Take that case of the hand impressed on the soft dough and plaster of
Paris, described in an article that he had picked up in the dentist’s
office out there in Pasadena—Mersereau’s very hand, so far as he could
judge. How about that for a coincidence, picking up the magazine with
that disturbing article about psychic materialization in Italy, and
later in Berne, Switzerland, where the scientists were gathered to
investigate that sort of thing? And just when he was trying to rid
himself finally of the notion that any such thing could be!
According to that magazine article, some old crone over in
Italy—spiritualist, or witch, or something—had got together a crowd
of experimentalists or professors in an abandoned house on an almost
deserted island off the coast of Sardinia. There they had conducted
experiments with spirits, which they called materialization, getting
the impression of the fingers of a hand, or of a whole hand and arm,
or of a face, on a plate of glass covered with soot, the plate being
locked in a small safe on the center of a table about which they sat!
He, Davidson, couldn’t understand, of course, how it was done, but
done it was. There in that magazine were half a dozen pictures,
reproductions of photographs of a hand, an arm and a face—or a part of
one, anyhow. And if they looked like anything, they looked exactly like
Mersereau’s! Hadn’t Pringle, there in Gatchard, Miss., stated spirits
could move anywhere, over long distances, with the speed of light. And
would it be any trick for Mersereau to appear there at Sardinia, and
then engineer this magazine into his presence, here in Los Angeles?
Would it? It would not. Spirits were free and powerful _over there_,
perhaps.
There was not the least doubt that these hands, these partial
impressions of a face, were those of Mersereau. Those big knuckles!
That long, heavy, humped nose and big jaw! Whose else could they
be?—they were Mersereau’s, intended, when they were made over there in
Italy, for him, Davidson, to see later here in Los Angeles. Yes, they
were! And looking at that sinister face reproduced in the magazine, it
seemed to say, with Mersereau’s old coarse sneer:
“_You see? You can’t escape me! I’m showing you how much alive I am
over here, just as I was on earth. And I’ll get you yet, even if I
have to go farther than Italy to do it!_”
It was amazing, the shock he took from that. It wasn’t just that alone,
but the persistence and repetition of this hand business. What could
it mean? Was it really Mersereau’s hand? As for the face, it wasn’t
all there—just the jaw, mouth, cheek, left temple, and a part of the
nose and eye; but it was Mersereau’s, all right. He had gone clear over
there into Italy somewhere, in a lone house on an island, to get this
message of his undying hate back to him. Or was it just spirits, evil
spirits, bent on annoying him because he was nervous and sensitive now?