Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (280 page)

“May I ask, your worship, whether it is in order that these witnesses should read their evidence?” asked Mr. Jones.

“Why not?” queried the magistrate. “We desire the exact facts” do we not?”

“We do. Possibly Mr. Jones does not,” said the prosecuting solicitor.

“It is clearly a method of securing that the evidence of these two witnesses shall be in accord,” said Jones. “I submit that these accounts are carefully prepared and collated.”

“Naturally, the police prepare their case,” said the magistrate. “I do not see that you have any grievance, Mr. Jones. Now, witness, let us hear your evidence.”

It followed on the exact lines of the other.

“You asked questions about your fiance? You had no fiance,” said Mr. Jones.

“That is so.”

“In fact, you both told a long sequence of lies?”

“With a good object in view.”

“You thought the end justified the means?”

“I carried out my instructions.”

“Which were given you beforehand?”

“Yes, we were told what to ask.”

“I think,” said the magistrate, “that the policewomen have given their evidence very fairly and well. Have you any witnesses for the defence, Mr. Jones?”

“There are a number of people in court, your worship, who have received great benefit from the mediumship of the prisoner. I have subpoenaed one woman who was, by her own account, saved from suicide that very morning by what he told her. I have another man who was an atheist, and had lost all belief in future life. He was completely converted by his experience of psychic phenomena. I can produce men of the highest eminence in science and literature who will testify to the real nature of Mr. Linden’s powers.”

The magistrate shook his head.

“You must know, Mr. Jones, that such evidence would be quite beside the question. It has been clearly laid down by the ruling of the Lord Chief Justice and others that the law of this country does not recognise supernatural powers of any sort whatever, and that a pretence of such powers where payment is involved constitutes a crime in itself. Therefore your suggestion that you should call witnesses could not possibly lead to anything save a wasting of the time of the court. At the same time, I am, of course, ready to listen to any observations which you may care to make after the solicitor for the prosecution has spoken.”

“Might I venture to point out, your worship,” said Jones, “that such a ruling would mean the condemnation of any sacred or holy person of whom we have any record, since even holy persons have to live, and have therefore to receive money.”

“If you refer to Apostolic times, Mr. Jones,” said the magistrate sharply, “I can only remind you that the Apostolic age is past and also that Queen Anne is dead. Such an argument is hardly worthy of your intelligence. Now, sir, if you have anything to add . . .”

Thus encouraged the prosecutor made a short address, stabbing the air at intervals with his pince-nez as if every stab punctured afresh all claims of the spirit. He pictured the destitution among the working-classes, and yet charlatans, by advancing wicked and blasphemous claims, were able to earn a rich living. That they had real powers was, as had been observed, beside the question, but even that excuse was shattered by the fact that these policewomen, who had discharged an unpleasant duty in a most exemplary way, had received nothing but nonsense in return for their money. Was it likely that other clients fared an better? These parasites were increasing in number, trading upon the finer feelings of bereaved parents, and it was high time that some exemplary punishment should warn them that they would be wise to turn their hands to some more honest trade.

Mr. Summerway Jones replied as best he might. He began by pointing out that the Acts were being used for a purpose for which they were never intended. (“That point has already been considered!” snapped the magistrate.) The whole position was open to criticism. The convictions were secured by evidence from agents-provocateurs, who, if any crime had been committed, were obviously inciters to it and also participants. The fines obtained were often deflected for purposes in which the police had a direct interest.

“Surely, Mr. Jones, you do not mean to cast a reflection upon the honesty of the police!”

The police were human, and were naturally inclined to stretch a point where there own interests were affected. All these cases were artificial. There was no record at any time of any real complaint from the public or any demand for protection. There were frauds in every profession, and if a man deliberately invested and lost a guinea in a false medium he had no more right to protection than the man who invested his money in a bad company on the stock market. Whilst the police were wasting time upon such cases, and their agents were weeping crocodile tears in the character of forlorn mourners, many of her branches of real crime received far less attention than they deserved. The law was quite arbitrary in its action. Every big garden-party, even, as he had been informed, every police fete was incomplete without its fortune-teller or palmist.

Some years ago the
Daily Mail
had raised an outcry against fortune-tellers. That great man, the late Lord Northcliffe, had been put in the box by the defence, and it had been shown that one of his other papers was running a palmistry column, and that the fees received were divided equally between the palmist and the proprietors. He mentioned this in no spirit which was derogatory to the memory of this great man, but merely as an example of the absurdity of the law as it was now administered. Whatever might be the individual opinion of members of that court, it was incontrovertible that a large number of intelligent and useful citizens regarded this power of mediumship as a remarkable manifestation of the power of spirit, making for the great improvement of the race. Was it not a most fatal policy in these days of materialism to crush down by law that which in its higher manifestation might work for the regeneration of mankind? As to the undoubted fact that information received by the policewomen was incorrect and that their lying statements were not detected by the medium, it was a psychic law that harmonious conditions were essential for true results, and that deceit on one side produced confusion on the other. If the court would for a moment adopt the Spiritualistic hypothesis, they would realise how absurd it would be to expect that angelic hosts would descend in order to answer the questions of two mercenary and hypocritical inquirers.

Such, in a short synopsis, was the general line of Mr. Summerway Jones’s defence which reduced Mrs. Linden to tears and threw the magistrate’s clerk into a deep slumber. The magistrate himself rapidly brought the matter to a conclusion.

“Your quarrel, Mr. Jones, seems to be with the law, and that is outside my competence. I administer it as I find it, though I may remark that I am entirely in agreement with it. Such men as the defendant are the noxious fungi which collect on a corrupt society, and the attempt to compare their vulgarities with the holy men of old, or to claim similar gifts, must be reprobated by all right-thinking men.

“As to you, Linden,” he added, fixing his stern eyes upon the prisoner, “I fear that you are a hardened offender since a previous conviction has not altered your ways. I sentence you, therefore, to two months’ hard labour without the option of a fine.”

There was a scream from Mrs. Linden.

“Good-bye, dear, don’t fret,” said the medium, glancing over the side of the dock. An instant later he had been hurried down to the cell.

Summerway Jones, Mailey and Malone met in the hall, and Mailey volunteered to escort the poor stricken woman home.

“What had he ever done but bring comfort to all?” she moaned. “Is there a better man living in the whole great City of London?”

“I don’t think there is a more useful one,” said Mailey. “I’ll venture to say that the whole of Crockford’s Directory with the Archbishops at their head could not prove the things of religion as I have seen Tom Linden prove them, or convert an atheist as I have seen Linden convert him.”

“It’s a shame! A damned shame!” said Malone, hotly.

“The touch about vulgarity was funny,” said Jones. “I wonder if he thinks the Apostles were very cultivated people. Well, I did my best. I had no hopes, and it has worked out as I thought. It is a pure waste of time.”

“Not at all,” Malone answered. “It has ventilated an evil. There were reporters in court. Surely some of them have some sense. They will note the injustice.”

“Not they,” said Mailey. “The Press is hopeless. My God, what a responsibility these people take on themselves, and how little they guess the price that each will pay! I know. I have spoken with them while they were paying it.”

“Well, I for one will speak out,” said Malone, “and I believe others will also. The Press is more independent and intelligent than you seem to think.”

But Mailey was right, after all. When he had left Mrs. Linden in her lonely home and had reached Fleet Street once more, Malone bought a Planet. As he opened it a scare head-line met his eye:

IMPOSTOR IN THE POLICE COURT.

 
——
 
——
 
—— -

Dog Mistaken for Man.

WHO WAS PEDRO?

Exemplary Sentence.

He crumpled the paper up in his hand.

“No wonder these Spiritualists feel bitterly,” he thought “They have good cause.”

Yes, poor Tom Linden had a bad Press. He went down into his miserable cell amid universal objurgation. The
Planet
, an evening paper which depended for its circulation upon the sporting forecasts of Captain Touch-and-go, remarked upon the absurdity of forecasting the future.
Honest John
, a weekly journal which had been mixed up with some of the greatest frauds of the century, was of the opinion that the dishonesty of Linden was a public scandal. A rich country rector wrote to
The Times
to express his indignation that anyone should profess to sell the gifts of the spirit. The
Churchman
remarked that such incidents arose from the growing infidelity, while the
Freethinker
saw in them a reversion to superstition. Finally Mr. Maskelyne showed the public, to the great advantage of his box office, exactly how the swindle was perpetrated. So for a few days Tom Linden was what the French call a “succés d’execration.” Then the world moved on and he was left to his fate.

8. In Which Three Investigators Come Across A Dark Sou
l

LORD ROXTON had returned from a Central American heavy game shooting, and had at once carried out a series of Alpine ascents which had satisfied and surprised everyone except himself.

“Top of the Alps is becomin’ a perfect bear-garden,” said he. “Short of Everest there don’t seem to be any decent privacy left.”

His advent into London was acclaimed by a dinner given in his honour at the ‘Travellers’ by the Heavy Game Society. The occasion was private and there were no reporters, but Lord Roxton’s speech was fixed verbatim in the minds of all his audience and has been imperishably preserved. He writhed for twenty minutes under the flowery and eulogistic periods of the president, and rose himself in the state of confused indignation which the Briton feels when he is publicly approved. “Oh, I say! By Jove! What!” was his oration, after which he resumed his seat and perspired profusely.

Malone was first aware of Lord Roxton’s return through McArdle, the crabbed old red-headed news editor, whose bald dome projected further and further from its ruddy fringe as the years still found him slaving at the most grinding of tasks. He retained his keen scent of what was good copy, and it was this sense of his which caused him one winter morning to summon Malone to his presence. He removed the long glass tube which he used as a cigarette-holder from his lips, and he blinked through his big round glasses at his subordinate.

“You know that Lord Roxton is back in London?”

“I had not heard.”

“Aye, he’s back. Dootless you’ve heard that he was wounded in the war. He led a small column in East Africa and made a wee war of his own till he got an elephant bullet through his chest. Oh, he’s done fine since then, or he couldn’t be climbin’ these mountains. He’s a deevil of a man and aye stirring up something new.”

“What is the latest?” asked Malone, eyeing a slip of paper which McArdle was waving between his finger and thumb.

“Well, that’s where he impinges on you. I was thinking maybe you could hunt in couples and, there would be copy in it. There’s a leaderette in the
Evening Standard
” He handed it over. It ran thus:

“A quaint advertisement in the columns of a contemporary shows that the famous Lord John Roxton, third son of the Duke of Pomfret, is seeking fresh worlds to conquer. Having exhausted the sporting adventures of this terrestrial globe, he is now turning to those of the dim, dark and dubious regions of psychic research. He is in the market apparently for any genuine specimen of a haunted house, and is open to receive information as to any violent or dangerous manifestation which called for investigation. As Lord John Roxton is a man of resolute character and one of the best revolver shots in England, we would warn any practical joker that he would be well-advised to stand aside and leave this matter to those who are said to be as impervious to bullets as their supporters are to common sense.”

McArdle gave his dry chuckle at the concluding words.

“I’m thinking they are getting pairsonal there, friend Malone, for if you are no a supporter, you’re well on the way. But are you no of the opeenion that this chiel and you between you might put up a spook and get two racy columns off him?”

“Well, I can see Lord Roxton,” said Malone. “He’s still, I suppose, in his old rooms in the Albany. I would wish to call in any case, so I can open this up as well.”

Thus it was that in the late afternoon just as the murk of London broke into dim circles of silver, the pressman found himself once more walking down Vigo Street and accosting the porter at the dark entrance of the old-fashioned chambers. Yes, Lord John Roxton was in, but a gentleman was with him. He would take a card. Presently he returned with word that in spite of the previous visitor, Lord Roxton would see Malone at once. An instant later, he had been ushered into the old luxurious rooms with their trophies of war and of the chase. The owner of them with outstretched hand was standing at the door, long, thin, austere, with the same gaunt, whimsical, Don Quixote face as of old. There was no change save that he was more aquiline, and his eyebrows jutted more thickly over his reckless, restless eyes.

“Hullo, young fellah!” he cried. “I was hopin’ you’d draw this old covert once more. I was comin’ down to the office to look you up. Come in! Come in! Let me introduce you to the Reverend Charles Mason.”

A very tall, thin clergyman, who was coiled up in a large basket chair, gradually unwound himself and held out a bony hand to the newcomer. Malone was aware of two very earnest and human grey eyes looking searchingly into his, and of a broad, welcoming smile which disclosed a double row of excellent teeth. It was a worn and weary face, the tired face of the spiritual fighter, but it was very kindly and companionable, none the less. Malone had heard of the man, a Church of England vicar, who had left his model parish and the church which he had built himself in order to preach freely the doctrines of Christianity, with the new psychic knowledge super-added.

“Why, I never seem to get away from the Spiritualists!” he exclaimed.

“You never will, Mr. Malone,” said the lean clergyman, chuckling. “The world never will until it has absorbed this new knowledge which God has sent. You can’t get away from it. It is too big. At the present moment, in this great city there is not a place where men or women meet that it does not come up. And yet you would not know it from the Press.”

“Well, you can’t level that reproach at the
Daily Gazette
,” said Malone. “Possibly you may have read my own descriptive articles.”

“Yes, I read them. They are at least better than the awful sensational nonsense which the London Press usually serves up, save when they ignore it altogether. To read a paper like
The Times
you would never know that this vital movement existed at all. The only editorial allusion to it that I can ever remember was in a leading article when the great paper announced that it would believe in it when it found it could, by means of it, pick out more winners on a race-card than by other means.”

“Doosed useful, too,” said Lord Roxton. “It’s just what I should have said myself. What!”

The clergyman’s face was grave and he shook his head.

“That brings me back to the object of my visit,” he said. He turned to Malone. “I took the liberty of calling upon Lord Roxton in connection with his advertisement to say that if he went on such a quest with a good intention, no better work could be found in the world, but if he did it out of a love of sport, following some poor earth-bound soul in the same spirit as he followed the white rhinoceros of the Lido, he might be playing with fire.”

“Well, padre, I’ve been playin’ with fire all my life and that’s nothin’ new. What I mean — if you want me to look at this ghost business from the religious angle, there’s nothin’ doin’, for the Church of England that I was brought up in fills my very modest need. But if it’s got a spice of danger, as you say, then it’s worth while. What!”

The Rev. Charles Mason smiled his kindly, toothsome grin.

“Incorrigible, is he not?” he said to Malone. “Well, I can only wish you a fuller comprehension of the subject.” He rose as if to depart.

“Wait a bit, padre!” cried Lord Roxton, hurriedly. “When I’m explorin’, I begin by ropin’ in a friendly native. I expect you’re just the man. Won’t you come with me?”

“Where to?”

“Well, sit down and I’ll tell you.” He rummaged among a pile of letters on his desk. “Fine selection of spooks!” he said. “I got on the track of over twenty by the first post. This is an easy winner, though. Read it for yourself. Lonely house, man driven mad, tenants boltin’ in the night, horrible spectre. Sounds all right — what!”

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 to-day.”

“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 generalisations. 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.”