“I could not have believed it!” cried Enid.
“Nor I,” said Malone. “I have extended my knowledge of what is possible. Mr. Bolsover, you have enlarged my views.”
“Good, Mr. Malone!”
“As to the power at the back of these things I am still ignorant. As to the thing themselves I have now and henceforward not the slightest doubt in the world. I know that they are true. I wish you all good night. It is not likely that Miss Challenger or I will ever forget the evening that we have spent under your roof.”
It was like another world when they came out into the frosty air, and saw the taxis bearing back the pleasure-seekers from the theatre or cinema palace. Mailey stood beside them while they waited for a cab.
“I know exactly how you feel,” he said, smiling. “You look at all these bustling, complacent people, and you marvel to think how little they know of the possibilities of life. Don’t you want to stop them? Don’t you want to tell them? And yet they would only think you a liar or a lunatic. Funny situation, is it not?”
“I’ve lost all my bearings for the moment.”
“They will come back to-morrow morning. It is curious how fleeting these impressions are. You will persuade yourselves that you have been dreaming. Well, good-bye—and let me know if I can help your studies in the future.”
The friends—one could hardly yet call them lovers—were absorbed in thought during their drive home. When he reached Victoria Gardens Malone escorted Enid to the door of the flat, but he did not go in with her. Somehow the jeers of Challenger which usually rather woke sympathy within him would now get upon his nerves. As it was he heard his greeting in the hall.
“Well, Enid. Where’s your spook? Spill him out of the bag on the floor and let us have a look at him.”
His evening’s adventure ended as it had begun, with a bellow of laughter which pursued him down the lift.
CHAPTER V
WHERE OUR COMMISSIONERS HAVE A REMARKABLE EXPERIENCE
Malone sat at the side table of the smoking-room of the Literary Club. He had Enid’s impressions of the séance before him—very subtle and observant they were—and he was endeavouring to merge them in his own experience. A group of men were smoking and chatting round the fire. This did not disturb the journalist, who found, as many do, that his brain and his pen worked best sometimes when they were stimulated by the knowledge that he was part of a busy world. Presently, however, somebody who observed his presence brought the talk round to psychic subjects, and then it was more difficult for him to remain aloof. He leaned back in his chair and listened.
Polter, the famous novelist, was there, a brilliant man with a subtle mind, which he used too often to avoid obvious truth and to defend some impossible position for the sake of the empty dialectic exercise. He was holding forth now to an admiring, but not entirely a subservient audience.
“Science,” said he, “is gradually sweeping the world clear of all these old cobwebs of superstition. The world was like some old, dusty attic, and the sun of science is bursting in, flooding it with light, while the dust settles gradually to the floor.”
“By science,” said someone maliciously, “you mean, of course, men like Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Barrett, Lombroso, Richet, and so forth.”
Polter was not accustomed to be countered, and usually became rude.
“No, sir, I mean nothing so preposterous,” he answered, with a glare. “No name, however eminent, can claim to stand for science so long as he is a member of an insignificant minority of scientific men.”
“He is, then, a crank,” said Pollifex, the artist, who usually played jackal to Polter.
The objector, one Millworthy, a free-lance of journalism, was not to be so easily silenced.
“Then Galileo was a crank in his day,” said he. “And Harvey was a crank when he was laughed at over the circulation of the blood.”
“It’s the circulation of the Daily Gazette which is at stake,” said Marrible, the humorist of the club. “If they get off their stunt I don’t suppose they care a tinker’s curse what is truth or what is not.”
“Why such things should be examined at all, except in a police court, I can’t imagine,” said Polter. “It is a dispersal of energy, a misdirection of human thought into channels which lead nowhere. We have plenty of obvious, material things to examine. Let us get on with our job.”
Atkinson, the surgeon, was one of the circle, and had sat silently listening. Now he spoke.
“I think the learned bodies should find more time for the consideration of psychic matters.”
“Less,” said Polter.
“You can’t have less than nothing. They ignore them altogether. Some time ago I had a series of cases of telepathic rapport which I wished to lay before the Royal Society. My colleague Wilson, the zoologist, also had a paper which he proposed to read. They went in together. His was accepted and mine rejected. The title of his paper was ‘The Reproductive System of the Dung-Beetle.’”
There was a general laugh.
“Quite right, too,” said Polter. “The humble dung-beetle was at least a fact. All this psychic stuff is not.”