The light vanished and an instant afterwards Malone felt pressure upon his own hand. He turned it palm upwards and clearly felt three fingers laid across it, smooth, warm fingers of adult size. He closed his own fingers and the hand seemed to melt away in his grasp.
“It has gone!” he gasped.
“Yes! Red Cloud is not very good at materializations. Perhaps we don’t give him the proper sort of power. But his lights are excellent.”
Several more had broken out. They were of different types, slow-moving clouds and little dancing sparks like glowworms. At the same time both visitors were conscious of a cold wind which blew upon their faces. It was no delusion, for Enid felt her hair stream across her forehead.
“You feel the rushing wind,” said Mailey. “Some of these lights would pass for tongues of fire, would they not? Pentecost does not seem such a very remote or impossible thing, does it?”
The tambourine had risen in the air, and the dot of luminous paint showed that it was circling round. Presently it descended and touched their heads each in turn. Then with a jingle it quivered down upon the table.
“Why a tambourine? It seems always to be a tambourine,” remarked Malone.
“It is a convenient little instrument,” Mailey explained. “The only one which shows automatically by its noise where it is flying. I don’t know what other I could suggest except a musical-box.”
“Our box here flies round something amazin’,” said Mrs. Bolsover. “It thinks nothing of winding itself up in the air as it flies. It’s a heavy box too.”
“Nine pounds,” said Bolsover. “Well, we seem to have got to the end of things. I don’t think we shall get much more to-night. It has not been a bad sitting—what I should call a fair average sitting. We must wait a little before we turn on the light. Well, Mr. Malone, what do you think of it? Let’s have any objections now before we part. That’s the worst of you inquirers, you know. You often bottle things up in your own minds and let them loose afterwards, when it would have been easy to settle it at the time. Very nice and polite to our faces, and then we are a gang of swindlers in the report.”
Malone’s head was throbbing and he passed his hand over his heated brow.
“I am confused,” he said, “but impressed. Oh, yes, certainly impressed. I’ve read of these things, but it is very different when you see them. What weighs most with me is the obvious sincerity and sanity of all you people. No one could doubt that.”
“Come. We’re gettin’ on.” said Bolsover.
“I try to think the objections which would be raised by others who were not present. I’ll have to answer them. First, there is the oddity of it all. It is so different to our preconceptions of spirit people.”
“We must fit our theories to the facts,” said Mailey. “Up to now we have fitted the facts to our theories. You must remember that we have been dealing to-night—with all respect to our dear good hosts—with a simple, primitive, earthly type of spirit, who has his very definite uses, but is not to be taken as an average type. You might as well take the stevedore whom you see on the quay as being a representative Englishman.”
“There’s Luke,” said Bolsover.
“Ah, yes, he is, of course, very much higher. You heard him and could judge. What else, Mr. Malone?”
“Well, the darkness! Everything done in darkness. Why should all mediumship be associated with gloom?”
“You mean all physical mediumship. That is the only branch of the subject which needs darkness. It is purely chemical, like the darkness of the photographic room. It preserves the delicate physical substance which, drawn from the human b
ody, is the basis of these phenomena. A cabinet is used for the purpose of condensing this same vaporous substance and helping it to solidify. Am I clear?”
“Yes, but it is a pity all the same. It gives a horrible air of deceit to the whole business.”
“We get it now and again in the light, Mr. Malone,” said Bolsover. “I don’t know if Wee One is gone yet. Wait a bit! Where are the matches?” He lit the candle, which set them all blinking after their long darkness, “Now let us see what we can do.”
There was a round wood platter or circle of wood lying among the miscellaneous objects littered over the table to serve as playthings for the strange forces. Bolsover stared at it. They all stared at it. They had risen but no one was within three feet of it.
“Please, Wee One, please!” cried Mrs. Bolsover.
Malone could hardly believe his eyes. The disc began to move. It quivered and then rattled upon the table, exactly as the lid of a boiling pot might do.
“Up with it, Wee One!” They were all clapping their hands.
The circle of wood, in the full light of the candle, rose upon edge and stood there shaking, as if trying to keep its balance.
“Give three tilts, Wee One.”
The disc inclined forward three times. Then it fell flat and remained so.
“I am so glad you have seen that,” said Mailey. “There is Telekenesis in its simplest and most decisive form.”