Mr Bessel was the senior partner in the firm of Bessel, Hart, and
Brown, of St Paul’s Churchyard, and for many years he was well known
among those interested in psychical research as a liberal-minded and
conscientious investigator. He was an unmarried man, and instead of
living in the suburbs, after the fashion of his class, he occupied
rooms in the Albany, near Piccadilly. He was particularly interested
in the questions of thought transference and of apparitions of the
living, and in November, 1896, he commenced a series of experiments in
conjunction with Mr Vincey, of Staple Inn, in order to test the alleged
possibility of projecting an apparition of oneself by force of will
through space.
Their experiments were conducted in the following manner: At a
pre-arranged hour Mr Bessel shut himself in one of his rooms in the
Albany and Mr Vincey in his sitting-room in Staple Inn, and each then
fixed his mind as resolutely as possible on the other. Mr Bessel
had acquired the art of self-hypnotism, and, so far as he could, he
attempted first to hypnotise himself and then to project himself as
a ‘phantom of the living’ across the intervening space of nearly two
miles into Mr Vincey’s apartment. On several evenings this was tried
without any satisfactory result, but on the fifth or sixth occasion
Mr Vincey did actually see or imagine he saw an apparition of Mr
Bessel standing in his room. He states that the appearance, although
brief, was very vivid and real. He noticed that Mr Bessel’s face
was white and his expression anxious, and, moreover, that his hair
was disordered. For a moment Mr Vincey, in spite of his state of
expectation, was too surprised to speak or move, and in that moment
it seemed to him as though the figure glanced over its shoulder and
incontinently vanished.
It had been arranged that an attempt should be made to photograph any
phantasm seen, but Mr Vincey had not the instant presence of mind to
snap the camera that lay ready on the table beside him, and when he
did so he was too late. Greatly elated, however, even by this partial
success, he made a note of the exact time, and at once took a cab to
the Albany to inform Mr Bessel of this result.
He was surprised to find Mr Bessel’s outer door standing open to the
night, and the inner apartments lit and in an extraordinary disorder.
An empty champagne magnum lay smashed upon the floor; its neck had
been broken off against the inkpot on the bureau and lay beside it.
An octagonal occasional table, which carried a bronze statuette and
a number of choice books, had been rudely overturned, and down the
primrose paper of the wall inky fingers had been drawn, as it seemed
for the mere pleasure of defilement. One of the delicate chintz
curtains had been violently torn from its rings and thrust upon the
fire, so that the smell of its smouldering filled the room. Indeed the
whole place was disarranged in the strangest fashion. For a few minutes
Mr Vincey, who had entered sure of finding Mr Bessel in his easy chair
awaiting him, could scarcely believe his eyes, and stood staring
helplessly at these unanticipated things.
Then, full of a vague sense of calamity, he sought the porter at the
entrance lodge. ‘Where is Mr Bessel?’ he asked. ‘Do you know that all
the furniture is broken in Mr Bessel’s room?’ The porter said nothing,
but, obeying his gestures, came at once to Mr Bessel’s apartment to see
the state of affairs. ‘This settles it,’ he said, surveying the lunatic
confusion. ‘I didn’t know of this. Mr Bessel’s gone off. He’s mad!’
He then proceeded to tell Mr Vincey that about half an hour previously,
that is to say, at about the time of Mr Bessel’s apparition in Mr
Vincey’s rooms, the missing gentleman had rushed out of the gates of
the Albany into Vigo Street, hatless and with disordered hair, and had
vanished into the direction of Bond Street. ‘And as he went past me,’
said the porter, ‘he laughed--a sort of gasping laugh, with his mouth
open and his eyes glaring--I tell you, sir, he fair scared me!--like
this.’
According to his imitation it was anything but a pleasant laugh. ‘He
waved his hand, with all his fingers crooked and clawing--like that.
And he said, in a sort of fierce whisper, “_Life!_” Just that one word,
“_Life!_”’
‘Dear me,’ said Mr Vincey. ‘Tut, tut,’ and ‘Dear me!’ He could think
of nothing else to say. He was naturally very much surprised. He
turned from the room to the porter and from the porter to the room
in the gravest perplexity. Beyond his suggestion that probably Mr
Bessel would come back presently and explain what had happened, their
conversation was unable to proceed. ‘It might be a sudden toothache,’
said the porter, ‘a very sudden and violent toothache, jumping on him
suddenly-like and driving him wild. I’ve broken things myself before
now in such a case....’ He thought. ‘If it was, why should he say
‘_life_’ to me as he went past?’
Mr Vincey did not know. Mr Bessel did not return, and at last Mr
Vincey, having done some more helpless staring, and having addressed
a note of brief inquiry and left it in a conspicuous position on the
bureau, returned in a very perplexed frame of mind to his own premises
in Staple Inn. This affair had given him a shock. He was at a loss to
account for Mr Bessel’s conduct on any sane hypothesis. He tried to
read, but he could not do so; he went for a short walk, and was so
preoccupied that he narrowly escaped a cab at the top of Chancery Lane;
and at last--a full hour before his usual time--he went to bed. For
a considerable time he could not sleep because of his memory of the
silent confusion of Mr Bessel’s apartment, and when at length he did
attain an uneasy slumber it was at once disturbed by a very vivid and
distressing dream of Mr Bessel.
He saw Mr Bessel gesticulating wildly, and with his face white and
contorted. And, inexplicably mingled with his appearance, suggested
perhaps by his gestures, was an intense fear, an urgency to act. He
even believes that he heard the voice of his fellow experimenter
calling distressfully to him, though at the time he considered this to
be an illusion. The vivid impression remained though Mr Vincey awoke.
For a space he lay awake and trembling in the darkness, possessed with
that vague, unaccountable terror of unknown possibilities that comes
out of dreams upon even the bravest men. But at last he roused himself,
and turned over and went to sleep again, only for the dream to return
with enhanced vividness.
He awoke with such a strong conviction that Mr Bessel was in
overwhelming distress and need of help that sleep was no longer
possible. He was persuaded that his friend had rushed out to some dire
calamity. For a time he lay reasoning vainly against this belief, but
at last he gave way to it. He arose, against all reason, lit his gas
and dressed, and set out through the deserted streets--deserted, save
for a noiseless policeman or so and the early news carts--towards Vigo
Street to inquire if Mr Bessel had returned.
But he never got there. As he was going down Long Acre some
unaccountable impulse turned him aside out of that street towards
Covent Garden, which was just waking to its nocturnal activities. He
saw the market in front of him--a queer effect of glowing yellow lights
and busy black figures. He became aware of a shouting, and perceived
a figure turn the corner by the hotel and run swiftly towards him. He
knew at once that it was Mr Bessel. But it was Mr Bessel transfigured.
He was hatless and dishevelled, his collar was torn open, he grasped
a bone-handled walking-cane near the ferrule end, and his mouth was
pulled awry. And he ran, with agile strides, very rapidly. Their
encounter was the affair of an instant. ‘Bessel!’ cried Vincey.
The running man gave no sign of recognition either of Mr Vincey or of
his own name. Instead, he cut at his friend savagely with the stick,
hitting him in the face within an inch of the eye. Mr Vincey, stunned
and astonished, staggered back, lost his footing, and fell heavily on
the pavement. It seemed to him that Mr Bessel leapt over him as he
fell. When he looked again Mr Bessel had vanished, and a policeman and
a number of garden porters and salesmen were rushing past towards Long
Acre in hot pursuit.
With the assistance of several passers-by--for the whole street was
speedily alive with running people--Mr Vincey struggled to his feet.
He at once became the centre of a crowd greedy to see his injury. A
multitude of voices competed to reassure him of his safety, and then to
tell him of the behaviour of the madman, as they regarded Mr Bessel.
He had suddenly appeared in the middle of the market screaming ‘_Life!
Life!_’ striking right and left with a blood-stained walking-stick,
and dancing and shouting with laughter at each successful blow. A lad
and two women had broken heads, and he had smashed a man’s wrist;
a little child had been knocked insensible, and for a time he had
driven every one before him, so furious and resolute had his behaviour
been. Then he made a raid upon a coffee stall, hurled its paraffin
flare through the window of the post office, and fled laughing, after
stunning the foremost of the two policemen who had the pluck to charge
him.
Mr Vincey’s first impulse was naturally to join in the pursuit of his
friend, in order if possible to save him from the violence of the
indignant people. But his action was slow, the blow had half stunned
him, and while this was still no more than a resolution came the news,
shouted through the crowd, that Mr Bessel had eluded his pursuers. At
first Mr Vincey could scarcely credit this, but the universality of the
report, and presently the dignified return of two futile policemen,
convinced him. After some aimless inquiries he returned towards Staple
Inn, padding a handkerchief to a now very painful nose.
He was angry and astonished and perplexed. It appeared to him
indisputable that Mr Bessel must have gone violently mad in the midst
of his experiment in thought transference, but why that should make him
appear with a sad white face in Mr Vincey’s dreams seemed a problem
beyond solution. He racked his brains in vain to explain this. It
seemed to him at last that not simply Mr Bessel, but the order of
things must be insane. But he could think of nothing to do. He shut
himself carefully into his room, lit his fire--it was a gas fire with
asbestos bricks--and, fearing fresh dreams if he went to bed, remained
bathing his injured face, or holding up books in a vain attempt to read
until dawn. Throughout that vigil he had a curious persuasion that Mr
Bessel was endeavouring to speak to him, but he would not let himself
attend to any such belief.
About dawn, his physical fatigue asserted itself, and he went to bed
and slept at last in spite of dreaming. He rose late, unrested and
anxious and in considerable facial pain. The morning papers had no news
of Mr Bessel’s aberration--it had come too late for them. Mr Vincey’s
perplexities, to which the fever of his bruise added fresh irritation,
became at last intolerable, and, after a fruitless visit to the Albany,
he went down to St Paul’s Churchyard to Mr Hart, Mr Bessel’s partner,
and so far as Mr Vincey knew, his nearest friend.
He was surprised to learn that Mr Hart, although he knew nothing of the
outbreak, had also been disturbed by a vision, the very vision that Mr
Vincey had seen--Mr Bessel, white and dishevelled, pleading earnestly
by his gestures for help. That was his impression of the import of
his signs. ‘I was just going to look him up in the Albany when you
arrived,’ said Mr Hart. ‘I was so sure of something being wrong with
him.’
As the outcome of their consultation the two gentlemen decided to
inquire at Scotland Yard for news of their missing friend. ‘He is
bound to be laid by the heels,’ said Mr Hart. ‘He can’t go on at that
pace for long.’ But the police authorities had not laid Mr Bessel by
the heels. They confirmed Mr Vincey’s overnight experiences and added
fresh circumstances, some of an even graver character than those he
knew--a list of smashed glass along the upper half of Tottenham Court
Road, an attack upon a policeman in Hampstead Road, and an atrocious
assault upon a woman. All these outrages were committed between
half-past twelve and a quarter to two in the morning, and between those
hours--and, indeed, from the very moment of Mr Bessel’s first rush
from his rooms at half-past nine in the evening--they could trace the
deepening violence of his fantastic career. For the last hour, at least
from before one, that is, until a quarter to two, he had run amuck
through London, eluding with amazing agility every effort to stop or
capture him.
But after a quarter to two he had vanished. Up to that hour witnesses
were multitudinous. Dozens of people had seen him, fled from him or
pursued him, and then things suddenly came to an end. At a quarter
to two he had been seen running down the Euston Road towards Baker
Street, flourishing a can of burning colza oil and jerking splashes of
flame therefrom at the windows of the houses he passed. But none of
the policemen on Euston Road beyond the Waxwork Exhibition, nor any of
those in the side streets down which he must have passed had he left
the Euston Road, had seen anything of him. Abruptly he disappeared.
Nothing of his subsequent doings came to light, in spite of the keenest
inquiry.
Here was a fresh astonishment for Mr Vincey. He had found considerable
comfort in Mr Hart’s conviction, ‘He is bound to be laid by the heels
before long,’ and in that assurance he had been able to suspend his
mental perplexities. But any fresh development seemed destined to add
new impossibilities to a pile already heaped beyond the powers of his
acceptance. He found himself doubting whether his memory might not
have played him some grotesque trick, debating whether any of these
things could possibly have happened; and in the afternoon he hunted up
Mr Hart again to share the intolerable weight on his mind. He found Mr
Hart engaged with a well-known private detective, but as that gentleman
accomplished nothing in this case, we need not enlarge upon his
proceedings.
All that day Mr Bessel’s whereabouts eluded an unceasingly active
inquiry, and all that night. And all that day there was a persuasion
in the back of Mr Vincey’s mind that Mr Bessel sought his attention,
and all through the night Mr Bessel with a tear-stained face of anguish
pursued him through his dreams. And whenever he saw Mr Bessel in his
dreams he also saw a number of other faces, vague but malignant, that
seemed to be pursuing Mr Bessel.
It was on the following day, Sunday, that Mr Vincey recalled certain
remarkable stories of Mrs Bullock, the medium, who was then attracting
attention for the first time in London. He determined to consult her.
She was staying at the house of that well-known inquirer, Dr Wilson
Paget, and Mr Vincey, although he had never met that gentleman before,
repaired to him forthwith with the intention of invoking her help.
But scarcely had he mentioned the name of Bessel when Doctor Paget
interrupted him. ‘Last night--just at the end,’ he said, ‘we had a
communication.’
He left the room, and returned with a slate on which were certain
words written in a handwriting, shaky indeed, but indisputably the
handwriting of Mr Bessel!
‘How did you get this?’ said Mr Vincey. ‘Do you mean?’----
‘We got it last night,’ said Doctor Paget. With numerous interruptions
from Mr Vincey, he proceeded to explain how the writing had been
obtained. It appears that in her _séances_, Mrs Bullock passes into a
condition of trance, her eyes rolling up in a strange way under her
eyelids, and her body becoming rigid. She then begins to talk very
rapidly, usually in voices other than her own. At the same time one
or both of her hands may become active, and if slates and pencils are
provided they will then write messages simultaneously with and quite
independently of the flow of words from her mouth. By many she is
considered an even more remarkable medium than the celebrated Mrs
Piper. It was one of these messages, the one written by her left hand,
that Mr Vincey now had before him. It consisted of eight words written
disconnectedly ‘George Bessel ... trial excav^n ... Baker Street ...
help ... starvation.’ Curiously enough, neither Doctor Paget nor the
two other inquirers who were present had heard of the disappearance
of Mr Bessel--the news of it appeared only in the evening papers of
Saturday--and they had put the message aside with many others of a
vague and enigmatical sort that Mrs Bullock has from time to time
delivered.
When Doctor Paget heard Mr Vincey’s story, he gave himself at once with
great energy to the pursuit of this clue to the discovery of Mr Bessel.
It would serve no useful purpose here to describe the inquiries of Mr
Vincey and himself; suffice it that the clue was a genuine one, and
that Mr Bessel was actually discovered by its aid.
He was found at the bottom of a detached shaft which had been sunk and
abandoned at the commencement of the work for the new electric railway
near Baker Street Station. His arm and leg and two ribs were broken.
The shaft is protected by a hoarding nearly 20 ft. high, and over this,
incredible as it seems, Mr Bessel, a stout, middle-aged gentleman, must
have scrambled in order to fall down the shaft. He was saturated in
colza oil, and the smashed tin lay beside him, but luckily the flame
had been extinguished by his fall. And his madness had passed from him
altogether. But he was, of course, terribly enfeebled, and at the sight
of his rescuers he gave way to hysterical weeping.
In view of the deplorable state of his flat, he was taken to the house
of Dr Hatton in Upper Baker Street. Here he was subjected to a sedative
treatment, and anything that might recall the violent crisis through
which he had passed was carefully avoided. But on the second day he
volunteered a statement.
Since that occasion Mr Bessel has several times repeated this
statement--to myself among other people--varying the details as the
narrator of real experiences always does, but never by any chance
contradicting himself in any particular. And the statement he makes is
in substance as follows.
In order to understand it clearly it is necessary to go back to his
experiments with Mr Vincey before his remarkable attack. Mr Bessel’s
first attempts at self-projection, in his experiments with Mr Vincey,
were, as the reader will remember, unsuccessful. But through all of
them he was concentrating all his power and will upon getting out of
the body--‘willing it with all my might,’ he says. At last, almost
against expectation, came success. And Mr Bessel asserts that he, being
alive, did actually, by an effort of will, leave his body and pass into
some place or state outside this world.
The release was, he asserts, instantaneous. ‘At one moment I was seated
in my chair, with my eyes tightly shut, my hands gripping the arms of
the chair, doing all I could to concentrate my mind on Vincey, and then
I perceived myself outside my body--saw my body near me, but certainly
not containing me, with the hands relaxing and the head drooping
forward on the breast.’
Nothing shakes him in his assurance of that release. He describes in a
quiet, matter-of-fact way the new sensation he experienced. He felt he
had become impalpable--so much he had expected, but he had not expected
to find himself enormously large. So, however, it would seem he became.
‘I was a great cloud--if I may express it that way--anchored to my
body. It appeared to me, at first, as if I had discovered a greater
self of which the conscious being in my brain was only a little part. I
saw the Albany and Piccadilly and Regent Street and all the rooms and
places in the houses, very minute and very bright and distinct, spread
out below me like a little city seen from a balloon. Every now and then
vague shapes like drifting wreaths of smoke made the vision a little
indistinct, but at first I paid little heed to them. The thing that
astonished me most, and which astonishes me still, is that I saw quite
distinctly the insides of the houses as well as the streets, saw little
people dining and talking in the private houses, men and women dining,
playing billiards, and drinking in restaurants and hotels, and several
places of entertainment crammed with people. It was like watching the
affairs of a glass hive.’
Such were Mr Bessel’s exact words as I took them down when he told
me the story. Quite forgetful of Mr Vincey, he remained for a space
observing these things. Impelled by curiosity, he says, he stooped down
and with the shadowy arm he found himself possessed of attempted to
touch a man walking along Vigo Street. But he could not do so, though
his finger seemed to pass through the man. Something prevented his
doing this, but what it was he finds it hard to describe. He compares
the obstacle to a sheet of glass.
‘I felt as a kitten may feel,’ he said, ‘when it goes for the first
time to pat its reflection in a mirror.’ Again and again, on the
occasion when I heard him tell this story, Mr Bessel returned to
that comparison of the sheet of glass. Yet it was not altogether a
precise comparison, because, as the reader will speedily see, there
were interruptions of this generally impermeable resistance, means
of getting through the barrier to the material world again. But,
naturally, there is a very great difficulty in expressing these
unprecedented impressions in the language of everyday experience.
A thing that impressed him instantly, and which weighed upon him
throughout all this experience, was the stillness of this place--he
was in a world without sound.
At first Mr Bessel’s mental state was an unemotional wonder. His
thought chiefly concerned itself with where he might be. He was out of
the body--out of his material body, at any rate--but that was not all.
He believes, and I for one believe also, that he was somewhere out of
space, as we understand it, altogether. By a strenuous effort of will
he had passed out of his body into a world beyond this world, a world
undreamt of, yet lying so close to it and so strangely situated with
regard to it that all things on this earth are clearly visible both
from without and from within in this other world about us. For a long
time, as it seemed to him, this realisation occupied his mind to the
exclusion of all other matters, and then he recalled the engagement
with Mr Vincey, to which this astonishing experience was, after all,
but a prelude.
He turned his mind to locomotion in this new body in which he found
himself. For a time he was unable to shift himself from his attachment
to his earthly carcass. For a time this new strange cloud body of his
simply swayed, contracted, expanded, coiled, and writhed with his
efforts to free himself, and then quite suddenly the link that bound
him snapped. For a moment everything was hidden by what appeared to
be whirling spheres of dark vapour, and then through a momentary gap
he saw his drooping body collapse limply, saw his lifeless head drop
sideways, and found he was driving along like a huge cloud in a strange
place of shadowy clouds that had the luminous intricacy of London
spread like a model below.
But now he was aware that the fluctuating vapour about him was
something more than vapour, and the temerarious excitement of his first
essay was shot with fear. For he perceived, at first indistinctly,
and then suddenly very clearly, that he was surrounded by _faces_!
that each roll and coil of the seeming cloud-stuff was a face. And
such faces! Faces of thin shadow, faces of gaseous tenuity. Faces like
those faces that glare with intolerable strangeness upon the sleeper
in the evil hours of his dreams. Evil, greedy eyes that were full of
a covetous curiosity, faces with knit brows and snarling, smiling
lips; their vague hands clutched at Mr Bessel as he passed, and the
rest of their bodies was but an elusive streak of trailing darkness.
Never a word they said, never a sound from the mouths that seemed to
gibber. All about him they pressed in that dreamy silence, passing
freely through the dim mistiness that was his body, gathering ever
more numerously about him. And the shadowy Mr Bessel, now suddenly
fear-stricken, drove through the silent, active multitude of eyes and
clutching hands.
So inhuman were these faces, so malignant their staring eyes, and
shadowy, clawing gestures, that it did not occur to Mr Bessel to
attempt intercourse with these drifting creatures. Idiot phantoms, they
seemed, children of vain desire, beings unborn and forbidden the boon
of being, whose only expressions and gestures told of the envy and
craving for life that was their one link with existence.
It says much for his resolution that, amidst the swarming cloud of
these noiseless spirits of evil, he could still think of Mr Vincey.
He made a violent effort of will and found himself, he knew not how,
stooping towards Staple Inn, saw Vincey sitting attentive and alert in
his arm-chair by the fire.
And clustering also about him, as they clustered ever about all that
lives and breathes, was another multitude of these vain voiceless
shadows, longing, desiring, seeking some loophole into life.
For a space Mr Bessel sought ineffectually to attract his friend’s
attention. He tried to get in front of his eyes, to move the objects in
his room, to touch him. But Mr Vincey remained unaffected, ignorant of
the being that was so close to his own. The strange something that Mr
Bessel has compared to a sheet of glass separated them impermeably.
And at last Mr Bessel did a desperate thing. I have told how that in
some strange way he could see not only the outside of a man as we see
him, but within. He extended his shadowy hand and thrust his vague
black fingers, as it seemed, through the heedless brain.
Then, suddenly, Mr Vincey started like a man who recalls his attention
from wandering thoughts, and it seemed to Mr Bessel that a little
dark-red body situated in the middle of Mr Vincey’s brain swelled and
glowed as he did so. Since that experience he has been shown anatomical
figures of the brain, and he knows now that this is that useless
structure, as doctors call it, the pineal eye. For, strange as it will
seem to many, we have, deep in our brains--where it cannot possibly
see any earthly light--an eye! At the time this, with the rest of the
internal anatomy of the brain, was quite new to him. At the sight of
its changed appearance, however, he thrust forth his finger, and,
rather fearful still of the consequences, touched this little spot. And
instantly Mr Vincey started, and Mr Bessel knew that he was seen.
And at that instant it came to Mr Bessel that evil had happened to his
body, and behold! a great wind blew through all that world of shadows
and tore him away. So strong was this persuasion that he thought no
more of Mr Vincey, but turned about forthwith, and all the countless
faces drove back with him like leaves before a gale. But he returned
too late. In an instant he saw the body that he had left inert and
collapsed--lying, indeed, like the body of a man just dead--had arisen
by virtue of some strength and will beyond his own. It stood with
staring eyes, stretching its limbs in dubious fashion.
For a moment he watched it in wild dismay, and then he stooped towards
it. But the pane of glass had closed against him again, and he was
foiled. He beat himself passionately against this, and all about
him the spirits of evil grinned and pointed and mocked. He gave way
to furious anger. He compares himself to a bird that has fluttered
heedlessly into a room and is beating at the window-pane that holds it
back from freedom.
And behold! the little body that had once been his was now dancing
with delight. He saw it shouting, though he could not hear its shouts;
he saw the violence of its movements grow. He watched it fling his
cherished furniture about in the mad delight of existence, rend his
books apart, smash bottles, drink heedlessly from the jagged fragments,
leap and smite in a passionate acceptance of living. He watched these
actions in paralysed astonishment. Then once more he hurled himself
against the impassable barrier, and then, with all that crew of mocking
ghosts about him, hurried back in dire confusion to Vincey to tell him
of the outrage that had come upon him.
But the brain of Vincey was now closed against apparitions, and the
disembodied Mr Bessel pursued him in vain as he hurried out into
Holborn to call a cab. Foiled and terror-stricken, Mr Bessel swept back
again, to find his desecrated body whooping in a glorious frenzy down
the Burlington Arcade....
And now the attentive reader begins to understand Mr Bessel’s
interpretation of the first part of this strange story. The being whose
frantic rush through London had inflicted so much injury and disaster
had indeed Mr Bessel’s body, but it was not Mr Bessel. It was an evil
spirit out of that strange world beyond existence, into which Mr Bessel
had so rashly ventured. For twenty hours it held possession of him, and
for all those twenty hours the dispossessed spirit-body of Mr Bessel
was going to and fro in that unheard-of middle world of shadows seeking
help in vain.
He spent many hours beating at the minds of Mr Vincey and of his friend
Mr Hart. Each, as we know, he roused by his efforts. But the language
that might convey his situation to these helpers across the gulf he did
not know; his feeble fingers groped vainly and powerlessly in their
brains. Once, indeed, as we have already told, he was able to turn Mr
Vincey aside from his path so that he encountered the stolen body in
its career, but he could not make him understand the thing that had
happened: he was unable to draw any help from that encounter....
All through those hours the persuasion was overwhelming in Mr Bessel’s
mind that presently his body would be killed by its furious tenant,
and he would have to remain in this shadow-land for evermore. So that
those long hours were a growing agony of fear. And ever as he hurried
to and fro in his ineffectual excitement innumerable spirits of that
world about him mobbed him and confused his mind. And ever an envious
applauding multitude poured after their successful fellow as he went
upon his glorious career.
For that, it would seem, must be the life of these bodiless things of
this world that is the shadow of our world. Ever they watch, coveting a
way into a mortal body, in order that they may descend, as furies and
frenzies, as violent lusts and mad, strange impulses, rejoicing in the
body they have won. For Mr Bessel was not the only human soul in that
place. Witness the fact that he met first one, and afterwards several
shadows of men, men like himself, it seemed, who had lost their bodies
even it may be as he had lost his, and wandered, despairingly, in that
lost world that is neither life nor death. They could not speak because
that world is silent, yet he knew them for men because of their dim
human bodies, and because of the sadness of their faces.
But how they had come into that world he could not tell, nor where
the bodies they had lost might be, whether they still raved about the
earth, or whether they were closed for ever in death against return.
That they were the spirits of the dead neither he nor I believe. But
Doctor Wilson Paget thinks they are the rational souls of men who are
lost in madness on the earth.
At last Mr Bessel chanced upon a place where a little crowd of such
disembodied silent creatures was gathered, and thrusting through them
he saw below a brightly-lit room, and four or five quiet gentlemen
and a woman, a stoutish woman dressed in black bombazine and sitting
awkwardly in a chair with her head thrown back. He knew her from her
portraits to be Mrs Bullock, the medium. And he perceived that tracts
and structures in her brain glowed and stirred as he had seen the
pineal eye in the brain of Mr Vincey glow. The light was very fitful;
sometimes it was a broad illumination, and sometimes merely a faint
twilight spot, and it shifted slowly about her brain. She kept on
talking and writing with one hand. And Mr Bessel saw that the crowding
shadows of men about him, and a great multitude of the shadow spirits
of that shadow-land, were all striving and thrusting to touch the
lighted regions of her brain. As one gained her brain or another was
thrust away, her voice and the writing of her hand changed. So that
what she said was disorderly and confused for the most part; now a
fragment of one soul’s message, and now a fragment of another’s, and
now she babbled the insane fancies of the spirits of vain desire. Then
Mr Bessel understood that she spoke for the spirit that had touch of
her, and he began to struggle very furiously towards her. But he was
on the outside of the crowd and at that time he could not reach her,
and at last, growing anxious, he went away to find what had happened
meanwhile to his body.
For a long time he went to and fro seeking it in vain and fearing that
it must have been killed, and then he found it at the bottom of the
shaft in Baker Street, writhing furiously and cursing with pain. Its
leg and an arm and two ribs had been broken by its fall. Moreover, the
evil spirit was angry because his time had been so short and because of
the pain--making violent movements and casting his body about.
And at that Mr Bessel returned with redoubled earnestness to the room
where the _séance_ was going on, and so soon as he had thrust himself
within sight of the place he saw one of the men who stood about the
medium looking at his watch as if he meant that the _séance_ should
presently end. At that a great number of the shadows who had been
striving turned away with gestures of despair. But the thought that the
_séance_ was almost over only made Mr Bessel the more earnest, and he
struggled so stoutly with his will against the others that presently he
gained the woman’s brain. It chanced that just at that moment it glowed
very brightly, and in that instant she wrote the message that Doctor
Wilson Paget preserved. And then the other shadows and the cloud of
evil spirits about him had thrust Mr Bessel away from her, and for all
the rest of the _séance_ he could regain her no more.
So he went back and watched through the long hours at the bottom of
the shaft where the evil spirit lay in the stolen body it had maimed,
writhing and cursing, and weeping and groaning, and learning the lesson
of pain. And towards dawn the thing he had waited for happened, the
brain glowed brightly and the evil spirit came out, and Mr Bessel
entered the body he had feared he should never enter again. As he did
so, the silence--the brooding silence--ended; he heard the tumult of
traffic and the voices of people overhead, and that strange world that
is the shadow of our world--the dark and silent shadows of ineffectual
desire and the shadows of lost men--vanished clean away.
He lay there for the space of about three hours before he was found.
And in spite of the pain and suffering of his wounds, and of the dim
damp place in which he lay; in spite of the tears--wrung from him by
his physical distress--his heart was full of gladness to know that he
was nevertheless back once more in the kindly world of men.