Fear

from dining out. There was not a taxi to be had, and I hurried through the pouring rain to the tube station at Piccadilly Circus, and thought myself very lucky to catch the last train in this direction. The carriage into which I stepped was quite empty except for one other passenger, who sat next the door immediately opposite to me. I had never, to my knowledge, seen him before, but I found my attention vividly fixed on him, as if he somehow concerned me. He was a man of middle age, in dress-clothes, and his face wore an expression of intense thought, as if in his mind he was pondering some very significant matter, and his hand which was resting on his knee clenched and unclenched itself. Suddenly he looked up and stared me in the face, and I saw there suspicion and fear, as if I had surprised him in some secret deed.

‘At that moment we stopped at Dover Street, and the conductor threw open the doors, announced the station and added, “Change here for Hyde Park Corner and Gloucester Road.” That was all right for me since it meant that the train would stop at Brompton Road, which was my destination. It was all right apparently, too, for my companion, for he certainly did not get out, and after a moment’s stop, during which no one else got in, we went on. I saw him, I must insist, after the doors were closed and the train had started. But when I looked again, as we rattled on, I saw that there was no one there. I was quite alone in the carriage.

‘Now you may think that I had had one of those swift momentary dreams which flash in and out of the mind in the space of a second, but I did not believe it was so myself, for I felt that I had experienced some sort of premonition or clairvoyant vision. A man, the semblance of whom, astral body or whatever you may choose to call it, I had just seen, would sometimes sit in that seat opposite to me, pondering and planning.’

‘But why?’ I asked. ‘Why should it have been the astral body of a living man, which you thought you had seen? Why not the ghost of a dead one?’

‘Because of my own sensations. The sight of the spirit of someone dead, which has occurred to me two or three times in my life, has always been accompanied by a physical shrinking and fear, and by the sensation of cold and of loneliness. I believed, at any rate, that I had seen a phantom of the living, and that impression was confirmed, I might say proved, the next day. For I met the man himself. And the next night, as you shall hear, I met the phantom again. We will take them in order.

‘I was lunching, then, the next day with my neighbour Mrs Stanley: there was a small party, and when I arrived we waited but for the final guest. He entered while I was talking to some friend, and presently at my elbow I heard Mrs Stanley’s voice –

‘ “Let me introduce you to Sir Henry Payle,” she said.

‘I turned and saw my vis-à-vis of the night before. It was quite unmistakably he, and as we shook hands he looked at me I thought with vague and puzzled recognition.

‘ “Haven’t we met before, Mr Carling?” he said. “I seem to recollect –”

‘For the moment I forgot the strange manner of his disappearance from the carriage, and thought that it had been the man himself whom I had seen last night.

‘ “Surely, and not so long ago,” I said. “For we sat opposite each other in the last tube-train from Piccadilly Circus yesterday night.”

‘He still looked at me, frowning, puzzled, and shook his head.

‘ “That can hardly be,” he said. “I only came up from the country this morning.”

‘Now this interested me profoundly, for the astral body, we are told, abides in some half-conscious region of the mind or spirit, and has recollections of what has happened to it, which it can convey only very vaguely and dimly to the conscious mind. All lunch-time I could see his eyes again and again directed to me with the same puzzled and perplexed air, and as I was taking my departure he came up to me.

‘ “I shall recollect some day,” he said, “where we met before, and I hope we may meet again. Was it not –?” and he stopped. “No: it has gone from me,” he added.’

The log that Anthony had thrown on the fire was burning bravely now, and its high-flickering flame lit up his face.

‘Now, I don’t know whether you believe in coincidences as chance things,’ he said, ‘but if you do, get rid of the notion. Or if you can’t at once, call it a coincidence that that very night I again caught the last train on the tube going westwards. This time, so far from my being a solitary passenger, there was a considerable crowd waiting at Dover Street, where I entered, and just as the noise of the approaching train began to reverberate in the tunnel I caught sight of Sir Henry Payle standing near the opening from which the train would presently emerge, apart from the rest of the crowd. And I thought to myself how odd it was that I should have seen the phantom of him at this very hour last night and the man himself now, and I began walking towards him with the idea of saying, ‘Anyhow, it is in the tube that we meet tonight.’ … And then a terrible and awful thing happened. Just as the train emerged from the tunnel he jumped down on to the line in front of it, and the train swept along over him up the platform.

‘For a moment I was stricken with horror at the sight, and I remember covering my eyes against the dreadful