He returned in a few minutes with a small blue book in his hand, from
which he began to read with gusto: "'I saw, as it were, a white luminous
ball floating over the floor; then rising straight upward, very rapidly,
as though issuing from a trap-door, appeared B. B., born, so to speak,
out of the flooring outside the curtain, which had not stirred. He
tries, as it seems to me, to come among us, but he has a limping,
hesitating gait. At one moment he reels as if about to fall, limping on
one leg; then he goes toward the opening of the curtains of the
cabinet. Then, without (as I believe) opening the curtains, he sinks
down, disappears into the floor.'"
"What are you reading from?" I asked.
"I am reading from the report which Richet made to the Annals of
Psychical Science. He goes on to say: 'It appears to me that this
experiment is decisive, for the formation of a luminous spot on the
ground, which then changes into a living and walking being, cannot
seemingly be produced by any trick. On the day after this experiment I
minutely examined the flagstones [which made up the floor of the seance
room], and also the coach-house and stable immediately under that part
of the kiosque.' There was no trap-door, and the cobwebs on the roof of
the stable were undisturbed. The photographs of the apparition were
taken on five different plates simultaneously, and the figure is the
same on each."
"Yes; but those experiments were afterward made of no value by the
confession of a coachman, who admitted his complicity in the fraud."
"No; that story is not true. The experiments stand, and Richet still
defends both himself and the circle against the charge of fraud."
"But read on," I insisted. "Does he not say that, in spite of all his
proof, he will not even hazard an affirmation of the phenomena?"
"Yes, he does say that," admitted Fowler; "but he also says: 'I have
thought it my duty to mention these facts in the same way as Sir William
Crookes thought it his duty in more difficult times to report the
history of "Katie King." I do not believe I have been deceived. I am
convinced that I have been present at realities, not deceptions.
Certainly I cannot say in what materialization consists. _I am only
ready to maintain that there is something profoundly mysterious in it,
which will change from top to bottom our ideas on nature and on life._'"
"He apparently was profoundly affected by what he saw," I assented, "and
I am perfectly willing to grant that the character of his friends in the
circle add value to what he saw. But, after all, the fact of
materialization is so tremendous in its implications that even to admit
its possibility is to admit more than any man of our day, who has been
trained in scientific ways, is willing to be answerable for. However,
the most extraordinary story I have ever read is that of Archdeacon
Colley, Rector of Stockton, Warwickshire, who declared in a public
lecture--and many times since, over his signature--that he saw the
miraculous issue of phantoms born directly from the side of a psychic.
He declares he saw a winsome little girl emerge--a laughing,
golden-haired creature, as alive as any one. I confess that this is too
much for me, and yet if a Spanish soldier can be born from a spot of
light, anything at all that anybody may imagine can happen.--But let us
return to our own psychics."
We found Mrs. Smiley sitting precisely as we left her, and, picking up
our thread, Fowler and I located the table and the cone and reassumed
our positions. The table, which was quite out of reach of Mrs. Smiley's
hands, now stood with its end toward the three of us, sitting in a
crescent shape opposite the psychic--a position which produced, so the
guides said, one pole of a battery.
Hardly were we seated in our places when the psychic suddenly awoke and
spoke in her natural voice, and I for one felt that the sitting was
over. I was perfectly certain that nothing could happen out of the
ordinary unless the medium were in either one or the other of her states
of trance.
I was now both amazed and delighted to find that the cone could be
drummed upon and voices delivered through it while Mrs. Smiley, mentally
normal, took part in the conversation. My theories were upset. I was
completely mystified, though I said nothing of this to Fowler.
Once or twice Mrs. Fowler declared she heard the sound of lips, and at
last a voice came to her speaking the name of her father. His voice
answered some of her questions correctly, but could not utter the pet
name which her father used to call her. This breakdown of the
individuality of the phantom voices is very characteristic. This ended
the sitting. The voices had not been as strong as we had hoped for, but
as we threw on the light we found a number of messages written upon the
sheets of paper which Fowler had put in the middle of the table. These
messages were lying with the writing wrong side up, so far as the
psychic was concerned. Altogether we felt that the results were both
significant and encouraging, and we agreed to meet three days later in
the same room and under the same conditions.
"What I want to do now is to hold your arms while the horn is in the
air, or while the writing is going on," I said to Mrs. Smiley.
And to this she replied: "You may make any test you please. I feel that
in this house my powers will return."
"That is a real gain," I said, to encourage her.