II
“You Can Almost Hear the Ghosts.”
I have sat down with the purpose of writing out, plainly and even flatly, all that happened to me and to Doctor Otto Zoberg in our impromptu adventure at psychic investigation; yet, almost at the start, I find it necessary to be vague about the tiny town where that adventure ran its course. Zoberg began by refusing to tell me its name, and now my friends of various psychical research committees have asked me to hold my peace until they have finished certain examinations without benefit of yellow journals or prying politicians.
It is located, as Zoberg told me, within five hours by fast automobile of Washington. On the following morning, after a quick and early breakfast, we departed at seven o’clock in my sturdy coupé. I drove and Zoberg guided. In the turtle-back we had stowed bags, for the November sky had begun to boil up with dark, heavy clouds, and a storm might delay us.
On the way Zoberg talked a great deal, with his usual charm and animation. He scoffed at my skepticism and prophesied my conversion before another midnight.
“A hundred years ago, realists like yourself were ridiculing hypnotism,” he chuckled. “They thought that it was a fantastic fake, like one of Edgar Poe’s amusing tales, ja? And now it is a great science, for healing and comforting the world. A few years ago, the world scorned mental telepathy—”
“Hold on,” I interrupted. “I’m none too convinced of it now.”
“I said just that, last night. However, you think that there is some grain of truth to it. You would be a fool to laugh at the many experiments in clairvoyance carried on at Duke University.”
“Yes, they are impressive,” I admitted.
“They are tremendous, and by no means unique,” he insisted. “Think of a number between one and ten,” he said suddenly.
I gazed at my hands on the wheel, thought of a joking reply, then fell in with his mood.
“All right,” I replied. “I’m thinking of a number. What is it?”
“It is seven,” he cried out at once, then laughed heartily at the blank look on my face.
“Look here, that’s a logical number for an average man to think of,” I protested. “You relied on human nature, not telepathy.”
He grinned and tweaked the end of his beard between manicured fingers. “Very good, Wills, try again. A color this time.”
I paused a moment before replying, “All right, guess what it is.”
He, too, hesitated, staring at me sidewise. “I think it is blue,” he offered at length.
“Go to the head of the class,” I grumbled. “I rather expected you to guess red—that’s most obvious.”
“But I was not guessing,” he assured me. “A flash of blue came before my mind’s eye. Come, let us try another time.”
We continued the experiment for a while. Zoberg was not always correct, but he was surprisingly close in nearly every case. The most interesting results were with the names of persons, and Zoberg achieved some rather mystifying approximations. Thus, when I was thinking of the actor Boris Karloff, he gave me the name of the actor Bela Lugosi. Upon my thinking of Gilbert K. Chesterton, he named Chesterton’s close friend Hilaire Belloc, and my concentration on George Bernard Shaw brought forth a shout of “Santa Claus.” When I reiterated my charge of psychological trickery and besought him to teach me his method, he grew actually angry and did not speak for more than half an hour. Then he began to discuss our destination.
“A most amazing community,” he pronounced. “It is old—one of the oldest inland towns of all America. Wait until you see the houses, my friend. You can almost hear the ghosts within them, in broad daylight. And their Devil’s Croft, that is worth seeing, too.”
“Their what?”
He shook his head, as though in despair. “And you set yourself up as an authority on occultism!” he sniffed. “Next you will admit that you have never heard of the Druids. A Devil’s Croft, my dull young friend, used to be part of every English or Scots village. The good people would set aside a field for Satan, so that he would not take their own lands.”
“And this settlement has such a place?”
“Ja wohl, a grove of the thickest timber ever seen in this over-civilized country, and hedged in to boot. I do not say that they believe, but it is civic property and protected by special order from trespassers.”
“I’d like to visit that grove,” I said.
“I pray you!” he cried, waving in protest. “Do not make us unwelcome.”
We arrived shortly before noon. The little town rests in a circular hollow among high wooded hills, and there is not a really good road into it, for two or three miles around. After listening to Zoberg, I had expected something grotesque or forbidding, but I was disappointed. The houses were sturdy and modest, in some cases poor. The greater part of them made a close-huddled mass, like a herd of cattle threatened by wolves, with here and there an isolated dwelling like an adventuresome young fighting-bull. The streets were narrow, crooked and unpaved, and for once in this age I saw buggies and wagons outnumbering automobiles. The central square, with a two-story town hall of red brick and a hideous cast-iron war memorial, still boasted numerous hitching-rails, brown with age and smooth with use. There were few real signs of modern progress. For instance, the drug store was a shabby clapboard affair with “Pharmacy” painted upon its windows, and it sold
