“Last night,” said Annerly very quietly, “Q appeared in this room, or
rather, a phantasm or psychic manifestation of him. He seemed in great
distress, made gestures which I could not understand, and kept turning
his trouser pockets inside out. I was too spellbound to question him,
and tried in vain to divine his meaning. Presently the phantasm seized
a pencil from the table, and wrote the words, ‘Two sovereigns,
to-morrow night, urgent.’”
Annerly was again silent. I sat in deep thought. “How do you interpret
the meaning which Q’s phanogram meant to convey?”
“I think,” he announced, “it means this. Q, who is evidently dead,
meant to visualise that fact, meant, so to speak, to deatomise the idea
that he was demonetised, and that he wanted two sovereigns to-night.”
“And how,” I asked, amazed at Annerly’s instinctive penetration into
the mysteries of the psychic world, “how do you intend to get it to
him?”
“I intend,” he announced, “to try a bold, a daring experiment, which,
if it succeeds, will bring us into immediate connection with the world
of spirits. My plan is to leave two sovereigns here upon the edge of
the table during the night. If they are gone in the morning, I shall
know that Q has contrived to de-astralise himself, and has taken the
sovereigns. The only question is, do you happen to have two sovereigns?
I myself, unfortunately, have nothing but small change about me.”
Here was a piece of rare good fortune, the coincidence of which seemed
to add another link to the chain of circumstance. As it happened I had
with me the six sovereigns which I had just drawn as my week’s pay.
“Luckily,” I said, “I am able to arrange that. I happen to have money
with me.” And I took two sovereigns from my pocket.
Annerly was delighted at our good luck. Our preparations for the
experiment were soon made.
We placed the table in the middle of the room in such a way that there
could be no fear of contact or collision with any of the furniture. The
chairs were carefully set against the wall, and so placed that no two
of them occupied the same place as any other two, while the pictures
and ornaments about the room were left entirely undisturbed. We were
careful not to remove any of the wall-paper from the wall, nor to
detach any of the window-panes from the window. When all was ready the
two sovereigns were laid side by side upon the table, with the heads up
in such a way that the lower sides or tails were supported by only the
table itself. We then extinguished the light. I said “Good night” to
Annerly, and groped my way out into the dark, feverish with excitement.
My readers may well imagine my state of eagerness to know the result of
the experiment. I could scarcely sleep for anxiety to know the issue. I
had, of course, every faith in the completeness of our preparations,
but was not without misgivings that the experiment might fail, as my
own mental temperament and disposition might not be of the precise kind
needed for the success of these experiments.
On this score, however, I need have had no alarm. The event showed that
my mind was a media, or if the word is better, a transparency, of the
very first order for psychic work of this character.
In the morning Annerly came rushing over to my lodgings, his face
beaming with excitement.
“Glorious, glorious,” he almost shouted, “we have succeeded! The
sovereigns are gone. We are in direct monetary communication with Q.”
I need not dwell on the exquisite thrill of happiness which went
through me. All that day and all the following day, the sense that I
was in communication with Q was ever present with me.
My only hope was that an opportunity might offer for the renewal of our
inter-communication with the spirit world.
The following night my wishes were gratified. Late in the evening
Annerly called me up on the telephone.
“Come over at once to my lodgings,” he said. “Q’s phanogram is
communicating with us.”
I hastened over, and arrived almost breathless. “Q has been here
again,” said Annerly, “and appeared in the same distress as before. A
projection of him stood in the room, and kept writing with its finger
on the table. I could distinguish the word ‘sovereigns,’ but nothing
more.”
“Do you not suppose,” I said, “that Q for some reason which we cannot
fathom, wishes us to again leave two sovereigns for him?”
“By Jove!” said Annerly enthusiastically, “I believe you’ve hit it. At
any rate, let us try; we can but fail.”
That night we placed again two of my sovereigns on the table, and
arranged the furniture with the same scrupulous care as before.
Still somewhat doubtful of my own psychic fitness for the work in which
I was engaged, I endeavoured to keep my mind so poised as to readily
offer a mark for any astral disturbance that might be about. The result
showed that it had offered just such a mark. Our experiment succeeded
completely. The two coins had vanished in the morning.
For nearly two months we continued our experiments on these lines. At
times Annerly himself, so he told me, would leave money, often
considerable sums, within reach of the phantasm, which never failed to
remove them during the night. But Annerly, being a man of strict
honour, never carried on these experiments alone except when it proved
impossible to communicate with me in time for me to come.
At other times he would call me up with the simple message, “Q is
here,” or would send me a telegram, or a written note saying, “Q needs
money; bring any that you have, but no more.”
On my own part, I was extremely anxious to bring our experiments
prominently before the public, or to interest the Society for Psychic
Research, and similar bodies, in the daring transit which we had
effected between the world of sentience and the psycho-astric, or
pseudo-ethereal existence. It seemed to me that we alone had succeeded
in thus conveying money directly and without mediation, from one world
to another. Others, indeed, had done so by the interposition of a
medium, or by subscription to an occult magazine, but we had performed
the feat with such simplicity that I was anxious to make our experience
public, for the benefit of others like myself.
Annerly, however, was averse from this course, being fearful that it
might break off our relations with Q.
It was some three months after our first inter-astral psycho-monetary
experiment, that there came the culmination of my experiences—so
mysterious as to leave me still lost in perplexity.
Annerly had come in to see me one afternoon. He looked nervous and
depressed.
“I have just had a psychic communication from Q,” he said in answer to
my inquiries, “which I can hardly fathom. As far as I can judge, Q has
formed some plan for interesting other phantasms in the kind of work
that we are doing. He proposes to form, on his side of the gulf, an
association that is to work in harmony with us, for monetary dealings
on a large scale, between the two worlds.”
My reader may well imagine that my eyes almost blazed with excitement
at the magnitude of the prospect opened up.
“Q wishes us to gather together all the capital that we can, and to
send it across to him, in order that he may be able to organise with
him a corporate association of phanograms, or perhaps in this case, one
would more correctly call them phantoids.”
I had no sooner grasped Annerly’s meaning than I became enthusiastic
over it.
We decided to try the great experiment that night.
My own worldly capital was, unfortunately, no great amount. I had,
however, some £500 in bank stock left to me at my father’s decease,
which I could, of course, realise within a few hours. I was fearful,
however, lest it might prove too small to enable Q to organise his
fellow phantoids with it.
I carried the money in notes and sovereigns to Annerly’s room, where it
was laid on the table. Annerly was fortunately able to contribute a
larger sum, which, however, he was not to place beside mine until after
I had withdrawn, in order that conjunction of our monetary
personalities might not dematerialise the astral phenomenon.
We made our preparations this time with exceptional care, Annerly
quietly confident, I, it must be confessed, extremely nervous and
fearful of failure. We removed our boots, and walked about on our
stockinged feet, and at Annerly’s suggestion, not only placed the
furniture as before, but turned the coal-scuttle upside down, and laid
a wet towel over the top of the wastepaper basket.
All complete, I wrung Annerly’s hand, and went out into the darkness.
I waited next morning in vain. Nine o’clock came, ten o’clock, and
finally eleven, and still no word of him. Then feverish with anxiety, I
sought his lodgings.
Judge of my utter consternation to find that Annerly had disappeared.
He had vanished as if off the face of the earth. By what awful error in
our preparations, by what neglect of some necessary psychic
precautions, he had met his fate, I cannot tell. But the evidence was
only too clear, that Annerly had been engulfed into the astral world,
carrying with him the money for the transfer of which he had risked his
mundane existence.
The proof of his disappearance was easy to find. As soon as I dared do
so with discretion I ventured upon a few inquiries. The fact that he
had been engulfed while still owing four months’ rent for his rooms,
and that he had vanished without even having time to pay such bills as
he had outstanding with local tradesmen, showed that he must have been
devisualised at a moment’s notice.
The awful fear that I might be held accountable for his death,
prevented me from making the affair public.
Till that moment I had not realised the risks that he had incurred in
our reckless dealing with the world of spirits. Annerly fell a victim
to the great cause of psychic science, and the record of our
experiments remains in the face of prejudice as a witness to its truth.
III.
Guido the Gimlet of Ghent:
A Romance of Chivalry
It was in the flood-tide of chivalry. Knighthood was in the pod.
The sun was slowly setting in the east, rising and falling occasionally
as it subsided, and illuminating with its dying beams the towers of the
grim castle of Buggensberg.
Isolde the Slender stood upon an embattled turret of the castle. Her
arms were outstretched to the empty air, and her face, upturned as if
in colloquy with heaven, was distraught with yearning.
Anon she murmured, “Guido”—and bewhiles a deep sigh rent her breast.
Sylph-like and ethereal in her beauty, she scarcely seemed to breathe.
In fact she hardly did.
Willowy and slender in form, she was as graceful as a meridian of
longitude. Her body seemed almost too frail for motion, while her
features were of a mould so delicate as to preclude all thought of
intellectual operation.
She was begirt with a flowing kirtle of deep blue, bebound with a belt
bebuckled with a silvern clasp, while about her waist a stomacher of
point lace ended in the ruffled farthingale at her throat. On her head
she bore a sugar-loaf hat shaped like an extinguisher and pointing
backward at an angle of 45 degrees.
“Guido,” she murmured, “Guido.”
And erstwhile she would wring her hands as one distraught and mutter,
“He cometh not.”
The sun sank and night fell, enwrapping in shadow the frowning castle
of Buggensberg, and the ancient city of Ghent at its foot. And as the
darkness gathered, the windows of the castle shone out with fiery red,
for it was Yuletide, and it was wassail all in the Great Hall of the
castle, and this night the Margrave of Buggensberg made him a feast,
and celebrated the betrothal of Isolde, his daughter, with Tancred the
Tenspot.
And to the feast he had bidden all his liege lords and vassals— Hubert
the Husky, Edward the Earwig, Rollo the Rumbottle, and many others.
In the meantime the Lady Isolde stood upon the battlements and mourned
for the absent Guido.
The love of Guido and Isolde was of that pure and almost divine type,
found only in the middle ages.
They had never seen one another. Guido had never seen Isolde, Isolde
had never seen Guido. They had never heard one another speak. They had
never been together. They did not know one another.
Yet they loved.
Their love had sprung into being suddenly and romantically, with all
the mystic charm which is love’s greatest happiness.
Years before, Guido had seen the name of Isolde the Slender painted on
a fence.
He had turned pale, fallen into a swoon and started at once for
Jerusalem.
On the very same day Isolde in passing through the streets of Ghent had
seen the coat of arms of Guido hanging on a clothes line.
She had fallen back into the arms of her tire-women more dead than
alive.
Since that day they had loved.
Isolde would wander forth from the castle at earliest morn, with the
name of Guido on her lips. She told his name to the trees. She
whispered it to the flowers. She breathed it to the birds. Quite a lot
of them knew it. At times she would ride her palfrey along the sands of
the sea and call “Guido” to the waves! At other times she would tell it
to the grass or even to a stick of cordwood or a ton of coal.
Guido and Isolde, though they had never met, cherished each the
features of the other. Beneath his coat of mail Guido carried a
miniature of Isolde, carven on ivory. He had found it at the bottom of
the castle crag, between the castle and the old town of Ghent at its
foot.
How did he know that it was Isolde?
There was no need for him to ask.
His _heart_ had spoken.
The eye of love cannot be deceived.
And Isolde? She, too, cherished beneath her stomacher a miniature of
Guido the Gimlet. She had it of a travelling chapman in whose pack she
had discovered it, and had paid its price in pearls. How had she known
that he it was, that is, that it was he? Because of the Coat of Arms
emblazoned beneath the miniature. The same heraldic design that had
first shaken her to the heart. Sleeping or waking it was ever before
her eyes: A lion, proper, quartered in a field of gules, and a dog,
improper, three-quarters in a field of buckwheat.
And if the love of Isolde burned thus purely for Guido, the love of
Guido burned for Isolde with a flame no less pure.
No sooner had love entered Guido’s heart than he had determined to do
some great feat of emprise or adventure, some high achievement of
deringdo which should make him worthy to woo her.
He placed himself under a vow that he would eat nothing, save only
food, and drink nothing, save only liquor, till such season as he
should have performed his feat.
For this cause he had at once set out for Jerusalem to kill a Saracen
for her. He killed one, quite a large one. Still under his vow, he set
out again at once to the very confines of Pannonia determined to kill a
Turk for her. From Pannonia he passed into the Highlands of Britain,
where he killed her a Caledonian.
Every year and every month Guido performed for Isolde some new
achievement of emprise.
And in the meantime Isolde waited.
It was not that suitors were lacking. Isolde the Slender had suitors in
plenty ready to do her lightest hest.
Feats of arms were done daily for her sake. To win her love suitors
were willing to vow themselves to perdition. For Isolde’s sake, Otto
the Otter had cast himself into the sea. Conrad the Cocoanut had hurled
himself from the highest battlement of the castle head first into the
mud. Hugo the Hopeless had hanged himself by the waistband to a hickory
tree and had refused all efforts to dislodge him. For her sake
Sickfried the Susceptible had swallowed sulphuric acid.