at all. She had disappeared behind him, or into him, I don’t know
which. The other two men were talking to him--talking earnestly. And it
seemed to me that it was extremely--oh, _immensely_--important that I
should understand what they were saying. I listened with all my soul.
It almost hurt me to listen as hard as I did--And yet I couldn’t get
a word of it. What they said was, somehow, just out of reach--like
people you see talking on the bioscope. And then, all of a sudden, I
heard--one sentence--as clearly as possible, ‘_Forsdyke is the man who
prepares the schedule!_’”
Jimmy Lomax uttered a sharp cry of amazement.
“What!” He turned to Forsdyke. “Chief, that’s strange!”
Forsdyke imposed silence with a gesture.
“Go on, Hetty,” he said, calmly. “What then?”
“Then I woke up. The words were ringing in my ears. They haunted me
all the time I was dressing for dinner. I wondered if I ought to tell
you. Something was whispering to me that I should. But I was afraid you
would laugh at me. But that’s not all. You remember at dinner I dropped
a glass.--Poppa!” Her voice suddenly became very earnest. “I saw that
man--the man who had grown out of the girl--_standing behind you_. His
eyes were fixed on you as though trying to read into you--so evilly
that I went cold all over.”
The Professor gave her a sharp glance.
“No vision of the room in Berlin--or wherever it was?” he queried.
She shook her head.
“No. Just the man. But even that’s not all. Just now--when I was
playing and looking across to you--_I distinctly saw him again_, close
behind Poppa! He moved this time--moved with a funny little limp--just
like a real man with a bad leg. I jumped up--and--and he was gone!” She
looked around apprehensively as though expecting to see him still.
“Your liver’s out of order, my dear,” said her father. “Take a pill
when you go to bed to-night.”
“No,” said the girl, “it’s not that. I know you would say I was
ill--that is why I asked the Professor to examine me. I am sure it
_means_ something!”
Captain Sergeantson threw the end of his cigar into the fireplace and
took a wallet out of his pocket. The wallet contained photographs. He
handed them to the girl.
“Miss Forsdyke,” he said, gravely, “would you mind telling me if you
have ever seen any of these people?”
The girl examined them. Suddenly she uttered a cry and held up one of
the prints.
“_This!_” she said. Her eyes were wide with astonishment. “This is the
man I saw!--There’s the scar, too--exactly!--Who is he? Do you know
him?”
“That man,” replied Captain Sergeantson, sententiously, “is Karl
Wertheimer. About the cutest spy the German Secret Service ever had.--I
was going to tell Jimmy a story about him and brought his picture along
with me,” he added in explanation. “I sort of recognized him from your
description.”
The girl stared at the photograph.
“Of course,” continued Sergeantson, “he made up over that scar. He
was an extraordinarily clever actor, by the way. They cleaned off the
make-up when they took the photograph.”
“And he is a German spy!” mused the girl, still staring at the picture.
“He was!” replied Sergeantson, grimly. “The British shot him in the
Tower when I was in London six months ago.”
The girl looked up sharply.
“I’m sure I’ve never seen his photograph before!” she said, as though
answering an allegation she felt in the silence of the others. “How
could I?”
“I can’t imagine, Miss Forsdyke. The extraordinary thing is that you
should have got his limp. That’s what gave him away to the British. He
broke his leg dropping over a wall in an exceedingly daring escape at
the beginning of the war. But how you should know about it beats me all
to pieces.”
“I didn’t _know_--I saw----”
“You saw his ghost, I guess, Miss Forsdyke--and that’s all there is to
it.” Captain Sergeantson lit himself another cigar by way of showing
how cold-blooded he could be in the possible presence of a spectre.
Jimmy shuddered. “It’s uncanny,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
“But _why_?” puzzled Hetty, wrinkling her brows. She turned to her
father. “Poppa----!”
Forsdyke shook his head smilingly.
“I’m out of this deal. Ask the Professor. He’s the authority on spooks.
What does it all mean, Lomax? Can you give an explanation that doesn’t
outrage commonsense?”
The Professor smiled. The eyes in that clean-cut face twinkled.
“Commonsense?” He shrugged his shoulders. “We want to start by
defining that--by defining all our senses--and we should never
finish.” He looked with his challenging smile round the group. “I see
you are inviting me to throw away my last little shred of reputation
as a sane,” he said, humorously. “Well, I will not venture on any
explanation of my own. The evidence, with all respect to Hetty here,
is insufficient. We only know that she had a dream and a hallucination
twice repeated. We know that the hallucination corresponds to a
photograph in Captain Sergeantson’s pocket. We do not know what basis
there is--if any--for her dream. But I will give you two alternative
explanations that might be suggested by other people.--Will that
satisfy you?”
“Go ahead, Professor,” said Forsdyke. “Don’t ask me to believe in
ghosts, that’s all!”
“I don’t ask you to believe in anything,” replied the Professor. “I
don’t ask you to believe in the reality of your presence and ours in
this room. If you have ever read old Bishop Berkeley you will know that
you would find it exceedingly difficult to evade the thesis that it may
all be an illusion. Your consciousness--whatever that is--builds up a
picture from impressions on your senses. You can’t test the reality of
the origin of those impressions--you can only collate the subjective
results. Everything--Time and Space--may be an illusion for all you or
I know!”
“I heard that in my dream!” Hetty broke in. “Someone said it: ‘Time
and Space are an illusion!’ I remember it so clearly now!” Her eyes
glistened with excitement.
“All right, Hetty,” said her father. “Let the Professor have his say.
It’s his turn. And don’t take us out of our depth, Lomax. You know as
well as I do what I mean by commonsense.”
The Professor laughed.
“Well, I’m not going to guarantee either of the explanations, Forsdyke.
I merely put them before you. The first is the out-and-out spiritualist
explanation. Let us see what we can make of that. You must assume,
with the spiritualists, that man has a soul which survives with its
attributes of memory, volition, and a certain potentiality for action
upon what we know as matter. Captain Sergeantson here vouches for the
fact that a certain German spy, Karl Wertheimer, was shot in London six
months ago. The spiritualist would allege that it is possible--under
certain conditions which are very imperfectly under human command--for
the soul (we’ll call it that) of Karl Wertheimer to put itself into
communication with his old associates who still remain in the world of
the living. There is an enormous mass of human testimony--which you may
reject as worthless if you like--to the possibility of such a thing.
Assume it _is_ possible. Karl Wertheimer was a spy so successful,
according to Captain Sergeantson, that it is reasonable to suppose
that spying was his natural vocation, his life-passion, as much as
painting pictures is the life-passion of an artist. It may be assumed
that, if anything survives, one’s life-passion survives. Now suppose
that Karl Wertheimer’s late employers believe in the possibility of
communication with their late agent--that they find a medium--in this
case, the young girl that Hetty saw in her dream--who can be controlled
by the defunct Karl Wertheimer--through whom they can speak to him and
receive communications from him--what is more natural than that they
should do so? Admitting the premises, difficult as they are, it appears
to me that the discarnate soul of Karl Wertheimer would be an extremely
valuable secret agent----”
“Yes, suppose--suppose----” said Forsdyke. “It is all supposition. And
it doesn’t explain Hetty’s dream.”
“I am coming to that,” pursued the Professor. “Grant me, for the sake
of argument, all my suppositions. Karl Wertheimer’s employers are
communicating with him and setting him tasks. One of those tasks, we
will assume, concerns you. Now it may be, Forsdyke, that in the unseen
world of discarnate spirits there is one who watches over you, guards
you from danger. Someone, perhaps, who loved you in this life----”
Forsdyke glanced up to the portrait of his wife upon the wall.
“I leave the suggestion to you,” said the Professor, delicately. “We
will merely pursue it as a hypothesis. Such a spirit would seek to warn
you. It is obviously futile to discuss the means it might or might not
employ. We know nothing of the conditions of discarnate life--nothing,
at any rate, with scientific certainty. But we will assume that such a
spirit, desirous of communicating, finds that Hetty here is temporarily
in a mediumistic condition--and by ‘mediumistic’ I mean merely that
she is in the abnormal state which, in all ages and in all countries,
induces persons to declare that they see and hear things imperceptible
to others. She certainly had an abnormal headache. She goes to sleep
and dreams. We won’t analyze dream-consciousness now. I will only point
out that, in a clearly remembered dream, the events of that dream are
as real to consciousness as the events of waking life, and that the
perception of Time is enormously modified--you dream through hours of
experience while the hand marks minutes on the clock. You are subject
to a different illusion of Time--and, as Time and Space are but two
faces of the same phenomenon, it may be said that you are subject to
a different illusion of Space as well. The spiritualist uses this
undoubted fact to support his assertion that in dream-sleep the spirit
of the living person is freed from the conditions of matter and is in a
condition at least approximating to that of a person who is dead--that
it can and does accompany the spirits of those who in this life were
linked to it.
“The spiritualist, then, endeavouring to explain our present problem,
would allege that a spiritual agency concerned with your welfare led
Hetty’s spirit into a room in Berlin where Karl Wertheimer’s employers
were indicating him to you for some special purpose--that Hetty, being
then pure spirit, could actually perceive Karl Wertheimer as a living
being when perhaps those in the room (if there was such a room) could
only perceive the girl through whom he was speaking--that she could
actually hear the significant phrase of their conversation. Further,
the spiritualist would assert as a possibility that Karl Wertheimer,
ordered to obtain information in your possession, is actually
here--_shadowing_ you more effectively than any mortal spy could
do--and that Hetty, still retaining her mediumistic power, has actually
seen him. That is a spiritualistic explanation--I apologize for its
length, Forsdyke. Give me another of your very excellent and material
cigars!”
“It is a fantastic explanation. I don’t believe a word of it,” said
Forsdyke, passing him the box. “Let us have the other one.”
“The other one,” replied the Professor, cutting the tip of his cigar
and lighting it carefully, with a critical glance at its even burning,
“is shorter. It is the explanation of those who are determined to
explain a great mass of well-attested and apparently abnormal facts
by normal agency. Their explanation in one word is--telepathy. You
know the idea--the common phenomenon of two people who utter a remark,
unconnected with previous conversation, at the same moment. Living
minds unconsciously act upon each other--that is experimentally
proved. Why, therefore, drag in dead ones? That is their argument.
Let us apply their theory. Hetty is in an abnormal condition. Captain
Sergeantson is coming to dinner. In his pocket he has a photograph of
the notorious German spy, Karl Wertheimer. In his mind he has a story
about him which he intends to relate. Now there are well-documented
cases of hallucinations of persons actually on their way to a house
where they were not expected appearing to their destined hostesses.
I could quote you dozens of examples. The telepathist says this is
because the guest forms in his mind a vivid picture of himself in that
house, which is projected forward to the hostess’s mind and causes her
to think she sees him. Now, Captain Sergeantson’s mind is not full
of himself--it is full of the story about Karl Wertheimer that he
is going to tell. Hetty’s mind--somehow--picks this up. She goes to
sleep and as in sleep, notoriously, the human mind has a faculty for
building up pictures and a story. Hetty dreams this story about Karl
Wertheimer. It is true that she has never seen Karl Wertheimer. But
Captain Sergeantson presumably has a visualization of him, including
the limp, in his mind. The subsequent hallucinations are explained by
the tendency to automatic repetition of any vivid impression upon the
nervous centres which excite a picture in consciousness. It is a more
or less tenable theory, but it would be gravely shaken if it happened
that, unknown to Hetty or Captain Sergeantson--_you actually had
something to do with a secret schedule which would interest our friends
the enemy_.”
There was a silence. Forsdyke’s brow wrinkled as he stared into the
fire. Suddenly he switched round to the Professor.
“That’s the devil of it, Lomax!” he exclaimed. “I have! A most secret
schedule. Thank God, it will be out of my possession to-morrow morning,
when I----”
“_Don’t_, Poppa!” cried Hetty, clapping her hand over his mouth. She
stared wildly around her. “I feel sure that someone is listening!”
Forsdyke freed himself with a gesture which expressed his impatience of
this absurdity.
“What do you make of that, Lomax?” he asked.
“Of course,” murmured the Professor, “Hetty’s mind may be influenced
by a dominant anxiety in yours.--I should not like to say, Forsdyke!”
His tone was emphatic. “Personally, I have never heard of a spectral
spy--but--well, you are, on your showing worth spying on. And there
are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio--you know! If it _is_
possible--then there are things more improbable than that this means of
acquiring information should be used. Your schedule would, I take it,
be priceless?”
“The fate of the world may be involved in it,” replied Forsdyke. “But I
can’t believe----”
“I am certain!” exclaimed Hetty. “I feel there’s something uncanny
around us now!” She shuddered. “Oh, _do_ take care, Poppa!”
“But what can he do?” asked Jimmy, who had been listening anxiously to
the Professor’s explanation. “What do you suggest, Sergeantson? You’re
the authentic spycatcher. How can you defeat the ghost of one?”
“I pass!” replied Sergeantson, laconically. “Professor, the word’s to
you!”
Forsdyke looked genuinely worried.
“Of course, I don’t believe it, Lomax,” he said. “But
supposing--supposing there was something like you suggest--what could I
do?”
The Professor’s eyes twinkled.
“Assuming the objective reality of our supposition, my dear Forsdyke,”
he replied, “I can think of only one effective counterstroke.”
He held their interest for a moment in suspense.
“And that is----?”
“To drop a bomb on the girl!”
“A bomb--on the girl----” puzzled Jimmy slowly. “Why?”
“Because when you break the telephone receiver it doesn’t matter what
the fellow at the other end says--you can’t hear!”
“But we can’t get at her,” said Sergeantson. “We don’t even know who
she is, or where. We should never find out--in time.”
“That’s just it,” agreed the Professor. “You would have no time.
Assuming that a ghostly spy is haunting our friend Forsdyke--the moment
he reads that schedule, or even indicates where it is, the spy reads it
too----”
“Reads it?” echoed Jimmy, incredulously. “But surely ghosts can’t read!”
“It is alleged they can,” replied the Professor. “There is, for
example, a very curious case reported of the Rev. Stainton Moses, a
teacher at the University College in London during the ’seventies.
A spirit, purporting to be writing through his hand, quoted to him
a paragraph from a closed book in a friend’s library. Moses merely
indicated a book and a page at random, without knowing even to what
book he referred. The quotation was correct. One of the foremost
scientists of the present day has lent the weight of his authority to
this story by incorporating it in his book as evidence of supernormal
powers----”[2]
“That is sure incredible, Professor!” cried Sergeantson.
“We are dealing with what normally are incredibilities,” said the
Professor, with a smile. “We agreed to assume an objective reality
to our supposition--and, assuming it, the spy would read that
schedule at the same moment as Forsdyke, and possibly communicate
it instantaneously. As Forsdyke is going to do something with that
schedule to-morrow morning, well,” he shrugged his shoulders, “my money
would be on the ghost!”
“My God!” said Forsdyke, thoroughly alarmed, “if it’s true--it’s
maddening! One can do nothing!”
“Nothing,” agreed the Professor. “There would be no time.”
The men stared at each other, exasperated at the hopelessness of the
problem. If--they scarcely dared admit it to their sanity--it really
were the case?
Hetty startled them by a sudden cry.
“Didn’t you hear? Didn’t you hear?” she exclaimed. “Someone laughing at
us--close behind!--Oh, look! Look!” She pointed to empty space. “There
he is again! Don’t you see?”
She fainted in Jimmy’s ready arms.
* * * * *
The next morning Hetty found her father already at breakfast.
“Well,” he asked, his dry smile mildly sarcastic, “any more dreams?”
“Horrid!” she replied with a little shudder as she poured herself out
some coffee. “But I don’t remember them.”
“You will see the doctor to-day, young woman,” observed her father in
a tone which indicated his verdict on the happenings of the previous
night.
Hetty was docility itself, a phenomenon not altogether lost on her
experienced parent.
“Very well, Poppa,” she agreed, demurely. “What are you going to do
this morning?”
“I am going to the office to get some papers----”
“_The_ papers----?” She checked herself with a little frightened glance
round the room.
Her father laughed--a good, healthy, commonsense laugh.
“_The_ papers!” he said. “No more nonsense about ghosts, Hetty. I’m
going to get _the_ papers from my office and take them round to the
Conference. So now you know. And there’s a Colt automatic in the pocket
of the automobile if any one tries tricks on the way.”
Hetty nodded her head sagely.
“Guess you’ve a place for me in that automobile, Poppa,” she said.
“I’ll come with you to the office, wait while you get the papers, and
go on with you to the Conference building--and while you’re there I’ll
go on to see that doctor. I shall be back in time to pick you up before
you are finished with your old Conference.”
Her father saw no objection to this, was in fact secretly glad to have
her under his eye as long as possible.
“Mind, no tricks about the doctor!” he said, with an assumption of
severity.
“Sure, Poppa!” was her equable reply.
A few minutes later saw them speeding through the keen air of a frosty
morning toward Forsdyke’s office. But the interior of the limousine was
warm, and Hetty, snug in her furs, looked a picture of young, healthy
beauty, looked---- A memory came to Henry Forsdyke in a pang that
brought a sigh. He thought of the Professor’s suggestion of last night.
Of course, the whole thing was absurd!--but he wondered----
The car swung into the sidewalk in front of the Government building,
stopped before the big doorway with the marble steps. Forsdyke got out.
“I shall be back in a few minutes,” he said.
Hetty watched him go across the pavement, ascend the marble steps. He
looked neither to right nor left. _Then who was that with him?_ Hetty
felt her heart stop. Who was that who passed into the doorway with him?
No one had been on the steps--she was suddenly sure of it. Yet--her
heart began to pump again--certainly two figures had passed through the
swing-doors! She sat chilled and paralyzed for the moment in which she
visualized the memory of those two figures passing into the shadow of
the interior--tried to think when she had first perceived the second. A
certitude shot through her, a wild alarm.
She jumped to her feet, and with a blind, instinctive desire for a
weapon, pulled the Colt out of the pocket of the limousine and thrust
it into her muff. A moment later she was running across the pavement
and up the marble steps. The janitor pulled open the swing-door for
her. She fixed him with excited eyes.
“Who was that who came in with Mr. Forsdyke just now?” she asked
breathlessly.
The janitor stared.
“No one, miss. Mr. Forsdyke was alone.”
Alone! She repressed an impulse to scream out, dashed to the elevator
which had just come to rest after its descent. The attendant opened the
gate at her approach.
“Did you take Mr. Forsdyke up just now?” she asked.
“Yes, miss.”
“Was he alone?”
“Sure!--He came in alone.”
“Take me up!” She trembled so that she could scarcely stand. Her eyes
closed in a sickening anxiety as she swayed back against the wall of
the elevator.
She shot upward. Another moment and she found herself racing along the
corridor to her father’s rooms, twisting at the handle of the door.
She almost fell into the ante-room occupied by Jimmy Lomax. He jumped
to his feet.
“Hetty!”
“Father!” She had scarcely breath enough for utterance. “Father!--I
must see Father----!”
“Hetty, you can’t! He’s busy in his private room--no one dare----”
“I must!” she gasped. “Quick!--the ghost----!”
He stared in astonishment. She dodged past him, flung open the door
into the next room.
Henry Forsdyke was standing, checking over a sheaf of papers in his
hand, in front of the swung-open wall of the room, now revealed as a
safe divided into many compartments. Hetty perceived him at the first
glance; _perceived, standing at his side, a man with a sardonic mocking
face and a scar over the right eye who peered over his shoulder_.
In a blind whirl of impulse she whipped out the automatic, rushed up
close, and fired--into thin air!
Her father swung round on her in a burst of anger.
“Good God, Hetty!--Are you mad?”
She looked wildly at him.
“The ghost!--the ghost!”
He laughed despite his genuine wrath.
“Great heavens, what nonsense it all is!--What are you thinking
of?--You can’t shoot a ghost!”
But Hetty had sunk on to a chair and was sobbing hysterically.
* * * * *
In the luxuriously furnished room in Berlin Kranz was speaking
excitedly into the telephone.
“_Excellenz!_” he called. “_Excellenz!_--Are you there?--Quickly!--Karl
says he will be with us in ten minutes!” He glanced toward the girl
sleeping in the big chair. “Quickly!”
He listened for a moment and then put down the receiver with a
satisfied air. He rose from his seat and began to pace nervously up and
down the room. From time to time he threw a glance at the still figure
stretched back among the cushions. She slept with a regular deep
breathing. He listened, anxiously alert for any change.
The minutes passed, slowly enough to his impatience. He looked at
his watch. It marked ten minutes to four. A thought occurred to
him--he amplified it deliberately, to occupy his mind. Ten minutes to
four!--What time would it be in Washington? Six hours--ten minutes to
ten in the morning. What would be happening at ten minutes to ten? What
was Karl looking at----?
The raucous hoot of a Klaxon horn startled him out of these
meditations. He ran to the window, looked out. A familiar motor-car was
drawing up by the pavement. His Excellency had lost no time!
A few moments later and the dreaded Chief stood in the room, formidable
still despite his dwarfed appearance in the great fur coat turned up
to his ears. The clipped white moustache bristled more than ever, it
seemed, as he glared at Kranz through the pince-nez with a ferocity
which was but the expression of his excitement.
“Yes?” he cried, ere the door had closed after him. “What has happened?
Speak, man!”
“Nothing yet, _Excellenz_!” Kranz hastened to assure him. “The girl
swooned off suddenly at about a quarter to four--I have not let her
out of my sight since last night--and then Karl spoke. He said--and it
sounded as though he meant it--that he would give us the information in
ten minutes. I telephoned you at once.”
“Right! Quite right!” snapped His Excellency. “Ten minutes! The time
must be up----”