“I know that you are a stage magician—” he began afresh.
“I was once,” I amended, a little sulkily. My early career had brought me considerable money and notice, but after the novelty of show business was worn off I had never rejoiced in it. Talboto the Mysterious—it had been impressive, but tawdry. Better to be Talbot Wills, lecturer and investigator in the field of exposing fraudulent mediums.
For six years I had known Doctor Otto Zoberg, the champion of spiritism and mediumism, as rival and companion. We had first met in debate under auspices of the Society for Psychical Research in London. I, young enough for enthusiasm but also for carelessness, had been badly out-thought and out-talked. But afterward, Doctor Zoberg had praised my arguments and my delivery, and had graciously taken me out to a late supper. The following day, there arrived from him a present of helpful books and magazines. Our next platform duel found me in a position to get a little of my own back; and he, afterward, laughingly congratulated me on turning to account the material he had sent me. After that, we were public foemen and personal inseparables. Just now we were touring the United States, debating, giving exhibitions, visiting mediums. The night’s program, before a Washington audience liberally laced with high officials, had ended in what we agreed was a draw; and here we were, squabbling good-naturedly afterward.
“Please, Doctor,” I begged, offering him a cigarette, “save your charges of stubbornness for the theater.”
He waved my case aside and bit the end from a villainous black cheroot. “I wouldn’t say it, here or in public, if it weren’t true, Talbot. Yet you sneer even at telepathy, and only half believe in mental suggestion. Ach, you are worse than Houdini.”
“Houdini was absolutely sincere,” I almost blazed, for I had known and worshipped that brilliant and kindly prince of conjurers and fraud-finders.
“Ach, to be sure, to be sure,” nodded Zoberg over his blazing match. “I did not say he was not. Yet, he refused proof—the proof that he himself embodied. Houdini was a great mystic, a medium. His power for miracles he did not know himself.”
I had heard that before, from Conan Doyle as well as Zoberg, but I made no comment. Zoberg continued:
“Perhaps Houdini was afraid—if anything could frighten so brave and wise a man it would assuredly come from within. And so he would not even listen to argument.” He turned suddenly somber. “Perhaps he knew best, ja. But he was stubborn, and so are you.”
“I don’t think you can say that of me,” I objected once more. The cheroot was alight now, and I kindled a cigarette to combat in some degree the gunpowdery fumes.
Teeth gleamed amiably through the beard, and Zoberg nodded again, in frank delight this time. “Oh, we have hopes of you, Wills, where we gave up Houdini.”
He had never said that before, not so plainly at any rate. I smiled back. “I’ve always been willing to be shown. Give me a foolproof, fake-proof, supernormal phenomenon, Doctor; let me convince myself; then I’ll come gladly into the spiritist camp.”
“Ach, so you always say!” he exploded, but without genuine wrath. “Why must the burden of proof rest with the spirits? How can you prove that they do not live and move and act? Study what Eddington has to say about that.”
“For five years,” I reminded him, “I have offered a prize of five thousand dollars to any medium whose spirit miracles I could not duplicate by honest sleight-of-hand.”
He gestured with slim fingers, as though to push the words back into me. “That proves absolutely nothing, Wills. For all your skill, do you think that sleight-of-hand can be the only way? Is it even the best way?”
“I’ve unmasked famous mediums for years, at the rate of one a month,” I flung back. “Unmasked them as the clumsiest of fakes.”
“Because some are dishonest, are all dishonest?” he appealed. “What specific thing would convince you, my friend?”
I thought for a moment, gazing at him through the billows of smoke. Not a gray hair to him—and I, twenty years his junior, had six or eight at either temple. I went on to admire and even to envy that pointed trowel of beard, the sort of thing that I, a magician, might have cultivated once. Then I made my answer.
“I’d ask for a materialization, Doctor. An ectoplasmic apparition, visible and solid to touch—in an empty room with no curtains or closets, all entrances sealed by myself, the medium and witnesses shackled.” He started to open his mouth, but I hurried to prevent him. “I know what you’ll say—that I’ve seen a number of impressive ectoplasms. So I have, perhaps, but not one was scientifically and dispassionately controlled. No, Doctor, if I’m to be convinced, I must make the conditions and set the stage myself.”
“And if the materialization was a complete success?”
“Then it would prove the claim to me—to the world. Materializations are the most important question in the whole field.”
He looked long at me, narrowing his shrewd eyes beneath the dark single bar of his brows. “Wills,” he said at length, “I hoped you would ask something like this.”
“You did?”
“Ja. Because—first, can you spare a day or so?”
I replied guardedly, “I can, I believe. We have two weeks or more before the New Orleans date.” I computed rapidly. “Yes, that’s December 8. What have you got up your sleeve, Doctor?”
He grinned once more, with a great display of gleaming white teeth, and flung out his long arms.
