"Mr. Stinchfield had several packages of plates opened ready to use in
his cameras, but The Voices only let him make one flashlight. It seems
as if they knew the experiment would end my mother's life, and yet on
each of the unexposed plates are faces and forms, some of which Mr.
Bartol 'recognized.'"
"Let me see them--please!" she pleaded, earnestly. "They will comfort
me, too, for I am under conviction."
He took from his pocket a package of small photographs. "Here," he said,
"are the three flashlights of my grandfather, Nelson Blodgett."
The young woman almost snatched them in her eager haste. "Oh, wonderful!
What a document! The medium plainly in her cage--and this figure on the
same plate."
"It is the most convincing picture in existence," he said, sadly, "but
it cost me my mother."
She fixed a dreamy gaze upon him. "If this is a spirit--then your mother
can return to you. Has she done so?"
He moved uneasily. "I have not asked her to do that. I don't care to be
controlled or guided by spirits, not even by her spirit."
"Why?"
His voice was firm and assured as he replied: "Because I want to live
and work out my career like other men. I don't want to see or hear any
more of the 'astral plane'--" He checked himself. "It isn't natural for
a man like me to be mixed up with all this spirit business, and I'm
tired of it."
"I see what you mean. You want to work and woo and marry like other men.
You're right; of course you're right. What have we who are young and
vigorous to do with the dead, anyway? Unless all human life is a
mistake, a foolish thing, it's our business to live it humanly." She
held out her hand for the other pictures. "Let me see them all, please!"
He handed them to her. "There were three cameras," he explained, "hence
these duplicates. These faces are likenesses of Mr. Bartol's wife and
two children--and these plates, remember, were not exposed--they are of
Altair, one of the guides."
She studied the shadowy forms with keen gaze. "One of the strange things
about this 'spirit photograph' business is the resemblance they all bear
to pictures--I mean, they all look as if they were photographs of framed
portraits or drawings."