The Professor's Mystery Part 30

"I would," said I, "with the greatest pleasure, in every paper in New York." I stepped back. "Excuse me, I'm going to telephone."

She looked around at the others with the eyes of a cornered cat. Then she dropped back into her chair.

"Very well," she sniffed, "I'll do it. I'll deny my faith to preserve my usefulness. And G.o.d will punish you."

The granite face of Doctor Immanuel Paulus relaxed into a grim smile.

"The press, in America," said he. "That is a fine weapon."

Mrs. Mahl, having finally yielded, was not long in recovering from her emotion; and while Mr. Tabor went to bring his wife, the two doctors rapidly discussed the precise needs of the case, and with the medium's a.s.sistance formulated a plan of action. I am bound to say that she entered into the scheme as unreservedly as though it had been from the first her own; suggesting eagerly how this and that detail might best be managed, and showing a familiarity with Mrs. Tabor's trouble, and with nervous abnormality in general, hardly less complete and practical than theirs. Presently we heard the voices of the others in the hall, and she went quietly out to meet them. Then came a confused blur of tones, Mrs.

Tabor's in timid protest and Sheila and Lady in rea.s.surance; then Mr.

Tabor, a little louder than the rest: "Not in the least, my dear. Why should I? You should have told me all about it from the first." Then the voices grew quieter, and at last blunted into silence behind the heavy curtains of the living-room. We waited an interminable five minutes gazing into one another's rigid faces, and hearing only the restless movement of Reid. At last, Doctor Paulus nodded at us, and we tiptoed noiselessly across the hall to where around the edges of the close-drawn curtains we could hear and see.

At a little card-table, drawn out into the center of the floor, sat Mrs.

Tabor and the medium, face to face. Between them and beyond the table was Mr. Tabor; Lady sat on her mother's nearer side, and Sheila, with her back to us, completed the circle. They were all leaning forward intently, something in the att.i.tude of people saying grace before a meal. The windows were not covered, but the dull light of the late and stormy afternoon came inward only as a leaden grayness, in which faces and the details of the surroundings were heavily and vaguely visible, like shadows of themselves. In the window at the far end of the room, the canary hopped carelessly about his cage, with an occasional cricket-like chirp; and but for this the house was quiet enough for us to hear the swish of wind along the leaves of the vine-covered veranda and the ripple of the rain upon the gla.s.s.

I knew now that my excited sensations at the previous sittings must have been imaginary in their origin; for even here, in the presence of this open and prearranged imposture, I felt the same curious sense of tension, the same intimacy as of a surrounding crowd, the same oppressive heaviness of the atmosphere. I could hardly believe in the airy s.p.a.ciousness of the high room, or the physical distance between me and my fellow-watchers. My breath came laboriously, and I wondered how those within could fail to hear the slow pounding of my heart and the rustle of our heavy breathing behind the curtain. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Reid raise his brows toward his superior, and he answered by a frowning nod. At last after an interval doubtless far shorter than before, but interminable to our strained antic.i.p.ation, the medium shuddered slightly, and fell back in her chair. Her face twisted convulsively, and her hands and head made little twitching, aimless movements, unpleasantly like the reflexive spasms of a dying animal. She moaned softly once or twice, then relaxed limply; and the voice of Miriam began to speak.

"Here I am--mother--why did--you--bring me here?"

Mr. Tabor leaned back, his white brows drawn into a savage knot. Sheila covered her eyes and fell to rocking slowly to and fro. Lady made no sign; but I knew what sacrilege it was to her, and I could hardly hold myself. Yet the mother answered without regarding them.

"I like to have you near me, dearest. Does this place trouble you?"

"Why should it--trouble me?-- As well--here--as anywhere-- Nothing matters--to me."

"That's more like yourself than anything I've heard you say-- George, did you hear? Can you doubt now after that?"

Her husband answered only with a gesture, and the voice went on.

"Are you--sure you know me, mother?"

The two scientists exchanged glances. Mrs. Tabor began a hurried protest, but the voice interrupted.

"Because you may be--only imagining--it may not be real."

The querulous throaty tone was the same, but the words came each time more quickly, and the wail was dying out of them. The comic aspect of the whole scene struck me suddenly with revolting. It was so terribly important and at the same time such a tawdry practical joke.

"Miriam, what are you saying?" Mrs. Tabor was leaning forward toward the sound, her face tense and frightened.

"Oh, anything I please--it's quite easy-- Don't you begin to understand?"

"Oh, what do you mean? Miriam! Mrs. Mahl, what is happening?"

The medium never stirred, nor moved a muscle of her face, as the spirit-voice replied: "Just the same thing that's happened right along, Mrs. Tabor. Don't you see now? You were always so sure that any voice could do for you to recognize. You've laid yourself open to it."

Mrs. Tabor looked for the first time as one might who listens to the dead. Her voice frightened me, it was so calm.

"What do you mean?" she said monotonously. I saw Reid move as if to part the curtain, glancing sharply at Doctor Paulus as he did so; but the older man's mouth was a bloodless line, and he shook his great head, whispering: "Not yet, Reid; not yet."

"Listen," said the voice. "Here's what you call Miriam talking." Its tone changed abruptly: "Now here's me. I'm doing it." The medium rose quietly from her chair, and stepped out into the room: "The whole thing's just--a trick," she said, shifting from one voice to the other in alternate phrases. "You believe in--ghosts--and so I gave you--what you believe." She came around the table. "Do you understand now?"

Sheila was sobbing aloud, but none of the others seemed to notice her.

Mrs. Tabor sat for an instant as if frozen, staring vacantly in front of her. Then as the medium approached, she shrank away suddenly with a childish cry of fear. "It isn't true!" she cried. "It isn't true!" and she swung limply forward upon the little table, and lay still.

Lady and Mr. Tabor were beside her in an instant, as we three sprang forward into the room. Sheila was on her feet, muttering, "You've killed her, ye brute beasts--" But a look from Doctor Paulus silenced her, as he waved the rest of us back and bent over the unconscious woman, his broad fingers pressed along the slender wrist. For a moment we watched his face in silence, as if it were the very face of destiny. Then the canary gave a sudden shrill scream, and fluttered palpitating into a corner of its cage, beating so violently against the wires that tiny feathers floated loosely out and down. The medium whispered: "Oh, my G.o.d!" and cringed sidelong, raising her arms as if one struck at her.

And my hair thrilled and my heart sickened and stopped, for even while she spoke, a voice came out of the empty air above our heads; a voice like nothing that I had heard before, a woman's voice thin and tremulous, with a fragile resonance in it, as though it spoke into a bell.

"Oh, mother, mother," it wailed. "Why don't you let me go and rest?"

CHAPTER XXVI

AND REDISCOVERING REALITIES

I think Lady clutched at my arm, but I can not remember. The one memory that remains to me of that moment is the face of Doctor Paulus. His color had turned from ivory to chalk, his mouth was drawn open in a snarling square and his eyes shrank back hollowly, glaring into nothingness. For a second he stood so, clawing in front of him with his hands, a living horror. Then with an effort that shook him from head to foot, the strong soul of the man commanded him. "It's nothing," he whispered, "I understand it. Take hold of yourselves." The hands dropped, and he bent again over Mrs. Tabor. The next moment Sheila had sprung out in front of us, and was speaking to the voice that we could not see.

"Miriam Reid," she cried, in a high chanting cadence between song and speech, "if it's yourself that's here, lie down to your rest again, an'

leave us. Go back to your place in purgatory, darling till the white angels come to carry ye higher in their own good time. In the name av G.o.d an' Mary, in the name av the Blessed Saints, go back! Go back to your home between h.e.l.l an' Heaven, an' come no more among us here!"

"Get some water, Reid," snapped Doctor Paulus. "Quiet that woman, some of you."

But Sheila had done before we could move or speak to her. With her last words, she flung her arms wide apart, above her head, and brought them inward and downward in some strange formal gesture. Then as swiftly and certainly as if she had planned it all from the beginning, she caught a little bottle from her breast, and sprinkled its contents in the upturned face of Mrs. Tabor. We caught hold of her just as she was making the sign of the Cross. But she was perfectly quiet now, with nothing more to say or do, and stood motionless like the rest of us, breathing deep breaths and watching.

The cool shock of the water did its work. Mrs. Tabor's eyelids quivered, and she gasped faintly. Reid came hurrying back with a gla.s.s of water, and stood at the side of his superior, looking foolishly disappointed as he realized the antic.i.p.ation of his errand.

"She comes out of it all right," Doctor Paulus muttered. "No harm. It is more the trance condition than an ordinary faint." He looked up at Sheila with a grim smile. "Superst.i.tion is a fine thing--sometimes, under medical direction. Now I leave her to you, Reid, a few minutes. It is better that at first she sees only her own." He beckoned to the medium, and the two went out of the room together. Then as we stood about, Mrs. Tabor caught another breath, and another. Her hands groped a moment, and her eyes opened. She looked around at us wonderingly, as we raised her up in her seat.

"Thank G.o.d," said Lady softly. And Sheila answered from the other side: "The Saints be praised."

She sat very quietly for a little time, looking about her. Lady had wiped the water from her face, and she seemed her natural self again, the girlish color returning to her cheeks and a certain bird-like vivacity in her whole pose. Then, as if memory of a sudden returned to her, she crumpled over, hiding her tragic little face in her hands. She began to cry softly at first in little sobbing, heart-broken gasps, which took on gradually a wailing intensity very dreadful to hear.

"Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear!" she repeated over and over again, in a desolate and ceaseless iteration that grew into a horror and which alone we dared not stop. Doctor Paulus, we knew, must be within call and listening. I think that all of us wondered why he did not return; we resented this permitted continuance of suffering. Finally it was Lady who made the first move among us.

She dropped on her knees beside her mother, putting her arm tenderly about the convulsed little form, and pressing her cheek close against her mother's own. "Mother, dear," she whispered very softly.

A pause came in Mrs. Tabor's sobbing and she stretched one hand half as if to push Lady away, half as if to hold her as something real and tangible.

"Where is the doctor?" she asked.

Evidently Doctor Paulus had been listening, for at the murmured question he stepped in and came across the room to Mrs. Tabor. She faced him shrinkingly, but nerved herself for the question.

"Why have you taken her from me?" she asked brokenly, at last.

Doctor Paulus' face was very kind and very serious.