PART 3: THE EXPLANATION
Mr. Messenger and the Sergeant were in the drawing-room talking to Lady Ulrica and Vernon, when Harrison, at the head of the little party, entered by the French window.
Mr. Messenger’s story was soon told. His daughter had left the hotel presumably between nine and ten o’clock, and had not been seen since. He explained that he was peculiarly anxious because she had been in very low spirits recently. For one thing, a friend of hers, a Mrs. Burton who lived a few miles away, had committed suicide about three weeks before. Also, and here Mr. Messenger looked rather pointedly in the direction of Robert Fell; also, he believed that she had—he paused with obvious intention before he concluded—“she had—another trouble on her mind.”
Harrison had listened with a preoccupied air that was unusual to him. But as the hotel-keeper finished his story, he warmed again to his usual alertness.
“I must tell you, Messenger,” he said, “that we have only this moment come up from the lake, all of us. And we saw no sign of your daughter there, but we did meet another young woman, a perfect stranger to all of us, who behaved in—er—in a rather odd manner. Might I ask you if you have anyone staying with you who at all answers that description?”
“We’ve no one staying in the house at all this week-end, sir,” Messenger replied.
“And do you know of anyone, any stranger staying in the village?”
“There’s no one, sir, to my knowledge,” Messenger said, and went on quickly: “But have I your permission now, sir, for me and Mr. Stevens to go down to the plantation, and—and the lake?” He paused before he added in a lower tone, “Though I’m afraid we’ll be too late. She’s been gone, now, for more than three hours.”
“But we’ve just come back from the plantation, all of us,”Harrison protested. “If she’d been there, surely we should have seen her?”
“Not if she’d ... if she’d been....” Messenger began, and stopped abruptly, putting his hand to his throat as if his words had choked him.
Stevens, the police-sergeant, shifted his feet uneasily and looked half-appealingly at Mrs. Harrison. “Mr. Messenger is afraid as Miss Phyllis may ’ave—may ’ave done what her friend Mrs. Burton did,” he explained.
Mrs. Harrison got to her feet with a sudden effect of tense emotion, but before she could speak her husband cut in quickly by saying, “We’d better have the electric torches, Emma. Will you get them? G. and I will go, too. Will you come, Vernon?”
“Certainly,” Vernon said. There was a light in his eyes that was hardly indicative of horror or even of pity.
Harrison turned away from him with a movement of disgust. “And Fell? Where’s Fell?” he asked.
But Fell had already left the room.
“He went out by the window, a couple of minutes back, sir,” the Sergeant said.
Charles Harrison was at all times an impatient man, and there were occasions, as in the present case, when his nervous irritability completely overcame him. He was seriously distressed by the thought that Phyllis Messenger had in all probability committed suicide. That touched him on his human, generous side. But the thing that had finally upset him had been the look on Vernon’s face; rapt, faintly mystical, the look of one who believed that a very miracle had been performed for his benefit. Harrison could not endure to remain in his presence for another moment.
“I’ll—I’ll go on and see what’s become of Fell,” he mumbled as he fairly scuttled out of the room.
Once outside, he began to run. He wanted to think, but his mind was full of exasperation—with Vernon for his lookof triumph, with the unfortunate Phyllis Messenger, with the vacillating Robert Fell as the immediate cause of the whole disaster. It seemed to Charles Harrison as if a fortuitous coincidence of events were conspiring against him to produce the illusion of a spiritualistic phenomenon. He did not believe for one moment that the stranger he had seen by the plantation was the spirit of the drowned Phyllis Messenger, but he foresaw the kind of case that Vernon would make out, and the effect it would have upon all the other members of the party. He could not even be sure that his own wife might not be influenced. When that confounded Stevens had hinted at the probability of this girl’s suicide, a very queer expression had come into Emma’s face, just as if she had suddenly realised some strange, significant connection between the possibility of the girl’s death and that other experience earlier in the evening. He had cut hurriedly into the conversation for fear that she might say something foolish....
No, no, the girl could not, must not be dead. They would find her somewhere. And yet, so great was Harrison’s foreboding that he never paused a moment by the yews, but hurried straight on to the shore of the lake. He had seen nothing of Fell. He had indeed forgotten all about him.
The night was still clear, but it was no longer frozen into that rigid immobility which had earlier produced so strange an effect of expectancy. There was a perceptible movement of air from the west, the familiar voices of the poplars maintained a perpetual background of sound, and when he had come through the plantation to the edge of the lake, he could hear the minute clashing of the reeds as the chasing ripple of the water set them gently swaying. The air of mystery had fled. He no longer felt the least influence of fear. The dread that he might presently see something that heavily floated, rocking and pressing against the rushes, was more the dread of annoyance.
But there was no one in sight. Nothing moved on all thelong curving reaches of the bank. There was no sound in the night other than the faint crash of the reeds, the soft chuckle of the water and the steady insistence of the sibilant poplars.
And search as he would up and down the brooding sweep of the dark water, damascened here and there by the yellow silver of moonlight reflected from the crest of the increasing ripple, he could see no slender raft of floating drapery, nor any sign of a sodden form, nearly immersed, sagging inertly towards the bank.
He desisted presently, and sat down to consider the whole situation. The sense of exasperation had faded under the influence of the night’s peace, and he fell into a calmer consideration of the problem that was vexing him. He saw that he must take the initiative, state his case before Vernon could get a word in. He would treat the affair as an instance of the kind of thing that gets worked up into what these people absurdly called “evidence.” The coincidence of this stranger, (whoever she was,) turning up on the very evening on which that unhappy girl had drowned herself—if she had sunk, they would have an awful job to recover the body; the lake was over forty feet deep in places—was just another of those coincidences that had probably been responsible for most of the superstitions about the appearance of the spirit at the moment of death. And in this case it was obviously absurd to argue that it was the spirit of Phyllis Messenger they had seen.And heard!That was a good point. Finally and conclusively, there was the tulle scarf; real and solid enough. No one had ever heard of a spirit leaving such material evidence behind it. What had he done with that scarf, by the way? He had had it in his hand when he had entered the drawing-room. He’d probably laid it down there, somewhere. He must make enquiries about that as soon as he got in. It might help him to trace the identity of the stranger.
He had wandered a quarter of a mile or so away from the path through the plantation, and he jumped up now, with theintention of getting back at once to the house, in order to make sure of that valuable piece of evidence. But as he came out of his preoccupation, his attention was arrested by the distant murmur of little detached sounds, the separated notes of human voices, musical in their remoteness, faintly impinging upon the textured whisperings of the night.
They are still looking for that poor girl, he thought with a twinge of remorse for his own loss of interest in the search. But even as he started to join them, he realised that the sounds were retreating, fading imperceptibly into the depths of the night. Have they found her, I wonder, he murmured to himself, thinking still of a desecrated and draggled body; and then he heard himself being distantly hailed in the strong, cheerful voice of his friend Greatorex.
“Ahoy there, Harrison; Harrison, ahoy!” he was shouting.
It was not in the least the voice one would expect from a man who had so recently stood in the presence of the dead.
“Ahoy! Hallo! Where are you?” Harrison shouted in return.
The next minute he saw the tall, athletic figure of Greatorex coming towards him along the bank of the lake.
“Been looking for you everywhere,” Greatorex said as he came within speaking distance. “We’ve found the lady.”
“Alive?” gasped Harrison.
“Rather. Not exactly hearty, perhaps, but she’s all right. Well enough, in any case, to walk back to the house in the company of her father and Fell.” He dropped his voice confidentially as he added: “Seems that it’s a case with Fell. What? We found ’em together, you know, in a cosy little place among the yews, not five yards from the spot where the mysterious lady came out. Perfect little tunnel up to it, too. If we’d happened on it at first, we’d have found the girl there and saved all the trouble. Fell knew all about the place, it seems. Went straight to it and found Miss Messenger in a faint, or just recovering from it.”
“How long had she been there?” Harrison asked sharply.
“All the time, presumably,” Greatorex said.
“Come there to meet Fell, eh?”
“Seems probable. And we spoilt his little game by coming too, I suppose. However, he’s owned up now. Made a clean breast of it, and declared his intention of marrying her; in the presence of five witnesses. Quite a dramatic little scene there was. Old Messenger was almost overcome.”
Harrison did not seem to have been attending to this speech, for his next question was:
“You didn’t find anything else there, did you? No apparatus of any kind, such as a mask or attempts at a disguise?”
“Lord, no. I didn’t see anything, and I was the first to get to them,” Greatorex replied. “But why? You don’t think....”
“That she may have been prepared? I do,” Harrison said emphatically. “She’d made an assignation and come ready to pass herself off as someone else if she were caught—which she very nearly was. Showed herself in the first instance in order to attract Fell’s attention, and unfortunately for her brought the whole party out.”
“Oh! no, no, Harrison. No, I don’t think so,” Greatorex said. “You’ve got that blessed apparition or whatever it was on your nerves. But, honestly, that explanation won’t do. Why, the girl was half-unconscious when I found ’em.”
“Put on,” Harrison interpolated.
“Impossible,” Greatorex replied. “When we got her out into the open, she was still as white as a sheet.”
“Effect of moonlight,” commented Harrison.
“No.” Greatorex’s tone had a quality of great assurance. “No, she was recovering from a faint all right. There can be no question of that. Besides, what could be the point of all that make-believe after she was found?”
“Well, she may have fainted after she’d fooled us,” Harrison suggested. “Overwrought, you know.”
They had been making their way steadily back to thehouse as they talked, but Greatorex stopped now in the middle of the meadow, and took Harrison by the lapel of his dinner-jacket.
“Bad line, my friend,” he said gravely. “Take my advice and don’t attempt it before Vernon. I’m advising you for your good.”
“Well, then, who the devil was it?” Harrison snapped impatiently.
“Ah! there you have me,” Greatorex said.
“But, good God, G.,” Harrison expostulated. “Youdon’t believe that it was a—er—an apparition.”
“Dunno what to think,” Greatorex said.
Harrison blew a deep breath of disgust. “I thought you had more sense,” he snapped out.
“Well, I’m willing to be convinced,” Greatorex replied; “if you have any other explanation to offer.”
But Harrison had nothing further to say in the matter just then. He wanted to see Phyllis Messenger first, alone. When he had got his evidence, he would be ready to offer his explanation.
They found only Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Greatorex in the drawing-room when they entered by the French window. Messenger, his daughter, Stevens and Fell had gone back to the hotel, she explained, and Vernon and Lady Ulrica were in the morning-room, conferring, so Mrs. Harrison suggested, over the events of the evening.
“I don’t quite know whether Mr. Fell means to come back,” Mrs. Harrison concluded with a lift of her eyebrows. “He seemed—well, rather ashamed of himself altogether. I’m not sure that he hasn’t taken his things.”
“Just as well, perhaps,” her husband said. And then his observant glance fell on the tulle scarf thrown over the back of a chair.
“Did you find out whom that belonged to?” he asked sharply.
“Oh!” ejaculated Mrs. Harrison. “They left it behind after all. It’s Miss Messenger’s. She identified it at once and wondered how it had got here.”
“Certain it was hers, I suppose?” Harrison asked.
“Oh yes! It’s got her initials worked on it,” his wife told him.
For a few seconds Harrison stood thoughtfully drawing the scarf through his hands, then dropping it back on to the chair, he said: “That’s all right, then. Hadn’t we better be going to bed? It’s after one o’clock.”
When Charles Harrison set about the investigation of that night’s mystery, he was still intent upon the theory that the appearance he had seen and spoken to was in fact the living personality of some stranger who had been staying either in the village or possibly at Orton Park, the grounds of which sloped down to the other side of the lake. There were a couple of canoes and a punt in Lord Orton’s boathouse, and the crossing presented no real difficulty. He was, however, finally deflected from that theory in the course of his interview with Miss Messenger.
He had been quite firm at breakfast. As a result, no doubt, of the “conference” they had held the night before, Lady Ulrica and Vernon were eager to begin an immediate discussion of what they called the “phenomenon.” Harrison effectively stopped that.
“No! no!! no!!!” he said, putting his hands over his ears as soon as the topic was opened. “Now, Vernon, you profess to be scientific in your investigations. You—you insisted on that in your—er—lecture under the cedar last night. Now listen to me. I promise to thrash this out with you—presently. To—to discuss the thing in all its bearings. But I at least mean to be thorough and careful in my methods. Give me to-day toexamine the case. I must cross-examine the principal witness—er—alone. Yes. I insist on that. You’ll have the very best intentions, of course. I don’t doubt it. But you’ll offer suggestions—unconsciously, perhaps, but you’ll do it.”
“And you?” Vernon replied. “Won’t you put suggestions into the examinee’s mind, too?”
“Hm! hm! You’ll have to trust me,” Harrison said. “I assure you that I only want to arrive at the truth of—of the actual facts, you understand. I want to know what Miss Messenger was doing down there for three hours or more. And if you want me to discuss the thing with you, you must let me get at the facts in my own way. I—I make that a condition. If you won’t agree to it, I shall refuse to discuss the thing at all.”
“Oh, very well,” Vernon agreed.
And Harrison had gone off to the hotel after breakfast, in the cheerful state of mind of one who has good reasons to hope for the best.
Miss Messenger received him in the private parlour of the hotel, a room that evidenced her desperate efforts to alleviate the influence of the original furniture.
She professed to be completely recovered from the effects of her adventure, and indeed she displayed no sign of illness. Her engagement to Robert Fell was, it seemed, an understood thing, and she received Mr. Harrison’s congratulations with the air proper to the occasion. Harrison, who had only known her very slightly hitherto, decided in his own mind that she was a very charming young woman, and came at last to the purpose of his visit with a slight effect of apology.
“I—I don’t know whether you have heard, Miss Messenger,” he began, “that we had another visitor in the plantation last night.”
She opened her eyes at that, with a genuine surprise that could not be mistaken.
“Didn’t Mr. Fell or your father say anything to you aboutit?” Harrison continued.
She looked at him with obvious perplexity. “About another visitor?” she repeated. “No, they haven’t told me anything. I don’t quite understand.”
“I—I’ll explain in a moment,” Harrison said. “There are just one or two little questions that I’d like to ask you first, if you don’t mind?”
She shook her head with a sigh. “No, I don’t mind,” she said. “I suppose as a matter of fact you know all about it already?”
“Something,” Harrison agreed, shrewdly guessing at her meaning. “So far as you and Mr. Fell are concerned at least. But—well—I’ll tell you in a moment why I want to know—could you say what the time was when you got to the plantation?”
“A little before ten,” she told him. “I heard the stable clock in Orton Park strike after I’d been there a few minutes.”
“Hm! hm! And what did youdoexactly between ten o’clock and—er—half-past twelve or so?” Harrison enquired.
Phyllis Messenger’s face glowed suddenly red. “I—I don’t know,” she said after a marked pause.
“Did you go to sleep, for instance?” Harrison asked with a friendly smile.
She shook her head. “It wasn’t a sleep,” she said, and then went on quickly: “Oh, you said you knew—something. Don’t you know how—how unhappy I was?”
Mr. Harrison turned his head away and stared at the ferns in the fireplace. “I’ve heard something,” he murmured.
“About my friend Rhoda Burton?” Miss Messenger said.
“Ah! yes. She—she committed suicide about a month ago, I believe?” Harrison mumbled.
“Well, I meant to do that, too,” Phyllis Messenger burst out with a sudden boldness. “In there, where they found me. I meant to—to strangle myself with my tulle scarf. I tied it round my neck and I meant to do it. And then I couldn’t.”
“Yes?” Harrison prompted her gently.
“Oh, and then I threw it down—the scarf, I mean—and everything went black. I thought I was going to die. I went down on my knees and tried to pray. I don’t remember anything after that until—until they found me.”
Harrison’s agile mind seized the significance of this evidence in a flash. At one stroke it eliminated the probability of that scarf having been worn by a stranger. If the scarf had lain there by the side of the swooning Miss Messenger, no one but a mad woman could have callously picked it up, worn it and postured before a group of half a dozen people without making the least mention of the helpless figure to whom it belonged. For a moment he played with the thought of a madwoman, but dismissed it. If there was a madwoman in Long Orton or the neighbourhood, he would have heard of her.
He sighed heavily, and chiefly for the sake of giving himself more time, said, “You’re quite sure you had the scarf with you?”
“Well, of course,” Miss Messenger replied. “I only bought it last week;” and added with a shudder, “but I don’t ever want to see it again.” There could be no question of the vividness of the unhappy memories associated in her mind with that particular article of apparel.
“It doesn’t follow, however,” Harrison went on thoughtfully after a perceptible pause, “that because you have no memory of anything after you fainted, you never moved from the spot where you were found?”
Miss Messenger shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t say anything about that, can I?” she asked.
“You see,” Harrison explained, “earlier in the evening, it may have been about eleven or thereabouts, my friends and I saw someone down by the plantation, and—and went down to investigate. And there we met and spoke to—er—someone who was unquestionably wearing your scarf—which she later discarded. It was found later by myself, as a matter of fact.”
“How very extraordinary!” was all Miss Messenger’s comment. Her surprise and interest, however, were beyond question.
“Inexplicable,” Harrison agreed.
“But whocouldit have been?” Miss Messenger besought him.
“It could, so far as I can make out, only have been yourself—in a trance,” Harrison replied. He instinctively disliked the sound of that last word, but could find no other. People who have “swooned” or fainted do not walk about in that condition. “Er—you’ve never, I suppose—er—been in that state of unconsciousness before?” he went on quickly, as if to obliterate the effect of the too suggestive word.
“Not actually,” Miss Messenger said, hesitated, and then continued: “but I’ve—felt queer once or twice lately.”
“Queer?” Harrison prompted her.
“As if—as if I were going off like I did last night,” she explained. “Only lately, though. Only since my friend died.”
“Mrs. Burton?”
She nodded.
“Hm. Very sad, very,” said Harrison, getting up, and then he added: “It was very good of you to answer my questions, and I think, now, that I am satisfied as to the identity of the stranger. You must have walked in your trance last night, Miss Messenger, and made your way back again to the place where we found you, dropping your scarf on the way. You must forgive us for not recognising you in the half-light.”
Miss Messenger had no comment to make on that explanation. It was evident that she was not in a position to deny his statement, even if she had had the desire to do so....
And after that interview, Harrison began to see his way quite clearly. When he left the hotel he visited the scene of last night’s encounter in order to make a thorough examination of the place itself, and especially of that curious little enceinte among the yews where Miss Messenger had been found. Hethought it possible that he might discover fresh evidence.
No fresh evidence, however, rewarded his investigation.
He was, nevertheless, in very good spirits at dinner that night. The discussion had been postponed by common consent until the evening, but he once or twice referred to it in the course of the meal.
Greatorex, noting his host’s almost gleeful manner, asked him if he had got new and conclusive evidence in the process of his investigations, but Harrison refused to answer that.
“No, no,” he said. “We’ll have it out after dinner. Vernon has got his case, and I have mine. We’ll argue, and then put it to the vote. Do you agree, Vernon?”
Vernon, no less confident than his antagonist, agreed willingly enough, and later, when they were all gathered together in the drawing-room, he agreed also to open the discussion.
“It’s all so clear to me,” he said. “I cannot see how there can be two opinions.”
“Well, fire away,” Harrison encouraged him.
Vernon leaned back in his chair, and clasped his hands behind his head.
“I postulate to begin with,” he said, “that we were all in precisely the right, expectant, slightly inert condition necessary to the production of phenomena. We were sitting in a circle, and our conscious minds were completely occupied with the subject of spiritualism. We were, in fact, according to the common agreement about such things, in the state that best enables us to assist any possible manifestations by—by giving out power.
“The chief medium in the case was unquestionably the unconscious person of Miss Messenger. She was in what I may call an ideal trance for the purpose of manifestation. Also, by an extraordinary chance, her body was secluded and in darkness. If the conditions had been planned by experts they couldhardly have been improved upon. After that our explanation of the apparition and of the ‘direct voice’ phenomena is largely dependent upon precedents.
“With regard to the first, I claim that von Schrenck-Notsing’s photographs taken in Paris and elsewhere in 1912 and 1913 have sufficiently demonstrated that in favourable conditions and with a sensitive medium, a form of matter, not as yet scientifically described, may be drawn from the body of the medium and used by the external agency to build up representations not only of the human form, but also of familiar materials. I mention that in order that we may not be in any way disturbed by the fact that the materialisation was dressed in a gown of different colour from that worn by Miss Messenger. That gown too was instantly woven out of the creative flux.
“Indeed, the only thing that was not so momentarily created and re-absorbed was the tulle scarf. That must actually have been taken from Miss Messenger’s unconscious body and handled by the temporary form evolved out of the teleplasm. There is good precedent for that, as I believe I said last night.”
He paused a moment and then, as Harrison did not immediately reply, he added: “And if we are all agreed, after we have finished our discussion this evening, I would like to have separate written accounts from each of you as to your sight of the phenomenon; those, backed by the evidence of Mr. Messenger, his daughter and the police sergeant, ought, I think, to establish one of the most remarkable and convincing cases ever reported to the S.P.R.”
“Steady, steady, Vernon,” Harrison put in. “I can’t say that I’m absolutely convinced as yet.”
“What’s the alternative explanation?” Vernon asked.
“That it was Miss Messenger herself whom we saw in a state of trance,” Harrison said. “You see I concede you the trance.”
“But, my dear man,” Vernon expostulated, “the figurewe saw by the wood was not like Miss Messenger.”
“No?” Harrison replied. “Very well, let’s analyse the differences as observed by the various witnesses. You begin, Vernon. Was there any difference in height?”
“None to speak of that I noticed,” Vernon admitted, “but that woman had a distinctly more spiritual face than Miss Messenger.”
“Anything else?” Harrison pressed him.
“We only saw her for a few moments, of course,” Vernon said. “I must confess that at the moment I can’t think of any other marked differences. It—it was another face and expression, that’s all.”
“And you, Emma,” said Harrison, looking at his wife.
“I couldn’t be absolutely sure that it wasn’t Miss Messenger,” she replied. “We were all in rather an excited state just then, weren’t we?”
“But the dress was a different colour,” put in Mrs. Greatorex. “That first woman was in white. Miss Messenger had a grey dress on.”
“I think, you know,” her husband continued, “that Vernon rather hit the mark when he said that the first girl had a more spiritual face. That was what struck me.”
“Haven’t you any comments, Lady Ulrica?” Harrison asked.
Lady Ulrica sighed. “I’m afraid,” she said honestly, “that for observations of that kind, you can’t count on me one way or the other. I’d left my glasses under the cedar, and I’m as blind as a bat without them.”
Harrison smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, come, what does it all amount to?” he asked. “Is there any reason in the world why we should resort to so far-fetched an explanation as the supernatural? Let us consider the evidence as if we were going to put it before a body of expert opinion. We were, according to Vernon’s own admission, in an ‘expectant, slightly inert condition.’ We had been talking spiritualism for anhour or more after dinner, in very exceptional conditions. I never remember a stiller or an—er—more emotional night. When we were all worked up by Vernon’s eloquence into a peculiar state of anticipation, we saw a white figure down by the lake. It was inevitable, in these circumstances, that we should approach it in a state of emotion. And what did we find? We found a young woman walking in trance. Well, that state had very naturally altered her usual appearance, given her face a more spiritual expression. No doubt, she was very pale. She told me this morning that she had contemplated suicide just before she fell into this trance, and I conceive it as being probable that her highly disturbed mental condition had reacted upon her physical appearance.
“Now let us consider what actually happened. Three observers, Emma, Fell and myself, had seen Miss Messenger before and failed in those circumstances to recognise her. Is that a very remarkable failure when we give due weight to our own excited anticipations, coupled with the fact that the girl was in an altogether abnormal physical state? Furthermore we find that four people fail later to recognise Miss Messenger as the original of the supposed stranger. Of these four, one admits that she cannot be trusted as an observer of the details, another that she hardly noticed the stranger’s face. A third, Vernon, cannot deny that he was the victim of a prepossession, that he anticipated a spiritualistic phenomenon and he is not therefore a reliable witness. The fourth is our friend Greatorex. Now, G., I ask you in all seriousness whether you would be prepared to swear on oath that the figure we saw for a few seconds in the moonlight down by the yews could not have been Miss Messenger in a state of trance. On your oath, now.”
“No, Harrison, no. I would not be prepared to swear that,” Greatorex said. “In fact, I believe you’re right about the whole affair.”
“But the dress, Mr. Harrison,” Mrs. Greatorex put in. “That woman by the wood was in white. Miss Messengerwas wearing a grey dress.”
“The effect of moonlight, my dear lady,” Harrison replied. “Moonlight takes the colour out of everything.” As he spoke, he got to his feet and took a turn up the room. As he had argued, the conviction of the truth of his theory had been steadily growing in his own mind. He wanted, now, to clinch the thing once and for all, eliminate the last possibility of sending in a report to the S. P. R., and lay the ghost for ever. But as he reached the end of the room, his eye fell on the tulle scarf left by Miss Messenger on the previous night, now neatly folded by the housemaid and laid on a table by the window. And he realised in an instant that the confounded thing was grey and matched the colour of Miss Messenger’s dress. Why then had that scarf also not appeared white in the moonlight? It meant nothing; no doubt he might be able to evolve some explanation, but at the present moment it might most vexatiously complicate his case. Everyone, strangely enough, had recognised that scarf. It was the one thing that had appeared to be unaltered by the unusual conditions.
Harrison was intellectually honest, but the temptation to suppress that piece of evidence was too strong for him. As he turned, he was between the table and the rest of the party, and he stretched his hand out behind him, and surreptitiously crammed the scarf into the pocket of his dinner-jacket.
But his peroration was spoilt. The enthusiasm seemed to have been suddenly drained out of him.
“Hm! hm! Well, in effect,” he said as he returned, “I submit that there is no reason whatever to seek a supernatural explanation of our experience last night. What do you all say?”
“Personally, I’m quite convinced that it was Miss Messenger we saw,” his wife replied cheerfully.
“Very probably, I should say,” Greatorex agreed.
“It certainly seems the most likely explanation,” Mrs. Greatorex added.
“And you, Lady Ulrica?” Harrison asked.
“Well, of course, if you are all sure it was Miss Messenger, I don’t see that there’s anything more to be said,” Lady Ulrica replied.
“All of us except Vernon,” Harrison amended.
Vernon sighed and leaned back in his chair. “You’ve pretty effectively diddled my report to the S.P.R., anyway,” he said. “If no one is prepared to swear that the person we first saw was not Miss Messenger, I’ve got no evidence.”
“There is still Fell, of course,” Harrison suggested.
“I don’t think we can rely upon anything Mr. Fell might say,” Mrs. Harrison put in. “I’m afraid he had a reason for notwantingto recognise Miss Messenger just then. I don’t think Mr. Fell has behaved at all nicely.”
“I think we’ll drop it, Harrison,” Vernon said with a touch of magnanimity. “I can’t say that you’ve convinced me, even about last night’s experience, but you’ve got all the ordinary probabilities on your side. It’s curious how difficult it is even toplana perfect test case.”
Harrison had triumphed. He ought to have been content. But the truth is that he had satisfied everyone but himself. “That confounded scarf,” as he began to think of it, bothered and perplexed him. He stowed it away in a drawer when he went to bed, but in the small hours of the morning he found himself wide awake reconsidering all the evidence. It had come to him with a perfectly detestable clearness that if Vernon’s theory was a true one, that scarf was the single piece of common earthly material that had been used in the presentation of the phenomenon they had witnessed; and it was, at least, a strangely significant fact that the scarf should be the one thing they had all seen so clearly, the one thing the appearance of which had not been influenced by their mental emotion or the effect of moonlight.
The coincidence bothered him. He could not find an explanation.
It continued to bother him the next morning. It came between him and his work. And after lunch he put the scarf in his pocket and made it an excuse to call again on Miss Messenger. There were, perhaps, one or two further points that might be elucidated in conversation with her. She had taken, he judged, almost as violent an antipathy to the thing as he had himself. The sight of it might produce some kind of shock, might just possibly revive some memory of what had happened during her trance.
When he arrived at the hotel, Miss Messenger was in the garden, and he was shown up into her private sitting-room to await her. Still thoughtfully considering the best means to approach the production of the scarf, he walked absent-mindedly across the room and began to stare at the photographs on the mantelpiece. And then, suddenly, he became aware of the illusion that he was gazing at a background of dark yews, against which was vividly posed the delicate profile of some exquisite cameo. He blinked his eyes in amazement, and the background changed to the commonplace detail reflected in the mirror. But the face remained, the very profile he had seen by the plantation, a face sensitive and full of sadness, staring wistfully out as if at some unwelcome vision of the future.
Harrison shivered. It seemed to him as if a thin draught of cold air were blowing past him. And then, for a moment, he had a sense of immense distances and strange activities beyond the knowledge of common life. He was aware of some old experience newly recognised after long ages of forgetfulness; an experience that came back to him elusive as the thought of a recent dream. But while he struggled to place that fugitive memory, the door behind him opened, and the dark curtain of physical reality was suddenly interposed between him and his vision.
He heard the voice of Miss Messenger speaking to himclose at hand.
“That’s my friend, Rhoda Burton,” she was saying. “The photograph was taken only a week before she died. She was in great trouble even then, poor darling.”
HERE ENDS SIGNS AND WONDERS, THE THIRDBOOK PRINTED AT THE GOLDEN COCKERELPRESS, WALTHAM SAINT LAWRENCE,BERKSHIRE. THIS EDITION OF 1500COPIES FINISHED ON THE15TH. OF JUNE1921.
HERE ENDS SIGNS AND WONDERS, THE THIRDBOOK PRINTED AT THE GOLDEN COCKERELPRESS, WALTHAM SAINT LAWRENCE,BERKSHIRE. THIS EDITION OF 1500COPIES FINISHED ON THE15TH. OF JUNE1921.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:The cover image of this eBook was created by the transcriber and is entered into the public domain.Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.Archaic or alternate spelling which may have been in use at the time of publication has been retained.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
The cover image of this eBook was created by the transcriber and is entered into the public domain.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling which may have been in use at the time of publication has been retained.