I
The rather extraordinary story revealed by the experiments of the
Neighborhood Club have been until now a matter only of private record.
But it seems to me, as an active participant in the investigations, that
they should be given to the public; not so much for what they will add
to the existing data on psychical research, for from that angle they
were not unusual, but as yet another exploration into that still
uncharted territory, the human mind.
The psycho-analysts have taught us something about the individual mind.
They have their own patter, of complexes and primal instincts, of
the unconscious, which is a sort of bonded warehouse from which we
clandestinely withdraw our stored thoughts and impressions. They lay
to this unconscious mind of ours all phenomena that cannot otherwise
be labeled, and ascribe such demonstrations of power as cannot thus be
explained to trickery, to black silk threads and folding rods, to slates
with false sides and a medium with chalk on his finger nail.
In other words, they give us subjective mind but never objective mind.
They take the mind and its reactions on itself and on the body. But
what about objective mind? Does it make its only outward manifestations
through speech and action? Can we ignore the effect of mind on mind,
when there are present none of the ordinary media of communication? I
think not.
In making the following statement concerning our part in the strange
case of Arthur Wells, a certain allowance must be made for our ignorance
of so-called psychic phenomena, and also for the fact that since that
time, just before the war, great advances have been made in scientific
methods of investigation. For instance, we did not place Miss Jeremy’s
chair on a scale, to measure for any loss of weight. Also the theory
of rods of invisible matter emanating from the medium’s body, to move
bodies at a distance from her, had only been evolved; and none of the
methods for calculation of leverages and strains had been formulated, so
far as I know.
To be frank, I am quite convinced that, even had we known of these
so-called explanations, which in reality explain nothing, we would
have ignored them as we became involved in the dramatic movement of
the revelations and the personal experiences which grew out of them. I
confess that following the night after the first seance any observations
of mine would have been of no scientific value whatever, and I believe I
can speak for the others also.
Of the medium herself I can only say that we have never questioned her
integrity. The physical phenomena occurred before she went into trance,
and during that time her forearms were rigid. During the deep trance,
with which this unusual record deals, she spoke in her own voice, but in
a querulous tone, and Sperry’s examination of her pulse showed that it
went from eighty normal to a hundred and twenty and very feeble.
With this preface I come to the death of Arthur Wells, our acquaintance
and neighbor, and the investigation into that death by a group of six
earnest people who call themselves the Neighborhood Club.
*****
The Neighborhood Club was organized in my house. It was too small really
to be called a club, but women have a way these days of conferring a
titular dignity on their activities, and it is not so bad, after all.
The Neighborhood Club it really was, composed of four of our neighbors,
my wife, and myself.
We had drifted into the habit of dining together on Monday evenings
at the different houses. There were Herbert Robinson and his sister
Alice--not a young woman, but clever, alert, and very alive; Sperry, the
well-known heart specialist, a bachelor still in spite of much feminine
activity; and there was old Mrs. Dane, hopelessly crippled as to the
knees with rheumatism, but one of those glowing and kindly souls that
have a way of being a neighborhood nucleus. It was around her that we
first gathered, with an idea of forming for her certain contact points
with the active life from which she was otherwise cut off. But she gave
us, I am sure, more than we brought her, and, as will be seen later, her
shrewdness was an important element in solving our mystery.
In addition to these four there were my wife and myself.
It had been our policy to take up different subjects for these
neighborhood dinners. Sperry was a reformer in his way, and on his
nights we generally took up civic questions. He was particularly
interested in the responsibility of the state to the sick poor. My wife
and I had “political” evenings. Not really politics, except in their
relation to life. I am a lawyer by profession, and dabble a bit in city
government. The Robinsons had literature.
Don’t misunderstand me. We had no papers, no set programs. On the
Robinson evenings we discussed editorials and current periodicals, as
well as the new books and plays. We were frequently acrimonious, I fear,
but our small wrangles ended with the evening. Robinson was the literary
editor of a paper, and his sister read for a large publishing house.
Mrs. Dane was a free-lance. “Give me that privilege,” she begged. “At
least, until you find my evenings dull. It gives me, during all the week
before you come, a sort of thrilling feeling that the world is mine to
choose from.” The result was never dull. She led us all the way from
moving-pictures to modern dress. She led us even further, as you will
see.
On consulting my note-book I find that the first evening which directly
concerns the Arthur Wells case was Monday, November the second, of last
year.
It was a curious day, to begin with. There come days, now and then,
that bring with them a strange sort of mental excitement. I have never
analyzed them. With me on this occasion it took the form of nervous
irritability, and something of apprehension. My wife, I remember,
complained of headache, and one of the stenographers had a fainting
attack.
I have often wondered for how much of what happened to Arthur Wells the
day was responsible. There are days when the world is a place for love
and play and laughter. And then there are sinister days, when the earth
is a hideous place, when even the thought of immortality is unbearable,
and life itself a burden; when all that is riotous and unlawful comes
forth and bares itself to the light.
This was such a day.
I am fond of my friends, but I found no pleasure in the thought of
meeting them that evening. I remembered the odious squeak in the wheels
of Mrs. Dane’s chair. I resented the way Sperry would clear his throat.
I read in the morning paper Herbert Robinson’s review of a book I had
liked, and disagreed with him. Disagreed violently. I wanted to call him
on the telephone and tell him that he was a fool. I felt old, although I
am only fifty-three, old and bitter, and tired.
With the fall of twilight, things changed somewhat. I was more passive.
Wretchedness encompassed me, but I was not wretched. There was violence
in the air, but I was not violent. And with a bath and my dinner clothes
I put away the horrors of the day.
My wife was better, but the cook had given notice.
“There has been quarreling among the servants all day,” my wife said. “I
wish I could go and live on a desert island.”
We have no children, and my wife, for lack of other interests, finds her
housekeeping an engrossing and serious matter. She is in the habit
of bringing her domestic difficulties to me when I reach home in the
evenings, a habit which sometimes renders me unjustly indignant. Most
unjustly, for she has borne with me for thirty years and is known
throughout the entire neighborhood as a perfect housekeeper. I can close
my eyes and find any desired article in my bedroom at any time.
We passed the Wellses’ house on our way to Mrs. Dane’s that night, and
my wife commented on the dark condition of the lower floor.
“Even if they are going out,” she said, “it would add to the appearance
of the street to leave a light or two burning. But some people have no
public feeling.”
I made no comment, I believe. The Wellses were a young couple, with
children, and had been known to observe that they considered the
neighborhood “stodgy.” And we had retaliated, I regret to say, in kind,
but not with any real unkindness, by regarding them as interlopers. They
drove too many cars, and drove them too fast; they kept a governess and
didn’t see enough of their children; and their English butler made our
neat maids look commonplace.
There is generally, in every old neighborhood, some one house on which
is fixed, so to speak, the community gaze, and in our case it was on
the Arthur Wellses’. It was a curious, not unfriendly staring, much
I daresay like that of the old robin who sees two young wild canaries
building near her.
We passed the house, and went on to Mrs. Dane’s.
She had given us no inkling of what we were to have that night, and my
wife conjectured a conjurer! She gave me rather a triumphant smile when
we were received in the library and the doors into the drawing-room were
seen to be tightly closed.
We were early, as my wife is a punctual person, and soon after our
arrival Sperry came. Mrs. Dane was in her chair as usual, with her
companion in attendance, and when she heard Sperry’s voice outside she
excused herself and was wheeled out to him, and together we heard them
go into the drawing-room. When the Robinsons arrived she and Sperry
reappeared, and we waited for her customary announcement of the
evening’s program. When none came, even during the meal, I confess that
my curiosity was almost painful.
I think, looking back, that it was Sperry who turned the talk to the
supernatural, and that, to the accompaniment of considerable gibing by
the men, he told a ghost story that set the women to looking back over
their shoulders into the dark corners beyond the zone of candle-light.
All of us, I remember, except Sperry and Mrs. Dane, were skeptical as
to the supernatural, and Herbert Robinson believed that while there were
so-called sensitives who actually went into trance, the controls which
took possession of them were buried personalities of their own, released
during trance from the sub-conscious mind.
“If not,” he said truculently, “if they are really spirits, why can’t
they tell us what is going on, not in some vague place where they are
always happy, but here and now, in the next house? I don’t ask for
prophecy, but for some evidence of their knowledge. Are the Germans
getting ready to fight England? Is Horace here the gay dog some of us
suspect?”
As I am the Horace in question, I must explain that Herbert was merely
being facetious. My life is a most orderly and decorous one. But my
wife, unfortunately, lacks a sense of humor, and I felt that the remark
might have been more fortunate.
“Physical phenomena!” scoffed the cynic. “I’ve seen it all--objects
moving without visible hands, unexplained currents of cold air, voice
through a trumpet--I know the whole rotten mess, and I’ve got a book
which tells how to do all the tricks. I’ll bring it along some night.”
Mrs. Dane smiled, and the discussion was dropped for a time. It was
during the coffee and cigars that Mrs. Dane made her announcement. As
Alice Robinson takes an after-dinner cigarette, a custom my wife greatly
deplores, the ladies had remained with us at the table.
“As a matter of fact, Herbert,” she said, “we intend to put your
skepticism to the test tonight. Doctor Sperry has found a medium for us,
a non-professional and a patient of his, and she has kindly consented to
give us a sitting.”
Herbert wheeled and looked at Sperry.
“Hold up your right hand and state by your honor as a member in good
standing that you have not primed her, Sperry.”
Sperry held up his hand.
“Absolutely not,” he said, gravely. “She is coming in my car. She
doesn’t know to what house or whose. She knows none of you. She is a
stranger to the city, and she will not even recognize the neighborhood.”