In Victor"s mind a complete revulsion to faith had come. His heart went out in a rush of remorseful tenderness and awe. The last lingering doubt of his mother disappeared. Like a flash of lightning memory swept back over his past. All he had seen and heard of the "ghost-room" stood revealed in a pure white light. "_It was all true--all of it. She has never deceived me or any one else; she is wonderful and pure as an angel!_" Incredible as were the effects he had seen, and which he had rejected as unconscious trickery, not one of them was more destructive of the teaching of his books than this vision of the zither played high in the air by sad, sweet hands. He longed to clasp his mother to his bosom to ask her forgiveness, but his throat choked with an emotion he could not utter.
Bartol, with tense voice, said to Stinchfield: "We have succeeded in paralleling Crookes" experiment. With this alone I can save her."
The flash of radiance from the cabinet interrupted him, and a new voice--an imperative voice--called:
"_Green light!_"
Stinchfield turned his switch, and there in the glow of the lamp stood a tall female figure with pale, sweet, oval face and dark, mysterious eyes.
"It is Altair!" exclaimed Leo.
Victor shivered with awe and exalted admiration, for the eyes seemed to look straight at him. The room was filled with that familiar unaccountable odor, and a cold wind blew as before from the celestial visitant, with suggestions of limitless s.p.a.ce and cold, white light.
"_Be faithful_," the sweet Voice said. "_Do not grieve. Do your work.
Good-by._"
The vision lasted but an instant, but in that moment Stinchfield and Bartol both perceived the psychic in her electric prison, lying like a corpse with lolling head and ghostly, sunken cheeks. She seemed to have lost half her bulk; like a partly filled garment she draped her chair.
The engineer spoke in a voice soft, pleading, husky with excitement.
"May I flashlight now?"
"_Not that--but this!_" uttered a man"s voice, and forth from the cabinet a faintly luminous mist appeared.
"_Red lamp!_"
In the glow of the sixteen-candle-power light the face of a bearded man was plainly seen. It wore a look of grave expectancy.
"Shall I fire?" asked Stinchfield.
"_It may destroy our instrument_," answered the figure. "_But proceed._"
The blinding flash which followed was accompanied by a cry, followed by a moan, and Lucy Ollnee was heard to topple from her chair to the floor.
In the moment of horrified silence which followed the Voice commanded:
"_Be silent! Do not stir! Turn off your current._"
In his excitement Stinchfield turned off both light and current, and left the whole room in darkness. Victor was on his feet crying out: "She has fallen! She is dying!"
"_Stay where you are, my son. Keep the room dark. We will take care of your mother._"
So absolute was his faith at the moment, Victor resumed his seat, though he was trembling with fear. Leo reached for his hand. "Don"t be frightened. They will care for her."
"We have witnessed the miraculous," declared Bartol, stricken into irresolution by what had taken place.
Mrs. Joyce, accustomed to these marvels, added her word of warning.
"Don"t go to her yet. Spirits are all about her. It has been a terrible shock, but they will heal her."
Stunned silent, baffled by what he had seen, the scientist sat with his hand on the switches controlling the lights ready to carry out the orders of his invisible colleague.
"_Red light!_" commanded the Voice. "_Approach--quietly. Victor, take charge of your mother"s body. She will not re-enter it. Her spirit is with us._"
Victor went forward and knelt in agony while the engineer lifted the cage and delivered the unconscious psychic into his hands.
Lucy Ollnee breathed no more. She had died as she had lived, a martyr to the unseen world.
But her death was triumphant, for on the sensitive plate of each camera science and law were able to read the proof of her power. In the dark face of his grandsire Victor read a stern contempt as though he said:
"Deny and still deny. In the end you _must_ believe."
In the alcove on the pad these words were written in his mother"s hand: "_Do not grieve. My work is done. I do not go far. I shall be near to cheer and guide you. Your future is secure. Work hard, be patient, and all will be well. Farewell, but not good-by._"
Below, written in the quaint script which Victor recognized, were these words: "_Men of science and of law, blazon forth the marvels you have seen and tested. Make the world ring with them; in such wise will you advance veneration for G.o.d and remove the fear of death._
"_WATTS._"
XV
THE RING
Bartol obeyed the command of the invisible powers. He gladly blazoned the triumphant death of the psychic to the world. Lucy Ollnee became at once a glorious martyr for her faith, a victim of science. Liberal journals and religious journals alike lamented that it was necessary for the sake of proof as regards immortality "that an innocent woman should be caged and tortured to death with electric batteries," and even the _Star_, leader in the war against the mediums, permitted itself an editorial word of regret, and published in full Bartol"s letter, and also a long interview with Stinchfield, wherein he admitted the genuineness of the dead woman"s claims to supra-normal power.
But all this was, at the moment, of small comfort to Victor. For a long time he refused to believe in the reality of his mother"s death, insisting that she was in deep trance (as she had been before); but at last, when the body was to be removed to Mrs. Joyce"s home and Doctor Steele and Doctor Eberly had both examined it and found no signs of life, he gave up all hope of her return.
Accompanied by Mrs. Joyce, he visited the California Avenue flat for the last time to pack up the few things of value which his mother had been permitted to acquire. His att.i.tude toward the chairs, the slates, the old table, had utterly changed. They were now instinct with his mother"s power, permeated with some part of her subtler material self, and he was minded to preserve them. They were no longer the tools of a conjuror; they were the sacred relics of a priestess.
Mrs. Joyce asked permission to house them for him till he had secured a home of his own, and to this he consented, for with his present feeling concerning them he was troubled by the thought of their being stored in dark vaults among ma.s.ses of commonplace furniture.
"I shall keep the table in my own room," said Mrs. Joyce. "It may be that Lucy will be able to manifest herself to me through it. I have been promised such power."
To this Victor made no reply, for while he now believed absolutely in all that his mother claimed to do, he had not been brought to a belief in the return of the dead, and it was this fundamental doubt which made his grief so bitter. "If only she could know that I believe in her," he said to Leo, on the morning of the day when his mother"s body was to be taken away. "Think of it! She died a thousand times for the curious and the selfish, only to be called an impostor and a cheat--and I, her only son, was afraid the charge was true. If only I could have told her that I believed in her!"
"She knows," the girl gently a.s.sured him. They were seated at the moment in the library and the morning was very warm and silent. The birds seemed to be resting in preparation for their evensong. "Your mother is near us--she may be listening to us this minute."
"I can"t believe that," he declared, sadly. "I"m not sure that I want to believe it. I can"t endure the thought of my mother"s destruction, and yet the notion of her floating about somewhere like a wreath of mist is sorrowful to me."
Leo confessed to somewhat the same feeling. "Heaven--any kind of heaven--has always been incomprehensible to me, and yet we must believe there is some sort of system of rewards and punishments. Anyhow, your mother"s death was glorious. She died as she would have wished to die--in proving her faith."
"She gave too much," he protested. "All her life she was set apart to do a martyr"s work. I understand now why my father couldn"t stand it. I know how he must have resented these Voices, and I cannot blame him for going away. Would you marry a man like Stainton Moses or David Home?"
She recoiled a little before the thought. "Of course not--but--"
"What?"