IN WHICH THE READER IS SHOWN THE HABITS OF A NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL
We will now leave that little group with whom we have made our first
exploration of these grey and ill-defined, but immensely important,
regions of human thought and experiences. From the researchers we will
turn to the researched. Come with me and we will visit Mr. Linden at
home, and will examine the lights and shades which make up the life of a
professional medium.
To reach him we will pass down the crowded thoroughfare of Tottenham
Court Road, where the huge furniture emporia flank the way, and we will
turn into a small street of drab houses which leads eastwards towards
the British Museum. Tullis Street is the name and 40 the number. Here it
is, one of a row, flat-faced, dull-coloured and commonplace, with railed
steps leading up to a discoloured door, and one front-room window, in
which a huge gilt-edged Bible upon a small round table reassures the
timid visitor. With the universal pass-key of imagination we open the
dingy door, pass down a dark passage and up a narrow stair. It is nearly
ten o’clock in the morning and yet it is in his bedroom that we must
seek the famous worker of miracles. The fact is that he has had, as we
have seen, an exhausting sitting the night before, and that he has to
conserve his strength in the mornings.
At the moment of our inopportune, but invisible, visit he was sitting
up, propped by the pillows, with a breakfast-tray upon his knees. The
vision he presented would have amused those who have prayed with him in
the humble Spiritualist temples, or had sat with awe at the séances
where he had exhibited the modern equivalents of the gifts of the
Spirit. He looked unhealthily pallid in the dim morning light, and his
curly hair rose up in a tangled pyramid above his broad, intellectual
brow. The open collar of his night-shirt displayed a broad, bull’s neck,
and the depth of his chest and spread of his shoulders showed that he
was a man of considerable personal strength. He was eating his breakfast
with avidity while he conversed with the little, eager, dark-eyed wife
who was seated on the side of the bed.
“And you reckon it a good meeting, Mary?”
“Fair to middling, Tom. There was two of them researchers raking round
with their feet and upsetting everybody. D’ye think those folk in the
Bible would have got their phenomena if they had chaps of that sort on
the premises? ‘Of one accord,’ that’s what they say in the Book.”
“Of course!” cried Linden heartily. “Was the Duchess pleased?”
“Yes, I think she was very pleased. So was Mr. Atkinson, the surgeon.
There was a new man there called Malone of the Press. Then Lord and Lady
Montnoir got evidence and so did Sir James Smith and Mr. Mailey.”
“I wasn’t satisfied with the clairvoyance,” said the medium. “The silly
idiots kept on putting things into my mind. ‘That’s surely my Uncle
Sam,’ and so forth. It blurs me so that I can see nothing clear.”
“Yes, and they think they are helping! Helping to muddle you and
deceive themselves. I know the kind.”
“But I went under nicely and I am glad there were some fine
materialisations. It took it out of me, though. I’m a rag this morning.”
“They work you too hard, dear. I’ll take you to Margate and build you
up.”
“Well, maybe at Easter we could do a week. It would be fine. I don’t
mind readings and clairvoyance, but the physicals do try you. I’m not as
bad as Hallows. They say he just lies white and gasping on the floor
after them.”
“Yes,” cried the woman bitterly. “And then they run to him with whiskey,
and so they teach him to rely on the bottle and you get another case of
a drunken medium. I know them. You keep off it, Tom!”
“Yes, one of our trade should stick to soft drinks. If he can stick to
vegetables, too, he’s all the better, but I can’t preach that while I am
wolfin’ up ham and eggs. By Gosh, Mary! it’s past ten and I have a
string of them comin’ this morning. I’m going to make a bit to-day.”
“You give it away as quick as you make it, Tom.”
“Well, some hard cases come my way. So long as we can make both ends
meet what more do we want? I expect _they_ will look after us all
right.”
“They have let down a lot of other poor mediums who did good work in
their day.”
“It’s the rich folk that are to blame, not the Spirit-people,” said Tom
Linden hotly. “It makes me see red when I remember these folk, Lady This
and Countess That, declaring all the comfort they have had, and then
leaving those who gave it to die in the gutter or rot in the workhouse.
Poor old Tweedy and Soames and the rest all living on old-age pensions
and the papers talking of the money that mediums make, while some damned
conjuror makes more than all of us put together by a rotten imitation
with two tons of machinery to help him.”
“Don’t worry, dear,” cried the medium’s wife, putting her thin hand
caressingly upon the tangled mane of her man. “It all comes level in
time and everybody pays the price for what they have done.”
Linden laughed loudly. “It’s my Welsh half that comes out when I flare
up. Let the conjurors take their dirty money and let the rich folk keep
their purses shut. I wonder what they think money is for. Paying death
duties is about the only fun some of them seem to get out of it. If I
had their money....”
There was a knock at the door.
“Please, sir, your brother Silas is below.”
The two looked at each other with some dismay.
“More trouble,” said Mrs. Linden sadly.
Linden shrugged his shoulders. “All right, Susan!” he cried. “Tell him
I’ll be down. Now, dear, you keep him going and I’ll be with you in a
quarter of an hour.”
In less time than he named he was down in the front-room--his consulting
room--where his wife was evidently having some difficulty in making
agreeable conversation with their visitor. He was a big, heavy man, not
unlike his elder brother, but with all the genial chubbiness of the
medium coarsened into pure brutality. He had the same pile of curly
hair, but he was clean-shaven with a heavy, obstinate jowl. He sat by
the window with his huge freckled hands upon his knees. A very important
part of Mr. Silas Linden lay in those hands, for he had been a
formidable professional boxer, and at one time was fancied for the
welter-weight honours of England. Now, as his stained tweed suit and
frayed boots made clear, he had fallen on evil days, which he
endeavoured to mitigate by cadging on his brother.
“Mornin’, Tom,” he said in a husky voice. Then as the wife left the
room: “Got a drop of Scotch about? I’ve a head on me this morning. I met
some of the old set last night down at ‘The Admiral Vernon.’ Quite a
reunion it was--chaps I hadn’t seen since my best ring days.”
“Sorry, Silas,” said the medium, seating himself behind his desk. “I
keep nothing in the house.”
“Spirits enough, but not the right sort,” said Silas. “Well, the price
of a drink will do as well. If you’ve got a Bradbury about you I could
do with it, for there’s nothing coming my way.”
Tom Linden took a pound from his desk.
“Here you are, Silas. So long as I have any you have your share. But you
had two pounds last week. Is it gone?”
“Gone! I should say so!” He put the note in his pocket. “Now, look here,
Tom, I want to speak to you very serious as between man and man.”
“Yes, Silas, what is it?”
“You see that!” He pointed to a lump on the back of his hand. “That’s a
bone! See? It will never be right. It was when I hit Curly Jenkins third
round and outed him at the N.S.C. I outed myself for life that night. I
can put up a show fight and exhibition bout, but I’m done for the real
thing. My right has gone west.”
“It’s a hard case, Silas.”
“Damned hard! But that’s neither here nor there. What matters is that
I’ve got to pick up a living and I want to know how to do it. An old
scrapper don’t find many openings. Chucker-out at a pub with free
drinks. Nothing doing there. What I want to know, Tom, is what’s the
matter with my becoming a medium?”
“A medium?”
“Why the devil should you stare at me! If it’s good enough for you it’s
good enough for me.”
“But you are _not_ a medium.”
“Oh, come! Keep that for the newspapers. It’s all in the family, and
between you an’ me, how dy’e do it?”
“I don’t do it. I do nothing.”
“And get four or five quid a week for it. That’s a good yarn. Now you
can’t fool me, Tom. I’m not one o’ those duds that pay you a thick ’un
for an hour in the dark. We’re on the square, you an’ me. How d’ye do
it?”
“Do what?”
“Well, them raps, for example. I’ve seen you sit there at your desk, as
it might be, and raps come answerin’ questions over yonder on the
bookshelf. It’s damned clever--fair puzzles ’em every time. How d’ye get
them?”
“I tell you I don’t. It’s outside myself.”
“Rats! You can tell me, Tom. I’m Griffiths, the safe man. It would set
me up for life if I could do it.”
For the second time in one morning the medium’s Welsh strain took
control.
“You’re an impudent, blasphemous rascal, Silas Linden. It’s men like you
who come into our movement and give it a bad name. You should know me
better than to think that I am a cheat. Get out of my house, you
ungrateful rascal!”
“Not too much of your lip,” growled the ruffian.
“Out you go, or I’ll put you out, brother or no brother.”
Silas doubled his great fists and looked ugly for a moment. Then the
anticipation of favours to come softened his mood.
“Well, well, no harm meant,” he growled, as he made for the door. “I
expect I can make a shot at it without your help.” His grievance
suddenly overcame his prudence as he stood in the doorway. “You damned,
canting, hypocritical box-of-tricks. I’ll be even with you yet.”
The heavy door slammed behind him.
Mrs. Linden had run in to her husband.
“The ’ulking blackguard!” she cried. “I ’eard ’im. What did ’e want?”
“Wanted me to put him wise to mediumship. Thinks it’s a trick of some
sort that I could teach him.”
“The foolish lump! Well, it’s a good thing, for he won’t dare show his
face here again.”
“Oh, won’t he?”
“If he does I’ll slap it for him. To think of his upsettin’ you like
this. Why, you’re shakin’ all over.”
“I suppose I wouldn’t be a medium if I wasn’t high strung. Someone said
we were poets, only more so. But it’s bad just when work is beginning.”
“I’ll give you healing.”
She put her little, work-worn hands over his high forehead and held them
there in silence.
“That’s better!” said he. “Well done, Mary. I’ll have a cigarette in the
kitchen. That will finish it.”
“No, there’s someone here.” She had looked out of the window. “Are you
fit to see her? It’s a woman.”
“Yes, yes. I am all right now. Show her in.”
An instant later a woman entered, a pale, tragic figure in black, whose
appearance told its own tale. Linden motioned her to a chair away from
the light. Then he looked through his papers.
“You are Mrs. Blount, are you not? You had an appointment.”
“Yes--I wanted to ask----”
“Please ask me nothing. It confuses me.”
He was looking at her with the medium’s gaze in his light, grey
eyes--that gaze which looks round and through a thing rather than at it.
“You have been wise to come, very wise. There is someone beside you who
has an urgent message which could not be delayed. I get a name ...
Francis ... yes, Francis.”
The woman clasped her hands.
“Yes, yes, it is the name.”
“A dark man, very sad, very earnest--oh, so earnest. He will speak. He
must speak! It is urgent. He says, ‘Tink-a-bell.’ Who is Tink-a-bell?”
“Yes, yes, he called me so. Oh, Frank, Frank, speak to me! Speak!”
“He is speaking. His hand is on your head. ‘Tink-a-bell,’ he says. ‘If
you do what you purpose doing it will make a gap that it will take many
years to cross.’ Does that mean anything?”
She sprang from her chair. “It means everything. Oh, Mr. Linden, this
was my last chance. If this had failed--if I found that I had really
lost him I meant to go and seek him. I would have taken poison this
night.”
“Thank God that I have saved you. It is a terrible thing, madame, to
take one’s life. It breaks the law of Nature, and Nature’s laws cannot
be broken without punishment. I rejoice that he has been able to save
you. He has more to say to you. His message is, ‘If you will live and do
your duty I will for ever be by your side, far closer to you than ever I
was in life. My presence will surround and guard both you and our three
babes.’”
It was marvellous the change! The pale, worn woman who had entered the
room was now standing with flushed cheeks and smiling lips. It is true
that tears were pouring down her face, but they were tears of joy. She
clapped her hands. She made little convulsive movements as if she would
dance.
“He’s not dead! He’s not dead! How can he be dead if he can speak to me
and be closer to me than ever? Oh, it’s glorious! Oh, Mr. Linden, what
can I do for you? You have saved me from shameful death! You have
restored my husband to me! Oh, what a Godlike power you have!”
The medium was an emotional man and his own tears were moist upon his
cheeks.
“My dear lady, say no more. It is not I. I do nothing. You can thank God
Who in His mercy permits some of His mortals to discern a spirit or to
carry a message. Well, well, a guinea is my fee, if you can afford it.
Come back to me if ever you are in trouble.”
“I am content now,” she cried, drying her eyes, “to await God’s will and
to do my duty in the world until such time as it shall be ordained that
we unite once more.”
The widow left the house walking on air. Tom Linden also felt that the
clouds left by his brother’s visit had been blown away by this joyful
incident, for there is no happiness like giving happiness and seeing
the beneficent workings of one’s own power. He had hardly settled down
in his chair, however, before another client was ushered in. This time
it was a smartly-dressed, white-spatted, frock-coated man of the world,
with a bustling air as of one to whom minutes are precious.
“Mr. Linden, I believe? I have heard, sir, of your powers. I am told
that by handling an object you can often get some clue as to the person
who owned it?”
“It happens sometimes. I cannot command it.”
“I should like to test you. I have a letter here which I received this
morning. Would you try your powers upon that?”
The medium took the folded letter, and, leaning back in his chair, he
pressed it upon his forehead. He sat with his eyes closed for a minute
or more. Then he returned the paper.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “I get a feeling of evil. I see a man
dressed all in white. He has a dark face. He writes at a bamboo table. I
get a sensation of heat. The letter is from the tropics.”
“Yes, from Central America.”
“I can tell you no more.”
“Are the spirits so limited? I thought they knew everything.”
“They do not know everything. Their power and knowledge are as closely
limited as ours. But this is not a matter for the spirit people. What I
did then was psychometry, which, so far as we know, is a power of the
human soul.”
“Well, you are right as far as you have gone. This man, my
correspondent, wants me to put up the money for the half-share in an
oil boring. Shall I do it?”
Tom Linden shook his head.
“These powers are given to some of us, sir, for the consolation of
humanity and for a proof of immortality. They were never meant for
worldly use. Trouble always comes of such use, trouble to the medium and
trouble to the client. I will not go into the matter.”
“Money’s no object,” said the man, drawing a wallet from his inner
pocket.
“No, sir, nor to me. I am poor, but I have never ill-used my gift.”
“A fat lot of use the gift is, then!” said the visitor, rising from his
chair. “I can get all the rest from the parsons who are licensed, and
you are not. There is your guinea, but I have not had the worth of it.”
“I am sorry, sir, but I cannot break a rule. There is a lady beside
you--near your left shoulder--an elderly lady....”
“Tut! tut!” said the financier, turning towards the door.
“She wears a large gold locket with an emerald cross upon her breast.”
The man stopped, turned and stared.
“Where did you pick that up?”
“I see it before me now.”
“Why, dash it, man, that was what my mother always wore! D’you tell me
you can see her?”
“No, she is gone.”
“What was she like? What was she doing?”
“She _was_ your mother. She said so. She was weeping.”
“Weeping! My mother! Why, she is in heaven if ever a woman was. They
don’t weep in heaven!”
“Not in the imaginary heaven. They do in the real heaven. It is only we
who ever make them weep. She left a message.”
“Give it me!”
“The message was: ‘Oh, Jack! Jack! you are drifting ever further from my
reach.’”
The man made a contemptuous gesture.
“I was a damned fool to let you have my name when I made the
appointment. You have been making enquiries. You don’t take me in with
your tricks. I’ve had enough of it--more than enough!”
For the second time that morning the door was slammed by an angry
visitor.
“He didn’t like his message,” Linden explained to his wife. “It was his
poor mother. She is fretting over him. Lord! if folk only knew these
things it would do them more good than all the forms and ceremonies.”
“Well, Tom, it’s not your fault if they don’t,” his wife answered.
“There are two women waiting to see you. They have not an introduction
but they seem in great trouble.”
“I’ve a bit of a headache. I haven’t got over last night. Silas and I
are the same in that. Our night’s work finds us out next morning. I’ll
just take these and no more, for it is bad to send anyone sorrowin’ away
if one can help it.”
The two women were shown in, both of them austere figures dressed in
black, one a stern-looking person of fifty, the other about half that
age.
“I believe your fee is a guinea,” said the elder, putting that sum upon
the table.
“To those who can afford it,” Linden answered. As a matter of fact, the
guinea often went the other way.
“Oh, yes, I can afford it,” said the woman. “I am in sad trouble and
they told me maybe you could help me.”
“Well, I will if I can. That’s what I am for.”
“I lost my poor husband in the war--killed at Ypres he was. Could I get
in touch with him?”
“You don’t seem to bring any influence with you. I get no impression. I
am sorry, but we can’t command these things. I get the name Edmund. Was
that his name?”
“No.”
“Or Albert?”
“No.”
“I am sorry, but it seems confused--cross vibrations, perhaps and a
mix-up of messages like crossed telegraph wires.”
“Does the name Pedro help you?”
“Pedro! Pedro! No, I get nothing. Was Pedro an elderly man?”
“No, not elderly.”
“I can get no impression.”
“It was about this girl of mine that I really wanted advice. My husband
would have told me what to do. She has got engaged to a young man, a
fitter by trade, but there are one or two things against it and I want
to know what to do.”
“Do give us some advice,” said the young woman, looking at the medium
with a hard eye.
“I would if I could, my dear. Do you love this man?”
“Oh, yes, he’s all right.”
“Well, if you don’t feel more than that about him, I should leave him
alone. Nothing but unhappiness comes of such a marriage.”
“Then you see unhappiness waiting for her?”
“I see a good chance of it. I think she should be careful.”
“Do you see anyone else coming along?”
“Everyone, man or woman, meets his mate sometime somewhere.”
“Then she will get a mate?”
“Most certainly she will.”
“I wonder if I should have any family?” asked the girl.
“Nay, that’s more than I can say.”
“And money--will she have money? We are down-hearted, Mr. Linden, and we
want a little----”
At this moment there came a most surprising interruption. The door flew
open and little Mrs. Linden rushed into the room with pale face and
blazing eyes.
“They are policewomen, Tom. I’ve had a warning about them. It’s only
just come. Get out of this house, you pair of snivelling hypocrites. Oh,
what a fool! What a fool I was not to recognise what you were.”
The two women had risen.
“Yes, you are rather late, Mrs. Linden,” said the senior. “The money has
passed.”
“Take it back! Take it back! It’s on the table.”
“No, no, the money has passed. We have had our fortune told. You will
hear more of this, Mr. Linden.”
“You brace of frauds! You talk of frauds when it is you who are the
frauds all the time! He would not have seen you if it had not been for
compassion.”
“It is no use scolding us,” the woman answered. “We do our duty and we
did not make the law. So long as it is on the Statute Book we have to
enforce it. We must report the case at headquarters.”
Tom Linden seemed stunned by the blow, but when the policewomen had
disappeared, he put his arms round his weeping wife and consoled her as
best he might.
“The typist at the police office sent down the warning,” she said. “Oh,
Tom, it is the second time!” she cried. “It means gaol and hard labour
for you.”
“Well, dear, so long as we are conscious of having done no wrong and of
having done God’s work to the best of our power, we must take what comes
with a good heart.”
“But where were they? How could they let you down so? Where was your
guide?”
“Yes, Victor,” said Tom Linden, shaking his head at the air above him,
“where were you? I’ve got a crow to pick with you. You know, dear,” he
added, “just as a doctor can never treat his own case, a medium is very
helpless when things come to his own address. That’s the law. And yet I
should have known. I was feeling in the dark. I had no inspiration of
any sort. It was just a foolish pity and sympathy that led me on when I
had no sort of a real message. Well, dear Mary, we will take what’s
coming to us with a brave heart. Maybe they have not enough to make a
case, and maybe the beak is not as ignorant as most of them. We’ll hope
for the best.”
In spite of his brave words the medium was shaking and quivering at the
shock. His wife had put her hands upon him and was endeavouring to
steady him, when Susan, the maid, who knew nothing of the trouble,
admitted a fresh visitor into the room. It was none other than Edward
Malone.
“He can’t see you,” said Mrs. Linden, “the medium is ill. He will see no
one this morning.”
But Linden had recognised his visitor.
“This is Mr. Malone, my dear, of the _Daily Gazette_. He was with us
last night. We had a good sitting, had we not, sir?”
“Marvellous!” said Malone. “But what is amiss?”
Both husband and wife poured out their sorrows.
“What a dirty business!” cried Malone, with disgust. “I am sure the
public does not realise how this law is enforced, or there would be a
row. This agent-provocateur business is quite foreign to British
justice. But in any case, Linden, you are a real medium. The law was
made to suppress false ones.”
“There are no real mediums in British law,” said Linden ruefully. “I
expect the more real you are the greater the offence. If you are a
medium at all and take money you are liable. But how can a medium live
if he does not take money? It’s a man’s whole work and needs all his
strength. You can’t be a carpenter all day and a first-class medium in
the evening.”
“What a wicked law! It seems to be deliberately stifling all physical
proofs of spiritual power.”
“Yes, that is just what it is. If the Devil passed a law it would be
just that. It is supposed to be for the protection of the public and yet
no member of the public has ever been known to complain. Every case is a
police trap. And yet the police know as well as you or I that every
Church charity garden-party has got its clairvoyante or its
fortune-teller.”
“It does seem monstrous. What will happen now?”
“Well, I expect a summons will come along. Then a police court case.
Then fine or imprisonment. It’s the second time, you see.”
“Well, your friends will give evidence for you and we will have a good
man to defend you.”
Linden shrugged his shoulders.
“You never know who are your friends. They slip away like water when it
comes to the pinch.”
“Well, I won’t for one,” said Malone, heartily. “Keep me in touch with
what is going on. But I called because I had something to ask you.”
“I am sorry, but I am really not fit,” Linden held out a quivering hand.
“No, no, nothing psychic. I simply wanted to ask you whether the
presence of a strong sceptic would stop all your phenomena?”
“Not necessarily. But, of course, it makes everything more difficult. If
they will be quiet and reasonable we can get results. But they know
nothing, break every law, and ruin their own sittings. There was old
Sherbank, the doctor, the other day. When the raps came on the table he
jumped up, put his hand on the wall, and cried, ‘Now then, put a rap on
the palm of my hand within five seconds.’ Because he did not get it he
declared it was all humbug and stamped out of the room. They will not
admit that there are fixed laws in this as in everything else.”
“Well, I must confess that the man I am thinking of might be quite as
unreasonable. It is the great Professor Challenger.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard he is a hard case.”
“Would you give him a sitting?”
“Yes, if you desired it.”
“He won’t come to you or to any place you name. He imagines all sorts of
wires and contrivances. You might have to come down to his country
house.”
“I would not refuse if it might convert him.”
“And when?”
“I can do nothing until this horrible affair is over. It will take a
month or two.”
“Well, I will keep in touch with you till then. When all is well again
we shall make our plans and see if we can bring these facts before him
as they have been brought before me. Meanwhile, let me say how much I
sympathise. We will form a committee of your friends and all that can
will surely be done.”