Part 19

‘What gave a sort of point to him, you know, was the fact that he did seem within limits to have found himself out. The mess he had made of haunting had depressed him terribly. He had been told it would be a “lark”; he had come expecting it to be a “lark,” and here it was, nothing but another failure added to his record! He proclaimed himself an utter out-and-out failure. He said, and I can quite believe it, that he had never tried to do anything all his life that he hadn’t made a perfect mess of--and through all the wastes of eternity he never would. If he had had sympathy, perhaps---- He paused at that, and stood regarding me. He remarked that, strange as it might seem to me, nobody, not any one, ever, had given him the amount of sympathy I was doing now. I could see what he wanted straight away, and I determined to head him off at once. I may be a brute, you know, but being the Only Real Friend, the recipient of the confidences of one of these egotistical weaklings, ghost or body, is beyond my physical endurance. I got up briskly. “Don’t you brood on these things too much,” I said. “The thing you’ve got to do is to get out of this--get out of this sharp. You pull yourself together and _try_.” “I can’t,” he said. “You try,” I said, and try he did.’

‘Try!’ said Sanderson. ‘_How?_’

‘Passes,’ said Clayton.

‘Passes?’

‘Complicated series of gestures and passes with the hands. That’s how he had come in and that’s how he had to get out again. Lord! what a business I had!’

‘But how could _any_ series of passes----’ I began.

‘My dear man,’ said Clayton, turning on me and putting a great emphasis on certain words, ‘you want _everything_ clear. _I_ don’t know _how_. All I know is that you _do_--that _he_ did, anyhow, at least. After a fearful time, you know, he got his passes right and suddenly disappeared.’

‘Did you,’ said Sanderson, slowly, ‘observe the passes?’

‘Yes,’ said Clayton, and seemed to think. ‘It was tremendously queer,’ he said. ‘There we were, I and this thin vague ghost, in that silent room, in this silent, empty inn, in this silent little Friday-night town. Not a sound except our voices and a faint panting he made when he swung. There was the bedroom candle, and one candle on the dressing-table alight, that was all--sometimes one or other would flare up into a tall, lean, astonished flame for a space. And queer things happened. “I can’t,” he said; “I shall never----!” And suddenly he sat down on a little chair at the foot of the bed and began to sob and sob. Lord! what a harrowing, whimpering thing he seemed!

‘“You pull yourself together,” I said, and tried to pat him on the back, and ... my confounded hand went through him! By that time, you know, I wasn’t nearly so--massive as I had been on the landing. I got the queerness of it full. I remember snatching back my hand out of him, as it were, with a little thrill, and walking over to the dressing-table. “You pull yourself together,” I said to him, “and try.” And in order to encourage and help him I began to try as well.’

‘What!’ said Sanderson, ‘the passes?’

‘Yes, the passes.’

‘But----’ I said, moved by an idea that eluded me for a space.

‘This is interesting,’ said Sanderson, with his finger in his pipe-bowl. ‘You mean to say this ghost of yours gave away----’

‘Did his level best to give away the whole confounded barrier? _Yes._’

‘He didn’t,’ said Wish; ‘he couldn’t. Or you’d have gone there too.’

‘That’s precisely it,’ I said, finding my elusive idea put into words for me.

‘That _is_ precisely it,’ said Clayton, with thoughtful eyes upon the fire.

For just a little while there was silence.

‘And at last he did it?’ said Sanderson.

‘At last he did it. I had to keep him up to it hard, but he did it at last--rather suddenly. He despaired, we had a scene, and then he got up abruptly and asked me to go through the whole performance, slowly, so that he might see. “I believe,” he said, “if I could _see_ I should spot what was wrong at once.” And he did. “_I_ know,” he said. “What do you know?” said I. “_I_ know,” he repeated. Then he said, peevishly, “I _can’t_ do it if you look at me--I really _can’t_; it’s been that, partly, all along. I’m such a nervous fellow that you put me out.” Well, we had a bit of an argument. Naturally I wanted to see; but he was as obstinate as a mule, and suddenly I had come over as tired as a dog--he tired me out. “All right,” I said, “_I_ won’t look at you,” and turned towards the mirror, on the wardrobe, by the bed.

‘He started off very fast. I tried to follow him by looking in the looking-glass, to see just what it was had hung. Round went his arms and hands, so, and so, and so, and then with a rush came to the last gesture of all--you stand erect and open out your arms--and so, don’t you know, he stood. And then he didn’t! He didn’t! He wasn’t! I wheeled round from the looking-glass to him. There was nothing! I was alone with the flaring candles and a staggering mind. What had happened? Had anything happened? Had I been dreaming?... And then, with an absurd note of finality about it, the clock upon the landing discovered the moment was ripe for striking _one_. So!--Ping! And I was as grave and sober as a judge, with all my champagne and whisky gone into the vast serene. Feeling queer, you know--confoundedly _queer_! Queer! Good Lord!’

He regarded his cigar-ash for a moment. ‘That’s all that happened,’ he said.

‘And then you went to bed?’ asked Evans.

‘What else was there to do?’

I looked Wish in the eye. We wanted to scoff, and there was something, something perhaps in Clayton’s voice and manner, that hampered our desire.

‘And about these passes?’ said Sanderson.

‘I believe I could do them now.’

‘Oh!’ said Sanderson, and produced a pen-knife and set himself to grub the dottel out of the bowl of his clay.

‘Why don’t you do them now?’ said Sanderson, shutting his pen-knife with a click.

‘That’s what I’m going to do,’ said Clayton.

‘They won’t work,’ said Evans.

‘If they do----’ I suggested.

‘You know, I’d rather you didn’t,’ said Wish, stretching out his legs.

‘Why?’ asked Evans.

‘I’d rather he didn’t,’ said Wish.

‘But he hasn’t got ’em right,’ said Sanderson, plugging too much tobacco into his pipe.

‘All the same, I’d rather he didn’t,’ said Wish.

We argued with Wish. He said that for Clayton to go through those gestures was like mocking a serious matter. ‘But you don’t believe----?’ I said. Wish glanced at Clayton, who was staring into the fire, weighing something in his mind. ‘I do--more than half, anyhow, I do,’ said Wish.

‘Clayton,’ said I, ‘you’re too good a liar for us. Most of it was all right. But that disappearance ... happened to be convincing. Tell us, it’s a tale of cock and bull.’

He stood up without heeding me, took the middle of the hearthrug, and faced me. For a moment he regarded his feet thoughtfully, and then for all the rest of the time his eyes were on the opposite wall, with an intent expression. He raised his two hands slowly to the level of his eyes and so began....

Now, Sanderson is a Freemason, a member of the lodge of the Four Kings, which devotes itself so ably to the study and elucidation of all the mysteries of Masonry past and present, and among the students of this lodge Sanderson is by no means the least. He followed Clayton’s motions with a singular interest in his reddish eye. ‘That’s not bad,’ he said, when it was done. ‘You really do, you know, put things together, Clayton, in a most amazing fashion. But there’s one little detail out.’

‘I know,’ said Clayton. ‘I believe I could tell you which.’

‘Well?’

‘This,’ said Clayton, and did a queer little twist and writhing and thrust of the hands.

‘Yes.’

‘That, you know, was what _he_ couldn’t get right,’ said Clayton. ‘But how do _you_----?’

‘Most of this business, and particularly how you invented it, I don’t understand at all,’ said Sanderson, ‘but just that phase--I do.’ He reflected. ‘These happen to be a series of gestures--connected with a certain branch of esoteric Masonry---- Probably you know. Or else---- _How?_’ He reflected still further. ‘I do not see I can do any harm in telling you just the proper twist. After all, if you know, you know; if you don’t, you don’t.’

‘I know nothing,’ said Clayton, ‘except what the poor devil let out last night.’

‘Well, anyhow,’ said Sanderson, and placed his churchwarden very carefully upon the shelf over the fireplace. Then very rapidly he gesticulated with his hands.

‘So?’ said Clayton, repeating.

‘So,’ said Sanderson, and took his pipe in hand again.

‘Ah, _now_,’ said Clayton, ‘I can do the whole thing--right.’

He stood up before the waning fire and smiled at us all. But I think there was just a little hesitation in his smile. ‘If I begin----’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t begin,’ said Wish.

‘It’s all right!’ said Evans. ‘Matter is indestructible. You don’t think any jiggery-pokery of this sort is going to snatch Clayton into the world of shades. Not it! You may try, Clayton, so far as I’m concerned, until your arms drop off at the wrists.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ said Wish, and stood up and put his arm on Clayton’s shoulder. ‘You’ve made me half believe in that story somehow, and I don’t want to see the thing done.’

‘Goodness!’ said I, ‘here’s Wish frightened!’

‘I am,’ said Wish, with real or admirably feigned intensity. ‘I believe that if he goes through these motions right he’ll _go_.’

‘He’ll not do anything of the sort,’ I cried. ‘There’s only one way out of this world for men, and Clayton is thirty years from that. Besides.... And such a ghost! Do you think----?’

Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among our chairs and stopped beside the table and stood there. ‘Clayton,’ he said, ‘you’re a fool.’

Clayton, with a humorous light in his eyes, smiled back at him. ‘Wish,’ he said, ‘is right and all you others are wrong. I shall go. I shall get to the end of these passes, and as the last swish whistles through the air, Presto!--this hearthrug will be vacant, the room will be blank amazement, and a respectably dressed gentleman of fifteen stone will plump into the world of shades. I’m certain. So will you be. I decline to argue further. Let the thing be tried.’

‘_No_,’ said Wish, and made a step and ceased, and Clayton raised his hands once more to repeat the spirit’s passing.

By that time, you know, we were all in a state of tension--largely because of the behaviour of Wish. We sat all of us with our eyes on Clayton--I, at least, with a sort of tight, stiff feeling about me as though from the back of my skull to the middle of my thighs my body had been changed to steel. And there, with a gravity that was imperturbably serene, Clayton bowed and swayed and waved his hands and arms before us. As he drew towards the end one piled up, one tingled in one’s teeth. The last gesture, I have said, was to swing the arms out wide open, with the face held up. And when at last he swung out to this closing gesture I ceased even to breathe. It was ridiculous, of course, but you know that ghost-story feeling. It was after dinner, in a queer, old shadowy house. Would he, after all----?

There he stood for one stupendous moment, with his arms open and his upturned face, assured and bright, in the glare of the hanging lamp. We hung through that moment as if it were an age, and then came from all of us something that was half a sigh of infinite relief and half a reassuring ‘_No!_’ For visibly--he wasn’t going. It was all nonsense. He had told an idle story, and carried it almost to conviction, that was all!... And then in that moment the face of Clayton changed.

It changed, It changed as a lit house changes when its lights are suddenly extinguished. His eyes were suddenly eyes that were fixed, his smile was frozen on his lips, and he stood there still. He stood there, very gently swaying.

That moment, too, was an age. And then, you know, chairs were scraping, things were falling, and we were all moving. His knees seemed to give, and he fell forward, and Evans rose and caught him in his arms....

It stunned us all. For a minute I suppose no one said a coherent thing. We believed it, yet could not believe it.... I came out of a muddled stupefaction to find myself kneeling beside him, and his vest and shirt were torn open, and Sanderson’s hand lay on his heart....

Well--the simple fact before us could very well wait our convenience; there was no hurry for us to comprehend. It lay there for an hour; it lies athwart my memory, black and amazing still, to this day. Clayton had, indeed, passed into the world that lies so near to and so far from our own, and he had gone thither by the only road that mortal man may take. But whether he did indeed pass there by that poor ghost’s incantation, or whether he was stricken suddenly by apoplexy in the midst of an idle tale--as the coroner’s jury would have us believe--is no matter for my judging; it is just one of those inexplicable riddles that must remain unsolved until the final solution of all things shall come. All I certainly know is that, in the very moment, in the very instant, of concluding those passes, he changed, and staggered, and fell down before us--dead!

THE STOLEN BODY

Mr Bessel was the senior partner in the firm of Bessel, Hart, and Brown, of St Paul’s Churchyard, and for many years he was well known among those interested in psychical research as a liberal-minded and conscientious investigator. He was an unmarried man, and instead of living in the suburbs, after the fashion of his class, he occupied rooms in the Albany, near Piccadilly. He was particularly interested in the questions of thought transference and of apparitions of the living, and in November, 1896, he commenced a series of experiments in conjunction with Mr Vincey, of Staple Inn, in order to test the alleged possibility of projecting an apparition of oneself by force of will through space.

Their experiments were conducted in the following manner: At a pre-arranged hour Mr Bessel shut himself in one of his rooms in the Albany and Mr Vincey in his sitting-room in Staple Inn, and each then fixed his mind as resolutely as possible on the other. Mr Bessel had acquired the art of self-hypnotism, and, so far as he could, he attempted first to hypnotise himself and then to project himself as a ‘phantom of the living’ across the intervening space of nearly two miles into Mr Vincey’s apartment. On several evenings this was tried without any satisfactory result, but on the fifth or sixth occasion Mr Vincey did actually see or imagine he saw an apparition of Mr Bessel standing in his room. He states that the appearance, although brief, was very vivid and real. He noticed that Mr Bessel’s face was white and his expression anxious, and, moreover, that his hair was disordered. For a moment Mr Vincey, in spite of his state of expectation, was too surprised to speak or move, and in that moment it seemed to him as though the figure glanced over its shoulder and incontinently vanished.

It had been arranged that an attempt should be made to photograph any phantasm seen, but Mr Vincey had not the instant presence of mind to snap the camera that lay ready on the table beside him, and when he did so he was too late. Greatly elated, however, even by this partial success, he made a note of the exact time, and at once took a cab to the Albany to inform Mr Bessel of this result.

He was surprised to find Mr Bessel’s outer door standing open to the night, and the inner apartments lit and in an extraordinary disorder. An empty champagne magnum lay smashed upon the floor; its neck had been broken off against the inkpot on the bureau and lay beside it. An octagonal occasional table, which carried a bronze statuette and a number of choice books, had been rudely overturned, and down the primrose paper of the wall inky fingers had been drawn, as it seemed for the mere pleasure of defilement. One of the delicate chintz curtains had been violently torn from its rings and thrust upon the fire, so that the smell of its smouldering filled the room. Indeed the whole place was disarranged in the strangest fashion. For a few minutes Mr Vincey, who had entered sure of finding Mr Bessel in his easy chair awaiting him, could scarcely believe his eyes, and stood staring helplessly at these unanticipated things.

Then, full of a vague sense of calamity, he sought the porter at the entrance lodge. ‘Where is Mr Bessel?’ he asked. ‘Do you know that all the furniture is broken in Mr Bessel’s room?’ The porter said nothing, but, obeying his gestures, came at once to Mr Bessel’s apartment to see the state of affairs. ‘This settles it,’ he said, surveying the lunatic confusion. ‘I didn’t know of this. Mr Bessel’s gone off. He’s mad!’

He then proceeded to tell Mr Vincey that about half an hour previously, that is to say, at about the time of Mr Bessel’s apparition in Mr Vincey’s rooms, the missing gentleman had rushed out of the gates of the Albany into Vigo Street, hatless and with disordered hair, and had vanished into the direction of Bond Street. ‘And as he went past me,’ said the porter, ‘he laughed--a sort of gasping laugh, with his mouth open and his eyes glaring--I tell you, sir, he fair scared me!--like this.’

According to his imitation it was anything but a pleasant laugh. ‘He waved his hand, with all his fingers crooked and clawing--like that. And he said, in a sort of fierce whisper, “_Life!_” Just that one word, “_Life!_”’

‘Dear me,’ said Mr Vincey. ‘Tut, tut,’ and ‘Dear me!’ He could think of nothing else to say. He was naturally very much surprised. He turned from the room to the porter and from the porter to the room in the gravest perplexity. Beyond his suggestion that probably Mr Bessel would come back presently and explain what had happened, their conversation was unable to proceed. ‘It might be a sudden toothache,’ said the porter, ‘a very sudden and violent toothache, jumping on him suddenly-like and driving him wild. I’ve broken things myself before now in such a case....’ He thought. ‘If it was, why should he say ‘_life_’ to me as he went past?’

Mr Vincey did not know. Mr Bessel did not return, and at last Mr Vincey, having done some more helpless staring, and having addressed a note of brief inquiry and left it in a conspicuous position on the bureau, returned in a very perplexed frame of mind to his own premises in Staple Inn. This affair had given him a shock. He was at a loss to account for Mr Bessel’s conduct on any sane hypothesis. He tried to read, but he could not do so; he went for a short walk, and was so preoccupied that he narrowly escaped a cab at the top of Chancery Lane; and at last--a full hour before his usual time--he went to bed. For a considerable time he could not sleep because of his memory of the silent confusion of Mr Bessel’s apartment, and when at length he did attain an uneasy slumber it was at once disturbed by a very vivid and distressing dream of Mr Bessel.

He saw Mr Bessel gesticulating wildly, and with his face white and contorted. And, inexplicably mingled with his appearance, suggested perhaps by his gestures, was an intense fear, an urgency to act. He even believes that he heard the voice of his fellow experimenter calling distressfully to him, though at the time he considered this to be an illusion. The vivid impression remained though Mr Vincey awoke. For a space he lay awake and trembling in the darkness, possessed with that vague, unaccountable terror of unknown possibilities that comes out of dreams upon even the bravest men. But at last he roused himself, and turned over and went to sleep again, only for the dream to return with enhanced vividness.

He awoke with such a strong conviction that Mr Bessel was in overwhelming distress and need of help that sleep was no longer possible. He was persuaded that his friend had rushed out to some dire calamity. For a time he lay reasoning vainly against this belief, but at last he gave way to it. He arose, against all reason, lit his gas and dressed, and set out through the deserted streets--deserted, save for a noiseless policeman or so and the early news carts--towards Vigo Street to inquire if Mr Bessel had returned.

But he never got there. As he was going down Long Acre some unaccountable impulse turned him aside out of that street towards Covent Garden, which was just waking to its nocturnal activities. He saw the market in front of him--a queer effect of glowing yellow lights and busy black figures. He became aware of a shouting, and perceived a figure turn the corner by the hotel and run swiftly towards him. He knew at once that it was Mr Bessel. But it was Mr Bessel transfigured. He was hatless and dishevelled, his collar was torn open, he grasped a bone-handled walking-cane near the ferrule end, and his mouth was pulled awry. And he ran, with agile strides, very rapidly. Their encounter was the affair of an instant. ‘Bessel!’ cried Vincey.

The running man gave no sign of recognition either of Mr Vincey or of his own name. Instead, he cut at his friend savagely with the stick, hitting him in the face within an inch of the eye. Mr Vincey, stunned and astonished, staggered back, lost his footing, and fell heavily on the pavement. It seemed to him that Mr Bessel leapt over him as he fell. When he looked again Mr Bessel had vanished, and a policeman and a number of garden porters and salesmen were rushing past towards Long Acre in hot pursuit.

With the assistance of several passers-by--for the whole street was speedily alive with running people--Mr Vincey struggled to his feet. He at once became the centre of a crowd greedy to see his injury. A multitude of voices competed to reassure him of his safety, and then to tell him of the behaviour of the madman, as they regarded Mr Bessel. He had suddenly appeared in the middle of the market screaming ‘_Life! Life!_’ striking right and left with a blood-stained walking-stick, and dancing and shouting with laughter at each successful blow. A lad and two women had broken heads, and he had smashed a man’s wrist; a little child had been knocked insensible, and for a time he had driven every one before him, so furious and resolute had his behaviour been. Then he made a raid upon a coffee stall, hurled its paraffin flare through the window of the post office, and fled laughing, after stunning the foremost of the two policemen who had the pluck to charge him.

Mr Vincey’s first impulse was naturally to join in the pursuit of his friend, in order if possible to save him from the violence of the indignant people. But his action was slow, the blow had half stunned him, and while this was still no more than a resolution came the news, shouted through the crowd, that Mr Bessel had eluded his pursuers. At first Mr Vincey could scarcely credit this, but the universality of the report, and presently the dignified return of two futile policemen, convinced him. After some aimless inquiries he returned towards Staple Inn, padding a handkerchief to a now very painful nose.

He was angry and astonished and perplexed. It appeared to him indisputable that Mr Bessel must have gone violently mad in the midst of his experiment in thought transference, but why that should make him appear with a sad white face in Mr Vincey’s dreams seemed a problem beyond solution. He racked his brains in vain to explain this. It seemed to him at last that not simply Mr Bessel, but the order of things must be insane. But he could think of nothing to do. He shut himself carefully into his room, lit his fire--it was a gas fire with asbestos bricks--and, fearing fresh dreams if he went to bed, remained bathing his injured face, or holding up books in a vain attempt to read until dawn. Throughout that vigil he had a curious persuasion that Mr Bessel was endeavouring to speak to him, but he would not let himself attend to any such belief.