'Yes.'
'You would not wish to come back to life?'
'No – certainly not.'
'Are you busy?'
'We could not be happy if we were not busy.'
'What do you do?'
'I have said that the conditions are entirely different.'
'Can you give us no idea of your own work?'
'We labour for our own improvement and for the advancement of others.'
'Do you like coming here to-night?'
'I am glad to come if I can do good by coming.'
'Then to do good is your object? '
'It is the object of all life on every plane.'
'You see, Markham, that should answer your scruples.'
It did, for my doubts had passed and only interest remained.
'Have you pain in your life?' I asked.
'No; pain is a thing of the body.'
'Have you mental pain?'
'Yes; one may always be sad or anxious.'
'Do you meet the friends whom you have known on earth?'
'Some of them.'
'Why only some of them?'
'Only those who are sympathetic.'
'Do husbands meet wives?'
'Those who have truly loved.'
'And the others?'
'They are nothing to each other.'
'There must be a spiritual connection?'
'Of course.'
'Is what we are doing right?'
'If done in the right spirit.'
'What is the wrong spirit?'
'Curiosity and levity.'
'May harm come of that?'
'Very serious harm.'
'What sort of harm?'
'You may call up forces over whom you have no control.'
'Evil forces?'
'Undeveloped forces.'
'You say they are dangerous. Dangerous to body or mind?'
'Sometimes to both.'
There was a pause, and the blackness seemed to grow blacker still, while the yellow-green fog swirled and smoked upon the table.
'Any questions you would like to ask, Moir?' said Harvey Deacon.
'Only this- Do you pray in your world?'
'One should pray in every world.'
'Why?'
'Because it is the acknowledgement of forces outside ourselves.'
'What religion do you hold over there?'
'We differ exactly as you do.'
'You have no certain knowledge?'
'We have only faith.'
'These questions of religion,' said the Frenchman, 'they are of interest to you serious English people, but they are not so much fun. It seems to me that with this power here we might be able to have some great experience – hein? Something of which we could talk.'
'But nothing could be more interesting than this,' said Moir.
'Well if you think so, that is very well' the Frenchman answered, peevishly. 'For my part, it seems to me that I have heard all this before, and that to-night I should weesh to try some experiment with all this force which is given to us. But if you have other questions, then ask them, and when you are finish we can try something more.'
But the spell was broken. We asked and asked, but the medium sat silent in her chair. Only her deep, regular breathing showed that she was there. The mist still swirled upon the table.
'You have disturbed the harmony. She will not answer.'
'But we have learned already all that she can tell – hein? For my part I wish to see something that I have never seen before.'
'What then?'
'You will let me try?'
'What would you do?'
'I have said to you that thoughts are things. Now I wish to prove it to you, and to show you that which is only thought. Yes, yes, I can do it and you will see. Now I ask you only to sit still and say nothing, and keep your hands quiet upon the table.'
The room was blacker and more silent than ever. The same feeling of apprehension which had lain heavily upon me at the beginning of the seance was back at my heart once more. The roots of my hair were tingling.
'It is working! It is working!' cried the Frenchman, and there was a crack in his voice as he spoke which told me that he also was strung to his tightest.
The luminous tog drifted slowly off the table, and wavered and flickered across the room. There in the farther and darkest corner it gathered and glowed, hardening down into a shining core – a strange, shifty, luminous, and yet non-illuminating patch of radiance, bright itself, but throwing no rays into the darkness. It had changed from a greenish-yellow to a dusky sullen red. Then round the centre there coiled a dark, smoky substance, thickening, hardening, growing denser and blacker. And then the light went out, smothered in that which had grown round it.
'It has gone.'
'Hush – there's something in the room.'
We heard it in the comer where the light had been, something which breathed deeply and fidgeted in the darkness.
'What is it? Le Duc, what have you done?'
'It is all right. No harm will come.' The Frenchman's voice was treble with agitation.
'Good heavens, Moir, there's a large animal in the room. Here it is close by my chair! Go away! Go away!'
It was Harvey Deacon's voice, and then came the sound of a blow upon some hard object. And then… And then… how can I tell you what happened then?
Some huge thing hurtled against us in the darkness, rearing, stamping, smashing, springing, snorting. The table was splintered. We were scattered in every direction. It clattered and scrambled amongst us, rushing with horrible energy from one corner of the room to another. We were all screaming with fear, grovelling upon our hands and knees to get away from it. Something trod upon my left hand, and I felt the bones splinter under the weight.
'A light! A light!' someone yelled.
'Moir, you have matches, matches!'
'No, I have none. Deacon, where are the matches! For God's sake the matches!'
'I can't find them. Here, you Frenchman, stop it!'
'It is beyond me. Oh, mon Dieu, I cannot stop it. The door! Where is the door?'
My hand, by good luck, lit upon the handle as I groped about in the darkness. The hard-breathing, snorting,
