The clergyman read the letter with puckered brows.
“It seems a bad case,” said he.
“Well, suppose you come along. What! Maybe you can help clear it up.”
The Rev. Mason pulled out a pocket-almanac. “I have a service for ex-Service men on Wednesday, and a lecture the same evening.”
“But we could start today.”
“It’s a long way.”
“Only Dorsetshire. Three hours.”
“What is your plan?”
“Well, I suppose a night in the house should do it.”
“If there is any poor soul in trouble it becomes a duty. Very well, I will come.”
“And surely there is room for me,” pleaded Malone.
“Of course there is, young fellah! What I mean — I expect that old, red-headed bird at the office sent you round with no other purpose. Ah, I thought so. Well, you can write an adventure that is not perfect bilge for a change — what! There’s a train from Victoria at eight o’clock. We can meet there, and I’ll have a look in at old man Challenger as I pass.”
They dined together in the train and after dinner reassembled in their first-class carriage, which is the snuggest mode of travel which the world can show. Roxton, behind a big black cigar, was full of his visit to Challenger.
“The old dear is the same as ever. Bit my head off once or twice in his own familiar way. Talked unadulterated tripe. Says I’ve got brain-softenin’, if I could think there was such a thing as a real spook. ‘When you’re dead you’re dead’”. That’s the old man’s cheery slogan. Surveyin’ his contemporaries’ he said, extinction was a doosed good thing! ‘It’s the only hope of the world’, said he. ‘Fancy the awful prospect if they survived’. Wanted to give me a bottle of chlorine to chuck at the ghost. I told him that if my automatic was not a spook-stopper, nothin’ else would serve. Tell me, padre, is this the first time you’ve been on safari after this kind of game?”
“You treat the matter too lightly, Lord John,” said the clergyman gravely. “You have clearly had no experience of it. In answer to your question I may say that I have several times tried to help in similar cases.”
“And you take it seriously?” asked Malone, making notes for his article.
“Very, very seriously.”
“What do you think these influences are?”
“I am no authority upon the general question. You know Algernon Mailey, the barrister, do you not? He could give you facts and figures. I approach the subject rather perhaps from the point of view of instinct and emotion. I remember Mailey lecturing on Professor Bozzano’s book on ghosts where over five hundred well-authenticated instances were given, every one of them sufficient to establish an a priori case. There is Flammarion, too. You can’t laugh away evidence of that kind.”
“I’ve read Bozzano and Flammarion, too,” said Malone, “but it is your own experience and conclusions that I want.”
“Well, if you quote me, remember that I do not look on myself as a great authority on psychic research. Wiser brains than mine may come along and give some other explanation. Still, what I have seen has led me to certain conclusions. One of them is to think that there is some truth in the theosophical idea of shells.”
“What is that?”
“They imagined that all spirit bodies near the earth were empty shells or husks from which the real entity had departed. Now, of course, we know that a general statement of that sort is nonsense, for we could not get the glorious communications which we do get from anything but high intelligences. But we also must beware of generalizations. They are not all high intelligences. Some are so low that I think the creature is purely external and is an appearance rather than a reality.”
“But why should it be there?”
“Yes, that is the question. It is usually allowed that there is the natural body, as St. Paul called it, which is dissolved at death, and the etheric or spiritual body which survives and functions upon an etheric plane. Those are the essential things. But we may really have as many coats as an onion and there may be a mental body which may shed itself at any spot where great mental or emotional strain has been experienced. It may be a dull automatic simulacrum and yet carry something of our appearance and thoughts.”
“Well” said Malone, “that would to some extent get over the difficulty, for I could never imagine that a murderer or his victim could spend whole centuries re-acting the old crime. What would be the sense of it?”
“Quite right, young fellah,” said Lord Roxton. “There was a pal of mine, Archie Soames, the gentleman Jock, who had an old place in Berkshire. Well, Nell Gwynne had lived there once, and he was ready to swear he met her a dozen times in the passage. Archie never flinched at the big jump at the Grand National, but, by Jove! he flinched at those passages after dark. Doosed fine woman she was and all that, but dash it all! What I mean — one has to draw the line — what!”
“Quite so!” the clergyman answered. “You can’t imagine that the real soul of a vivid personality like Nell could spend centuries walking those passages. But if by chance she had ate her heart out in that house, brooding and fretting, one could think that she might have cast a shell and left some thought-image of herself behind her.”
“You said you had experiences of your own.”
“I had one before ever I knew anything of Spiritualism. I hardly expect that you will believe me, but I assure you it is true. I was a very young curate up in the north. There was a house in the village which had a poltergeist, one of those very mischievous influences which cause so much trouble. I volunteered to exorcize it. We have an official form of exorcism in the Church, you know, so I thought that I was well-armed. I stood in the drawing-room which was the centre of the disturbances, with all the family on their knees beside me, and I read the service. What do you think happened?”
Mason’s gaunt face broke into a sweetly humorous laugh. “Just as I reached Amen, when the creature should have been slinking away abashed, the big bearskin hearthrug stood up on end and simply enveloped me. I am ashamed to say that I was out of that house in two jumps. It was then that I learned that no formal religious proceeding has any effect at all.”
“Then what has?”
“Well, kindness and reason may do something. You see, they vary greatly. Some of these earthbound or earth-interested creatures are neutral, like these simulacra or shells that I speak of. Others are essentially good like these monks of Glastonbury, who have manifested so wonderfully of late years and are recorded by Bligh Bond. They are held to earth by a pious memory. Some are mischievous children like the poltergeists. And some — only a few, I hope — are deadly beyond words, strong, malevolent creatures too heavy with matter to rise above our earth plane — so heavy with matter that their vibrations may be low enough to affect the human retina and to become visible. If they have been cruel, cunning brutes in life, they are cruel and cunning still with more power to hurt. It is evil monsters of this kind who are let loose by our system of capital punishment, for they die with unused vitality which may be expended upon revenge.”
“This Dryfont spook has a doosed bad record,” said Lord Roxton.
“Exactly. That is why I disapprove of levity. He seems to me to be the very type of the creature I speak of. Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure.”
Malone’s jaw began to drop.
“I say!” he exclaimed, “have we no protection?”
“Yes,