Perhaps it were just as well to start at the beginning. A mere matter of
news.
All the world at the time knew the story; but for the benefit of those
who have forgotten I shall repeat it. I am merely giving it as I have
taken it from the papers with no elaboration and no opinion--a mere
statement of facts. It was a celebrated case at the time and stirred the
world to wonder. Indeed, it still is celebrated, though to the layman it
is forgotten.
It has been labelled and indexed and filed away in the archives of the
profession. To those who wish to look it up it will be spoken of as one
of the great unsolved mysteries of the century. A crime that leads two
ways, one into murder--sordid, cold and calculating; and the other into
the nebulous screen that thwarts us from the occult.
Perhaps it is the character of Dr. Holcomb that gives the latter. He was
a great man and a splendid thinker. That he should have been led into a
maze of cheap necromancy is, on the face, improbable. He had a wonderful
mind. For years he had been battering down the scepticism that had
bulwarked itself in the material.
He was a psychologist, and up to the day the greatest, perhaps, that we
have known. He had a way of going out before his fellows--it is the way
of genius--and he had gone far, indeed, before them. If we would trust
Dr. Holcomb we have much to live for; our religion is not all hearsay
and there is a great deal in science still unthought of. It is an
unfortunate case; but there is much to be learned in the circumstance
that led the great doctor into the Blind Spot.
I