"Is yet," laughed the voice. "Same old sport. Couldn't find any man
good enough. You didn't like me, but no matter; I want to tell you that
you're in danger of fire. Don't play with fire. Be careful of fire--"
Again a calm blankness fell upon the psychic's delicate and sensitive
face, and the hand once more slowly closed upon the pencil.
"My father again!" exclaimed Mrs. Cameron. "How could Dolly have known
that he held his pen in just that way? She never saw him."
"Do not place too much value on such performances," I cautioned. "She
has probably heard you describe it. Or she might have taken it out of
your subconscious mind."
The pencil dropped. The hand lifted. The form of the sleeper expanded
with power. Her face took on benignity and lofty serenity. She rose
slowly, impressively, and with her hand upraised in a peculiar gesture,
laid a blessing upon the head of her hostess. There was so much of
sweetness and tolerance in her face, so much of dignity and power in
every movement that I was moved to applaud the actress. As we all sat
thus, deeply impressed by her towering attitude, Mrs. Cameron whispered:
"Why, it is Bishop Blank! That is exactly the way he held his hand--his
robe!"
"Is it the bishop?" I asked.
The psychic bowed and in solemn answer spoke. "Tell James all will yet
be well," she said, and, making the sign of blessing once more, sank
back into her chair.
Meanwhile the irreverent ribalds in the far end of the room were
disturbing the solemnity of all this communion with the shades, and at
my suggestion we went up-stairs to Mrs. Cameron's own sitting-room,
where we could be quiet. Seizing a moment when Mrs. Harris was free from
the "influence," I woke her and told her what we were about to do. She
followed Mrs. Cameron readily, although she seemed a little dazed, and
five of us continued the sitting, with Mrs. Quigg and Cameron looking on
with perfectly evident doubt of our psychic's sincerity. Harris was
rigidly excluded.
In the quiet of this room Mrs. Harris passed almost immediately into
trance--or what seemed like a trance--and ran swiftly over all her
former impersonations. Voice succeeded voice, almost without pause. The
sweet mother with the child, the painter of San Remo, the jovial and
slangy girl, the commanding and majestic figure of the bishop--all
returned repeatedly, in bewildering mixture, dropping away, one after
the other, with disappointing suddenness. And yet each time the messages
grew a little more definite, a little more coherent, until at last they
all cleared up, and this _in opposition to our thought, to our first
interpretations_. It developed that the painter was not named "Sands,"
but "Felipi," and that he was only trying to tell Brierly that to
succeed he should paint rocks and sands and old boats at San Remo.
"Pauline," the woman who had seemed to hold a babe, was a friend of Mrs.
Cameron's who had died in childbirth. And then swiftly, unaccountably,
all these gentle or genial influences were scattered as if by something
hellish, something diabolic. The face of the sweet little woman became
fiendish in line. Her lips snarled, her hands clawed like those of a
cat, and out of her mouth came a hoarse imprecation. "I'll tear your
heart out!" she snarled. "I'll kill you soul and body--I'll rip you limb
from limb!" We all recoiled in amazement and wonder. It was as if our
friend had suddenly gone insane.
I confess to a feeling of profound astonishment. I had never met Mrs.
Harris before, but as she was an intimate friend of Mrs. Cameron, and
quite evidently a woman of culture, I could not think her so practised a
joker as to be "putting all this on."
While still we sat in silence, another voice uttered a wail of infinite
terror and despair. "I didn't do it! _Don't_ kill me! It was not _my_
work." And then, still more horrible to hear, a sound like the gurgling
of blood came from the psychic's lips, mixed with babbled, frantic,
incoherent words. I had a perfectly definite impression that she was
impersonating some one with his throat cut. Her grimaces were disgusting
and terrifying. The women shivered with horror. A few seconds later and
her face changed; the hideous mask became white, expressing rigid,
exalted terror. Her arms were drawn back as if tied at the elbow behind
her back. Her head was uplifted, and in a low, monotonous, hushed voice
she prayed: "Lord Jesus, receive--"
A gasping, gurgling cry cut short her prayer, and, with tongue
protruding from her mouth, she presented such a picture of a strangling
woman that a sudden clear conception of what it all meant came to me.
"She's impersonating a woman on the scaffold," I explained. "She has
shown us a murder, and now she is depicting an execution. Is it Mrs. R.,
of Vermont?" I asked.
She nodded slowly. "Save me!" she whispered.
"Waken her, please. Don't let her do that any more," pleaded Mrs.
Cameron, in poignant distress.