Part 7

"'I believe because it is impossible,'" quoted the stranger. "You may keep the pieces and decide at your leisure."

He rose as he spoke, and once more threw off his robe. The Club waited breathless. He again placed the ring between his feet.

"I wish now," he said, "the three globes filled with colored fluid."

These were brought to him on a tray, and at his bidding placed close together in a triangle.

"This is only another of the innumerable possible variations upon the penetrability of matter, and would come under the head in common nomenclature of that stupidly used term 'fourth dimension.' I said that I am not a juggler, but of course I chose some of the tests because they are picturesque, and so might amuse an audience. See."

He laid his hand upon the top of the three globes. Instantly they became one by intersection, the three bases being moved nearer together. Each globe preserved perfectly its shape, and in the divisions now made by the coalescing of the section of one sphere with that of another the liquid was of the hue resulting from a mingling of the colors of the differently tinted fluids.

A murmur went around. Several of the members rose to examine the globes.

"Put them on the table," the wonder-worker said, "and then everybody may see."

"We are not to ask questions of methods," Judge Hobart observed. "Is it proper to inquire whether the experiment involves a contradiction of the old law that two bodies cannot occupy the same space?"

"Not at all," was the answer. "Modern science has shown clearly enough that to seem to occupy space is only to fill it as the stars fill the sky. I have only taken advantage of that fact to crowd more matter into a defined area."

The members were asked to seat themselves, and when this had been done, the stranger said: "Any number of examples of this power could be given, but these should be enough, unless some one would prefer to improvise a test on the spot."

"I am glad that you say this," Professor Gray remarked. "I am subject to the prejudice, foolish enough but common, of being more impressed by experiments of my own contriving. Do you mind, sir, if Dr. Taunton and I loop handkerchiefs together, and let you separate them while we hold the ends?"

"Certainly not," was the reply.

The experiment was instantly successful, and was repeated for double assurance.

"If we had nothing else to do," the stranger observed, "we might go on in this line indefinitely; but this is enough of the 'fourth dimension,' so called. Now we will try development."

III

The flower-pot filled with earth was placed upon the slab at the feet of the magician. The orange seed was laid upon the earth.

"So ingenious an explanation has recently been given--or, more exactly, recently revived--of the development of a plant from a seed, that you may suppose me to have all the different pieces of an orange grove concealed about me, despite the fact that my dress is not adapted to the concealment of a needle. However, you may judge for yourselves."

He leaned forward, and with the point of his finger pushed the seed into the earth.

"Will some one cover the pot with a handkerchief?" he said. "Please be careful not to touch me or it. Hold the handkerchief out, and drop it."

One of the members followed the directions, and for a moment the stranger sat quiet, his eyes fixed on the covered flower-pot. The centre of the handkerchief was seen gradually to rise, and when the cloth was lifted, the astonished eyes of the Club beheld a glossy shoot, three or four inches in height. Without again covering it, the magician continued to gaze fixedly upon the plant. Before the eyes of the spectators the shoot became a shrub, the shrub a tree; the fragrance of orange blossoms filled the air, and among the shining leaves began to swell the golden fruit. The time had been numbered only in minutes, yet there stood a tree higher than a man's head, and laden with golden globes.

"Take it away," the wonder-worker said, "and let me rest a little before I try anything more. You will find the tree to-morrow, and I think you will concede that it is too bulky to have been concealed under these fleshings. If you think it only an optical delusion or the result of hypnotism, try to-morrow by the senses of persons who do not know how it was produced."

He sat for some moments with his head bowed in his hands. Then at his direction a globe about a foot in diameter was filled with clear water and placed on the table. The lights were then turned down so as to leave all the room in shadow except the platform.

"I must ask you to be as quiet as possible," the magician requested. "The experiment is a difficult one, and from living in the atmosphere which surrounds my daily life I am out of the proper condition."

Putting his hands behind him, he sank downward on the slab to his knees, and so reached forward as to press his thumbs upon his great toes. The position was a singular one, and earlier in the evening might have raised a smile. Now all was breathless silence for a couple of moments. Then the stranger sprang suddenly to his full height, and directed his forefinger with a violent movement toward the globe. A spark of violet light not unlike that from an electric battery flashed from the outstretched finger to the globe, and was seen to remain like a star in the midst of the water.

From this violet centre, with slow, sinuous movement, numerous filaments of light grew out in the liquid, until the globe was filled with tangled and intertwined threads like the roots of a hyacinth in its glass. Slowly, slowly, the nucleus rose to the surface, dragging the threads behind it. Then above the water began to form a faint haze. With gradual motion it mounted, absorbing by degrees the fire from the phosphorescent fibres which served for its roots, until a faintly luminous pillar of dully glowing mist four or five feet high showed above the mouth of the globe.

The magician made strange gestures, and a slow rotary motion was discerned in the cloud. Without abrupt or definitely marked alteration the pillar was modified in shape until more and more plainly was evident a resemblance to the human form. He rose to his full height, and extended both his hands toward the figure. Slowly it detached itself from the water and from the globe, and floated in the air, the perfect shape of a woman, transparent, faintly luminous, but with a lustre less cold than at first. One of the men drew in his breath with a deep and audible inspiration. The shape wavered, and another spectator impulsively cried "Hush!" The word seemed to break the spell. The wonderful visionary form trembled, shivered, and its exquisite beauty melted in the air.

The magician resumed his seat with visible disappointment.

"I am sorry," he said. "I am already tired, and you distracted my attention. The experiment has failed. May the lights be turned up, please."

A murmur of disappointment ran around the room.

"I am sorry," he repeated. "I should have impressed on you more strongly the need of absolute quiet. I am not quite up to beginning this over again. Let me show you the opposite--disintegration. It is easier to tear down than to build up."

The block of iron he had asked for was by his direction laid on the floor in front of the platform. The magician sat for a moment with closed eyes, his hands laid palm to palm upon his knees. Then with an abrupt movement he pointed his two forefingers, pressed together, toward the cube. A report like that of a pistol startled the members, and the solid iron shivered into almost impalpable dust. The members of the Club crowded together to the spot.

"Please do not touch my platform," he requested, as he had earlier in the evening. "I must still show you something more."

IV

"Levitation is a phenomenon which is common enough," he said by way of preface, "but our examination would by no means be complete without it. Of course I am only touching upon a few of the less subtle principles that underlie what is commonly misnamed occultism; but this is one of the obvious ones. Please let some heavy man step upon the scales."

Judge Hobart was with some laughter persuaded to take his place upon the platform of the scales, and the indicator marked a weight of two hundred and six pounds.

"Will you look again?" the stranger asked of the gentleman who had read the number.

"Why, he weighs nothing!" the weigher exclaimed, in astonishment.

"His weight has broken the scales," another member declared.

"You may think," the magician went on, "that I have bewitched the spring. Will somebody lift the Judge?"

Professor Gray, who happened to stand nearest, put out one hand and picked the venerable Judge up as easily as he would have lifted a pocket-handkerchief. As he took his victim by the collar, the effect did not tend toward solemnity.

"What do you mean, sir?" demanded the Judge. "Put me down, sir, at once."

The stranger made a little sign with his hand. The Professor saw and understood, so instead of putting Judge Hobart down, he lightly tossed the rotund figure upward. The Judge, probably more to his amazement than to his satisfaction, found himself floating in the air with his head against the ceiling, and with his legs paddling hopelessly as if he were learning to swim. The other members shouted with laughter.

"That will do," the magician said. "I did not mean to turn things into a farce."

The ponderous form of Judge Hobart floated softly to the floor; his face showed a wonderful mixture of bewilderment, wounded vanity, and relief.

"It's very warm at the top of the room," he said, wiping his red forehead; "very warm. Heat rises so."

"Other things rise also at times," somebody said.

Everybody laughed, and then the members settled into quiet again, and listened to the magician.

"Examples of this sort are infinite in number, but one is as good as many. The principle is everywhere the same. Levitation is really too simple a matter to occupy more of our time. The transporting of matter through space and through other matter is more interesting and more important. It is also more difficult, and consequently less common. Some time ago it was proposed in London, as a test of the reality of occultism, that a copy of an Indian paper of any given date be produced in London on the day of its publication in Calcutta. The test was shirked by those who are advertising themselves by pretending to powers which they did not have, and those who were able to do the feat had no interest in helping to bolster up a sham. That the thing was easily possible is the last fact with which I shall trouble you to-night. Allow me to offer you a copy of the 'London Times' of this morning."

As he spoke, a newspaper fluttered from the air above, and fell upon the table. The stranger checked a movement which Judge Hobart made to examine it.

"Let me seal it first," he said. "It will make future identification surer. Please lay it with that stick of sealing-wax on the platform."

When this had been done, he took the wax and held it above the paper. The wax melted without visible cause, and dropped on the margin of the journal. Leaning forward, the magician pressed his seal into the red mass, and then flung the paper again on the table.

"It will be easy," he remarked, "to compare this with a copy received through the ordinary channels. You do not need to be instructed in the means proper for securing and identifying this. The experiment may seem to you a simple one, but I assure you that it is so difficult that you cannot hope to repeat it without preparation you would find pretty severe."

He rose as he spoke, and drew his robe about him.

"I have to thank you," he continued, "for your patience and attention. As I meet so many of you not infrequently, it is better to trust to your courtesy not to name me than to your ignorance."

He pulled off, as he spoke, the black mask, and with cries of surprise more than half the members of the Club called out the name of one of the best-known club men of the town, a man who had traveled extensively in the East, a man who had proved his powers by distinguished services in literature, a man of wealth and of leisure, and one of dominating character. Smiling calmly, he replaced the mask, and stood a moment in silence.

"That is all," he said.

Then, with a peculiar gesture he waved his arms over the company, and repeated a few words in some unknown tongue. He stepped down from the platform and walked quietly from the room. But by that gesture or spell he had strangely wrought upon their minds; from that moment no man of them all, not even the President, has ever been able to remember who was their acquaintance who that evening did such wonders in the sight of the astonished Psychical Club.

TIM CALLIGAN'S GRAVE-MONEY

I

"'T was a fool's notion to get tipped out of a boat anywhere," said Tim Calligan to his circle of fellow pensioners at the Dartbank poor-farm, "me that's been on the water like a bubble from the day me mother weaned me, saints rest her soul, and she as decent a woman as ever was born in County Cork."

Tim was relating the oft-told tale of his escape from drowning, a story of which they were fond, and which he delighted to tell. The old man had a fertile Celtic fancy, and his narrations were luxuriant with exuberant growth.

"So there was meself drownin' like a blind kitten in a pond,--and many 's the litter of 'em I'd sent to the cat's Purgatory by the way of that very river, saving that the Purgatory of cats there ain't any, having no souls, by the token that having nine lives they'd belike have nine souls, and being so many they'd crowd good Christian souls in Paradise,--blessings on the holy saints for previnting it.

"No more could I make me head stay out of water," Tim went on, "than if it was a stone. 'Good-by, Tim, me boy,' sez I to meself. 'Ye're gone this time,' sez I, 'and I'll miss nothing in not being at yer wake, by the token that there won't be no wake; and ef there was,' sez I, still to meself, 'there could be nothing to drink but water here in this cursed stream.' And down I went again, like a dasher in a churn. 'Holy St. Bridget,' thinks I, 'how far 'll it be to the bottom of this ondecent river. Likely it goes clean through to Chiny,' thinks I, 'and one of them bloody, onbelaving heathen 'll be grabbing me presently with his mice-eating hands. But it's better being pulled out by a heretic heathen than staying in and soaking.' With that up again I goes, like a shellaly at a fair; and it was like fire flashing in me eyes. Sez I to meself: 'That 'll be Widdy Malony's bit of a house,' sez I, spaking always in me mind because of the floods of water in me mouth. 'It'll be burning to the very ground,' sez I, 'and me missing all the fun of it. The blessed saints help the poor woman, turned out of house and home to get bite and sup for her children like a chipmunk, and every one of them taking after Dennis, and I might have married her meself long ago if they was fewer, for I'd want a ready-made family small,' sez I to meself, plunking up and down in the water like a dumpling in the broth. ''T is pitiful to think of her house burning down over her head,' sez I, 'and she never to know the man might have made her Mis' Calligan's down here drowning in plain sight of the very flames of it, and she nor nobody doing one thing to save him, praise be to the handiworks of God. Faith, and 't would be better for the both of us if she had more water and meself more fire,' sez I in me mind. And all the time 't was no fire, but just the blessed sun I'd never see again, barring I had n't got saved, and it shining and flashing in the eyes of me from the widdy's windows."

The tale was long, for it included an enumeration of all the sensations and emotions which Tim had really experienced, and all those which, in the course of long years, he had been able to imagine he might have felt. As at the poor-farm time was not an object, however, except of slaughter, the length of the narrative was its greatest recommendation.

"And with that," Tim at last ended his recital, "I felt the whole top of me head pulled off as I lay soft and easy on the bottom of the flood, and thinking nothing at all, but reflecting how soft the mud of it were and pitying Pat Donovan that he'd never get the quarter I owed him. 'That 'll be a Chany-man or the Divil, Tim, me boy,' sez I to meself; and then I made no more observes to meself at all, owing to the soul having gone out of me body. And all the time it was Bill Trafton catching me by the hair, him having dove for me just shortly after me being dead, and dragging me to the top when I could n't be moved from the bottom, and was likely to die any minute, saving that it was dead already I was. And he saved me life, by the token that the soul had gone out of me peaceful; but, Holy Mother, how'll I be telling ye the pain of its coming back! 'T was like the unwilling dragging back of a pig out of a praitie patch to get the soul of me back from the place it had gone to, and they rubbing me to show it the care they'd take of me, and coaxing it for two mortal hours."

As the tale ended, the bleared eyes of one of the auditors were attracted to a light wagon which had turned into the lane at the foot of the long slope upon which the poor-house stood.

"Somebody 's comin'," old Simeon observed deliberately. "Likely it's the new Over_seer_."

"Yes, that's him," Tim assented. "That's Dan Springer."

"I 'spected he was a-comin'," Grandsire Welsh commented, with a senile chuckle. "Huldy and Sam's been a-slickin' up things."

"Huldy and Sam," in more official language Mr. and Mrs. Dooling, were the not unworthy couple who had the poor-farm in charge.

"Wa'n't you sayin' t'other day," asked old Simeon, "thet you particular wantid to see the Over_seer_?"

"It's pining for him I am the time," Tim answered.

The old men sat silent, watching the approach of the visitor, who drove up to the hitching-post near them, and who leaped from his wagon with a briskness almost startling to the aged chorus.

"Spry," old Simeon commented. "I've seen the time, though, when I was spry too."

Springer fastened his horse, and came toward them.

"How d' do, boys?" he said cheerily. "How goes it?"

The contrast between his great hearty voice and the thin quavers in which they answered him was pathetic. He lingered a moment, and then turned to make his way into the house. Tim rose and hobbled rheumatically after him.

"Whist, Mister Springer," he called; "would ye be after waiting a wee bit till I have a word of speech with yer."

"Well, what can I do for you?" Springer asked good-naturedly. "Don't they treat you well?"

The old man took him by the arm and drew him around the corner of the house, away from the curious eyes of his companions.

"Whist!" he said, with a strange and sudden air of excitement. "Wait till I'm after telling yer. Your honor'll mind I'm after _trusting_ yer; _trusting_ yer, and ye'll no be betraying an old man. It's meself," he added, with a touch of pride at once whimsical and pathetic, "is ninety-three the day."

"Are you as old as that? Well, I'd keep your secret if you were twice as old," Springer returned, with clumsy but kindly jocoseness.

Tim raised himself until he stood almost upright.

"It's the money," he whispered, "the money I've saved for me burying."

He turned to stretch his thin, bloodless finger toward the bleak cluster of mounds on the hillside where mouldered the dead of the poor-farm.

"I'll no lie there," he said, with husky intensity. "I've scraped and scraped, and saved and saved, and it's the wee bit money I've got to pay for a spot of consecrated ground over to Tiverton. Ye'll no put me here when I'm gone! I'll no rest here! Me folks was respectable in the Old Isle, an' not unbeknowing the gentry; and there's never a one put outside consecrated ground. Ye'll promise me I'll be put in the graveyard over to Tiverton, and me got the money to pay."

Springer was as unemotional and unimaginative as a hearty, practical, well-fed man could be, but seeing the tears in the old pauper's bleared eyes, and hearing the passion of his tone, he could not but be moved. He had heard something of this before. His predecessor in office had mentioned Tim, and his twenty years' saving, but so few were the chances a pauper in Dartbank had of picking up even a penny that the hoard even of so long a time could not be large. Now and then some charitable soul had given the old man a trifle. A vague sympathy was felt for the pathetic longing to be assured of a grave in consecrated ground, even among the villagers who regarded the idea itself as rank superstition.

"It's all right, Tim," the Overseer said. "If you go off while I have the say, I'll see to it myself. If you'd be any more comfortable over in Tiverton, we'll plant you there."

"Thank yer honor kindly," Tim answered. "The Calligans has always been decent, God-fearing folks, and it's meself'd be loth to disgrace the name a-crawling up out of this unholy graveyard forby on Judgment Day, and all the world there to see, and I never could do it so sly but the O'Tools and the O'Hooligans 'd spy on me, and they always so mad with envy of the Calligans they'd be after tattling the news all over Heaven, and bringing shame to me whole kith and kin."

The Overseer laughed, and responded that if Tim had laid by the money to pay for the job, he would certainly see that the grave was made in the consecrated earth of Tiverton churchyard. Then with a brisk step he passed on to attend to the sordid affairs of his office within. The most troublesome matter was left until the last.

"As to the Trafton child," he said to Huldy and Sam, "I don't see that anything can be done. I've spoken to the Selectmen about it, and they don't think the town should be called on to pay out twenty-five dollars when here's a place for the child for nothing."

"That's just what I told Louizy," Huldy responded. "I said that's what they'd say; but Louizy 's dretful cut up."

Springer moved uneasily or impatiently in his seat, so that the old wooden chair creaked under the weight of his substantial person.

"I know she is," he said; "if I could afford it, I'd send the child to her folks myself; but I can't, and I don't see but the girl's got to go to 'Lizy Ann Betts. Perhaps she won't be so hard on her."

"Hard on her," sniffed Huldy; "she'll just kill her; that's all."

At the word a wretched-looking woman pushed into the kitchen as if she had been listening at the door. She held out before her a right hand withered and shriveled by fire.

"Oh, Mr. Springer," she broke out, tears running down her cheeks, "don't send my Nellie to be bound to that woman! She's all I've got in the world; and she never wanted till I was burned. Send her to my folks in Connecticut and they'll treat her as their own."

She sank down suddenly as if her strength failed, and sat stiff and despairing, with eyes of wild entreaty.

"It's hard, I know," Springer answered awkwardly, "but Nellie'll be near you, and she would n't be in Connecticut. 'Lizy Ann Betts ain't a bad-hearted woman. She'll do well by the child, I hope."

"She'll do well?" the mother cried shrilly, raising herself with sudden vehemence. "Did she do well by the last girl was bound to her from this farm? Did n't she kill her?"

"There, there, Louizy," interposed Huldy, "it ain't no sort of use to make a fuss. What the S'lectmen say they say, and--"

She was interrupted by a cry without, and in an instant the door was flung open by old Simeon, who with wildly waving arms and weirdly working face cried out:--

"F' th' Lord's sake! Come quicker 'n scat! Old Tim's in a fit!"

II