I say that I dont think I saw anything. But Im not sure, either, whether the story I am telling you was quite concluded last night. I think there may be a further incident. If you prefer it, I will leave the rest of it, as far as I know it, unfinished till tomorrow morning, and you can go off to bed now. His complete calmness and tranquillity reassured me. But why should I do that? I asked. Again he looked round on the bright walls. Well, I think something entered the room just now, he said, and it may develop. If you dont like the notion, you had better go. Of course theres nothing to be alarmed at; whatever it is, it cant hurt us. But it is close on the hour when on two successive nights I saw what I have already told you, and an apparition usually occurs at the same time. Why that is so, I cannot say, but certainly it looks as if a spirit that is earthbound is still subject to certain conventions, the conventions of time for instance. I think that personally I shall see something before long, but most likely you wont. Youre not such a sufferer as I from thesethese delusions I was frightened and knew it, but I was also intensely interested, and some perverse pride wriggled within me at his last words. Why, so I asked myself, shouldnt I see whatever was to be seen?  I dont want to go in the least, I said. I want to hear the rest of your story. Where was I, then? Ah, yes you were wondering why I didnt do something after I saw the train move up to the platform, and I said that there was nothing to be done. If you think it over, I fancy you will agree with me.  A couple of days passed, and on the third morning I saw in the paper that there had come fulfilment to my vision. Sir Henry Payle, who had been waiting on the platform of Dover Street Station for the last train to South Kensington, had thrown himself in front of it as it came into the station. The train had been pulled up in a couple of yards, but a wheel had passed over his chest, crushing it in and instantly killing him. An inquest was held, and there emerged at it one of those dark stories which, on occasions like these, sometimes fall like a midnight shadow across a life that the world perhaps had thought prosperous. He had long been on bad terms with his wife, from whom he had lived apart, and it appeared that not long before this he had fallen desperately in love with another woman. The night before his suicide he had appeared very late at his wifes house, and had a long and angry scene with her in which he entreated her to divorce him, threatening otherwise to make her life a hell to her. She refused, and in an ungovernable fit of passion he attempted to strangle her. There was a struggle, and the noise of it caused her manservant to come up, who succeeded in overmastering him. Lady Payle threatened to proceed against him for assault with the intention to murder her. With this hanging over his head, the next night, as I have already told you, he committed suicide. He glanced at the clock again, and I saw that the hands now pointed to ten minutes to one. The fire was beginning to burn low and the room surely was growing strangely cold. Thats not quite all, said Anthony, again looking round. Are you sure you wouldnt prefer to hear it tomorrow? The mixture of shame and pride and curiosity again prevailed. No tell me the rest of it at once, I said. Before speaking, he peered suddenly at some point behind my chair, shading his eyes. I followed his glance, and knew what he meant by saying that sometimes one could not be sure whether one saw something or not. But was that an outlined shadow that intervened between me and the wall? It was difficult to focus; I did not know whether it was near the wall or near my chair. It seemed to clear away, anyhow, as I looked more closely at it. You see nothing? asked Anthony. No I dont think so, said I. And you? I think I do, he said, and his eyes followed something which was invisible to mine. They came to rest between him and the chimneypiece. Looking steadily there, he spoke again. All this happened some weeks ago, he said, when you were out in Switzerland, and since then, up till last night, I saw nothing further. But all the time I was expecting something further. I felt that, as far as I was concerned, it was not all over yet, and last night, with the intention of assisting any communication to come through to me fromfrom beyond, I went into the Dover Street tubestation at a few minutes before one oclock, the hour at which both the assault and the suicide had taken place. The platform when I arrived on it was absolutely empty, or appeared to be so, but presently, just as I began to hear the roar of the approaching train, I saw there was the figure of a man standing some twenty yards from me, looking into the tunnel. He had not come down with me in the lift, and the moment before he had not been there. He began moving towards me, and then I saw who it was, and I felt a stir of wind icycold coming towards me as he approached. It was not the draught that heralds the approach of a train, for it came from the opposite direction. He came close up to me, and I saw there was recognition in his eyes. He raised his face towards me and I saw his lips move, but, perhaps in the increasing noise from the tunnel, I heard nothing come from them. He put out his hand, as if entreating me to do something, and with a cowardice from which I cannot forgive myself, I shrank from him, for I knew, by the sign that I have told you, that this was one from the dead, and my flesh quaked before him, drowning for the moment all pity and all desire to help him, if that was possible. Certainly he had something which he wanted of me, but I recoiled from him. And by now the train was emerging from the tunnel, and next moment, with a dreadful gesture of despair, he threw himself in front of it. As he finished speaking he got up quickly from his chair, still looking fixedly in front of him. I saw his pupils dilate, and his mouth worked. It is coming, he said. I am to be given a chance of atoning for my cowardice. There is nothing to be afraid of I must remember that myself.  As he spoke there came from the panelling above the chimneypiece one loud shattering crack, and the cold wind again circled about my head. I found myself shrinking back in my chair with my hands held in front of me as instinctively I screened myself against something which I knew was there but which I could not see. Every sense told me that there was a presence in the room other than mine and Anthonys, and the horror of it was that I could not see it. Any vision, however terrible, would, I felt, be more tolerable than this clear certain knowledge that close to me was this invisible thing. And yet what horror might not be disclosed of the face of the dead and the crushed chest.  But all I could see, as I shuddered in this cold wind, was the familiar walls of the room, and Anthony standing in front of me stiff and firm, making, as I knew, a call on his courage. His eyes were focused on something quite close to him, and some semblance of a smile quivered on his mouth. And then he spoke again. Yes, I know you, he said. And you want something of me. Tell me, then, what it is. There was absolute silence, but what was silence to my ears could not have been so to his, for once or twice he nodded, and once he said, Yes I see. I will do it. And with the knowledge that, even as there was someone here whom I could not see, so there was speech going on which I could not hear, this terror of the dead and of the unknown rose in me with the sense of powerlessness to move that accompanies nightmare. I could not stir, I could not speak. I could only strain my ears for the inaudible and my eyes for the unseen, while the cold wind from the very valley of the shadow of death streamed over me. It was not that the presence of death itself was terrible; it was that from its tranquillity and serene keeping there had been driven some unquiet soul unable to rest in peace for whatever ultimate awakening rouses the countless generations of those who have passed away, driven, no less, from whatever activities are theirs, back into the material world from which it should have been delivered. Never, until the gulf between the living and the dead was thus bridged, had it seemed so immense and so unnatural. It is possible that the dead may have communication with the living, and it was not that exactly that so terrified me, for such communication, as we know it, comes voluntarily from them. But here was something icycold and crimeladen, that was chased back from the peace that would not pacify it. And then, most horrible of all, there came a change in these unseen conditions. Anthony was silent now, and from looking straight and fixedly in front of him, he began to glance sideways to where I sat and back again, and with that I felt that the unseen presence had turned its attention from him to me. And now, too, gradually and by awful degrees I began to see.  There came an outline of shadow across the chimneypiece and the panels above it. It took shape it fashioned itself into the outline of a man. Within the shape of the shadow details began to form themselves, and I saw wavering in the air, like something concealed by haze, the semblance of a face, stricken and tragic, and burdened with such a weight of woe as no human face had ever worn. Next, the shoulders outlined themselves, and a stain livid and red spread out below them, and suddenly the vision leaped into clearness. There he stood, the chest crushed in and drowned in the red stain, from which broken ribs, like the bones of a wrecked ship, protruded. The mournful, terrible eyes were fixed on me, and it was from them, so I knew, that the bitter wind proceeded.  Then, quick as the switching off of a lamp, the spectre vanished, and the bitter wind was still, and opposite to me stood Anthony, in a quiet, brightlit room. There was no sense of an unseen presence any more; he and I were then alone, with an interrupted conversation still dangling between us in the warm air. I came round to that, as one comes round after an anaesthetic. It all swam into sight again, unreal at first, and gradually assuming the texture of actuality. You were talking to somebody, not to me, I said. Who was it? What was it? He passed the back of his hand over his forehead, which glistened in the light. A soul in hell, he said. Now it is hard ever to recall mere physical sensations, when they have passed. If you have been cold and are warmed, it is difficult to remember what cold was like if you have been hot and have got cool, it is difficult to realise what the oppression of heat really meant. Just so, with the passing of that presence, I found myself unable to recapture the sense of the terror with which, a few moments ago only, it had invaded and inspired me. A soul in hell? I said. What are you talking about? He moved about the room for a minute or so, and then came and sat on the arm of my chair. I dont know what you saw, he said, or what you felt, but there has never in all my life happened to me anything more real than what these last few minutes have brought. I have talked to a soul in the hell of remorse, which is the only possible hell. He knew, from what happened last night, that he could perhaps establish communication through me with the world he had quitted, and he sought me and found me. I am charged with a mission to a woman I have never seen, a message from the contrite.  You can guess who it is.  He got up with a sudden briskness. Lets verify it anyhow, he said. He gave me the street and the number. Ah, theres the telephone book! Would it be a coincidence merely if I found that at No. 20 in Chasemore Street, South Kensington, there lived a Lady Payle? He turned over the leaves of the bulky volume. Yes, thats right, he said. Inscrutable Decrees I had found nothing momentous in the more august pages of the Times that morning, and so, just because I was lazy and unwilling to embark on a host of businesses that were waiting for me, I turned to the first page and, beginning with the seventh column, pondered profoundly over Situations Vacant, and hoped that the Gentlewoman fond of games, who desired the position of governess, would find the very thing to suit her. I glanced at the notices of lectures to be delivered under the auspices of various learned societies, and was thankful that I had not got to give or to listen to any of them. I debated over Business Opportunities; I vainly tried to conjecture clues to mysterious Personal paragraphs, and, still pursuing my sideways, crabfashion course, came to Deaths Continued. There, with a shock of arrest, I saw that Sybil Rorke, widow of the late Sir Ernest Rorke, had died at Torquay, suddenly, at the age of thirtytwo. It seemed strange that there should be only this bare announcement concerning a woman who at one time had been so wellknown and dazzling a figure; and turning to the obituary notices, I found that my inattentive skimming had overlooked a paragraph there of appreciation and regret. She had died during her sleep, and it was announced that an inquest would be held. My laziness then had been of some use, for Archie Rorke, distant cousin but successor to Sir Ernests estates and title, was arriving that evening to spend a few country days with me, and I was glad to have known this before he came. How it would affect him, or whether, indeed, it would affect him at all, I had no idea. What a mysterious affair it had been! No one, I supposed, knew the history of it except he, now that Lady Rorke was dead. If anyone knew, it should have been myself, and yet Archie, my oldest friend, whose best man I was to have been, had never opened his lips to a syllable of explanation. I knew, in fact, no whit more than the whole world knew, namely, that a year after Sir Ernest Rorkes death the engagement of his widow to the new baronet, Sir Archibald Rorke, was made public, and that within a fortnight of the date fixed for the wedding it was laconically announced that the marriage would not take place. When, on seeing that, I rang Archie up on the telephone, I was told that he had already left London, and he wrote to me a few days later from Lincotethe place in Hampshire, which he had inherited from his cousinsaying that he had nothing to tell me about the breaking off of his engagement beyond the fact that it was true. The wholehe had written a word and carefully erased itepisode was now an excised leaf from his life. He was proposing to stay down at Lincote alone for a month or so, and would then turn on to the new page. Lady Rorke, so I heard, had also left London immediately and passed the summer in Italy. Then she took a furnished house in Torquay, where she lived for the remainder of the year which intervened between the breaking off of her engagement and her death. She cut herself completely off from all her friendsand no woman, surely, ever commanded a larger host of themsaw nobody, seldom went outside her house and garden, and observed the same unbroken silence as did Archie about what had happened. And now, with all her youth and charm and beauty, she had gone down dumb into the Great Silence. With the prospect of seeing Archie that evening it was no wonder that the thought of Lady Rorke ran all day in my head like a tune heard long ago which now recalled itself to my mind in scattered staves of melody. Meetings and talks with her, phrase by phrase, reconstructed themselves, and as these memories grew definite and complete I found that, even as before, when I was actually experiencing them, there lurked underneath the gay rhythms and joyousness something macabre and mysterious. Today that was accentuated, whereas before when I listened for it, trying to isolate it from the rest and so perhaps dispel it, it was always overscored by some triumphant crescendo her presence diverted eye and ear alike. Yet such a simile halts; perhaps, still in simile, I shall more accurately define this underlying something by saying that her presence was like some gorgeous rosebush, full of flowers, and sun, and sweetness; then, even as one admired and applauded and inhaled, one saw that among its buds and blossoms there emerged the spikes of some other plant, bitter and poisonous, but growing from the same soil as the rose, and intertwined with it. But immediately a fresh glory met your eye, a fresh fragrance enchanted you. As I rummaged among my memories of her, certain scenes which significantly illustrated this curiously vivid impression stirred and made themselves manifest to me, and now they were not broken in upon by her presence. One such occurred on the first evening that I ever met her, which was in the summer before the death of her husband. The moment that she entered the room where we were waiting before dinner for her arrival, the stale, sultry air of a June evening grew fresh and effervescent; never have I come across so radiant and infectious a vitality. She was tall and big, with the splendour of the Junotype, and though she was then close on thirty, the iridescence of girlhood was still hers. Without effort she Piedpipered a rather stodgy party to dance to her flutings, she caused everyone to become silly and pleased and full of laughter. At her bidding we indulged in ridiculous games, dumbcrambo, and whatnot, and after that the carpet was rolled up and we capered to the strains of a gramophone. And then the incident occurred. I was standing with her, for a breath of air, on the balcony outside the drawingroom windows which faced the park. She had just made a great curtsey to a slip of the moon that rose above the trees and had borrowed a shilling of me in order to turn it. No, I cant swear that I believe in moonluck, she said, but after all it does no harm, and, in case its true, you cant afford to make an enemy of her. Ah, whats that? A thrush, attracted by the lights inside, had flown between us, dashed itself against the window, and now lay fluttering on the ground at our feet. Instantly she was all pity and tenderness. She picked up the bird, examined it, and found that its wing was broken. Ah, poor thing! she said. Look, its wingbone is snapped; the end protrudes. And how terrified it is! What are we to do? It was clear that the kindest thing to do would be to put the bird out of its pain, but when I suggested that, she took a step back from me, and covered it with her other hand. Her eyes gleamed, her mouth smiled, and I saw the tip of her tongue swiftly pass over her lips as if licking them. No, that would be a terrible thing to do, she said. I shall take it home with me ever so carefully, and watch over it. I am afraid it is badly hurt. But it may live. Suddenlyperhaps it was that swift licking of her lips that suggested the thought to meI felt instinctively that she was not so much pitiful as pleased. She stood there with eyes fixed on it, as it feebly struggled in her hands. And then her face clouded; over its brightness there came a look of displeasure, of annoyance. Im afraid it is dying, she said. Its poor frightened eyes are closing. The bird fluttered once more, then its legs stretched themselves stiffly out, and it lay still. She tossed it out of her hands on to the paved balcony, with a little shrug of her shoulders. What a fuss over a bird, she said. It was silly of it to fly against the glass. But I have too soft a heart; I cannot bear that the poor creatures should die. Let us go in and have one more romp. Oh, here is your shilling; I hope it will have brought me good luck. And then I must get home. My husbanddo you know him?always sits up till I get back, and he will scold me for being so late! There, then, was my first meeting with her, and there, too, were the spikes of the poisonous plant pushing up among the magnificence of her roses. And yet, so I thought to myself then, and so I think to myself now, I perhaps was utterly wrong about it all, in thus attributing to her a secret glee of which she was wholly incapable. So, with a certain effort I wiped the impression I had received off my mind, determining to consider myself quite mistaken. But, involuntarily, my mind as if to justify itself in having delineated such a picture, proceeded to delineate another. Very shortly after that first meeting I received from her a charming note, asking me to dine with her on a date not far distant. I telephoned a delighted acceptance, for, indeed, I wanted then, even as I did this morning, to convince myself that I was wholly in error concerning my interpretation of that incident concerning the thrush. Though I hold that no man has the right to accept the hospitality offered by one he does not like, in all points except one I admired and liked Lady Rorke immensely and wished to get rid of that one. So I gratefully accepted, and then hurried out on a dismal and overdue visit to the dentists. In the waitingroom was a girl of about twelve, with a hand nursing a rueful face, and from time to time she stifled a sob of pain or apprehension. I was just wondering whether it would be a breach of waitingroom etiquette to attempt to administer comfort or supply diversion, when the door opened and in came Lady Rorke. She laughed delightfully when she saw me. Hurrah! Youre another occupant of the condemned cell, she said, and very soon we shall both be sent for to the scaffold. I cant describe to you what a coward I am about it. Why havent we got beaks like birds? Her glance fell on the forlorn little figure by the window, with the rueful face and the wet eyes. Why, heres another of us, she said. And have they sent you to the dentists all alone, my dear? Yyes. How horrid of them! said Lady Rorke. Theyve sent me alone, too, and I think its most unfeeling. But you shant be alone, anyhow, Ill come in with you, and sit by you, if you like that, and box the mans ears for him if he hurts you. Or shall you and I set on him, as soon as weve got him by himself, and take out all his teeth one after the other? Just to teach him to be a dentist. A faint smile began the break through the clouds. Oh, will you come in with me? she asked. I shant mind nearly so much, then. Itsits got to come out, you know, and I maynt have gas. Just the same gleam of a smile as I had seen on Lady Rorkes face once before quivered there now, a light not of pity, surely. Ah, but it wont ache any more after that, she said, and after all, it is so soon over. Youll just open your mouth as if you were going to put the largest of all strawberries into it, and youll hold tight on to my hand, and the dentist takes up something which you neednt look at There was a want of tact in the vividness of this picture, and the child began to sob again. Oh, dont, dont! she cried. Again the door opened, and she clung to Lady Rorke. Oh, I know its for me! she wailed. Lady Rorke bent over her, scanning her terrified face. Come along, my dear, she said, and it will be over in no time. Youll be back here again before this gentleman can count a hundred, and hell have all his troubles in front of him still. Again this morning I tried to expunge from that picture, so trivial and yet so vivid to me, the sinister something which seemed to connect it with the incident about the thrush, and, leaving it, my mind strayed on over other reminiscences of Lady Rorke. Before the season was over I had got to know her well, and the better I knew her the more I marvelled at that manypetalled vitality, which never ceased unfolding itself. She entertained largely, and had that crowning gift of a good hostess, namely, that she enjoyed her own parties quite enormously. She was a very fine horsewoman, and after being up till dawn at some dance, she would be in the Row by halfpast eight on a peculiarly vicious mare to whom she seemed to pay only the most cursory attention. She had a good knowledge of music, she dressed amazingly, she was charming to her meagre little husband, playing piquet with him by the hour (which was the only thing, apart from herself, that he cared about), and if in this modern democratic London there could be said to be a queen, there is no doubt who that season would have worn the crown. Less publicly, she was a great student of the psychical and occult, and I remembered hearing that she was herself possessed of very remarkable mediumistic gifts. But to me that was a matter of hearsay, for I never was present at any sance of hers. Yet through the triumphant music of her pageant, there sounded, to my ears at least, fragments of a very ugly tune. It was not only in these two instances of its emergence that I heard it, it was chiefly and most persistently audible in her treatment of Archie Rorke, her husbands cousin. Everyone knew, for none could help knowing, that he was desperately in love with her, and it is impossible to imagine that she alone was ignorant of it. It is, no doubt, the instinct of many women to fan a passion which they do not share, and which they have no intention of indulging, just as the male instinct is to gratify a passion that he does not really feel, but there are limits to mercilessness. She was not cruel to be kind; she was kind to be demoniacally cruel. She had him always by her; she gave him those little touches and comradelike licences which meant nothing to her, but crazed him with thirst; she held the glass close to his lips and then tilted it up and showed it him empty. The more charitable explanation was that she, perhaps, knew that her husband could not live long, and that she intended to marry Archie, and such, so it subsequently appeared, her intentions were. But when I saw her feeding him with husks and putting an empty glass to his lips, nothing, to my mind, could account for her treatment of him except a rapture of cruelty at the sight of his aching. And somehow, awfully and aptly, that seemed to fit in with the affair of the thrush, and the meeting with the forlorn child in the dentists waitingroom. Yet ever, through that gruesome twilight, there blazed forth her charm and her beauty and the beam of her joyous vitality, and I would cudgel myself for my nasty interpretations. It was early in the spring of next year that I was spending a weekend with her and her husband at Lincote. She had suggested my coming down on Saturday morning before the party assembled later in the day, and at lunch I was alone with her husband and her. Sir Ernest was very silent; he looked ill and haggard, and, in fact, hardly spoke a word except when suddenly he turned to the butler and said, Has anything been heard of the child yet? He was told that there was no news, and subsided into silence again. I thought that some queer shadow as of suspense or anxiety crossed Lady Rorkes face at the question; but on the answer, it cleared off again, and, as if to sweep the subject wholly away, she asked me if I could tolerate a saunter with her through the woods till her guests arrived. Out she came like some splendid Diana of the Forests, and like the goddesss was the swift, swinging pace of her saunter. Spring all round was riotous in blossom and birdsong; it was just that ecstatic moment of the year when the hounds of spring have run winter to death, and as we gained the high ridge of down above the woods she stopped and threw her arms wide. Oh, the sense of spring! she cried. The daffodils, and the west wind, and the shadows of the clouds. How I wish I could take the whole lot into my arms and hug them. Miracles are flowering every moment now in the country, while the only miracle in London is the mud. What sunshine, what air! Drink them in, for they are the one divine medicine. One wants that medicine sometimes, for there are sad things and terrible things all round us, pain and anguish, and decay. Yet I suppose that even those call out the splendour of fortitude or endurance. Even when one looks on a struggle which one knows is hopeless, it warms the heart to see it. The gleam that shone from her paled, her arms dropped, and she moved on. Then, soft of voice and soft of eye, she spoke again. Such a sad thing happened here two days ago, she said. A small girlnow what was her name? YesEllen Davenportbrought a note from the village up to the house. I was out, so she left it, and started, it is supposed, to go back home. She has not been seen since. Descriptions of her were circulated in all the villages for miles round; but, as you heard at lunch, there has been no news of her, and the copses and coverts in the park have been searched, but with no result. And yet out of that comes splendour. I went to see her mother yesterday, bowed down with grief, but she wont give up hope. If it is Gods will, she said to me, we shall find my Ellen alive; and if we find her dead, it will be Gods will, too.  She paused. But I didnt ask you down here to moan over tragedies, she said. I wanted you after all your weeks in town to come and have a springcleaning. Doesnt the wind take the dust out of you, like one of those suckingmachines which you put on to carpets? And the sun! Make a sponge of yourself and soak it up till youre dripping with it. For a couple of miles, at the least, we kept along this high ridge of down, and the larks were springing from the grass, vocal with song uncongealed, as they aspired and sank again, dropping at last dumb and spent with rapture. Then we descended steeply, through the woods and glades of the park, past thickets of catkinned sallows, and of willows with soft moleskin buttons, and in the hollows the daffodils were dancing, and the herbs of the springtime were pushing up through the brittle withered stuff of the winter. Then, passing along the one street of the redtiled village, in which my companion pointed me out the house where the poor vanished girl had lived, we turned homewards across the grass and joined the road again at the bottom of the great lake that lies below the terraced gardens of the house. This lake was artificial, made a hundred years ago by the erection of a huge dam across the dip of the valley, so that the stream which flowed down it was thereby confined and must needs form this sheet of water before it found outlet again through the sluices. At the centre the dam is some twentyfive feet in height, and by the side of the road which crosses it clumps of rhododendrons lean out over the deep water. The margin on the side towards the lake is reinforced with concrete, now mossy and overgrown with herbage, and the face of it, burrows down to the level of the bottom of the dam through four fathoms of dusky water. The lake was high and the overflow poured sonorously through the sluices, and the sun in the west made broken rainbows in the foam of its outpouring. As we paused there a moment, my companion seemed the incarnation of the sights and sounds that went to the spell of the spring; singing larks and dancing daffodils, west wind and rainbowed foam and, no less, the dark, deep water, were all distilled into her radiant vitality. And now for the house again, she said, going briskly up the steep slope. Is it inhospitable of me to wish that no one was coming except, of course, our delightful Archie? A houseful brings London into the country, and we shall talk scandal and stir up mud instead of watching miracles. Another faint memory of her lingered somewhere in the dusk, and I groped for it, as one gropes in slime for the roots of a waterplant, and pulled it out. A notorious murderer had been guillotined that morning in France, and in some Sunday paper next day there was a brutal, brilliant, inexcusable little sketch of his being led out between guards for the final scene at dawn outside the prison at Versailles.


And, as I wrote my name in Lady Rorkes visitors book on Monday morning, I spilt a blot of ink on the page and hastily had recourse to the blottingpad on her writingtable in order to minimize the disfigurement. Inside it was this unpardonable picture, cut out and put away, and I thought of the thrush and the dentists waitingroom A month afterwards her husband died, after three weeks of intolerable torment. The doctor insisted on his having two trained nurses, but Lady Rorke never left him. She was present at the painful dressings of the wound from the operation that only prolonged the misery of his existence, and even slept on the sofa of the room where he lay. Archie Rorke arrived that evening. He let me know at once that he had seen the announcement of Lady Rorkes death, and said no more about it till later, when he and I were left alone over the fire in the smokingroom. He looked round to see that the door was shut behind the last bedgoer of my little party, and then turned to me. Ive got to tell you something, he said. Itll take half an hour, so tomorrow will do if you want to be off. But I dont, said I. He pulled himself together from his sprawling sunkenness in his chair. Very well, he said. What I want to tell you is the story of the breakingoff of my engagement with Sybil. I have often wanted to do so before, but while she was alive, as you will presently see, I could tell nobody. I shall ask you, when you know everything, whether you think I could have done otherwise. And please do not interrupt me till I have finished, unless there is something you dont understand, for it wont be very easy to get through with it. But I think I can make it intelligible. He was silent a moment, and I saw his face working and twitching. I must tell somebody, he said, and I choose you, unless you mind it awfully. But I simply cant bear it alone any more. Go on, then, old boy, I said. Im glad you chose me, do you know. And I wont interrupt. Archie spoke. A week or two only before our marriage was to have taken place, he said, I went down to Lincote for a couple of days. I had had the house done up and redecorated, and now the work was finished and I wanted to see that all was in order. Nothing could be worthy of Sybil, butwell, you can guess, more or less, what my feelings were. For a week before there had been very heavy rains, and the lakeyou know itbelow the garden was very high, higher than I had ever seen it the water poured over the road across the dam which leads to the village. Under the weight and press of it a great crack had appeared in the concrete with which it is faced, and there was danger of the dam being carried away. If that happened the whole lake would have been suddenly released and no end of damage might have been done. It was therefore necessary to draw off the water as fast as possible to relieve the pressure and repair the crack. This was done by means of big siphons. For two days we had them working, but the crack seemed to extend right to the foundations of the dam, and before it could be repaired all the water in the lake would have to be drawn off. I was just leaving for town, when the foreman came up to the house to tell me that they had found something there. In the ooze and mud at the base of the dam, twentyfive feet below waterlevel, they had come upon the body of a young girl. He gripped the arms of his chair tight. Little did he know that I was horribly aware of what he was going to tell me next. About a month before my cousin Ernests death, he said, a mysterious affair happened in the village. A girl named Ellen Davenport had disappeared. She came up one afternoon to the house with a note, and was never seen again, dead or alive. Her disappearance was now explained. A chain of beads round the neck and various fragments of clothing established, beyond any doubt, the identity of what they had found at the bottom of the lake. I waited for the inquest, telegraphing to Sybil that business had detained me, and then returned to town, not intending to tell her what that business was, for our marriage was close at hand and it was not a topic one would choose. She was very superstitious, you know, and I thought that it would shock her. That she would feel it to be unlucky and illomened. So I said nothing to her. Sybil had extraordinary mediumistic powers. She did not often exercise them and she never would give a sance to anyone she did not know extremely well, for she believed that people brought with them the spiritual influences with which they were surrounded, and that there was the possibility of very evil intelligences being set free. But she had sat several times with me, and I had witnessed some very remarkable manifestations. Her procedure was to put herself, by abstraction of her mind, into a state of trance, and spirits of the dead who were connected with the sitters could then communicate through her. On one occasion my mother, whom she had never seen, and who died many years ago, spoke through her and told me certain facts which Sybil could not have known, and which I did not know. But an old friend of my mothers, still alive, told me that they were correct. They were of an exceedingly private nature. Sybil also, so she told me, could produce materialisations, but up till now I had never seen any. A remarkable thing about her mediumship was that she would sometimes regain consciousness from her trance while still these communications were being made, and she knew what was going on. She could hear herself speak and be mentally aware of what she was saying. On the occasion, for instance, of which I have told you, when my mother spoke to me she was in this state. The same thing occurred at the sitting of which I shall now speak. That night, on my return to London, she and I dined alone. I felt a very strong desire, for which I could not account, that she should hold a sittingjust herself and meand she consented. We sat in her room, with a shaded lamp, but there was sufficient illumination for me to see her quite distinctly, for her face was towards the light. There was a small table in front of us covered with a dark cloth. She sat close to it, in a high chair, composed herself, and almost immediately went into trance. Her head fell forward and by her slow breathing and her absolute immobility I knew she was unconscious. For a long time we sat there in silence, and I began to think that we should get no manifestations at all, and that the sitting, as sometimes was the case, would be a failure; but then I saw that something was happening. His hands, with which he gripped the arms of his chair, were trembling. Twice he tried to speak, but it was not till the third attempt that he mastered himself. There was forming a mist above the table, he said. It was slightly luminous and it spread upwards, pillarshaped, in height between two and three feet. Then I saw that below the outlying skeins of it something was materialising. It moulded itself into human shape, rising waisthigh from the table, and presently shoulders and arms and neck and head were visible, and features began to outline themselves. For some time it remained vague and fluid, swaying backwards and forwards a little; then very quickly it solidified, and there, close in front of me, was the halffigure of a young girl. The eyes were still closed, but now they opened. Round her neck was a chain of beads just such as I had seen laid by the body that had been found in the lake. And then I spoke to her, asking her who she was, though I already knew. Her answer was no more than a whisper, but quite distinct.  Ellen Davenport, she said. A disordered terror seized me. Yet perhaps this little white figure, with its widegazing eyes, was some hallucination, something that had no objective existence at all. All day the thought of the poor kiddie whose remains I had seen taken out of the ooze at the bottom of the lake had been vivid in my mind, and I tried to think that what I saw was no more than some strange projection of my thought. And yet I felt it was not so; it was independent of myself. And why was it made manifest, and on what errand had it come? I had pressed Sybil to give me this sance, and God knows what I would have given not to have done so! For one thing I was thankful, namely, that she was in unconscious trance. Perhaps the phantom would fade again before she came out of it. And then I heard a stir of movement from the chair where she sat, and, turning, I saw that she had raised her head. Her eyes were open and on her face such a mask of terror as I have never known human being could wear. Recognition was there, too; I saw that Sybil knew who the phantom was. The figure that palely gleamed above the table turned its head towards her, and once more the white lips opened.  Yes, I am Ellen Davenport, she said. The whisper grew louder.  You might have saved me, she said, or you might have tried to save me; but you watched me struggling till I sank. And then the apparition vanished. It did not die away; it was there clear and distinct one moment, at the next it was gone. Sybil and I were sitting alone in her room with the lowburning lamp, and the silence sang in my ears. I got up and turned on the switch that kindled the electric lights, and knew that something within me had grown cold and that something had snapped. She still sat where she was, not looking at me at all, but blankly in front of her. She said no word of denial in answer to the terrible accusation that had been uttered. And I think I was glad of that, for there are times when it is not only futility to deny, but blasphemy. For my part, I could neither look at her nor speak to her. I remember holding out my hands to the empty grate, as if there had been a fire burning there. And standing there I heard her rise, and drearily wondered what she would say and knew how useless it would be. And then I heard the whisper of her dress on the carpet and the noise of the door opening and shutting, and when I turned I found that I was alone in the room. Presently I let myself out of the house. There was a long pause, but I did not break it, for I felt he had not quite finished. I had loved her with my whole heart, he said, and she knew it. Perhaps that was why I never attempted to see her again and why she did not attempt to see me. That little white figure would always have been with us, for she could not deny the reality of it and the truth of that which it had spoken. Thats my story, then. You neednt even tell me if you think I could have done differently, for I knew I couldnt. And she couldnt. He rose. I see there is to be an inquest, he said. I hope they will find that she killed herself. It will mean, wont it, that her remorse was unbearable. And thats atonement. He moved towards the door. Inscrutable decrees, he said. Machaon I was returning at the close of the short winter day from my visit to St. Jamess Hospital, where my old servant Parkes, who had been in my service for twenty years, was lying. I had sent him there three days before, not for treatment, but for observation, and this afternoon I had gone up to London, to hear the doctors report on the case. He told me that Parkes was suffering from an internal tumour, the nature of which could not be diagnosed for certain, but all the symptoms pointed directly to its being cancerous. That, however, must not be regarded as proved; it could only be proved by an exploratory operation to reveal the nature and the extent of the growth, which must then, if possible, be excised. It might involve, so my old friend Godfrey Symes told me, certain tissues and would be found to be inoperable, but he hoped this would not be the case, and that it would be possible to remove it removal gave the only chance of recovery. It was fortunate that the patient had been sent for examination in an early stage, for thus the chances of success were much greater than if the growth had been one of long standing. Parkes was not, however, in a fit state to stand the operation at once; a recuperative week or ten days in bed was advisable. In these circumstances Symes recommended that he should not be told at once what lay in front of him. I can see that he is a nervous fellow, he said, and to lie in bed thinking of what he has got to face will probably undo all the good that lying in bed will bring to him. You dont get used to the idea of being cut open; the more you think about it, the more intolerable it becomes. If that sort of adventure faced me, I should infinitely prefer not to be told about it until they came to give me the anaesthetic. Naturally, he will have to consent to the operation, but I shouldnt tell him anything about it till the day before. Hes not married, I think, is he? No hes alone in the world, said I. Hes been with me twenty years. Yes, I remember Parkes almost as long as I remember you. But thats all I can recommend. Of course, if the pain became severe, it might be better to operate sooner, but at present he suffers hardly at all, and he sleeps well, so the nurse tells me. And theres nothing else that you can try for it? I asked. Ill try anything you like, but it will be perfectly useless. Ill let him have any quack nostrum you and he wish, as long as it doesnt injure his health, or make you put off the operation. There are Xrays and ultraviolet rays, and violet leaves and radium; there are fresh cures for cancer discovered every day, and whats the result? They only make people put off the operation till its no longer possible to operate. Naturally, I will welcome any further opinion you want. Now Godfrey Symes is easily the first authority on this subject, and has a far higher percentage of cures to his credit than anyone else. No, I dont want any fresh opinion, said I. Very well, Ill have him carefully watched. By the way, cant you stop in town and dine with me? There are one or two people coming, and among them a perfectly mad spiritualist who has more messages from the other world than I ever get on my telephone. Trunkcalls, eh? I wonder where the exchange is. Do come! You like cranks, I know! I cant, Im afraid, said I. Ive a couple of guests coming to stay with me today down in the country. They are both cranks ones a medium. He laughed. Well, I can only offer you one crank, and youve got two, he said. I must get back to the wards. Ill write to you in about a weeks time or so, unless theres any urgency which I dont foresee, and I should suggest your coming up to tell Parkes. Goodbye. I caught my train at Charing Cross with about three seconds to spare, and we slid clanking out over the bridge through the cold, dense air. Snow had been falling intermittently since morning, and when we got out of the grime and fog of London, it was lying thickly on field and hedgerow, retarding by its reflection of such light as lingered the oncoming of darkness, and giving to the landscape an aloof and lonely austerity. All day I had felt that drowsiness which accompanies snowfall, and sometimes, half losing myself in a doze, my mind crept, like a thing crawling about in the dark, over what Godfrey Symes had told me. For all these years Parkes, as much friend as servant, had given me his faithfulness and devotion, and now, in return for that, all that apparently I could do was to tell him of his plight. It was clear, from what the surgeon had said, that he expected a serious disclosure, and I knew from the experience of two friends of mine who had been in his condition what might be expected of this exploratory operation. Exactly similar had been these cases; there was clear evidence of an internal growth possibly not malignant, and in each case the same dismal sequence had followed. The growth had been removed, and within a couple of months there had been a recrudescence of it. Indeed, surgery had proved no more than a pruningknife, which had stimulated that which the surgeon had hoped to extirpate into swifter activity. And that apparently was the best chance that Symes held out the rest of the treatments were but rubbish or quackery.  My mind crawled away towards another subject probably the two visitors whom I expected, Charles Hope and the medium whom he was bringing with him, were in the same train as I, and I ran over in my mind all that he had told me of Mrs. Forrest. It was certainly an odd story he had brought me two days before. Mrs. Forrest was a medium of considerable reputation in psychical circles, and had produced some very extraordinary booktests which, by all accounts, seemed inexplicable, except on a spiritualistic hypothesis, and no imputation of trickery had, at any rate as yet, come near her. When in trance, she spoke and wrote, as is invariably the case with mediums, under the direction of a certain controlthat is to say, a spiritual and discarnate intelligence which for the time was in possession of her. But lately there had been signs that a fresh control had inspired her, the nature of whom, his name, and his identity was at present unknown. And then came the following queer incident. Last week only when in trance, and apparently under the direction of this new control, she began describing in considerable detail a certain house where the control said that he had work to do. At first the description aroused no association in Charles Hopes mind, but as it went on, it suddenly struck him that Mrs. Forrest was speaking of my house in Tilling. She gave its general features, its position in a small town on a hill, its walledin garden, and then went on to speak with great minuteness of a rather peculiar feature in the house. She described a big room built out in the garden a few yards away from the house itself at rightangles to its front, and approached by half a dozen stone steps. There was a railing, so she said, on each side of them, and into the railing were twisted, like snake coils, the stems of a tree which bore pale mauve flowers. This was all a correct description of my garden room and the wistaria which writhes in and out of the railings which line the steps. She then went on to speak of the interior of the room. At one end was a fireplace, at the other a big bowwindow looking out on to the street and the front of the house, and there were two other windows opposite each other, in one of which was a table, while the other, looking out on to the garden, was shadowed by the tree that twisted itself about the railings. Bookcases lined the walls, and there was a big sofa at rightangles to the fire.  Now all this, though it was a perfectly accurate description of a place that, as far as could be ascertained, Mrs. Forrest had never seen, might conceivably have been derived from Charles Hopes mind, since he knew the room well, having often stayed with me. But the medium added a detail which could not conceivably have been thus derived, for Charles believed it to be incorrect. She said that there was a big piano near the bowwindow, while he was sure that there was not. But oddly enough I had hired a piano only a week or so ago, and it stood in the place that she mentioned. The control then repeated that there was work for him to do in that house. There was some situation or complication there in which he could help, and he could get through better (that is, make a clearer communication) if the medium could hold a sance there. Charles Hope then told the control that he believed he knew the house that he had been speaking of, and promised to do his best. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Forrest came out of trance, and, as usual, had no recollection of what had passed. So Charles came to me with the story exactly as I have given it here, and though I could not think of any situation or complication in which an unknown control of a medium I had never seen could be of assistance, the whole thing (and in especial that detail about the piano) was so odd that I asked him to bring the medium down for a sitting or a series of sittings. The day of their arrival was arranged, but when three days ago Parkes had to go into hospital, I was inclined to put them off. But a neighbour away for a week obligingly lent me a parlourmaid, and I let the engagement stand. With regard to the situation in which the control would be of assistance, I can but assure the reader that as far as I thought about it at all, I only wondered whether it was concerned with a book on which I was engaged, which dealt (if I could ever succeed in writing it) with psychical affairs. But at present I could not get on with it at all. I had made half a dozen beginnings which had all gone into the wastepaper basket. My guests proved not to have come by the same train as I, but arrived shortly before dinnertime, and after Mrs. Forrest had gone to her room, I had a few words with Charles, who told me exactly how the situation now stood. I know your caution and your captiousness in these affairs, he said, so I have told Mrs. Forrest nothing about the description she gave of this house, or of the reason why I asked her to come here. I said only, as we settled, that you were a great friend of mine and immensely interested in psychical affairs, but a countrymouse whom it was difficult to get up to town. But you would be delighted if she would come down for a few days and give some sittings here. And does she recognise the house, do you think? I asked. No sign of it. As I told you, when she comes out of trance she never seems to have the faintest recollection of what she has said or written. We shall have a sance, I hope, tonight after dinner. Certainly, if she will, said I. I thought we had better hold it in the gardenroom, for that was the place that was so minutely described. Its quite warm there, centralheating and a fire, and its only half a dozen yards from the house. Ive had the snow swept from the steps. Mrs. Forrest turned out to be a very intelligent woman, well spiced with humour, gifted with a sane appreciation of the comforts of life, and most agreeably furnished with the small change of talk. She was inclined to be stout, but carried herself with briskness, and neither in body nor mind did she suggest that she was one who held communication with the unseen there was nothing wan or occult about her. Her general outlook on life appeared to be rather materialistic than otherwise, and she was very interesting on the topic when, about halfway through dinner, the subject of her mediumship came on the conversational board. My gifts, such as they are, she said, have nothing to do with this person who sits eating and drinking and talking to you. She, as Mr. Hope may have told you, is quite expunged before the subconscious part of methat is the latest notion, is it not?gets into touch with discarnate intelligences. Until that happens, the door is shut, and when it is over, the door is shut again, and I have no recollection of what I have said or written. The control uses my hand and my voice, but that is all. I know no more about it than a piano on which a tune has been played. And there is a new control who has lately been using you? I asked. She laughed. You must ask Mr. Hope about that, she said. I know nothing whatever of it. He tells me it is so, and he tells medont you, Mr. Hope?that he hasnt any idea who or what the new control is. I look forward to its development; my idea is that the control has to get used to me, as in learning a new instrument. I assure you I am as eager as anyone that he should gain facility in communication through me. I hope, indeed, that we are to have a sance tonight. The talk veered again, and I learned that Mrs. Forrest had never been in Tilling before, and was enchanted with the snowy moonlit glance she had had of its narrow streets and ancient residences. She liked, too, the atmosphere of the house it seemed tranquil and kindly; especially so was the little drawingroom where we had assembled before dinner. I glanced at Charles. I had thought of proposing that we should sit in the gardenroom, I said, if you dont mind half a dozen steps in the open. It adjoins the house. Just as you wish, she said, though I think we have excellent conditions in here without going there. This confirmed her statement that she had no idea after she had come out of trance what she had said, for otherwise she must have recognised at the mention of the gardenroom her own description of it, and when soon after dinner we adjourned there, it was clear that, unless she was acting an inexplicable part, the sight of it twanged no chord of memory. There we made the very simple arrangements to which she was accustomed. As the procedure in such sittings is possibly unfamiliar to the reader, I will describe quite shortly what our arrangements were. We had no idea what form these manifestationsif there were anymight take, and therefore we, Charles and I, were prepared to record them on the spot. We three sat round a small table about a couple of yards from the fire, which was burning brightly; Mrs. Forrest seated herself in a big armchair. Exactly in front of her on the table were a pencil and a block of paper in case, as often happened, the manifestation took the form of automatic scriptwriting, that is, while in a state of trance. Charles and I sat on each side of her, also provided with pencil and paper in order to take down what she said if and when (as lawyers say) the control took possession of her. In case materialised spirits appeared, a phenomenon not as yet seen at her sances, our idea was to jot down as quickly as possible whatever we saw or thought we saw. Should there be rappings or movements of furniture, we were to make similar notes of our impressions. The lamp was then turned down, so that just a ring of flame encircled the wick, but the firelight was of sufficient brightness, as we tested before the sance began, to enable us to write and to see what we had written. The red glow of it illuminated the room, and it was settled that Charles should note by his watch the time at which anything occurred. Occasionally, throughout the sance a bubble of coalgas caught fire, and then the whole room started into strong light. I had given orders that my servants should not interrupt the sitting at all, unless somebody rang the bell from the gardenroom. In that case it was to be answered. Finally, before the sance began, we bolted all the windows on the inside and locked the door. We took no other precautions against trickery, though, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Forrest suggested that she should be tied into her chair. But in the firelight any movement of hers would be so visible that we did not adopt this precaution. Charles and I had settled to read to each other the notes we made during the sitting, and cut out anything that both of us had not recorded. The accounts, therefore, of this sitting and of that which followed next day are founded on our joint evidence. The sitting began. Mrs. Forrest was leaning back at ease with her eyes open and her hands on the arms of her chair. Then her eyes closed and a violent trembling seized her. That passed, and shortly afterwards her head fell forward and her breathing became very rapid. Presently that quieted to normal pace again, and she began to speak at first in a scarcely audible whisper and then in a high shrill voice, quite unlike her usual tones. I do not think that in all England there was a more disappointed man than I during the next halfhour. Starlight, it appeared, was in control, and Starlight was a personage of platitudes. She had been a nun in the time of Henry VII, and her work was to help those who had lately passed over. She was very busy and very happy, and was in the third sphere where they had a great deal of beautiful music. We must all be good, said Starlight, and it didnt matter much whether we were clever or not. Love was the great thing; we had to love each other and help each other, and death was no more than the gate of life, and everything would be tremendously jolly.  Starlight, in fact, might be better described as claptrap, and I began thinking about Parkes.  And then I ceased to think about Parkes, for the shrill moralities of Starlight ceased, and Mrs. Forrests voice changed again. The stale facility of her utterance stopped and she began to speak, quite unintelligibly, in a voice of low baritone range. Charles leaned across the table and whispered to me. Thats the new control, he said. The voice that was speaking stumbled and hesitated it was like that of a man trying to express himself in some language which he knew very imperfectly. Sometimes it stopped altogether, and in one of these pauses I asked Can you tell us your name? There was no reply, but presently I saw Mrs. Forrests hand reach out for the pencil. Charles put it into her fingers and placed the writingpad more handily for her. I watched the letters, in capitals, being traced. They were made hesitatingly, but were perfectly legible. Swallow, she wrote, and again Swallow, and stopped. The bird? I asked. The voice spoke in answer; now I could hear the words, uttered in that low baritone voice. No, not a bird, it said. Not a bird, but it flies. I was utterly at sea; my mind could form no conjecture whatever as to what was meant. And then the pencil began writing again. Swallow, swallow, and then with a sudden briskness of movement, as if the guiding intelligence had got over some difficulty, it wrote Swallowtail. This seemed more abstrusely senseless than ever. The only connection with swallowtail in my mind was a swallowtailed coat, but whoever heard of a swallowtailed coat flying? Ive got it, said Charles. Swallowtail butterfly. Is it that? There came three sudden raps on the table, loud and startling. These raps, I may explain, in the usual code mean Yes. As if to confirm it the pencil began to write again, and spelled out Swallowtail butterfly. Is that your name? I asked. There was one rap, which signifies No, followed by three, which means Yes. I had not the slightest idea of what it all signified (indeed it seemed to signify nothing at all), but the sitting had become extraordinarily interesting if only for its very unexpectedness. The control was trying to establish himself by three methods simultaneouslyby the voice, by the automatic writing, and by rapping. But how a swallowtail butterfly could assist in some situation which was now existing in my house was utterly beyond me.  Then an idea struck me the swallowtail butterfly no doubt had a scientific name, and that we could easily ascertain, for I knew that there was on my shelves a copy of Newmans Butterflies and Moths of Great Britain, a sumptuous volume bound in morocco, which I had won as an entomological prize at school. A moments search gave me the book, and by the firelight I turned up the description of this butterfly in the index. Its scientific name was Papilio machaon. Is Machaon your name? I asked. The voice came clear now. Yes, I am Machaon, it said. With that came the end of the sance, which had lasted not more than an hour. Whatever the power was that had made Mrs. Forrest speak in that male voice and struggle, through that roundabout method of swallow, swallowtail, Machaon, to establish its identity, it now began to fail. Mrs. Forrests pencil made a few illegible scribbles, she whispered a few inaudible words, and presently with a stretch and a sigh she came out of trance. We told her that the name of the control was established, but apparently Machaon meant nothing to her. She was much exhausted, and very soon I took her across to the house to go to bed, and presently rejoined Charles. Who was Machaon, anyhow? he asked. He sounds classical more in your line than mine. I remembered enough Greek mythology to supply elementary facts, while I hunted for a particular book about Athens. Machaon was the son of Asclepios, I said, and Asclepios was the Greek god of healing.


He had precincts, hydropathic establishments, where people went to be cured. The Romans called him Aesculapius. What can he do for you then? asked Charles. Youre fairly fit, arent you? Not till he spoke did a light dawn on me. Though I had been thinking so much of Parkes that day, I had not consciously made the connection. But Parkes isnt, said I. Is that possible? By Jove! said he. I found my book, and turned to the accounts of the precinct of Asclepios in Athens. Yes, Asclepios had two sons, I saidMachaon and Podaleirios. In Homeric times he wasnt a god, but only a physician, and his sons were physicians too. The myth of his godhead is rather a late one I shut the book. Best not to read any more, I said. If we know all about Asclepios, we shall possibly be suggesting things to the mediums mind. Lets see what Machaon can tell us about himself, and we can verify it afterwards. It was therefore with no further knowledge than this on the subject of Machaon that we proposed to hold another sance the next day. All morning the bitter air had been laden with snow, and now the street in front of my house, a byway at the best in the slender traffic of the town, lay white and untrodden, save on the pavement where a few passengers had gone by. Mrs. Forrest had not appeared at breakfast, and from then till lunchtime I sat in the bowwindow of the gardenroom, for the warmth of the central heating, of which a stack of pipes was there installed, and for securing the utmost benefit of light that penetrated this cowl of snowladen sky, busy with belated letters. The drowsiness that accompanies snowfall weighed heavily on my faculties, but as far as I can assert anything, I can assert that I did not sleep. From one letter I went on to another, and then for the sixth or seventh time I tried to open my story. It promised better now than before, and searching for a word that would not come to my pen, I happened to look up along the street which lay in front of me. I expected nothing I was thinking of nothing but my work; probably I had looked up like that a dozen times before, and had seen the empty street, with snow lying thickly on the roadway. But now the roadway was not untenanted. Someone was walking down the middle of it, and his aspect, incredible though it seemed, was not startling. Why I was not startled I have no idea I can only say that the vision appeared perfectly natural. The figure was that of a young man, whose hair, black and curly, lay crisply over his forehead. A large white cloak reaching down to his knees enveloped him, and he had thrown the end of it over his shoulder. Below his knees his legs and feet were bare, so too was the arm up to the elbow, with which he pressed his cloak to him, and there he was walking briskly down the snowy street. As he came directly below the window where I sat, he raised his head and looked at me directly, and smiled. And now I saw his face there was the low brow, the straight nose, the curved and sunny mouth, the short chin, and I thought to myself that this was none other than the Hermes of Praxiteles, he whose statue at Olympia makes all those who look on it grow young again. There, anyhow, was a boyish Greek god, stepping blithely and with gay, incomparable grace along the street, and raising his face to smile at this stolid, middleaged man who blankly regarded him. Then with the certainty of one returning home, he mounted the steps outside the front door, and seemed to pass into and through it. Certainly he was no longer in the street, and, so real and solidseeming had he been to my vision, that I jumped up, ran across the few steps of garden, and went into the house, and I should not have been amazed if I had found him standing in the hall. But there was no one there, and I opened the front door the snow lay smooth and untrodden down the centre of the road where he had walked and on my doorstep. And at that moment the memory of the sance the evening before, about which up till now I had somehow felt distrustful and suspicious, passed into the realm of sober fact, for had not Machaon just now entered my house, with a smile as of recognition on some friendly mission? We sat again that afternoon by daylight, and now, I must suppose, the control was more actively and powerfully present, for hardly had Mrs. Forrest passed into trance than the voice began, louder than it had been the night before, and far more distinct. HeMachaon I must call himseemed to be anxious to establish his identity beyond all doubt, like some newcomer presenting his credentials, and he began to speak of the precinct of Asclepios in Athens. Often he hesitated for a word in English, often he put in a word in Greek, and as he spoke, fragments of things I had learned when an archaeological student in Athens came back into my mind, and I knew that he was accurately describing the portico and the temple and the well. All this I toss to the sceptic to growl and worry over and tear to bits; for certainly it seems possible that my mind, holding these facts in its subconsciousness, was suggesting them to the mediums mind, who thereupon spoke of them and, conveying them back to me, made me aware that I had known them.  My forgotten knowledge of these things and of the Greek language came flooding back on me, as he told us, now half in Greek, and half in English, of the patients who came to consult the god, how they washed in the sacred well for purification, and lay down to sleep in the portico. They often dreamed, and in the interpretation of their dreams, which they told to the priest next day, lay the indication of the cure. Or sometimes the god healed more directly, and accompanied by the sacred snake walked among the sleepers and by his touch made them whole. His temple was hung with exvotos, the gifts of those whom he had cured. And at Epidaurus, where was another shrine of his, there were great mural tablets recording the same.  Then the voice stopped, and as if to prove identity by another means, the medium drew the pencil and paper to her, and in Greek characters, unknown apparently to her, she traced the words Machaon, son of Asclepios.  There was a pause, and I asked a direct question, which now had been long simmering in my mind. Have you come to help me about Parkes? I asked. Can you tell me what will cure him? The pencil began to move again, tracing out characters in Greek. It wrote  , and repeated it. I did not at once guess what it meant, and asked for an explanation. There was no answer, and presently the medium stirred, stretched herself and sighed, and came out of trance. She took up the paper on which she had written. Did that come through? she asked. And what does it mean? I dont even know the characters.  Then suddenly the possible significance of   flashed on me, and I marvelled at my slowness. , a beam of light, a ray, and the letter , the equivalent of the English x. That had come in direct answer to my question as to what would cure Parkes, and it was without hesitation or delay that I wrote to Symes. I reminded him that he had said that he had no objection to any possible remedy, provided it was not harmful, being tried on his patient, and I asked him to treat him with Xrays. The whole sequence of events had been so frankly amazing, that I believe the veriest sceptic would not have done otherwise than I did. Our sittings continued, but after this day we had no further evidence of this second control. It looked as if the intelligence (even the most incredulous will allow me, for the sake of convenience, to call that intelligence Machaon) that had described this room, and told Mrs. Forrest that he had work to do here, had finished his task. Machaon had said, or so my interpretation was, that Xrays would cure Parkes. In justification of this view it is proper to quote from a letter which I got from Symes a week later. There is no need for you to come up to break to Parkes that an operation lies in front of him. In answer to your request, and without a grain of faith in its success, I treated him with Xrays, which I assured you were useless. Today, to speak quite frankly, I dont know what to think, for the growth has been steadily diminishing in size and hardness, and it is perfectly evident that it is being absorbed and is disappearing. The treatment through which I put Parkes is that of . Here in this hospital we have had patients to whom it brought no shadow of benefit. Often it had been continued on these deluded wretches till any operation which might possibly have been successful was out of the question owing to the encroachment of the growth. But from the first dose of the Xrays, Parkes began to get better, the growth was first arrested, and then diminished. I am trying to put the whole thing before you with as much impartiality as I can command. So, on the other side, you must remember that Parkess was never a proved case of cancer. I told you that it could not be proved till the exploratory operation took place. All the symptoms pointed to canceryou see, I am trying to save my own facebut my diagnosis, though confirmed by , may have been wrong. If he only had what we call a benign tumour, the case is not so extraordinary; there have been plenty of cases when a benign tumour has disappeared by absorption or whatnot. It is unusual, but by no means unknown. For instance.  But Parkess case was quite different. I certainly believe he had a cancerous growth, and thought that an operation was inevitable if his life was to be saved. Even then, the most I hoped for was an alleviation of pain, as the disease progressed, and a year or two more, at the most, of life. Instead, I apply another remedy, at your suggestion, and if he goes on as he has been doing, the growth will be a nodule in another week or two, and I should expect it to disappear altogether. Taking everything into consideration, if you asked me the question whether this Xray treatment was the cause of the cure, I should be obliged to say Yes. I dont believe in such a treatment, but I believe it is curing him. I suppose that it was suggested to you by a fraudulent, spiritualistic medium in a feigned trance, who was inspired by Aesculapius or some exploded heathen deity, for I remember you said you were going down into the country for some spiritual business.  Well, Parkes is getting better, and I am so oldfashioned a fellow that I would sooner a patient of mine got better by incredible methods, than died under my skilful knife.  Of course, we trained people know nothing, but we have to act according to the best chances of our ignorance. I entirely believed that the knife was the only means of saving the man, and now, when I stand confuted, the only thing that I can save is my honesty, which I hereby have done. Let me know, at your leisure, whether you just thought you would, on your own idea, like me to try Xrays, or whether some faked voice from the grave suggested it. Ever yours, Godfrey Symes. P.S.If it was some beastly voice from the grave, you might tell me in confidence who the medium was. I want to be fair.  That is the story; the reader will explain it according to his temperament. And as I have told Parkes, who is now back with me again, to look into the gardenroom before posttime and take a registered packet to the office, it is time that I got it ready for him. So here is the completed packet in manuscript, to be sent to the printers. From my window I shall see him go briskly along the street down which Machaon walked on a snowy morning. Mr. Tillys Sance Mr. Tilly had only the briefest moment for reflection, when, as he slipped and fell on the greasy wood pavement at Hyde Park Corner, which he was crossing at a smart trot, he saw the huge tractionengine with its grooved ponderous wheels towering high above him. Oh, dear! oh, dear! he said petulantly, it will certainly crush me quite flat, and I shant be able to be at Mrs. Cumberbatchs sance! Most provoking! Aow! The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the first half of his horrid anticipations was thoroughly fulfilled. The heavy wheels passed over him from head to foot and flattened him completely out. Then the driver (too late) reversed his engine and passed over him again, and finally lost his head, whistled loudly and stopped. The policeman on duty at the corner turned quite faint at the sight of the catastrophe, but presently recovered sufficiently to hold up the traffic, and ran to see what on earth could be done. It was all so much up with Mr. Tilly that the only thing possible was to get the hysterical enginedriver to move clear. Then the ambulance from the hospital was sent for, and Mr. Tillys remains, detached with great difficulty from the road (so firmly had they been pressed into it), were reverently carried away into the mortuary.  Mr. Tilly during this had experienced one moments excruciating pain, resembling the severest neuralgia as his head was ground beneath the wheel, but almost before he realised it, the pain was past, and he found himself, still rather dazed, floating or standing (he did not know which) in the middle of the road. There had been no break in his consciousness; he perfectly recollected slipping, and wondered how he had managed to save himself. He saw the arrested traffic, the policeman with white wan face making suggestions to the gibbering enginedriver, and he received the very puzzling impression that the traction engine was all mixed up with him. He had a sensation of redhot coals and boiling water and rivets all around him, but yet no feeling of scalding or burning or confinement. He was, on the contrary, extremely comfortable, and had the most pleasant consciousness of buoyancy and freedom. Then the engine puffed and the wheels went round, and immediately, to his immense surprise, he perceived his own crushed remains, flat as a biscuit, lying on the roadway. He identified them for certain by his clothes, which he had put on for the first time that morning, and one patent leather boot which had escaped demolition. But what on earth has happened? he said. Here am I, and yet that poor pressed flower of arms and legs is meor rather Ialso. And how terribly upset the driver looks. Why, I do believe that Ive been run over! It did hurt for a moment, now I come to think of it.  My good man, where are you shoving to? Dont you see me? He addressed these two questions to the policeman, who appeared to walk right through him. But the man took no notice, and calmly came out on the other side it was quite evident that he did not see him, or apprehend him in any way. Mr. Tilly was still feeling rather at sea amid these unusual occurrences, and there began to steal into his mind a glimpse of the fact which was so obvious to the crowd which formed an interested but respectful ring round his body. Men stood with bared heads; women screamed and looked away and looked back again. I really believe Im dead, said he. Thats the only hypothesis which will cover the facts. But I must feel more certain of it before I do anything. Ah! Here they come with the ambulance to look at me. I must be terribly hurt, and yet I dont feel hurt. I should feel hurt surely if I was hurt. I must be dead. Certainly it seemed the only thing for him to be, but he was far from realising it yet. A lane had been made through the crowd for the stretcherbearers, and he found himself wincing when they began to detach him from the road. Oh, do take care! he said. Thats the sciatic nerve protruding there surely, isnt it? Aow! No, it didnt hurt after all. My new clothes, too I put them on today for the first time. What bad luck! Now youre holding my leg upside down. Of course all my money comes out of my trouser pocket. And theres my ticket for the sance; I must have that I may use it after all. He tweaked it out of the fingers of the man who had picked it up, and laughed to see the expression of amazement on his face as the card suddenly vanished. That gave him something fresh to think about, and he pondered for a moment over some touch of association set up by it. I have it, he thought. It is clear that the moment I came into connection with that card, it became invisible. Im invisible myself (of course to the grosser sense), and everything I hold becomes invisible. Most interesting! That accounts for the sudden appearances of small objects at a sance. The spirit has been holding them, and as long as he holds them they are invisible. Then he lets go, and theres the flower or the spiritphotograph on the table. It accounts, too, for the sudden disappearances of such objects. The spirit has taken them, though the scoffers say that the medium has secreted them about his person. It is true that when searched he sometimes appears to have done so; but, after all, that may be a joke on the part of the spirit. Now, what am I to do with myself.  Let me see, theres the clock. Its just halfpast ten. All this has happened in a few minutes, for it was a quarter past when I left my house. Halfpast ten now what does that mean exactly? I used to know what it meant, but now it seems nonsense. Ten what? Hours, is it? Whats an hour? This was very puzzling. He felt that he used to know what an hour and a minute meant, but the perception of that, naturally enough, had ceased with his emergence from time and space into eternity. The conception of time was like some memory which, refusing to record itself on the consciousness, lies perdu in some dark corner of the brain, laughing at the efforts of the owner to ferret it out. While he still interrogated his mind over this lapsed perception, he found that space as well as time, had similarly grown obsolete for him, for he caught sight of his friend Miss Ida Soulsby, whom he knew was to be present at the sance for which he was bound, hurrying with birdlike steps down the pavement opposite. Forgetting for the moment that he was a disembodied spirit, he made the effort of will which in his past human existence would have set his legs in pursuit of her, and found that the effort of will alone was enough to place him at her side. My dear Miss Soulsby, he said, I was on my way to Mrs. Cumberbatchs house when I was knocked down and killed. It was far from unpleasant, a moments headache So far his natural volubility had carried him before he recollected that he was invisible and inaudible to those still closed in by the muddy vesture of decay, and stopped short. But though it was clear that what he said was inaudible to Miss Soulsbys rather large intelligentlooking ears, it seemed that some consciousness of his presence was conveyed to her finer sense, for she looked suddenly startled, a flush rose to her face, and he heard her murmur, Very odd. I wonder why I received so vivid an impression of dear Teddy. That gave Mr. Tilly a pleasant shock. He had long admired the lady, and here she was alluding to him in her supposed privacy as dear Teddy. That was followed by a momentary regret that he had been killed he would have liked to have been possessed of this information before, and have pursued the primrose path of dalliance down which it seemed to lead. (His intentions, of course, would, as always, have been strictly honourable the path of dalliance would have conducted them both, if she consented, to the altar, where the primroses would have been exchanged for orange blossom.) But his regret was quite shortlived; though the altar seemed inaccessible, the primrose path might still be open, for many of the spiritualistic circle in which he lived were on most affectionate terms with their spiritual guides and friends who, like himself, had passed over. From a human point of view these innocent and even elevating flirtations had always seemed to him rather bloodless; but now, looking on them from the far side, he saw how charming they were, for they gave him the sense of still having a place and an identity in the world he had just quitted. He pressed Miss Idas hand (or rather put himself into the spiritual condition of so doing), and could vaguely feel that it had some hint of warmth and solidity about it. This was gratifying, for it showed that though he had passed out of the material plane, he could still be in touch with it. Still more gratifying was it to observe that a pleased and secret smile overspread Miss Idas fine features as he gave this token of his presence perhaps she only smiled at her own thoughts, but in any case it was he who had inspired them. Encouraged by this, he indulged in a slightly more intimate token of affection, and permitted himself a respectful salute, and saw that he had gone too far, for she said to herself, Hush, hush! and quickened her pace, as if to leave these amorous thoughts behind. He felt that he was beginning to adjust himself to the new conditions in which he would now live, or, at any rate, was getting some sort of inkling as to what they were. Time existed no more for him, nor yet did space, since the wish to be at Miss Idas side had instantly transported him there, and with a view to testing this further he wished himself back in his flat. As swiftly as the change of scene in a cinematograph show he found himself there, and perceived that the news of his death must have reached his servants, for his cook and parlourmaid with excited faces, were talking over the event. Poor little gentleman, said his cook. It seems a shame it does. He never hurt a fly, and to think of one of those great engines laying him out flat. I hope theyll take him to the cemetery from the hospital I never could bear a corpse in the house. The great strapping parlourmaid tossed her head. Well, Im not sure that it doesnt serve him right, she observed. Always messing about with spirits he was, and the knockings and concertinas was awful sometimes when Ive been laying out supper in the diningroom. Now perhaps hell come himself and visit the rest of the loonies. But Im sorry all the same. A less troublesome little gentleman never stepped. Always pleasant, too, and wages paid to the day. These regretful comments and encomiums were something of a shock to Mr. Tilly. He had imagined that his excellent servants regarded him with a respectful affection, as befitted some sort of demigod, and the role of the poor little gentleman was not at all to his mind. This revelation of their true estimate of him, although what they thought of him could no longer have the smallest significance, irritated him profoundly. I never heard such impertinence, he said (so he thought) quite out loud, and still intensely earthbound, was astonished to see that they had no perception whatever of his presence. He raised his voice, replete with extreme irony, and addressed his cook. You may reserve your criticism on my character for your saucepans, he said. They will no doubt appreciate them. As regards the arrangements for my funeral, I have already provided for them in my will, and do not propose to consult your convenience. At present Lor! said Mrs. Inglis, I declare I can almost hear his voice, poor little fellow. Husky it was, as if he would do better by clearing his throat. I suppose Id best be making a black bow to my cap. His lawyers and whatnot will be here presently. Mr. Tilly had no sympathy with this suggestion. He was immensely conscious of being quite alive, and the idea of his servants behaving as if he were dead, especially after the way in which they had spoken about him, was very vexing. He wanted to give them some striking evidence of his presence and his activity, and he banged his hand angrily on the diningroom table, from which the breakfast equipage had not yet been cleared. Three tremendous blows he gave it, and was rejoiced to see that his parlourmaid looked startled. Mrs. Ingliss face remained perfectly placid. Why, if I didnt hear a sort of rapping sound, said Miss Talton. Where did it come from? Nonsense! Youve the jumps, dear, said Mrs. Inglis, picking up a remaining rasher of bacon on a fork, and putting it into her capacious mouth. Mr. Tilly was delighted at making any impression at all on either of these impercipient females. Talton! he called at the top of his voice. Why, whats that? said Talton. Almost hear his voice, do you say, Mrs. Inglis? I declare I did hear his voice then. A pack o nonsense, dear, said Mrs. Inglis placidly. Thats a prime bit of bacon, and theres a good cut of it left. Why, youre all of a tremble! Its your imagination. Suddenly it struck Mr. Tilly that he might be employing himself much better than, with such extreme exertion, managing to convey so slight a hint of his presence to his parlourmaid, and that the sance at the house of the medium, Mrs. Cumberbatch, would afford him much easier opportunities of getting through to the earthplane again. He gave a couple more thumps to the table and, wishing himself at Mrs. Cumberbatchs, nearly a mile away, scarcely heard the faint scream of Talton at the sound of his blows before he found himself in West Norfolk Street. He knew the house well, and went straight to the drawingroom, which was the scene of the sances he had so often and so eagerly attended. Mrs. Cumberbatch, who had a long spoonshaped face, had already pulled down the blinds, leaving the room in total darkness except for the glimmer of the nightlight which, under a shade of rubyglass, stood on the chimneypiece in front of the coloured photograph of Cardinal Newman. Round the table were seated Miss Ida Soulsby, Mr. and Mrs. Meriott (who paid their guineas at least twice a week in order to consult their spiritual guide Abibel and received mysterious advice about their indigestion and investments), and Sir John Plaice, who was much interested in learning the details of his previous incarnation as a Chaldean priest, completed the circle. His guide, who revealed to him his sacerdotal career, was playfully called Mespot. Naturally many other spirits visited them, for Miss Soulsby had no less than three guides in her spiritual household, Sapphire, Semiramis, and Sweet William, while Napoleon and Plato were not infrequent guests. Cardinal Newman, too, was a great favourite, and they encouraged his presence by the singing in unison of Lead, Kindly Light he could hardly ever resist that.  Mr. Tilly observed with pleasure that there was a vacant seat by the table which no doubt had been placed there for him. As he entered, Mrs. Cumberbatch peered at her watch. Eleven oclock already, she said, and Mr. Tilly is not here yet. I wonder what can have kept him. What shall we do, dear friends? Abibel gets very impatient sometimes if we keep him waiting. Mr. and Mrs. Meriott were getting impatient too, for he terribly wanted to ask about Mexican oils, and she had a very vexing heartburn. And Mespot doesnt like waiting either, said Sir John, jealous for the prestige of his protector, not to mention Sweet William. Miss Soulsby gave a little silvery laugh. Oh, but my Sweet Williams so good and kind, she said; besides, I have a feeling, quite a psychic feeling, Mrs. Cumberbatch, that Mr. Tilly is very close. So I am, said Mr. Tilly. Indeed, as I walked here, continued Miss Soulsby, I felt that Mr. Tilly was somewhere quite close to me. Dear me, whats that? Mr. Tilly was so delighted at being sensed, that he could not resist giving a tremendous rap on the table, in a sort of pleased applause. Mrs. Cumberbatch heard it too. Im sure thats Abibel come to tell us that he is ready, she said. I know Abibels knock. A little patience, Abibel. Lets give Mr. Tilly three minutes more and then begin. Perhaps, if we put up the blinds, Abibel will understand we havent begun. This was done, and Miss Soulsby glided to the window, in order to make known Mr. Tillys approach, for he always came along the opposite pavement and crossed over by the little island in the river of traffic. There was evidently some lately published news, for the readers of early editions were busy, and she caught sight of one of the advertisementboards bearing in large letters the announcement of a terrible accident at Hyde Park Corner. She drew in her breath with a hissing sound and turned away, unwilling to have her psychic tranquillity upset by the intrusion of painful incidents. But Mr. Tilly, who had followed her to the window and saw what she had seen, could hardly restrain a spiritual whoop of exultation. Why, its all about me! he said. Such large letters, too. Very gratifying. Subsequent editions will no doubt contain my name. He gave another loud rap to call attention to himself, and Mrs. Cumberbatch, sitting down in her antique chair which had once belonged to Madame Blavatsky, again heard. Well, if that isnt Abibel again, she said. Be quiet, naughty. Perhaps we had better begin. She recited the usual invocation to guides and angels, and leaned back in her chair. Presently she began to twitch and mutter, and shortly afterwards with several loud snorts, relapsed into cataleptic immobility. There she lay, stiff as a poker, a port of call, so to speak, for any voyaging intelligence. With pleased anticipation Mr. Tilly awaited their coming. How gratifying if Napoleon, with whom he had so often talked, recognised him and said, Pleased to see you, Mr. Tilly. I perceive you have joined us.  The room was dark except for the rubyshaded lamp in front of Cardinal Newman, but to Mr. Tillys emancipated perceptions the withdrawal of mere material light made no difference, and he idly wondered why it was generally supposed that disembodied spirits like himself produced their most powerful effects in the dark. He could not imagine the reason for that, and, what puzzled him still more, there was not to his spiritual perception any sign of those colleagues of his (for so he might now call them) who usually attended Mrs. Cumberbatchs sances in such gratifying numbers. Though she had been moaning and muttering a long time now, Mr. Tilly was in no way conscious of the presence of Abibel and Sweet William and Sapphire and Napoleon. They ought to be here by now, he said to himself. But while he still wondered at their absence, he saw to his amazed disgust that the mediums hand, now covered with a black glove, and thus invisible to ordinary human vision in the darkness, was groping about the table and clearly searching for the megaphonetrumpet which lay there. He found that he could read her mind with the same ease, though far less satisfaction, as he had read Miss Idas half an hour ago, and knew that she was intending to apply the trumpet to her own mouth and pretend to be Abibel or Semiramis or somebody, whereas she affirmed that she never touched the trumpet herself. Much shocked at this, he snatched up the trumpet himself, and observed that she was not in trance at all, for she opened her sharp black eyes, which always reminded him of buttons covered with American cloth, and gave a great gasp. Why, Mr. Tilly! she said. On the spiritual plane too! The rest of the circle was now singing Lead, Kindly Light in order to encourage Cardinal Newman, and this conversation was conducted under cover of the hoarse crooning voices. But Mr. Tilly had the feeling that though Mrs. Cumberbatch saw and heard him as clearly as he saw her, he was quite imperceptible to the others. Yes, Ive been killed, he said, and I want to get into touch with the material world. Thats why I came here. But I want to get into touch with other spirits too, and surely Abibel or Mespot ought to be here by this time. He received no answer, and her eyes fell before his like those of a detected charlatan. A terrible suspicion invaded his mind. What? Are you a fraud, Mrs. Cumberbatch? he asked. Oh, for shame! Think of all the guineas I have paid you. You shall have them all back, said Mrs. Cumberbatch. But dont tell of me. She began to whimper, and he remembered that she often made that sort of sniffling noise when Abibel was taking possession of her.