Part 6

Without a word the Professor lifted up her wrist and felt her pulse. “Now show me your tongue!” She obeyed. He nodded his head, and placed his hand upon her brow. His eyes plunged into hers for one second of searching scrutiny and then he nodded his head again, satisfied. “My dear,” he said, “I haven’t a thermometer here, but I should say you are absolutely normal in every way. Your pulse is a shade rapid, perhaps.”

The girl took a long breath.

“Thank you, Professor,” she said, simply. She turned to the others. “You heard what the Professor said? There’s no fever about _me_. Now--listen! I want to tell you something. I’ve been waiting to tell you ever since we sat down to dinner--and now I _must_ tell you! And you mustn’t laugh!--Poppa, this is serious!”

The four men, puzzled at her demeanour, grouped themselves round her. She assured herself of their gravity.

“This evening,” she began, “between five and six o’clock I suddenly developed a dreadful headache. It was so bad that I just had to go to my room and lie down. I went to sleep straight off. And then--then I had a--a dream--only,” she interposed quickly, to hold their interest, “it wasn’t like an ordinary dream. It was so vivid that I felt all the time it _meant_ something. I dreamed that someone or something that I could feel was sort of loving and kind and earnest--_very_ earnest, I could feel that strongly--took me into a room. And, somehow, I knew that the room was in Berlin. It seemed quite a nice room but I don’t remember much about the details of it. I only remember that I saw myself there with two men, one young and dark, the other old and white, who were staring at a girl sleeping in a big armchair. They took not the faintest notice of me, and I didn’t worry much about them. The girl was the interesting thing to all of us--and yet, though I was staring at her with a sort of fascination I couldn’t shake off, I didn’t know why. Then a strange thing happened. The girl kind of faded away--I don’t know how to describe it, because I felt all the time she was still there--and as she faded, there came up the figure of a man. He seemed to grow out of her--to take her place. It was real uncanny. This man that grew out of the girl like a--like a ghost--was somehow more _living_ than any of us. It was as if he were in the limelight and we were in the shadow. I shall never forget his face. It was handsome but _wicked_--mocking--malicious--like a devil. And he had an ugly scar over the right eyebrow which made him look even more devilish----”

“What colour was his hair?” interposed Captain Sergeantson. “Any moustache?”

The girl looked at him in surprise at the question.

“Fair--sticking up straight. No moustache--why?”

Captain Sergeantson nodded.

“I only wondered. Go on, Miss Forsdyke.”

The girl resumed.

“Well--it seemed that we were all looking at this man and not the girl at all. She had disappeared behind him, or into him, I don’t know which. The other two men were talking to him--talking earnestly. And it seemed to me that it was extremely--oh, _immensely_--important that I should understand what they were saying. I listened with all my soul. It almost hurt me to listen as hard as I did--And yet I couldn’t get a word of it. What they said was, somehow, just out of reach--like people you see talking on the bioscope. And then, all of a sudden, I heard--one sentence--as clearly as possible, ‘_Forsdyke is the man who prepares the schedule!_’”

Jimmy Lomax uttered a sharp cry of amazement.

“What!” He turned to Forsdyke. “Chief, that’s strange!”

Forsdyke imposed silence with a gesture.

“Go on, Hetty,” he said, calmly. “What then?”

“Then I woke up. The words were ringing in my ears. They haunted me all the time I was dressing for dinner. I wondered if I ought to tell you. Something was whispering to me that I should. But I was afraid you would laugh at me. But that’s not all. You remember at dinner I dropped a glass.--Poppa!” Her voice suddenly became very earnest. “I saw that man--the man who had grown out of the girl--_standing behind you_. His eyes were fixed on you as though trying to read into you--so evilly that I went cold all over.”

The Professor gave her a sharp glance.

“No vision of the room in Berlin--or wherever it was?” he queried.

She shook her head.

“No. Just the man. But even that’s not all. Just now--when I was playing and looking across to you--_I distinctly saw him again_, close behind Poppa! He moved this time--moved with a funny little limp--just like a real man with a bad leg. I jumped up--and--and he was gone!” She looked around apprehensively as though expecting to see him still.

“Your liver’s out of order, my dear,” said her father. “Take a pill when you go to bed to-night.”

“No,” said the girl, “it’s not that. I know you would say I was ill--that is why I asked the Professor to examine me. I am sure it _means_ something!”

Captain Sergeantson threw the end of his cigar into the fireplace and took a wallet out of his pocket. The wallet contained photographs. He handed them to the girl.

“Miss Forsdyke,” he said, gravely, “would you mind telling me if you have ever seen any of these people?”

The girl examined them. Suddenly she uttered a cry and held up one of the prints.

“_This!_” she said. Her eyes were wide with astonishment. “This is the man I saw!--There’s the scar, too--exactly!--Who is he? Do you know him?”

“That man,” replied Captain Sergeantson, sententiously, “is Karl Wertheimer. About the cutest spy the German Secret Service ever had.--I was going to tell Jimmy a story about him and brought his picture along with me,” he added in explanation. “I sort of recognized him from your description.”

The girl stared at the photograph.

“Of course,” continued Sergeantson, “he made up over that scar. He was an extraordinarily clever actor, by the way. They cleaned off the make-up when they took the photograph.”

“And he is a German spy!” mused the girl, still staring at the picture.

“He was!” replied Sergeantson, grimly. “The British shot him in the Tower when I was in London six months ago.”

The girl looked up sharply.

“I’m sure I’ve never seen his photograph before!” she said, as though answering an allegation she felt in the silence of the others. “How could I?”

“I can’t imagine, Miss Forsdyke. The extraordinary thing is that you should have got his limp. That’s what gave him away to the British. He broke his leg dropping over a wall in an exceedingly daring escape at the beginning of the war. But how you should know about it beats me all to pieces.”

“I didn’t _know_--I saw----”

“You saw his ghost, I guess, Miss Forsdyke--and that’s all there is to it.” Captain Sergeantson lit himself another cigar by way of showing how cold-blooded he could be in the possible presence of a spectre.

Jimmy shuddered. “It’s uncanny,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

“But _why_?” puzzled Hetty, wrinkling her brows. She turned to her father. “Poppa----!”

Forsdyke shook his head smilingly.

“I’m out of this deal. Ask the Professor. He’s the authority on spooks. What does it all mean, Lomax? Can you give an explanation that doesn’t outrage commonsense?”

The Professor smiled. The eyes in that clean-cut face twinkled.

“Commonsense?” He shrugged his shoulders. “We want to start by defining that--by defining all our senses--and we should never finish.” He looked with his challenging smile round the group. “I see you are inviting me to throw away my last little shred of reputation as a sane,” he said, humorously. “Well, I will not venture on any explanation of my own. The evidence, with all respect to Hetty here, is insufficient. We only know that she had a dream and a hallucination twice repeated. We know that the hallucination corresponds to a photograph in Captain Sergeantson’s pocket. We do not know what basis there is--if any--for her dream. But I will give you two alternative explanations that might be suggested by other people.--Will that satisfy you?”

“Go ahead, Professor,” said Forsdyke. “Don’t ask me to believe in ghosts, that’s all!”

“I don’t ask you to believe in anything,” replied the Professor. “I don’t ask you to believe in the reality of your presence and ours in this room. If you have ever read old Bishop Berkeley you will know that you would find it exceedingly difficult to evade the thesis that it may all be an illusion. Your consciousness--whatever that is--builds up a picture from impressions on your senses. You can’t test the reality of the origin of those impressions--you can only collate the subjective results. Everything--Time and Space--may be an illusion for all you or I know!”

“I heard that in my dream!” Hetty broke in. “Someone said it: ‘Time and Space are an illusion!’ I remember it so clearly now!” Her eyes glistened with excitement.

“All right, Hetty,” said her father. “Let the Professor have his say. It’s his turn. And don’t take us out of our depth, Lomax. You know as well as I do what I mean by commonsense.”

The Professor laughed.

“Well, I’m not going to guarantee either of the explanations, Forsdyke. I merely put them before you. The first is the out-and-out spiritualist explanation. Let us see what we can make of that. You must assume, with the spiritualists, that man has a soul which survives with its attributes of memory, volition, and a certain potentiality for action upon what we know as matter. Captain Sergeantson here vouches for the fact that a certain German spy, Karl Wertheimer, was shot in London six months ago. The spiritualist would allege that it is possible--under certain conditions which are very imperfectly under human command--for the soul (we’ll call it that) of Karl Wertheimer to put itself into communication with his old associates who still remain in the world of the living. There is an enormous mass of human testimony--which you may reject as worthless if you like--to the possibility of such a thing. Assume it _is_ possible. Karl Wertheimer was a spy so successful, according to Captain Sergeantson, that it is reasonable to suppose that spying was his natural vocation, his life-passion, as much as painting pictures is the life-passion of an artist. It may be assumed that, if anything survives, one’s life-passion survives. Now suppose that Karl Wertheimer’s late employers believe in the possibility of communication with their late agent--that they find a medium--in this case, the young girl that Hetty saw in her dream--who can be controlled by the defunct Karl Wertheimer--through whom they can speak to him and receive communications from him--what is more natural than that they should do so? Admitting the premises, difficult as they are, it appears to me that the discarnate soul of Karl Wertheimer would be an extremely valuable secret agent----”

“Yes, suppose--suppose----” said Forsdyke. “It is all supposition. And it doesn’t explain Hetty’s dream.”

“I am coming to that,” pursued the Professor. “Grant me, for the sake of argument, all my suppositions. Karl Wertheimer’s employers are communicating with him and setting him tasks. One of those tasks, we will assume, concerns you. Now it may be, Forsdyke, that in the unseen world of discarnate spirits there is one who watches over you, guards you from danger. Someone, perhaps, who loved you in this life----”

Forsdyke glanced up to the portrait of his wife upon the wall.

“I leave the suggestion to you,” said the Professor, delicately. “We will merely pursue it as a hypothesis. Such a spirit would seek to warn you. It is obviously futile to discuss the means it might or might not employ. We know nothing of the conditions of discarnate life--nothing, at any rate, with scientific certainty. But we will assume that such a spirit, desirous of communicating, finds that Hetty here is temporarily in a mediumistic condition--and by ‘mediumistic’ I mean merely that she is in the abnormal state which, in all ages and in all countries, induces persons to declare that they see and hear things imperceptible to others. She certainly had an abnormal headache. She goes to sleep and dreams. We won’t analyze dream-consciousness now. I will only point out that, in a clearly remembered dream, the events of that dream are as real to consciousness as the events of waking life, and that the perception of Time is enormously modified--you dream through hours of experience while the hand marks minutes on the clock. You are subject to a different illusion of Time--and, as Time and Space are but two faces of the same phenomenon, it may be said that you are subject to a different illusion of Space as well. The spiritualist uses this undoubted fact to support his assertion that in dream-sleep the spirit of the living person is freed from the conditions of matter and is in a condition at least approximating to that of a person who is dead--that it can and does accompany the spirits of those who in this life were linked to it.

“The spiritualist, then, endeavouring to explain our present problem, would allege that a spiritual agency concerned with your welfare led Hetty’s spirit into a room in Berlin where Karl Wertheimer’s employers were indicating him to you for some special purpose--that Hetty, being then pure spirit, could actually perceive Karl Wertheimer as a living being when perhaps those in the room (if there was such a room) could only perceive the girl through whom he was speaking--that she could actually hear the significant phrase of their conversation. Further, the spiritualist would assert as a possibility that Karl Wertheimer, ordered to obtain information in your possession, is actually here--_shadowing_ you more effectively than any mortal spy could do--and that Hetty, still retaining her mediumistic power, has actually seen him. That is a spiritualistic explanation--I apologize for its length, Forsdyke. Give me another of your very excellent and material cigars!”

“It is a fantastic explanation. I don’t believe a word of it,” said Forsdyke, passing him the box. “Let us have the other one.”

“The other one,” replied the Professor, cutting the tip of his cigar and lighting it carefully, with a critical glance at its even burning, “is shorter. It is the explanation of those who are determined to explain a great mass of well-attested and apparently abnormal facts by normal agency. Their explanation in one word is--telepathy. You know the idea--the common phenomenon of two people who utter a remark, unconnected with previous conversation, at the same moment. Living minds unconsciously act upon each other--that is experimentally proved. Why, therefore, drag in dead ones? That is their argument. Let us apply their theory. Hetty is in an abnormal condition. Captain Sergeantson is coming to dinner. In his pocket he has a photograph of the notorious German spy, Karl Wertheimer. In his mind he has a story about him which he intends to relate. Now there are well-documented cases of hallucinations of persons actually on their way to a house where they were not expected appearing to their destined hostesses. I could quote you dozens of examples. The telepathist says this is because the guest forms in his mind a vivid picture of himself in that house, which is projected forward to the hostess’s mind and causes her to think she sees him. Now, Captain Sergeantson’s mind is not full of himself--it is full of the story about Karl Wertheimer that he is going to tell. Hetty’s mind--somehow--picks this up. She goes to sleep and as in sleep, notoriously, the human mind has a faculty for building up pictures and a story. Hetty dreams this story about Karl Wertheimer. It is true that she has never seen Karl Wertheimer. But Captain Sergeantson presumably has a visualization of him, including the limp, in his mind. The subsequent hallucinations are explained by the tendency to automatic repetition of any vivid impression upon the nervous centres which excite a picture in consciousness. It is a more or less tenable theory, but it would be gravely shaken if it happened that, unknown to Hetty or Captain Sergeantson--_you actually had something to do with a secret schedule which would interest our friends the enemy_.”

There was a silence. Forsdyke’s brow wrinkled as he stared into the fire. Suddenly he switched round to the Professor.

“That’s the devil of it, Lomax!” he exclaimed. “I have! A most secret schedule. Thank God, it will be out of my possession to-morrow morning, when I----”

“_Don’t_, Poppa!” cried Hetty, clapping her hand over his mouth. She stared wildly around her. “I feel sure that someone is listening!”

Forsdyke freed himself with a gesture which expressed his impatience of this absurdity.

“What do you make of that, Lomax?” he asked.

“Of course,” murmured the Professor, “Hetty’s mind may be influenced by a dominant anxiety in yours.--I should not like to say, Forsdyke!” His tone was emphatic. “Personally, I have never heard of a spectral spy--but--well, you are, on your showing worth spying on. And there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio--you know! If it _is_ possible--then there are things more improbable than that this means of acquiring information should be used. Your schedule would, I take it, be priceless?”

“The fate of the world may be involved in it,” replied Forsdyke. “But I can’t believe----”

“I am certain!” exclaimed Hetty. “I feel there’s something uncanny around us now!” She shuddered. “Oh, _do_ take care, Poppa!”

“But what can he do?” asked Jimmy, who had been listening anxiously to the Professor’s explanation. “What do you suggest, Sergeantson? You’re the authentic spycatcher. How can you defeat the ghost of one?”

“I pass!” replied Sergeantson, laconically. “Professor, the word’s to you!”

Forsdyke looked genuinely worried.

“Of course, I don’t believe it, Lomax,” he said. “But supposing--supposing there was something like you suggest--what could I do?”

The Professor’s eyes twinkled.

“Assuming the objective reality of our supposition, my dear Forsdyke,” he replied, “I can think of only one effective counterstroke.”

He held their interest for a moment in suspense.

“And that is----?”

“To drop a bomb on the girl!”

“A bomb--on the girl----” puzzled Jimmy slowly. “Why?”

“Because when you break the telephone receiver it doesn’t matter what the fellow at the other end says--you can’t hear!”

“But we can’t get at her,” said Sergeantson. “We don’t even know who she is, or where. We should never find out--in time.”

“That’s just it,” agreed the Professor. “You would have no time. Assuming that a ghostly spy is haunting our friend Forsdyke--the moment he reads that schedule, or even indicates where it is, the spy reads it too----”

“Reads it?” echoed Jimmy, incredulously. “But surely ghosts can’t read!”

“It is alleged they can,” replied the Professor. “There is, for example, a very curious case reported of the Rev. Stainton Moses, a teacher at the University College in London during the ’seventies. A spirit, purporting to be writing through his hand, quoted to him a paragraph from a closed book in a friend’s library. Moses merely indicated a book and a page at random, without knowing even to what book he referred. The quotation was correct. One of the foremost scientists of the present day has lent the weight of his authority to this story by incorporating it in his book as evidence of supernormal powers----”[2]

“That is sure incredible, Professor!” cried Sergeantson.

“We are dealing with what normally are incredibilities,” said the Professor, with a smile. “We agreed to assume an objective reality to our supposition--and, assuming it, the spy would read that schedule at the same moment as Forsdyke, and possibly communicate it instantaneously. As Forsdyke is going to do something with that schedule to-morrow morning, well,” he shrugged his shoulders, “my money would be on the ghost!”

“My God!” said Forsdyke, thoroughly alarmed, “if it’s true--it’s maddening! One can do nothing!”

“Nothing,” agreed the Professor. “There would be no time.”

The men stared at each other, exasperated at the hopelessness of the problem. If--they scarcely dared admit it to their sanity--it really were the case?

Hetty startled them by a sudden cry.

“Didn’t you hear? Didn’t you hear?” she exclaimed. “Someone laughing at us--close behind!--Oh, look! Look!” She pointed to empty space. “There he is again! Don’t you see?”

She fainted in Jimmy’s ready arms.

* * * * *

The next morning Hetty found her father already at breakfast.

“Well,” he asked, his dry smile mildly sarcastic, “any more dreams?”

“Horrid!” she replied with a little shudder as she poured herself out some coffee. “But I don’t remember them.”

“You will see the doctor to-day, young woman,” observed her father in a tone which indicated his verdict on the happenings of the previous night.

Hetty was docility itself, a phenomenon not altogether lost on her experienced parent.

“Very well, Poppa,” she agreed, demurely. “What are you going to do this morning?”

“I am going to the office to get some papers----”

“_The_ papers----?” She checked herself with a little frightened glance round the room.

Her father laughed--a good, healthy, commonsense laugh.

“_The_ papers!” he said. “No more nonsense about ghosts, Hetty. I’m going to get _the_ papers from my office and take them round to the Conference. So now you know. And there’s a Colt automatic in the pocket of the automobile if any one tries tricks on the way.”

Hetty nodded her head sagely.

“Guess you’ve a place for me in that automobile, Poppa,” she said. “I’ll come with you to the office, wait while you get the papers, and go on with you to the Conference building--and while you’re there I’ll go on to see that doctor. I shall be back in time to pick you up before you are finished with your old Conference.”

Her father saw no objection to this, was in fact secretly glad to have her under his eye as long as possible.

“Mind, no tricks about the doctor!” he said, with an assumption of severity.

“Sure, Poppa!” was her equable reply.

A few minutes later saw them speeding through the keen air of a frosty morning toward Forsdyke’s office. But the interior of the limousine was warm, and Hetty, snug in her furs, looked a picture of young, healthy beauty, looked---- A memory came to Henry Forsdyke in a pang that brought a sigh. He thought of the Professor’s suggestion of last night. Of course, the whole thing was absurd!--but he wondered----

The car swung into the sidewalk in front of the Government building, stopped before the big doorway with the marble steps. Forsdyke got out.

“I shall be back in a few minutes,” he said.

Hetty watched him go across the pavement, ascend the marble steps. He looked neither to right nor left. _Then who was that with him?_ Hetty felt her heart stop. Who was that who passed into the doorway with him? No one had been on the steps--she was suddenly sure of it. Yet--her heart began to pump again--certainly two figures had passed through the swing-doors! She sat chilled and paralyzed for the moment in which she visualized the memory of those two figures passing into the shadow of the interior--tried to think when she had first perceived the second. A certitude shot through her, a wild alarm.

She jumped to her feet, and with a blind, instinctive desire for a weapon, pulled the Colt out of the pocket of the limousine and thrust it into her muff. A moment later she was running across the pavement and up the marble steps. The janitor pulled open the swing-door for her. She fixed him with excited eyes.

“Who was that who came in with Mr. Forsdyke just now?” she asked breathlessly.

The janitor stared.

“No one, miss. Mr. Forsdyke was alone.”

Alone! She repressed an impulse to scream out, dashed to the elevator which had just come to rest after its descent. The attendant opened the gate at her approach.

“Did you take Mr. Forsdyke up just now?” she asked.

“Yes, miss.”

“Was he alone?”