"However," he continued, "the essential fact is this: on the day appointed for the wedding, Q and Miss M were duly married."
"Impossible!" I gasped; "duly married, both of them?"
"Yes," said Annerly, "both at the same time. After the wedding Mr. and Mrs. Q--"
"Mr. and Mrs. Q," I repeated in perplexity.
"Yes," he answered, "Mr. and Mrs. Q-- for after the wedding Miss M. took the name of Q-- left England and went out to Australia, where they were to reside."
"Stop one moment," I said, "and let me be quite clear-in going out to settle in Australia it was their intention to reside there?"
"Yes," said Annerly, "that at any rate was generally understood. I myself saw them off on the steamer, and shook hands with Q, standing at the same time quite close to him."
"Well," I said, "and since the two Q"s, as I suppose one might almost call them, went to Australia, have you heard anything from them?"
"That," replied Annerly, "is a matter that has shown the same singularity as the rest of my experience. It is now four years since Q and his wife went to Australia. At first I heard from him quite regularly, and received two letters each month. Presently I only received one letter every two months, and later two letters every six months, and then only one letter every twelve months. Then until last night I heard nothing whatever of Q for a year and a half."
I was now on the tiptoe of expectancy.
"Last night," said Annerly very quietly, "Q appeared in this room, or rather, a phantasm or psychic manifestation of him. He seemed in great distress, made gestures which I could not understand, and kept turning his trouser pockets inside out. I was too spellbound to question him, and tried in vain to divine his meaning. Presently the phantasm seized a pencil from the table, and wrote the words, "Two sovereigns, to-morrow night, urgent.""
Annerly was again silent. I sat in deep thought. "How do you interpret the meaning which Q"s phanogram meant to convey?"
"I think," he announced, "it means this. Q, who is evidently dead, meant to visualise that fact, meant, so to speak, to deatomise the idea that he was demonetised, and that he wanted two sovereigns to-night."
"And how," I asked, amazed at Annerly"s instinctive penetration into the mysteries of the psychic world, "how do you intend to get it to him?"
"I intend," he announced, "to try a bold, a daring experiment, which, if it succeeds, will bring us into immediate connection with the world of spirits. My plan is to leave two sovereigns here upon the edge of the table during the night. If they are gone in the morning, I shall know that Q has contrived to de-astralise himself, and has taken the sovereigns. The only question is, do you happen to have two sovereigns? I myself, unfortunately, have nothing but small change about me."
Here was a piece of rare good fortune, the coincidence of which seemed to add another link to the chain of circ.u.mstance. As it happened I had with me the six sovereigns which I had just drawn as my week"s pay.
"Luckily," I said, "I am able to arrange that. I happen to have money with me." And I took two sovereigns from my pocket.
Annerly was delighted at our good luck. Our preparations for the experiment were soon made.
We placed the table in the middle of the room in such a way that there could be no fear of contact or collision with any of the furniture. The chairs were carefully set against the wall, and so placed that no two of them occupied the same place as any other two, while the pictures and ornaments about the room were left entirely undisturbed. We were careful not to remove any of the wall-paper from the wall, nor to detach any of the window-panes from the window. When all was ready the two sovereigns were laid side by side upon the table, with the heads up in such a way that the lower sides or tails were supported by only the table itself. We then extinguished the light. I said "Good night" to Annerly, and groped my way out into the dark, feverish with excitement.
My readers may well imagine my state of eagerness to know the result of the experiment. I could scarcely sleep for anxiety to know the issue. I had, of course, every faith in the completeness of our preparations, but was not without misgivings that the experiment might fail, as my own mental temperament and disposition might not be of the precise kind needed for the success of these experiments.
On this score, however, I need have had no alarm. The event showed that my mind was a media, or if the word is better, a transparency, of the very first order for psychic work of this character.
In the morning Annerly came rushing over to my lodgings, his face beaming with excitement.
"Glorious, glorious," he almost shouted, "we have succeeded! The sovereigns are gone. We are in direct monetary communication with Q."
I need not dwell on the exquisite thrill of happiness which went through me. All that day and all the following day, the sense that I was in communication with Q was ever present with me.
My only hope was that an opportunity might offer for the renewal of our inter-communication with the spirit world.
The following night my wishes were gratified. Late in the evening Annerly called me up on the telephone.
"Come over at once to my lodgings," he said. "Q"s phanogram is communicating with us."
I hastened over, and arrived almost breathless. "Q has been here again," said Annerly, "and appeared in the same distress as before. A projection of him stood in the room, and kept writing with its finger on the table. I could distinguish the word "sovereigns," but nothing more."
"Do you not suppose," I said, "that Q for some reason which we cannot fathom, wishes us to again leave two sovereigns for him?"
"By Jove!" said Annerly enthusiastically, "I believe you"ve hit it.
At any rate, let us try; we can but fail."
That night we placed again two of my sovereigns on the table, and arranged the furniture with the same scrupulous care as before.
Still somewhat doubtful of my own psychic fitness for the work in which I was engaged, I endeavoured to keep my mind so poised as to readily offer a mark for any astral disturbance that might be about. The result showed that it had offered just such a mark. Our experiment succeeded completely. The two coins had vanished in the morning.
For nearly two months we continued our experiments on these lines. At times Annerly himself, so he told me, would leave money, often considerable sums, within reach of the phantasm, which never failed to remove them during the night. But Annerly, being a man of strict honour, never carried on these experiments alone except when it proved impossible to communicate with me in time for me to come.
At other times he would call me up with the simple message, "Q is here," or would send me a telegram, or a written note saying, "Q needs money; bring any that you have, but no more."
On my own part, I was extremely anxious to bring our experiments prominently before the public, or to interest the Society for Psychic Research, and similar bodies, in the daring transit which we had effected between the world of sentience and the psycho-astric, or pseudo-ethereal existence. It seemed to me that we alone had succeeded in thus conveying money directly and without mediation, from one world to another. Others, indeed, had done so by the interposition of a medium, or by subscription to an occult magazine, but we had performed the feat with such simplicity that I was anxious to make our experience public, for the benefit of others like myself.
Annerly, however, was averse from this course, being fearful that it might break off our relations with Q.
It was some three months after our first inter-astral psycho-monetary experiment, that there came the culmination of my experiences-so mysterious as to leave me still lost in perplexity.
Annerly had come in to see me one afternoon. He looked nervous and depressed.
"I have just had a psychic communication from Q," he said in answer to my inquiries, "which I can hardly fathom. As far as I can judge, Q has formed some plan for interesting other phantasms in the kind of work that we are doing. He proposes to form, on his side of the gulf, an a.s.sociation that is to work in harmony with us, for monetary dealings on a large scale, between the two worlds."
My reader may well imagine that my eyes almost blazed with excitement at the magnitude of the prospect opened up.
"Q wishes us to gather together all the capital that we can, and to send it across to him, in order that he may be able to organise with him a corporate a.s.sociation of phanograms, or perhaps in this case, one would more correctly call them phantoids."
I had no sooner grasped Annerly"s meaning than I became enthusiastic over it.
We decided to try the great experiment that night.
My own worldly capital was, unfortunately, no great amount. I had, however, some 500 pounds in bank stock left to me at my father"s decease, which I could, of course, realise within a few hours. I was fearful, however, lest it might prove too small to enable Q to organise his fellow phantoids with it.
I carried the money in notes and sovereigns to Annerly"s room, where it was laid on the table. Annerly was fortunately able to contribute a larger sum, which, however, he was not to place beside mine until after I had withdrawn, in order that conjunction of our monetary personalities might not dematerialise the astral phenomenon.
We made our preparations this time with exceptional care, Annerly quietly confident, I, it must be confessed, extremely nervous and fearful of failure. We removed our boots, and walked about on our stockinged feet, and at Annerly"s suggestion, not only placed the furniture as before, but turned the coal-scuttle upside down, and laid a wet towel over the top of the wastepaper basket.
All complete, I wrung Annerly"s hand, and went out into the darkness.
I waited next morning in vain. Nine o"clock came, ten o"clock, and finally eleven, and still no word of him. Then feverish with anxiety, I sought his lodgings.
Judge of my utter consternation to find that Annerly had disappeared. He had vanished as if off the face of the earth. By what awful error in our preparations, by what neglect of some necessary psychic precautions, he had met his fate, I cannot tell. But the evidence was only too clear, that Annerly had been engulfed into the astral world, carrying with him the money for the transfer of which he had risked his mundane existence.
The proof of his disappearance was easy to find. As soon as I dared do so with discretion I ventured upon a few inquiries. The fact that he had been engulfed while still owing four months" rent for his rooms, and that he had vanished without even having time to pay such bills as he had outstanding with local tradesmen, showed that he must have been devisualised at a moment"s notice.