Then the stranger sprang suddenly to his full height, and directed his forefinger with a violent movement toward the globe. A spark of violet light not unlike that from an electric battery flashed from the outstretched finger to the globe, and was seen to remain like a star in the midst of the water.
From this violet centre, with slow, sinuous movement, numerous filaments of light grew out in the liquid, until the globe was filled with tangled and intertwined threads like the roots of a hyacinth in its gla.s.s.
Slowly, slowly, the nucleus rose to the surface, dragging the threads behind it. Then above the water began to form a faint haze. With gradual motion it mounted, absorbing by degrees the fire from the phosph.o.r.escent fibres which served for its roots, until a faintly luminous pillar of dully glowing mist four or five feet high showed above the mouth of the globe.
The magician made strange gestures, and a slow rotary motion was discerned in the cloud. Without abrupt or definitely marked alteration the pillar was modified in shape until more and more plainly was evident a resemblance to the human form. He rose to his full height, and extended both his hands toward the figure. Slowly it detached itself from the water and from the globe, and floated in the air, the perfect shape of a woman, transparent, faintly luminous, but with a l.u.s.tre less cold than at first. One of the men drew in his breath with a deep and audible inspiration. The shape wavered, and another spectator impulsively cried "Hush!" The word seemed to break the spell. The wonderful visionary form trembled, shivered, and its exquisite beauty melted in the air.
The magician resumed his seat with visible disappointment.
"I am sorry," he said. "I am already tired, and you distracted my attention. The experiment has failed. May the lights be turned up, please."
A murmur of disappointment ran around the room.
"I am sorry," he repeated. "I should have impressed on you more strongly the need of absolute quiet. I am not quite up to beginning this over again. Let me show you the opposite--disintegration. It is easier to tear down than to build up."
The block of iron he had asked for was by his direction laid on the floor in front of the platform. The magician sat for a moment with closed eyes, his hands laid palm to palm upon his knees. Then with an abrupt movement he pointed his two forefingers, pressed together, toward the cube. A report like that of a pistol startled the members, and the solid iron shivered into almost impalpable dust. The members of the Club crowded together to the spot.
"Please do not touch my platform," he requested, as he had earlier in the evening. "I must still show you something more."
IV
"Levitation is a phenomenon which is common enough," he said by way of preface, "but our examination would by no means be complete without it.
Of course I am only touching upon a few of the less subtle principles that underlie what is commonly misnamed occultism; but this is one of the obvious ones. Please let some heavy man step upon the scales."
Judge Hobart was with some laughter persuaded to take his place upon the platform of the scales, and the indicator marked a weight of two hundred and six pounds.
"Will you look again?" the stranger asked of the gentleman who had read the number.
"Why, he weighs nothing!" the weigher exclaimed, in astonishment.
"His weight has broken the scales," another member declared.
"You may think," the magician went on, "that I have bewitched the spring. Will somebody lift the Judge?"
Professor Gray, who happened to stand nearest, put out one hand and picked the venerable Judge up as easily as he would have lifted a pocket-handkerchief. As he took his victim by the collar, the effect did not tend toward solemnity.
"What do you mean, sir?" demanded the Judge. "Put me down, sir, at once."
The stranger made a little sign with his hand. The Professor saw and understood, so instead of putting Judge Hobart down, he lightly tossed the rotund figure upward. The Judge, probably more to his amazement than to his satisfaction, found himself floating in the air with his head against the ceiling, and with his legs paddling hopelessly as if he were learning to swim. The other members shouted with laughter.
"That will do," the magician said. "I did not mean to turn things into a farce."
The ponderous form of Judge Hobart floated softly to the floor; his face showed a wonderful mixture of bewilderment, wounded vanity, and relief.
"It"s very warm at the top of the room," he said, wiping his red forehead; "very warm. Heat rises so."
"Other things rise also at times," somebody said.
Everybody laughed, and then the members settled into quiet again, and listened to the magician.
"Examples of this sort are infinite in number, but one is as good as many. The principle is everywhere the same. Levitation is really too simple a matter to occupy more of our time. The transporting of matter through s.p.a.ce and through other matter is more interesting and more important. It is also more difficult, and consequently less common.
Some time ago it was proposed in London, as a test of the reality of occultism, that a copy of an Indian paper of any given date be produced in London on the day of its publication in Calcutta. The test was shirked by those who are advertising themselves by pretending to powers which they did not have, and those who were able to do the feat had no interest in helping to bolster up a sham. That the thing was easily possible is the last fact with which I shall trouble you to-night. Allow me to offer you a copy of the "London Times" of this morning."
As he spoke, a newspaper fluttered from the air above, and fell upon the table. The stranger checked a movement which Judge Hobart made to examine it.
"Let me seal it first," he said. "It will make future identification surer. Please lay it with that stick of sealing-wax on the platform."
When this had been done, he took the wax and held it above the paper.
The wax melted without visible cause, and dropped on the margin of the journal. Leaning forward, the magician pressed his seal into the red ma.s.s, and then flung the paper again on the table.
"It will be easy," he remarked, "to compare this with a copy received through the ordinary channels. You do not need to be instructed in the means proper for securing and identifying this. The experiment may seem to you a simple one, but I a.s.sure you that it is so difficult that you cannot hope to repeat it without preparation you would find pretty severe."
He rose as he spoke, and drew his robe about him.
"I have to thank you," he continued, "for your patience and attention.
As I meet so many of you not infrequently, it is better to trust to your courtesy not to name me than to your ignorance."
He pulled off, as he spoke, the black mask, and with cries of surprise more than half the members of the Club called out the name of one of the best-known club men of the town, a man who had traveled extensively in the East, a man who had proved his powers by distinguished services in literature, a man of wealth and of leisure, and one of dominating character. Smiling calmly, he replaced the mask, and stood a moment in silence.
"That is all," he said.
Then, with a peculiar gesture he waved his arms over the company, and repeated a few words in some unknown tongue. He stepped down from the platform and walked quietly from the room. But by that gesture or spell he had strangely wrought upon their minds; from that moment no man of them all, not even the President, has ever been able to remember who was their acquaintance who that evening did such wonders in the sight of the astonished Psychical Club.
TIM CALLIGAN"S GRAVE-MONEY
I
""T was a fool"s notion to get tipped out of a boat anywhere," said Tim Calligan to his circle of fellow pensioners at the Dartbank poor-farm, "me that"s been on the water like a bubble from the day me mother weaned me, saints rest her soul, and she as decent a woman as ever was born in County Cork."
Tim was relating the oft-told tale of his escape from drowning, a story of which they were fond, and which he delighted to tell. The old man had a fertile Celtic fancy, and his narrations were luxuriant with exuberant growth.
"So there was meself drownin" like a blind kitten in a pond,--and many "s the litter of "em I"d sent to the cat"s Purgatory by the way of that very river, saving that the Purgatory of cats there ain"t any, having no souls, by the token that having nine lives they"d belike have nine souls, and being so many they"d crowd good Christian souls in Paradise,--blessings on the holy saints for previnting it.
"No more could I make me head stay out of water," Tim went on, "than if it was a stone. "Good-by, Tim, me boy," sez I to meself. "Ye"re gone this time," sez I, "and I"ll miss nothing in not being at yer wake, by the token that there won"t be no wake; and ef there was," sez I, still to meself, "there could be nothing to drink but water here in this cursed stream." And down I went again, like a dasher in a churn. "Holy St. Bridget," thinks I, "how far "ll it be to the bottom of this ondecent river. Likely it goes clean through to Chiny," thinks I, "and one of them b.l.o.o.d.y, onbelaving heathen "ll be grabbing me presently with his mice-eating hands. But it"s better being pulled out by a heretic heathen than staying in and soaking." With that up again I goes, like a sh.e.l.laly at a fair; and it was like fire flashing in me eyes. Sez I to meself: "That "ll be Widdy Malony"s bit of a house," sez I, spaking always in me mind because of the floods of water in me mouth. "It"ll be burning to the very ground," sez I, "and me missing all the fun of it.
The blessed saints help the poor woman, turned out of house and home to get bite and sup for her children like a chipmunk, and every one of them taking after Dennis, and I might have married her meself long ago if they was fewer, for I"d want a ready-made family small," sez I to meself, plunking up and down in the water like a dumpling in the broth.
""T is pitiful to think of her house burning down over her head," sez I, "and she never to know the man might have made her Mis" Calligan"s down here drowning in plain sight of the very flames of it, and she nor n.o.body doing one thing to save him, praise be to the handiworks of G.o.d.
Faith, and "t would be better for the both of us if she had more water and meself more fire," sez I in me mind. And all the time "t was no fire, but just the blessed sun I"d never see again, barring I had n"t got saved, and it shining and flashing in the eyes of me from the widdy"s windows."
The tale was long, for it included an enumeration of all the sensations and emotions which Tim had really experienced, and all those which, in the course of long years, he had been able to imagine he might have felt. As at the poor-farm time was not an object, however, except of slaughter, the length of the narrative was its greatest recommendation.
"And with that," Tim at last ended his recital, "I felt the whole top of me head pulled off as I lay soft and easy on the bottom of the flood, and thinking nothing at all, but reflecting how soft the mud of it were and pitying Pat Donovan that he"d never get the quarter I owed him.
"That "ll be a Chany-man or the Divil, Tim, me boy," sez I to meself; and then I made no more observes to meself at all, owing to the soul having gone out of me body. And all the time it was Bill Trafton catching me by the hair, him having dove for me just shortly after me being dead, and dragging me to the top when I could n"t be moved from the bottom, and was likely to die any minute, saving that it was dead already I was. And he saved me life, by the token that the soul had gone out of me peaceful; but, Holy Mother, how"ll I be telling ye the pain of its coming back! "T was like the unwilling dragging back of a pig out of a praitie patch to get the soul of me back from the place it had gone to, and they rubbing me to show it the care they"d take of me, and coaxing it for two mortal hours."
As the tale ended, the bleared eyes of one of the auditors were attracted to a light wagon which had turned into the lane at the foot of the long slope upon which the poor-house stood.