuckled, and said, 'That's quite enough for a girl of sixteen; and anything that's do-able, a girl of those years will do.' It was no use talking to him of panniers and loose sleeves, and lockets. He was an old bachelor, and knew nothing about such things. At least, he had no business to, if he did.

"I cannot forbear adding a domestic episode, though it is perhaps scarcely relevant to the subject. Certain young imps in my house, hearing what I had seen, got up an exhibition of spirit faces for my benefit. They rigged up a kind of Punch-and-Judy erection, and the cleanest of them did the spirit face, with a white pocket-handkerchief over his head. He looked as stolid and unwinking as the genuine spirit-physiognomy itself. The gas was lowered to a 'dim religious light,' and then a black coal-scuttle, with features chalked on it, deceived some of the circle into the idea that it was a nigger. But the one element which interested me was wanting; there was no rope-tying which could at all entitle the juvenile performance to be categorized under 'Spiritual Athletics.'"

CHAPTER XL. "SPOTTING" SPIRIT MEDIUMS.

"Among the recent utterances of spiritualistic organs is one to the effect that 'manifestations' come in cycles—in 'great waves,' I believe was the actual expression; and of the many fluctuations to which spiritualistic society has been exposed of late is a very prominent irruption of young lady mediums. The time seems to have gone by for portly matrons to be wafted aërially from the northern suburbs to the W.C. district, or elderly spinsters to exhibit spirit drawings which gave one the idea of a water-colour palette having been overturned, and the resulting 'mess' sat upon for the purposes of concealment. Even inspirational speakers have so far 'gone out' as to subside from aristocratic halls to decidedly second-rate institutions down back streets. In fact, the 'wave' that has come over the spirit world seems to resemble that which has also supervened upon the purely mundane arrangements of Messrs. Spiers and Pond; and we anxious investigators can scarcely complain of the change which brings us face to face with fair young maidens in their teens to the exclusion of the matrons and spinsters aforesaid, or the male medium who was once irreverently termed by a narrator a 'bull-necked young man.'

"The names of these interesting young denizens of two worlds are so well known that it is perhaps unnecessary caution or superfluous gallantry to conceal them; but I will err, if error it be, on the safe side, and call No. 1 Miss C. and No. 2 Miss S., premising only that each is decidedly attractive, with the unquestioned advantage of having seen only some sixteen or seventeen summers apiece. Miss C. has been 'out' some time; her familiar being 'Katie King;' while Miss S. has made her debut more recently, having for her attendant sprites one 'Florence Maple,' a young lady spirit who has given a wrong terrestrial address in Aberdeen, and Peter, a defunct market gardener, who sings through the young lady's organism in a clear baritone voice. It was to me personally a source of great satisfaction when I learnt that Miss C. had been taken in hand by a F.R.S.—whom I will call henceforth the Professor—and Miss S. by a Serjeant learned in the law. Now, if ever, I thought, we have a chance of hearing what science and evidential acumen have to say on the subject of 'Face Manifestations.' Each of these gentlemen, I ought to mention, had written voluminously on the subject of Spiritualism, and both seemed inclined to contest its claims in favour of some occult physical—or, as they named it, psychic—force. This would make their verdict the more valuable to outsiders, as it was clear they had not approached the subject with a foregone conclusion in its favour. True, the Spiritualists claimed both the Professor and the Serjeant persistently as their own; but Spiritualists have a way of thinking everybody 'converted' who simply sits still in a decorous manner, and keeps his eyes open without loudly proclaiming scepticism.

"Personally I had been, up to the date of present occurrences, accustomed to summarize my convictions on the subject by the conveniently elastic formula that there might be 'something in it.' I still think so; but perhaps with a difference.

"For the former of the two exposés—if such they shall be deemed—I am compelled to rely on documentary evidence; but I have 'sat' so many times with Miss S., have been requested so often by the inspirational Peter to 'listen to the whip-poor-will, a-singin' on the tree,' have shaken the spirit hand, gazed on the spirit face, and even cut off portions of the spirit veil of the fair Florence, that I can follow the order of events just as though I had been present. I must confess the wonderful similarity existing between Miss S. and Florence had exercised me considerably, and perhaps prepared me to accept with calmness what followed. Why delay the result? Miss S. and her mamma were invited to the country house of the learned Serjeant. A 'cabinet' was extemporized in the bay of the window, over which the curtains were drawn and a shawl pinned. With a confidence which is really charming to contemplate, no 'tests' were asked of the medium, no 'conditions' imposed on the sitter. Miss S. was put in the cabinet with only a chair, and the expectant circle waited with patience. In due time the curtains were drawn aside, and the spirit-face appeared at the opening. It was still the facsimile of Miss S., with the eyes piously turned up and a ghostly head-dress covering the hair. One by one the assembled were summoned to look more closely. The initiated gazed and passed on, knowing they must not peep; but, alas, one lady who was not initiated, and therefore unaware of the tacitly imposed conditions, imitated the example of Mother Eve, drew aside the curtains and exposed the unspiritual form of Miss S. standing on the chair; the 'spirit-hands' at the same time struggling so convulsively to close the aperture that the head-gear fell off, and betrayed the somewhat voluminous chignon of Miss S. herself. Hereupon ensued a row, it being declared that the medium was killed, though eventually order was restored by the rather incongruous process of a gentleman present singing a comic song. The learned Serjeant still clings to the belief that Miss S. was in a condition of 'unconscious somnambulism.' I only hope, if ever I am arraigned before him in his judicial capacity, he will extend his benevolent credulity to me in an equal degree, and give me the benefit of the doubt.

"It may be in the recollection of those who follow the fluctuations of the Spiritual 'wave' that some months ago a Dialectical gentleman seized rudely on the spirit form of Katie, which struggled violently with him, scratching his face and pulling out his whiskers, eventually making good its retreat into the cupboard, where Miss C. was presumably bound hand and foot. I must confess the fact of that escape rather prejudiced me in favour of Katie, though I would rather she had evaporated into thin air, and left the dialectical whiskers intact. Still it scored a point on Katie's side, and I eagerly availed myself of the opportunity to pay my devoirs at the shrine of Miss C.; the more so as the Professor had asserted twice that he had seen and handled the form of the medium while looking on and conversing with that of the spirit at the same time. If I could retain my former faith in the Professor, of course this would be final and my conversion an accomplished fact.

"We sat no longer in the subterranean breakfast room of Miss C.'s parental abode; but moved up to the parlour floor, where two rooms communicated through folding doors, the front apartment being that in which we assembled, and the back used as a bedroom, where the ladies took off their 'things.' This latter room, be it remembered, had a second room communicating with the passage, and so with the universe of space in general. One leaf of the folding doors was closed, and a curtain hung over the other. Pillows were placed on the floor, just inside the curtain, and the little medium, who was nattily arrayed in a blue dress, was laid upon them. We were requested to sing and talk during 'materialization,' and there was as much putting up and lowering of the light as in a modern sensation drama. The Professor acted all the time as Master of the Ceremonies, retaining his place at the aperture; and I fear, from the very first, exciting suspicion by his marked attentions, not to the medium, but to the ghost. When it did come it was arrayed according to orthodox ghost fashion, in loose white garments, and I must confess with no resemblance to Miss C. We were at the same time shown the recumbent form of the pillowed medium, and there certainly was something blue, which might have been Miss C., or only her gown going to the wash. By-and-by, however, with 'lights down,' a bottle of phosphorized oil was produced, and by this weird and uncanny radiance one or two privileged individuals were led by the 'ghost' into the back bedroom, and allowed to put their hands on the entranced form of the medium. I was not of the 'elect,' but I talked to those who were, and their opinion was that the 'ghost' was a much stouter, bigger woman than the medium; and I must confess that certain unhallowed ideas of the bedroom door and the adjacent kitchen stairs connected themselves in my mind with recollections of a brawny servant girl who used to sit sentry over the cupboard in the breakfast room. Where was she?

"As a final bonne bouche the spirit made its exit from the side of the folding door covered by the curtain, and immediately Miss C. rose up with dishevelled locks in a way that must have been satisfactory to anybody who knew nothing of the back door and the brawny servant, or who had never seen the late Mr. Charles Kean act in the 'Corsican Brothers' or the 'Courier of Lyons.'

"I am free to confess the final death-blow to my belief that there might be 'something in' the Face Manifestations was given by the effusive Professor who has 'gone in' for the Double with a pertinacity altogether opposed to the calm judicial examination of his brother learned in the law, and with prejudice scarcely becoming a F.R.S.

"I am quite aware that all this proves nothing. Miss S. and Miss C. may each justify Longfellow's adjuration—