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Title: Karl Grier
The strange story of a man with a sixth sense

Author: Louis Tracy

Release date: August 1, 2025 [eBook #76603]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Edward J. Clode, 1905

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76603

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KARL GRIER
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KARL GRIER

KARL GRIER

The Strange Story of a
Man with a Sixth Sense
BY
LOUIS TRACY
Author of “The Wings of the Morning,” “The Pillar
of Light” and “The Great Mogul.”

New York
Edward J. Clode
156 Fifth Avenue
1906

Copyright, 1905, by
EDWARD J. CLODE

Entered at Stationers’ Hall

The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
The Affair of the Tea-Garden 1
CHAPTER II
The Saving of Constantine 14
CHAPTER III
The Finding of Maggie Hutchinson 27
CHAPTER IV
A Cat and Frank Hooper 41
CHAPTER V
Karl’s First Meeting with Steindal 53
CHAPTER VI
In which Constantine has a Vision 66
CHAPTER VII
“Blood is a very Peculiar Juice” 78
CHAPTER VIII
Maggie Hutchinson Intervenes 90
CHAPTER IX
The Confounded Hotel Clerk 101
CHAPTER X
Maggie Tells what Befel Her 115
CHAPTER XI
The Key of the Treasure-House 126
CHAPTER XII
The Scene in the Garden Court 138
CHAPTER XIII
Constantine Takes a Journey 151

CHAPTER XIV
Constantine Encounters the Shark 165
CHAPTER XV
The Other Woman 177
CHAPTER XVI
Women Called Him “The Magnet” 190
CHAPTER XVII
I Meet Nora Cazenove 203
CHAPTER XVIII
The Problem Takes Shape 216
CHAPTER XIX
The Unbidden Guest 231
CHAPTER XX
Steindal Gives a Public Performance 246
CHAPTER XXI
Hooper Suggests a Way Out 260
CHAPTER XXII
Nora Faces the Inevitable 275
CHAPTER XXIII
“A Struggle ’twixt Love and Death” 292
CHAPTER XXIV
The Fall of the Curtain 308

KARL GRIER

CHAPTER I
THE AFFAIR OF THE TEA-GARDEN
THE chief actor in the singular, perhaps unprecedented, incidents herein
recorded now leads a sedate existence of British top-hatted respectability.
Many reputable citizens of London and Edinburgh, not to mention
cosmopolitan Paris and New York, to whom he is personally known, would
be exceedingly surprised were they to recognize, through the thin disguise
of places and people, the popular man of the world whose extraordinary
career is now set forth for the first time.
Some few there are who dimly comprehend Karl Grier’s secret. They, for
reasons that shall be obvious, will keep their amazed imaginings locked in
their own hearts. Others, men of precise science for the most part, who have
been approached in order that certain remarkable phenomena might be
sanely investigated, refute with scorn the suggestion that such a person ever
lived. That is to say, they cannot deny Karl Grier, with his giant frame and
his hearty whole-souled laugh, but they do deny most emphatically that he
ever possessed the unknown power which he exercised in a marvelous way
during several eventful years.
If aught could make Karl angry, it is the stupid agnosticism of these learned
critics, true children of the dull tribe which began, ages ago, to create its
own unbending gods of stone and wood, and has been setting up barriers to
knowledge ever since, building dogmatic walls the crossing of which is
forbidden by bell, book, and candle.
Yet it is not within my province to rail against these infallibles, who smile at
the density which imprisoned Galileo in the sixteen hundreds, but refuse to-
day’s evidence of a new realm in man’s mental activity. Sometimes Karl has
been tempted, with me, his biographer, as tempter, to place before an
astounded world such an array of facts as must convert these scoffers into
perfervid disciples. He has been deterred—and here I may claim some
credit, too—by personal considerations, by dread of the fierce light of
publicity being shed on those near and dear to him, and, in lesser degree, by
the fact that a settled, happy existence has stifled the weird and subtle sense

which was vouchsafed to him during the growth and plentitude of his
bodily and spiritual powers. So, peace be to the critics. “Eppur si muove!”
sighed the astronomer, recanting the truth to save his life.
For, without further preamble be it said, my friend Grier was endowed with,
or permitted by Providence to use, a sixth sense, which he and I, seeking its
correct classification in after years, named telegnomy, or far-knowing. That
is the nearest the vocabulary of our times will approach to the description of
his mysterious faculty. Strictly speaking, it was not a new sense, as one
differentiates seeing from hearing, or taste from touch. Purists in words may
even quarrel with me for using the term “sense” to denote a transcendental
union of reason with physical attributes. But, in writing a quaint, almost
sensational, narrative of actual occurrences, it is well to be content with the
simple phraseology of every-day life, and, in that well-defined vehicle of
plain thought, the faculty vouchsafed to Karl Grier was a sense.
Its stupendous range, its curiously rational limitations, will be grasped only
by an intelligent reading of these memoirs. So a truce to the “Yea” and
“Nay” of theorists. Let the story, or group of queer incidents, as it may be
termed, speak for itself.
“I have always thought,” said Karl, musing once in analytical mood, “that
my sixth sense owed its inception to the Babel-like jargon of languages
which surrounded my youthful years. I remember distinctly being attired,
on my fourth birthday, in a new sailor suit, which showed to an admiring
family circle that I was rated as a first-class A.B. on His Majesty’s ship
Victorious. We lived then in India, where my father grew tea on a
Darjeeling plantation. I had a half-caste French nurse from Trichinopoly, a
Mahomedan bearer, or male servant, a Scottish father and a German mother,
and each member of our little republic spoke his or her own tongue when
the heart was stirred. In my jubilation I endeavored to climb a creeper, and
fell off the low veranda on to a path covered with sharp flints. Both I and
the suit were damaged at all points of contact with the globe. My mother
shrieked: ‘Ach, Himmel!’ but, being a woman of steady nerves, she soon
perceived that little real mischief had resulted, and she went on: ‘Er ist zum
seemann nicht geboren’ (He is not cut out for a sailor). My father said, with
a laugh: ‘We should hae kepit the bairn in a cutty sark.’ The nurse flew to
my assistance, crying: ‘Pauvre p’tit! Tu n’es pas assez adroit!’ whilst Abdul
Khan, my bearer, tried to console my grief with his ‘Kuchparwani, batcha,

mainne mitai lata!’ (Never mind, little one, I have some sweets for you.)
Now, these varied exclamations, conveying many distinct ideas in four
languages, of which the Eastern differed in every respect from the
European, were instantly intelligible to me. Abdul Khan alone comforted
me—the others hurt my pride. But the real point is that I understood them
all to the finest shade of meaning. To put it plainly, sounds, and not words,
conveyed clear ideas. It was the first unknown step along an uncharted
road; the step a fox-terrier takes when he grasps the inflections of his
master’s voice.”
“I suppose that is what people mean when they say that you can never
really speak a language well until you learn to think in that language?” said
I.
Karl laughed gently, and a dreamy look came into his eyes. At one time this
would have been the certain prelude to a condition which, for want of a
more accurate term, we called a “trance,” though it was far removed from
the muscular or mental subjection induced by mesmerism or clairvoyance.
Now he simply dropped his eyelids, took a whiff or two of his pipe, and,
when he glanced at me again, there was quiet humor, not fantasy, in his big
blue orbs.
“No,” he answered, “the states may be kin, but they differ, as the visual
powers of a daisy, which can see the sun, differ from those of man.
Education, by its necessary artificiality, tends to destroy natural gifts. The
daily growth of a living language supplies adequate proof of this truism.
The first sounds uttered by man, quite apart from signs and symbols,
implied a want or an emotion. Those primary words run in unbroken gamut
through all variations of speech or dialect. Of course, they vary, but not
greatly, no more than the bark of the Indian dog, the grunt of the Indian pig,
the caw of the Indian crow—I could recite hundreds of examples—vary
from the typical cries of their European congeners. To my childish
intelligence, sounds were all sufficing. I knew the voices of nature. The
whinney of a horse told me whether he was hungry or thirsty, afraid or
angered. I heard the kites whistling their fellow-ghouls to the feast. I could
actually distinguish the answering bleat of a kid to the hoarse summons of
its dam amidst a flock of goats. Good heavens! if only my baby mind could
have uttered its knowledge, and found a scientific recorder, what
undeciphered mysteries of human development might I not have solved!”

Although this train of reminiscence was somewhat removed from the far
more curious and complex sense he developed afterwards, it was interesting
as showing a tendency towards the abnormal.
“Have you any reason to believe that animals ever knew you possessed the
key to their utterances?” I asked.
“Not in a convincing degree. Oddly enough, my intelligence was more
receptive than creative. Certainly my dogs, ponies, birds, and other so-
called dumb creatures with which I was brought in contact were in
extraordinary sympathy with me. But such human and animal collusions are
far from rare. And I could not speak to them with effect. Our physical
appliances are fashioned by use, remember. If the nasal sounds of French
will change the shape of the roof of a Frenchman’s mouth, or singing
develop the singer’s throat in a single lifetime, how much more profoundly
must untold generations of ordered language have modified the vocal
organs. So my four-footed friends could not understand my harsh
imitations. They were too far down the scale. I could plumb their depths,
but they could only gaze at me wistfully, as men look at the stars.”
He went on to tell how he startled his father, one day, by the information
that a colony of minahs (the Indian starling) had found a snake in a flower-
bed, which was true, though none could guess how the child knew it; and he
made me shake with merriment as he described the antics of a monkey,
whose chattering rage he did succeed in burlesquing with some degree of
realism. But these are not serious contributions to science, and I am truly
endeavoring to help forward my fellow-men along the path which Morse,
Edison, Marconi, and many another earnest worker, each in a separate
sphere, yet each striving for the same goal, have indicated to a world not yet
ready to advance. I pass, therefore, to the first recorded use of his sixth
sense. In all probability there were minor instances, which were unnoticed
either by his parents or by the child himself. This one could not be gainsaid.
It verified itself most dramatically.
Karl’s peculiar gift of understanding the crude languages of nomads—he
lost the hidden key long before any one thought of testing him with
Homeric verse or the polished periods of Cicero—enabled him to converse
with the unkempt Nepalese and wilder Tibetans who occasionally visited
the station in the guise of petty traders. He was six years old when the

famous Hutchinson Raid took place. Already he had learnt to read, but,
luckily, his parents, being wise folk, determined that such a precocious
child must not be encouraged in his studies, else the growth of method in
that wondrous little brain must already have dimmed his comprehension of
primeval speech.
The Griers’ tea-garden, with its fine bungalow and spacious coolie quarters,
was an old estate. It stood on the outskirts of the scattered houses which
comprised the station. In a neighboring valley, two miles away, a London
company had established a huge garden, employing nearly three thousand
coolies, and the manager was a Mr. Frank Hutchinson. One day, at the
beginning of the hot weather, Hutchinson drove to the local bank, and
obtained a very considerable sum of money, some twenty odd thousand
rupees, to pay the monthly wages. Being a “brither Scot,” he called on the
Griers, left his wife there for a gossip, and his little daughter, Maggie, for a
romp with Karl. The three set out towards home in time for dinner, and Karl
was, naturally, very reluctant to part from his little playmate.
She, too, nearly wept, so he consoled her by saying:—
“Don’t cwy, Maggie”—for he had a slight lisp—“Mamsie says we are
coming to see you soon, and I’ll think of you until Nanna (the French nurse)
puts me to bed.”
Maggie evidently found consolation in this limited promise of fidelity. It
can only be assumed that the boy kept his vow. In his mind he followed the
child and her parents down into the valley, across the river, and up the hill-
side to the spacious compound which held the house and offices. Arrived
there, in fancy, his active brain roamed about the place, which he knew
well. Then his wits wandered. His father, quitting the monthly accounts in
time for dinner, found the nurse sitting in the veranda, sewing, in a dim
light. Near her was Karl, unusually quiet, curled up in a big peg-chair. Grier
spoke, but the boy did not answer. Stooping, he noticed a tiny stream of
blood issuing from a nostril.
Though not a nervous man, he lifted Karl into his arms with quick anxiety,
and the youngster appeared to wake from a light sleep.
“What is the matter, sonny?” he asked, somewhat puzzled. “Why is your
nose bleeding?”

“I don’t know, Daddy, but I have been a long way, and maybe I hurted
myself.”
“Been a long way! Has Master Karl been out, Mathilde?” he inquired.
“Mais non, m’sieur. He play some time, then he sit himself in the chair.”
“But I have, Daddy,” persisted the child. “I went with Maggie. I heard Mr.
Hutchinson tell Mrs. Hutchinson that their tea crop was not a good one, as
the soil was too light, and he thought the Company had not chosen a good
pitch.”
This was sufficiently bewildering from a boy of six, being an opinion which
Hutchinson would not utter even to Grier himself. But Karl, whose lisp
need not be reproduced, was brimful of news.
“Oh, it is quite, quite true,” he cried in response to his father’s laughing
protest. “Maggie went in, and was a naughty girl because she could not sit
up for dinner. Then I went around the house, and I saw some hill men in a
wood. They said they were going to kill Mr. Hutchinson to-night, and steal
his money. One of them will give the chowkidars (watchmen) something to
make them sleep. They will put the bags of money on some ponies, and go
by a hill path into Sikkim. There are eight brown ponies and one white one.
I counted them.”
Some inkling of a tremendous fact stayed the remonstrance on Mr. Grier’s
lips. He was Scottish, you see, a Highlander bred and born, and he almost
believed in second sight. So he encouraged Karl to talk, obtained additional
and more convincing details, for the child gave him the exact phrases of the
Shillong patois used by the bandits, and finally handed over the youthful
visionary to Mathilde, telling her to ask Mrs. Grier to keep some dinner for
him—he was called away on urgent business.
He rode to the house of the District Superintendent of Police. As a favor, for
Grier was a popular man, Captain Melville gathered a few mounted
constables, and they all cantered off to the Hutchinsons’ garden. In the
compound they found a stranger fraternizing with the servants, and in his
possession was a quantity of sweetmeats, which subsequent examination
proved to be rank with dhatura, an Indian drug which can induce sleep or
death.

A raid on the wood secured a dozen rascals armed to the teeth, and the nine
ponies, exactly as Karl had described them. There was a small fight, in
which a sepoy’s head was cut open, but the surprise was too effectual for
any serious resistance to be offered. “Conspiracy” was the root word of the
legal indictment which sent the gang to the Andamans convict settlement.
The affair was known as the “Hutchinson Raid.” Such things happen in
India. But Karl’s share in the adventure was kept quiet by the authorities. It
would have discredited the otherwise conclusive evidence, they thought.

CHAPTER II
THE SAVING OF CONSTANTINE
Though others might calmly dismiss the child’s vision as an extraordinarily
accurate delusion—“an unusually elaborate series of coincidences,” the
policeman termed it—not so his parents. A man from Inverness, a woman
from the Schwartz Wald, may be dour and stolid to outward seeming, but
they are highly imaginative by nature.
An ancestor of Grier’s, a warrior bard, took service with the Elector-
Palatine, and this remote link led to the Indian tea-planter marrying a stout
and pretty Gretchen from the borders of the Black Forest. Karl, named after
his German grandfather, not altogether without an eye to the main chance, I
regret to say, was their only child, and were he the ugliest duckling ever
hatched he would yet have been their greatest treasure. But he was a very
good-looking, merry-eyed, manly little fellow, with a face like one of
Murillo’s angels, and eyes with the blue of the Red Sea in them. If you are
in doubt as to the true blend of sapphire and ultramarine meant by that tint,
ask any sailor-man of your acquaintance, and he will tell you that the blue
of the Red Sea is a deep, unvarying, steadfast color, while the blue of the
Mediterranean is, often as not, a steely mistral gray.
In a word, Mr. and Mrs. Grier secretly worshiped their bonny chick, and it
was a great shock to them to discover that his developing brains held
compartments not within common ken. Therefore, although Karl ate his
meals heartily, and throve apace, they kept a close eye on him, and
compared notes whenever any curious action or utterance caught their
attention. And what eagle-like intensity there is in that wistful parental
glance! How it detects and interprets signs and portents! What degenerates
must be the father and mother whose first warning of danger to their young
comes from a nurse!
So it came to pass that once, aged seven, Karl had the earache. “Goodness
me!” cries the experienced matron, “that is nothing to cause domestic
flutterings. A pinch of bicarbonate of soda dissolved in a teaspoonful of hot

water, or, in severe attacks, a few drops of laudanum on cotton-wool, will
deaden the pain and induce sleep.”
Yes, madam, but if your little Tom, Dick, or Harry remarked that “the music
was doing it,” and, when pressed for details, began to explain that some one
was playing a flute, thus—whereupon Karl softly hummed part of the
obligato to the nightingale song from the “Marriage of Jeannette”—if,
moreover, your budding genius went on:
“There is a lady singing now. Listen:
Au bord du chemin qui passe ma porte
Fleurit un bel aubépin, un bel aubépin....”
and you knew quite well that the Commissioner’s niece, helped by a love-
sick subaltern who fluted, was probably singing that identical song in a
house over a mile distant, what would you do?
Send for the doctor, of course.
The doctor came, a hard-headed Scot—they thrive in India, those Scotsmen
—and heard the story. At first he was inclined to place a mother’s vagaries
firmly on one side, but, when a chuprassi (messenger) brought a reply to
Mrs. Grier’s note, and he read what the Commissioner’s niece had written,
he stroked his long nose silently. For this was the answer:
“Yes, Mr. Browne was here for luncheon. About two o’clock he ran through
the ‘Rossignol’ song with me, first without the voice, afterwards with all the
frills. But what on earth made you guess it? Mr. Browne is so amazed that
he is staying to tea. Do come and tell us all about it.”
“And ye say ye mentioned the chune yerself, Mrs. Grier?” said he
meditatively.
“Yes, indeed. I heard Miss Nicholls sing it at the Gloucesters’ concert and
Karl was not there. What can it all mean, doctor?”
“I wish I could read that riddle. Ye would see all the letters of the alphabet
afther me name. But trouble not yer head about Karl, Mrs. Grier. A slight
discharge is beginning, and that brings instant relief.”
He sought Grier in the big drying-room of the tea factory.

“That boy of yours is a pheenomenon,” he said. “The sensory zone of his
brain is, I should imagine, of remarkable size and unique capacity. With
care, and ordinary luck, he should grow into a marvelous man. But yer wife
must not fret if he puzzles her at times. He has the digestion of an ostrich,
and the stamina of a young bull.”
“Is there any way of accounting for his queer faculties?” asked the planter.
“How can the normal account for the abnormal?” answered the doctor.
“Here we have a set of nerves the functions of which are ill understood. We
know that unilateral destruction of a center will partially abolish sensation
on the opposite side of the body. A bilatereal lesion will destroy all
sensation. In simple language, if the hearing nerves are damaged on the
right side, you are somewhat deaf in the left ear; but general destruction
means total deafness. That is what happens when the ordinary appliances
are deranged. It is beyond me to explain the process whereby those same
appliances obtain a tenfold, perhaps a thousand-fold, activity.”
“Is such a thing possible?”
The Civil Surgeon selected a cigar from five exactly similar weeds in his
case with a care that betokened a nice discrimination.
“One does not discuss these matters with womenfolk, Grier; they think ye
are flying in the face of Providence,” he said. “Therefore, keep my
opeenion for yer own lug, so to speak. I have a theory, a pipe-and-tobacco
bit of pheelosophy, mind you, that human inventiveness is bounded only by
the latent powers of the human brain. The limits are absolute, but they are
far beyond our dimmest comprehension, as yet. I suppose you never saw an
epileptic lunatic?”
“No.”
The tea-planter disliked the abrupt question. When you come to think of it,
it had a disagreeable sound in a discussion of a pretty child’s simple
ailment. Doctors are apt to forget their hearers’ unscientific feelings.
“It provides a most interesting study,” said Dr. Macpherson, with a grim
glee. “Such a case is frequently accompanied by sensory hallucinations and
certain subjective sensations, such as unseen flashes of light and color,
strange, and often offensive, tastes and smells, the result of some morbid

irritation of the cortical sensory centers, which are the anatomical subtrata
of ideation.”
“What the—what has all this got to do with Karl?” demanded Grier, with
rising wrath.
“Softly, noo, ma man. Before ye build ye mun have a foundation. I am one
of those who think that insanity is closely akin to genius. An extra dense
membrane may convert a potential Isaac Newton into an actual eediot. The
other day, a clever Frenchman—they are daring deevils, the French—
opened an imbecile’s skull, rearranged his brain lobes, and provided space
for expansion. The imbecile went through all the processes of intellectual
growth, and is now a sane man. Why should not nature go one better than
the surgeon, and suddenly irradiate her wide realm by some lightning
gleam? In other days her efforts in that direction led her subjects to
martyrdom or sanctity, by the sheer chance of their being on the winning or
losing side. Mostly, both then and now, she sends her unfortunate failures to
the mad-house.”
“Look here, Macpherson,” interrupted Grier hotly, “you are talking about
my boy, remember.”
“Deed, ay! He’s a credit to ye, but he wouldn’t have the earache if ye hadn’t
dowered him wi’a thick cranium.”
And the doctor hurried away, sore because his grains of science had fallen
on such unreceptive soil.
Karl, of course, recovered speedily, and the more he learnt to appreciate a
Manipur pony, a brace of sporting fox-terriers, and an air-gun, the less
prone was he to uncanny manifestations. As the sway of Mathilde declined,
the more did he unconsciously acquire the lore of the jungle, until, at ten
years of age, he had the wisdom and beauty of a young god, though he
could scarce write his name, and spelled as a Scotchman jokes.
So a family council sat many times, and there came a day when Mrs. Grier
and Karl leaned against the rail of the P. & O. steamer, Ganges, and
watched the form of the stalwart planter until he, and the Calcutta Ghaut,
and the busy banks of the Hughli River, dissolved in a mist of tears.
For India is an evil land in which to rear tender plants of European stock,
and Karl must go home, not to see the glowing east again until he was a

man. His mother went with him, and, if God favored the loving family, they
would all be reunited when Grier sold his tea-garden in its highest state of
efficiency some three years later. These partings yield the sternest test of an
imperial race. Hearts which do not break suffer the fiercer strain.
Karl, who had forgotten the sea, being scarce able to toddle when his
parents quitted Britain, quickly merged his sorrows in the marvels of the
Bay of Bengal. His mother, choking her grief each day until the boy slept,
watched him narrowly. She was a very intelligent woman, and, although her
formula was wordless, she had a definite belief that the immensity of the
ocean, its far-flung silence, might affect her extraordinary son in some
unexpected manner.
Luckily, Dr. Macpherson, time-expired and pensioned, was on board, and in
him she had a sympathetic friend also who was a skilled observer. He
concurred with her that repression or secrecy was not to be thought of in
connection with Karl. The boy’s insatiable curiosity about ships and their
ways was not denied such information as was obtainable. The captain,
attracted one morning by his joyous laugh, took him up to the chart-house,
showed him how to take an observation, explained the curvature of the
earth, and, finally, made him pull the cord of the siren, thereby summoning
all hands to collision quarters for inspection.
Now, the raucous blast of the fog-horn spoke to the youngster as the voice
of the ship. It probed boundless depths in Karl’s soul. He heard the
tremulous waves of sound speeding over the face of the waters long after
the steam breath was dry in the whistle. He heard, though he knew it not,
the solemn echoes as the rolling harmony was sent up from sea to clouds
and back to the sea again.
And he began to “dream.” Mrs. Grier, fearful of the outcome, would have
distracted his attention, but Dr. Macpherson, who had never seen the boy in
the actual state of exaltation, besought her not to check him.
The day passed without incident. After dinner they were on deck, enjoying
the glorious tropical moon, “that orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,”
which some globe-trotting impressionist has described as yellow!
Macpherson, thinking Karl’s visionary mood had passed without result,
pointed out such planets as were ascendant, and added the information that
several hundreds of smaller bodies were invisible, save to astronomers.

“I can see a good many,” said Karl, instantly.
“Nonsense. Those are stars,” smiled the doctor.
“No. I mean round black things, like balloons. Some of them are shiny on
one side.”
“By gad!” muttered the man under his breath. He gazed up at the glittering
firmament.
“That big fellow there is Jupiter,” he said. “Can you discover anything
peculiar about him?”
“Yes,” said Karl, instantly. “There are three little dots quite near. They look
like pins stuck in a blue cloth.”
“Karl, did anybody ever tell you that Jupiter had three moons?”
“I never heard of Jupiter before, but I have often seen the three moons,”
was the amazing answer.
“That is true,” interposed Mrs. Grier. “We kept such problems from his
ken.”
What Dr. Macpherson might have said will never be known. They were
standing on the port side, well forward. On a clear space aft some light-
hearted people were waltzing. In utter disobedience of the ship’s rules, a
young Armenian, scion of a great commercial house in London and
Calcutta, was sitting on the rail. Some one cannoned against him and he
fell, yelling, into the sea.
Instantly there was a hubbub of screams and rushing feet. A cool-headed
man threw a life-buoy after the unfortunate youth, and others shouted to the
officer of the watch. Very speedily the steamer’s way was stopped and the
engines reversed.
The ship’s framework throbbed under the agony of the giant machines thus
rudely checked in their work. British quartermasters and lithe Lascars
worked like fiends to clear a boat’s hamper and swing out the davits. But it
was a hopeless task. Great steamers slip through a mile of water with such
rapidity, and the course was so interfered with by reversing the propellers,
that nothing short of a miracle would reveal the whereabouts of the hapless
Armenian, even if he still floated and retained consciousness.

“Mrs. Grier—” began Macpherson.
“I know what you would say,” she cried bravely. “Yes, let Karl help, and let
me try to thank God he has the power.”
Were it not for Macpherson’s great reputation and personal popularity the
captain would scarcely have listened to him in that confused moment. Even
as it was, he only understood the doctor to say that Constantine, the
Armenian, could be found, and he gave permission in a dazed way for the
man and the boy to be seated in the boat before it was lowered.
Then Macpherson had to convince a sceptical third officer, and, greatest
difficulty of all, he had to bend Karl’s excited wits to the task in hand, for
the child was delighted with the adventure.
The plash of the oars, the stealing away of the huge black hull of the
Ganges, the earnest words of Macpherson, soon had their effect. Karl
commenced to know what was expected of him.
“Yes,” he said, standing up on a seat in his eagerness, and pointing to a
different course, “he is there, crying out loud. He is calling for his mother.”
Not the best sailor of them all could see or hear aught. Yet, for want of other
guide, the third officer swung round the boat’s head.
Ever and anon Karl told them where the Armenian was, and even shouted,
in his shrill treble, to encourage him.
At last, after twenty minutes of strenuous tugging, a quartermaster in the
bows roared hoarsely, “By the Lord, I can see him!”
“Of course,” chirrupped Karl. “He was there all the time!”
So a half-drowned, wholly hysterical Constantine, clinging desperately to a
buoy which he refused to abandon, was dragged into the boat, and Karl was
restored to his weeping mother’s arms, while strange tales ran through the
ship when the screw jogged merrily onwards once more.
That saving of Constantine meant a good deal to Karl, as shall be seen.

CHAPTER III
THE FINDING OF MAGGIE HUTCHINSON
Sir William Macpherson earned his K.C.I.E. not so much by his thirty
years of Ind as by the comparative leisure which enabled him to write that
famous essay on “Brain Excitations.” He has told me since that the genesis
of the theory which likens man to an induction coil came to him as the oars
swung merrily back to the Ganges, he striving the while to restore the
Armenian’s vitality.
“Karl,” he whispered, stirred by the impulse of the moment, “can you see
your father?”
The boy looked unerringly towards the north, where Darjeeling lay, eight
hundred miles distant.
“No,” he said after a slight pause, “it is dark.”
“Dark?” repeated the scientist.
“Yes, like a fog at night, you know.”
“But there is no fog, and it was quite as dark a few minutes since, when you
saw Mr. Constantine in the sea.”
Karl seemed to focus his thoughts once more. Then he nestled wearily close
to his friend.
“Something seems to press me back, and I am tired,” he said.
Every woman who reads this would, in all probability, like to box
Macpherson’s ears. And, indeed, he had the good grace to be ashamed of
himself, though, if doctors did not push individual experiments a trifle too
far occasionally, the mass of humanity would be the worse for their caution.
Nevertheless, though he contented himself with asking the third officer to
shield the boy from the keen surface air of the sea, his mind was busy.
Karl’s wonderful comprehension of root words was known to him, and he
felt that the expressions “dark,” “fog,” “something seems to press me

back,” even the unwonted excuse of being “tired,” were not chosen at
random.
Then he remembered how a friend had taken him once, when home on
furlough, to witness certain telephonic tests conducted by the Post-office
engineers at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. An instrument was affixed to an
appliance which registered 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 miles of resistance at
will, for such high tensions are needed when sea-cables are laid. It was
instructive to hear the same human voice dying away as the conductivity of
the wire decreased. Again, he happened to be present when the Indo-
European Telegraph Company carried out their famous experiment, and
actually linked a transmitter in Paris with a receiver in Calcutta. As far
away as Teheran the action of the electric indicator was sharp and distinct,
but from Constantinople westwards through Vienna the current became
sluggish, until the supreme effort of Paris required slow and careful
manipulation ere the message emerged from chaos.
Here were unfailing indications of what Karl meant by “pressing back” and
“tired.” But what was the significance of the darkness, the fog? Suddenly
Macpherson asked himself:
“What was the force which fought against the thousands of miles of
telegraph wire? Suppose there was no wire? Yet the force remained!”
It came to him that the child cast his bright intelligence forth in ever-
spreading Hertzian waves, and that his perceptive powers diminished with
distance, on the well-established ratio of the decrease of sound as the circle
widens and air-waves lengthen with slower movement. Moreover, the
apparent difficulty of reconciling his instant discovery of planets known
only to astronomers with his inability to penetrate deeply the gloom of earth
vanished when the lateral density of the air mantle was taken into account.
To see the three moons of Jupiter! That was a marvel in itself. Strangely
enough, Du Maurier, an artist dreamer, had attributed the power to one of
the characters in his novel The Martian. But that was a phase in a spirit
romance; here was a child with eyes like telescopes and ears like
telephones.
Greatly was the scientist tempted to try Karl again on the nearer, and wholly
unknown, physical features of Colombo. But he resisted and vigorously

chafed the Armenian’s chest and back, though, to be sure, the tenacious
clinging of the youth to the canvas buoy rendered such massage difficult.
Thenceforth, during the voyage home, Constantine pestered Karl with a
ludicrous, dog-like fidelity. The Armenian was lean, tall, and dark, with the
big, black eyes, large mouth, small ears, and prominent nose of his race.
Ordinarily, he was a bumptious and exceedingly “clever” young man, the
heir to crores of rupees, and a business of world-wide renown; yet the mere
sight of Karl skipping towards him along the deck would stop his blatant
chatter and convert him into a sort of human grey-hound, a timid animal,
which had just caught sight of its master. This submissiveness amused the
other passengers, annoyed Mrs. Grier, and caused Macpherson certain
ponderings.
Constantine told the doctor that when he found himself in the water
grasping the life-buoy his first impression was that the ship could not
possibly find him. He began to cry in a frenzy, but suddenly he became
reassured. After that he had no fear of being drowned, but he had a horrible
premonition that a huge shark was rushing from the depths with incredible
speed to devour him. The memory of this shark always returned whenever
he saw Karl! The monster’s jaws opened! He could feel it crush his bones!
The boy throve splendidly aboard ship. Constantine went to England
overland from Marseilles, but he met the Ganges at Tilbury, and Mrs. Grier
could hardly refuse the aldermanic gold watch and absurdly heavy chain he
presented to Karl. The watch had a fine inscription, too: “From Paul
Constantine to Karl Grier, in memory of the s.s. Ganges, Bay of Bengal,
Lat. 12.10 N.; Long. 84.40 E.”
There was a date, but Karl was saved from mind-searchings by the fact that
his mother placed the gift in her bank, to await later years.
And then Karl went to school. Just picture this sturdy little human dynamo,
with his superhuman eyes and ears, sitting down in class with a number of
youthful Edinburgh contemporaries! Yet it was impossible for his parents to
encourage the growth of his spiritual faculties (as we may describe them) at
the expense of the equipment needed to fit him for the citizenship of the
world. So he learnt the exact locality of the North Cape in Lapland, the
value of the common denominator, and the great utility of the algebraic x.
And, as he pored over books, so the hidden spark dimmed.

At first he was wont to startle his companions no less than his tutors. When
a master was explaining that the moon was a satellite of the earth, and was
popularly known as a destroyed world, owing to the arid mountains and
volcanic chasms with which her bright face is decorated, it was slightly
ridiculous to be told by a boy of eleven, all aglow with interest—“Oh, yes,
sir. I saw the lunar mountains quite plainly last night. And there are several
great pits as black as ink.”
“Nonsense, Grier!” would the master say sharply, and Karl would be stilled
for the hour. Hence, he kept to himself the daily knowledge he had of the
hours of high water in the Forth, many miles away.
Once, by chance, the same master had arranged to take his class on a
boating excursion up the Forth, and the question of tide arose. Karl
volunteered the information that the tide would be high about three o’clock.
Examined as to his accuracy (he was a careless young dog in matters of
spelling or arithmetic) he admitted that he had no actual knowledge save the
“feeling.”
Fortunately, Mr. David Malcolm, the master, was a man prone to take stock
of the young idea, so he wrote to Mrs. Grier, and received a positive shock
when that sensible and level-headed woman gave him the assurance of
evidence that her son was not romancing. Indeed, it may be assumed
without fear of contradiction that to Mr. Malcolm’s growing appreciation of
the boy’s powers was due, in great measure, their retention. Even under his
kindly sway Karl was rapidly assimilating to the mold of the school.
Games, lessons, discipline, the smaller issues of daily intercourse with other
boys, were coating the inner perceptiveness with a dense membrane. Again,
at this period Karl almost lost his universal language key. Declensions and
conjugations choked intuitive knowledge, and, to all seeming, when his
father brought him to Oxford at the age of eighteen, young Grier was only a
lively, intelligent, and muscular undergrad—exceptionally bright, perhaps,
but in no wise the “phee-nomenon” Sir William Macpherson had dubbed
him.
But Dame Nature, not to be balked in the development of her prodigy,
arranged matters with that happy knack of hers whereby she cloaks design
under the guise of accident.

Grier had been at Oxford two years when a menagerie visited the classical
city on the Isis. Although wild beast shows are not regarded by the
authorities as essential aids to Oxonian success, Karl and others visited the
evil-smelling place. Now, a man will remember through his nose and
finger-tips when other more highly trained senses fail. The first sniff of the
closely packed laager of caravans brought to Grier’s mind a series of vivid
pictures of early days in the Himalayan foot-hills. He lost himself a little,
but his dreams were interrupted by a scene which yielded an exciting
paragraph for next morning’s newspapers.
A defective iron screen enabled a gorilla to get at a black panther. The two
beasts had a peculiar antipathy to each other, and the showman placed them
close together for effect. Like many another dramatist he obtained a
“curtain” he had not bargained for. Once the way was clear, by reason of the
giving way of the corroded lattice, the animals met in Homeric combat. It
was a fine fight, but it did not last long, for the gorilla tore the panther’s
head off.
The other denizens of the menagerie, aroused from lethargy by the mortal
defiances hurled forth by cat and ape, scented the battle and spoke in
strange tongues. And behold! Karl knew what they were saying! He heard
the lion and tiger roaring “Kill!” the deer and buffaloes shrieking “Run!”
the monkey tribe chattering “Climb, brother, and reach from above!” Above
all resounded the raging challenge of the elephant, who, when he is stirred,
is the real master of the jungle. Whips, hay-forks, and heavy bars of iron
soon ended the disturbance. A number of fainting women were carried out
into the fresh air, and Karl, to his intense chagrin, for he was a great dandy
in those days, found that his nose had bled freely during the hubbub. When
Mr. Verdant Green was “up” his friends would have asked who had tapped
his claret, but Karl’s companions were anxious to learn the identity of the
gentleman who had “punched him on the boko!” Youth is perennial though
it may change its idioms. It was disappointing to learn that the gore arose
from natural causes. The slaying of the panther had evoked the boys’
fighting instincts! Pugilism—to use the naked hands on a foe—that was the
ideal! Had not the gorilla thought so?
That night Karl found he could not sleep, so he rose and threw wide a
window. His chambers overlooked the College quadrangle with its well-
kept lawn, and, in this time of high summer, the exquisite profiles of Oxford

were blended with the soft luxuriance of the trees guarding the peaceful
precincts.
Karl was now a tall and graceful young man. A devoted follower of the
favorite University sports, he was studious withal, and his natural bent
inclined him more to the uncompromising tenets of science than to the
literature and dogma of the classics. While following the routine laid down
by his father’s advisers, he read deeply in the less popular branches of
knowledge. Lectures on anthropology, comparative anatomy, philology and
physics—subjects which certainly provided a varied intellectual pasturage
—invariably counted him among note-takers. Hence, it is not to be
wondered at if, on this particular night, he should give earnest thought to
the half-forgotten and long-disused powers of his childhood, powers called
back into vivid existence by the roaring of a few beasts!
He recalled, quite clearly, the incident in which his friendship with little
Maggie Hutchinson figured so dramatically. Again, with the photographic
trick of memory, he conjured up the Darjeeling valley. He saw the green
slopes dotted here and there with planters’ bungalows, the tea-gardens,
resembling gooseberry bushes in the first tender shoots, the winding roads,
the tropical foliage. Yielding to a whimsical surprise at the accuracy of his
impressions, he endeavored to reconstruct some of the incidents of the raid,
but he quickly discovered that beyond following events in ordered sequence
of recollection he could achieve nothing outside the range of what appeared
to be a very precise and realistic memory.
“I wonder where Miss Margaret is now,” he murmured, with a smiling
glance skywards. “She must be a demure young lady of eighteen or
thereabouts. I think my mother said she was in Berlin, having developed a
great talent for playing the violin. Berlin! That is a long way from Oxford,
and Maggie is abed, sound asleep, little dreaming that a young man in
England is picturing her in a Kate Greenaway costume of fourteen years
ago.”
So in this fanciful mood, the notion suddenly seized him that he would like
to see Maggie Hutchinson. What he really meant was that he would be glad
to meet her again, and exchange juvenile reminiscences of early days in
India. It is important to insist on this point, as his undoubted intention, or

desire, when contrasted with that which did really happen, goes far to prove
telegnomy a sense and not a mental state.
Remember, he fancied the girl was in Berlin and in bed, and, being an
extremely considerate person, Karl would certainly not have wished to
disturb her, even if such a thing were sanely possible.
He thought the external light fled with exceeding rapidity. There was an
instant’s gloom, and then he was looking at a sunlit scene. The surroundings
were quite novel to his eyes. He seemed to be standing on a spacious
veranda of a very fine hotel. The flooring, the walls, the pillars, were all of
wood, and Karl had never seen a hotel built of that material. Hundreds of
well-dressed people were seated around small tables, waiters were flitting to
and fro; on an empty table near him he noticed an “engaged” card, and even
a menu du diner of the previous day. (It was nearly one o’clock when he
went to the window.) Beyond a crowded lawn were a theater, a band-stand,
and a raised promenade bordering the sea.
He stared about him with the frank curiosity of the stranger. On the right,
the hotel buildings shut off the view, but, on the left, the veranda ran a long
way. It was bounded, apparently, by the turnstiles of a railway station, and
he read, quite distinctly, a prominent notice: “Trains depart for New York
every ten minutes between 6 p.m. and midnight.”
Away in the distance he saw a gigantic red brick building bearing the gilded
sign “Atlantic Hotel,” and he was about to stoop and pick up the menu card
—thinking to discover his whereabouts by that means—when his attention
was drawn to two persons who separated themselves from a laughing party
grouped near the band-stand. The couple, a tall, slightly-built foreign-
looking man, and a very pretty girl, whose costume and figure alike
bespoke her youth, slowly drew nearer to the hotel veranda.
Grier experienced no amazement when he recognized in the man,
Constantine, the Armenian. The young lady was unknown to him at first,
until some gesture, accompanied with a smile and a quick upward glance of
the eyes, recalled Mrs. Hutchinson, and he reflected that Maggie’s mother
must have looked like that when she was eighteen.
So this was Maggie herself! How extraordinary! But what was Constantine
saying that her face should flame and her big brown eyes survey him so

scornfully. They were both talking vehemently. In his eagerness Karl bent
forward to listen. He was inclined to step from off the veranda and join
them. Perhaps Constantine, the Armenian, required to be kicked.
At that instant he was conscious of a sharp pain in his left hand. He was
plunged into a dark void, and he came to his ordinary senses to find that he
had escaped from falling through the window into the quadrangle only
because he had pressed his left hand heavily on the top of a pointed stick
used to support some flowers in a window-box.

CHAPTER IV
A CAT AND FRANK HOOPER
In relation to the every-day affairs of life, Karl Grier had nerves of iron,
controlled by a well-ordered brain.
“As soon as I recovered my wits,” he said, laughingly, afterwards, “I closed
the window, examined the injury to my hand, which was painful but of little
account, undressed, and went to bed, resolutely determined to sleep. I knew
I was overwrought, and that the worst thing I could do was to strive
uselessly to read the puzzle of the trance, or vision, I had just experienced. I
estimated that it had lasted nearly a quarter of an hour. During those fifteen
minutes I had seemingly paid a visit to the United States. That would
suffice for one evening. I closed my eyes, endeavored to construct
equipotential lines on an imaginary surface containing two electrified
spheres, and, as a consequence, was soon sound asleep.”
This time, be it noted, there was no sanguinary result of the spell cast upon
him. Sir William Macpherson, in the work already alluded to, guardedly
called attention to the symptoms of bleeding at the nose and ears, and came
to the conclusion that Karl presented a hitherto unrecorded phase of
hypertrophy of the brain. There were periodical expansions of the
encephalon, or, in simple language, the nerve-cells, nerve-tubes, and the rest
of the marvelous apparatus which constitute the mental and govern the
physical equipment of man, increased in number and power, and,
consequently, to a slight extent, in size. All cases previously noted had
revealed deficiency of intellect. Either the skull could not accommodate its
unwieldy tenant, or the heart could not nourish it. Grier, exercising
unknown faculties in childhood, received the requisite nutriment without
effort, and growth was permitted by the occasional bursting of a distended
membrane.
Obviously, a full scientific explanation of the phenomenon is impossible
here. Not one scientist in ten thousand would even admit its existence, and
the few who do believe would demand a bulky tome to set forth their
reasons.

Karl, untroubled by such considerations, overslept himself, was late for
chapel, and was reprimanded for his somnolence! He retained the liveliest
impression of all that had taken place, and, being convinced that he had
seen some well-known seaside resort in North America, invited to his
rooms a young New Yorker, who was taking a degree at Oxford. He merely
described the scene, without any explanation of its significance, and his
friend recognized it at once.
“That is Manhattan Beach,” he cried, “one of the places where New York
dines when the weather is hot. Society goes to the Beach, the crowd to
Coney Island. They are not far apart, as the crow flies, but miles asunder in
every other respect. Say, I thought you had never been to the States?”
“Nor have I, to my present knowledge,” said Karl with a smile. “I have, so
to speak, constructed the picture, by force of imagination, let us say.”
“I congratulate you. Personally, I never fail to ‘construct’ places I have not
seen, but I find invariably that the reality differs from the conception as
greatly—well, as radically as my version of that cat’s plaintive remarks
might differ from their true inwardness.”
It was night again, and the two were sitting near the open window.
Somewhere beneath in the quad a seemingly disconsolate feline was
mewing its aspirations. There was a moment’s silence while they listened,
the American blithely unconscious that he had done aught save utter a
harmless pleasantry.
“Tell me what you think the cat is saying,” said Karl, quietly.
“I am not strong on cat,” was the reply. “Like Lord Roberts, I detest the
whole tribe. Away back in the origin of species I must have an affinity with
either the cat’s mortal enemy, or its prey. But, as a guess, I should credit
puss with remarking that he, or she, is waiting in the gy-arden ne-ow. ‘It’s a
fine ne-ight; oh, won’t ye-ou come over the we-all,’ is my version.”
Your true American can do that sort of thing and preserve the face of a
sphinx. His natural drawl lent an adroit buffoonery to his joke. He had not
the least notion that his friend was speaking in earnest. But he pricked his
ears, metaphorically, when Grier said, beginning in a low monotone, but
ending excitedly:

“You are mistaken. That cat is using a chant of defiance. It is old as the
hills, the product of the wind-mutterings of storm and the crash of thunder.
Listen:
Who art thou who seest with fire, snake-creeping among the
bushes?
Think not thou art hidden.
I also have eyes of flame. Beware!
I am young and strong; I can bite and tear.
I spring far to conquest.
My claws are sharp.
Fly, ere I rend thee!
Comest thou yet? Kill then, kill!”
As the concluding words rang through the room there came from without
the spitting and snarling of a pair of frenzied cats. There was a rush and a
scurry, and all was still.
The American leaped to his feet with a somewhat hysterical laugh.
“Say, Grier,” he cried, “that’s one against me. But how, in the name of the
father of all cats, did you manage to wind up your epic of the Tertiary
Period at the exact moment the fur began to fly?”
“Sit down, please. I am translating freely, but accurately enough. Animals
contrive to enfold many parts of speech in a single sound.”
“Do you mean to tell me you understood that cat’s mewing?”
“I—I think so.”
“Your thinking is uncommonly realistic.”
“Try to credit me, Hooper. I am not romancing. Somewhere at the back of
my head I have a language code which explains these things. If Max Müller
can declare with conviction that every thought which ever passed through a
human brain may be expressed in one hundred and twenty-one radical
concepts, if the earth and the heavens can be composed of sixty chemical
substances, surely it is not outrageously impossible for a lower animal
organism to contrive a large vocabulary out of a few elementary sounds?”
Hooper produced a cigar.

“This requires profound smoke,” he said.
“I want help,” murmured Karl. “Criticize and question as much as you like,
but scoffing will serve no purpose.”
“The deuce a scoff. I am far too interested. To begin at the beginning: What
is the cat, or cattish, for ‘seeing with fire,’ and ‘snake-creeping,’ both
exceedingly apt phrases, by the way?”
“I cannot tell you. I only know that these are handy symbols of root-ideas.
Musicians would comprehend a mental condition of definite thought
without syllabic form. Mendelssohn wrote: ‘It is exactly at that moment
when language is unable to voice the experiences of the soul that the
vocation of music opens to us; if all that passes in us were capable of
expression in words I should write no more music.’ Wagner goes to the
extreme of assigning a measured musical phrase to a given idea. Were I not
deficient in the parrot’s skill of sound-reproduction, I could most certainly
converse, in crude suggestion, with many animals. What is speech? Merely
the trick of conveying ideas by articulate sounds. Can it be affirmed that
man alone is gifted with the power? I once heard a gamekeeper calling a
corn-crake by using a little mechanical instrument. The bird came, in
response to the fancied cry of its mate. It was shot for its credulity. Were my
vocal cords differently shaped I could have warned it against danger. Is not
that speech?”
“Unless I am greatly mistaken, you are expounding a new thesis of life,
Grier,” said the American. “Is there any limit? Do you go down the scale?
How about insects, reptiles, fishes?”
Karl paused a little while. “Would that I might answer!” he cried at last.
“Who am I that I should add unknown words to the sparse total which
serves human needs? Think what it means, that list of Müller’s! Six score
root-ideas, from which we have named 245,000 species of living animals,
classified nearly 100,000 fossils, produced the works of Shakespeare and
Milton! Yet I swear to you that many a time, in India, lying awake and
listening to the croaking of innumerable frogs, I could distinguish the one
final shriek of agony of a frog seized by a snake from the million-voiced
chorus of its fellows.”

“Are these unknown languages always recognizable? If a dog yelps because
he has been booted, do you hear him say: ‘Stop that, you two-legged
ruffian! What have I done, I should like to know?’ If so, you must have a
lively time of it at a cattle-fair, for instance.”
Karl laughed. He rose, pulled down the blind, and switched on the electric
light.
“I am quite serious,” protested his friend. “For goodness’ sake don’t be
vexed if my questions seem idiotic. When I came here to-night I did not
expect you to play ‘Hail Columbia’ with all my preconceived notions.”
“Vexed! Why should I be vexed with so strenuous a listener? No, I do not
gather up all these animal utterances, else I should go mad. The exercise of
my peculiar faculties requires effort. I am like a loaded camera. To take a
picture I must raise the shutter.”
“You speak in the plural. Was your description of Manhattan Beach based
on some other intuition?”
“Yes. If you care to listen I will tell you some strange things. But first I
must have your pledge of inviolable secrecy.”
Hooper gave ready assurance, and Karl acquainted him with a good many,
substantially all the main points, of the facts I have previously recorded.
The American was shrewd and precise. He was studying Roman Law and
Jurisprudence at the English University, his avowed object being to devote
his life to the codification of his own country’s laws. Therefore, among the
young men of his college, Karl could have found none of quicker and
clearer perceptiveness.
When the recital reached the previous night’s inexplicable events he
checked each item as though it were a section of a statute.
“There is one feature of your unparalleled experiences which stands out in
bold relief,” he commented, at the close of Grier’s story. “You can see and
hear only that which is taking place at the precise moment of your trance, as
we shall call it. You can look into neither the past nor the future. Last night,
allowing for a difference of five hours, you actually saw people dining and
listening to the band at Manhattan Beach. It is noteworthy that you saw
only, and did not hear. Yet you heard the Armenian yelling for help when he

was a mile from the ship. The deduction is obvious. The electric waves, or
whatever they are, which convey impressions to your brain, follow the
known laws of the transmission of light and sound. If I were poetically
inclined, I might put it that you can see the spheres but you cannot hear
their music. Now, I am going to ask you, straight out, if you will oblige me
by ringing up that young lady again.”
“Now?”
“Right now. It is not far from the same hour.”
“I will try,” said Karl, simply.
In order to reproduce kindred conditions he extinguished the light, raised
the blind and the window, and looked out.
“Last night,” he said, “I nearly fell into the quad in my excitement.”
“No fear of that unless I fall too,” was the emphatic reply.
Karl focused his thoughts on Maggie Hutchinson. He found it easy to
follow the trend of circumstances which led up to the vision of the
preceding day. Soon there came the now almost familiar darkening of the
air and the instantaneous disappearance of surrounding objects, to be
succeeded by a well-defined view of a somewhat dimly lighted but spacious
apartment. It was a very large room, with an unusually low ceiling, but the
decorations, carpets, panels, and queer little windows were fashioned or
conceived with much taste. At the farther end was a grand piano. In the
center of the floor was a sunken space, guarded by rails. Seated on a sort of
divan which ran round the walls were a great many ladies and some half-
dozen gentlemen. They were reading, talking, or lying comfortably
ensconced in cushions. But the odd thing was that the room and its
inhabitants absolutely defied the law of gravity. No earthquake that ever
shook the globe could make a house sway in such fashion without causing
irretrievable ruin.
Yet the people in this uncanny apartment appeared to be in no wise
disturbed by its vagaries, and, most amazing thing of all, when any
individual crossed the room, or entered, or quitted it, he or she walked with
a ridiculous disregard for either the changing angles of the room or
Newton’s theory. So astonished was Karl by the spectacle that it took him a
long time to realize that he was looking at the saloon drawing-room of a big

Atlantic liner, which was evidently ploughing through a stiff gale. He saw
the ship’s name, the Merlin, on a printed notice swinging on the wall, and
he laughed so heartily at the antics of a fat man who essayed to carry a
shawl to a lady on the opposite side of the vessel, that he regained his wits
to find Hooper holding his arm and eagerly demanding:
“Well, what have you seen? Why are you laughing?”
Grier, not bewildered in the slightest degree by the sudden transition from
the saloon of an ocean-going steamship to his chambers in an Oxford
College, told his attentive friend what had transpired.
Like every up-to-date American, Hooper knew most of the great liners, and
kept track of their sailings. An Englishman drops a letter into the pillar-box
and trusts to Heaven and the Postmaster-General that it will reach its
destination, but the average New Yorker would wonder what was wrong
with him if he could not follow the missive by sea and rail, with precise
details of the journey from start to finish.
So Hooper ejaculated: “The Merlin! Great Scott! She sailed from New York
to-day. Was the girl on board?”
“I do not know,” admitted Karl. “I did not even look for her, so greatly was
I mystified by the wobbliness of everything.”
“Well, I guess we’ve done enough for one séance,” said the other. “I’ve
read and heard of some top-notch clairvoyants, but I give you best. To-
morrow evening, after Hall, I shall have the tangle a bit less knotted, if pen
and paper will follow its twists. You were away somewhere for nearly
twenty minutes, your eyes were closed, and you reeled so that I thought you
would have fallen. Guess you felt the deck heaving! But, say, old man, do
you sleep well after this kind of circus?”
“Sleep! I sleep like a healthy navvy!” said Karl.

CHAPTER V
KARL’S FIRST MEETING WITH STEINDAL
Hooper turned up next evening armed with a note-book.
“I did not go to bed until long after sunrise,” he said. “When I began to
marshal my thoughts into some semblance of order, I was amazed to find
how far back into the twilight of human origins you carried me with your
cat language. Has it ever struck you how old this world is, how long men
have waited before they took their first sure step towards knowledge?”
“Are you speaking of the evolution of matter in general, or of mankind in
particular?” asked Grier.
“Of our noble selves, to be sure. Geologically, there is practically no limit
backward, but we have been so fed up on individualism that we are only
now beginning to abandon useless speculations as to the eternity of the
future for a more definite study of the eternity of the past. Now you, with
your animal language and your genuine far-seeing, have cleared the mist
from a theory I have held nebulously for a year or more. Let me state it in
progressive theses: (a) Human inventiveness is bounded only by the zone of
human intelligence; (b) the capacity of the brain extends far beyond our
present scientific comprehension; (c) every new discovery is, therefore, a
mere quickening into activity of some special attribute latent in all properly
regulated brains; (d) a time may come when man shall know all things, as
nothing can happen, nor can have happened, which the brain is not capable
of conceiving.”
“An old Indian acquaintance, Sir William Macpherson, has told me that he
has reached a similar conclusion. Nevertheless, your theorizing vaults a
long way in advance of my experiences.”
“Not a bit of it. You are merely a living testimony of faculties either
undeveloped or deemed dead owing to disuse. Oddly enough, you, my
friend, possess powers which we modern degenerates—beef-fed and stodgy
with misapplied civilization—coolly relegate to the lower animals or, at the
best, to savage tribes. Watch cattle in a field, birds in the air—are they not

skilled weather prophets, far more reliable than any Meteorological
Bureau? They don’t tap a glass cylinder of mercury or write learnedly about
cirrus clouds and convex cumuli. No, the cows and horses just nibble the
grass on the exposed hills, the birds skate about unconcernedly, if the
advancing gloom simply heralds a passing shower; but see them all scoot
for shelter before ever a leaf is stirred if a real storm is about to break. That
is pure, undiluted, unquestioning knowledge. The power of transmitting
news instantly over long distances, possessed by certain human nomads, is
of the same type. Therefore, my dear Karl, you hark back in the centuries.
You are away down the social scale. I, an up-to-date demigod, to whom the
real meaning of nearly every word I use is unknown, tell you this
unblushingly.”
“Is that a part of your theory that the world is still in its infancy in its search
after truth?”
“Well hit, my prehistoric man, my vitalized fossil. You are old as many of
the hills. Oh, if only I could put a date on you! Say, have you ever heard of
Eridhu?”
“Do you mean the Chaldean city?”
“Yes. Well, six thousand years ago it was a seaport, and the sanctuary of the
Chaldean god, Eâ. Now, it is a dust-heap, miles inland. A friend of mine,
sorting among the rubbish last year, found a tomb. The gentleman buried
therein must have been an Akkadian antiquary, who hated, even in death, to
be parted from his treasures, because the brick vault containing his remains
also held a variety of objects several thousand years older than himself.”
“Are the facts quite clear?”
“Clear. Just listen to the evidence. You, as a bloated Britisher, are aware, no
doubt, that the year when it first attained the dignity of record began with
the vernal equinox, and the opening month was named after the ‘propitious
Bull’? Thus, Bull headed the twelve constellations of the zodiac, and was
quite an important character. Well, in the tomb aforesaid, the excavators
found a small stone urn, bearing, not Taurus, the Bull’s sign, but Aquarius,
the water-carrier. The sun, at the vernal equinox, has been in Aries since
2,500 b.c., and it first entered Taurus somewhere about 4,700 b.c. Lots of
centuries must have been passed in observation before the astrologers

formed the calendar we use to-day, so the urn could claim, at the very least,
a venerable antiquity, unless it was a hoary Chaldean hoax. There is a good
reason to believe it was anything but a joke. It was brought to Washington,
eagerly examined by a gathering of archæologists, and dropped by some
trembling enthusiast on to a marble floor.”
“Good gracious!”
“Yes, the finder said something like that. Indeed, his language was even
more fluent. Yet the accident led to a discovery. The shattered urn consisted
of two vessels, one within the other. Between the two was a thin slip of
ivory, and on this was a cuneiform inscription, with a lively drawing
showing how one gentleman hammered a big nail into another gentleman’s
skull.”
“Do you propose to treat me in that way?”
“I have reached my point now. That record of a crime, probably a murder of
revenge, was kept secret for at least 7,000 years, and only Schliemann or
Haynes could tell us how much longer. So your peculiarly constituted brain,
my friend, has gone on repeating itself through many a forgotten ancestor
until the accident of environment enabled its hidden recesses to burst their
bonds. It took a great many clever men a great many years to decipher the
cuneiform characters of the Akkadians, and you will probably be dead long
before some genius yet unborn tells an anxious world why you can see
things that are taking place at a distance of over three thousand miles.
Meanwhile, behold in me your patient observer and chronicler. To-night—”
“To-night we shall talk and smoke, and pursue vain conceits,” said Karl,
determinedly. “I think I ought to forego these glimpses into the void. They
are unpleasing in many ways. Of what personal benefit is this unusual gift?
I wish to qualify myself for a commercial career, and the only practical use
of such escapades as those of the two preceding nights is somewhat in the
detective line. I mean to resist the impulse for the future.”
“Now you are indulging in banalities. You can no more resist the occasional
use of your splendid gifts than a duckling reared by a hen could hold back
from a pond. And do you really think that I have written twenty pages of
notes merely to fool away three hours? I guess Maggie can’t be a nice girl,
or it’s a sure thing you would want to see her again.”

Karl smiled, and a very charming way he had of revealing his white teeth
with the kindliest and most good-natured expression of genuine fun.
“Even if you are smugging at law, Frank,” he said, “you should spare your
friends the tricks of counsel. You fancy, and probably your belief is
justified, that if I allow my mind to dwell on Miss Hutchinson’s appearance,
such as I have recently discovered it to be, I shall wander off hopelessly
across the ocean to find her. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I am firm in
my resolution to discourage these influences as much as possible.”
Hooper sighed. He put away his note-book and viciously bit the end off a
green cigar, a feat by no means so easy as the smokers of British dry weeds
may imagine.
“Then let us talk of ships and kings and sealing-wax,” he growled. “I am
rather strong on ancient Egypt. Would you like to hear my views on Ka?”
Hooper was speaking with careless sarcasm. He was grievously annoyed
that Grier should cut off a highly interesting experiment in such a summary
fashion. Yet there is an unconscious art which is superior to all intent, and
Hooper had blundered on to a question which set his hearer’s mind in a
whirl.
“Ka!” he said softly. “Surely that is what we call the soul? It is animism, the
shadowy second self evoked from dreams. Yes, that is a root word, direct
from the earliest mint. Man, in his first speech, described Ka.”
The American veiled the joy in his eyes by a cloud of smoke.
“If I can only plunk him near the window now, he will switch on to Maggie
with a jerk,” was the ready reflection. But the “plunking,” whatever it may
mean—for your good American, when not undergoing the embalming
process which finally fits him for Paris, can coin words at will—was not
necessary. Karl, without effort or volition, passed through the umbra which
separated his known senses from the sway of their unknown congener. He
leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and was forthwith, to all
appearance, sleeping lightly.
Hooper, whose nostrils quivered with repressed excitement, flung away his
cigar and applied himself to the task of recording all external physical
indications of the emotions his companion might be experiencing. It will be
remembered that this trance-like condition was usually preceded by some

slight disturbance of the blood-vessels infringing on or adjacent to the
brain. There was no such sign of cerebral disorder on this occasion. Karl
seemed to have yielded to a desire for a pleasant and refreshing doze.
Again, when he saw Maggie Hutchinson and the Armenian at Manhattan
Beach, he had endeavored to approach nearer to them, and was only
prevented by the fortunate interposition of a window-ledge and a stick stuck
in a flower-pot, while his temporary flight to the storm-tossed saloon of the
Merlin had caused him to sway in Hooper’s arms. To-night he sat
immovable, though he witnessed a series of really remarkable events, the
sight or hearing of which would assuredly have evoked some reflex action
or cry during any of his earlier manifestations.
Luckily, there was present, in the young American, a sympathetic watcher,
who, notwithstanding his comparative youth, had all the coolness and
critical acumen of a hardened investigator. Hooper, true to his own theory,
was convinced that he was assisting in the development of a hitherto
unsuspected function in man’s brain. He knew that the obscure sum of
influences we call heredity affects the adult man in a surprisingly small
traceable degree as compared with education. If it were possible to leave an
infant, born of civilized parents, wholly to its own devices, what direct
characteristics of human ancestry would it exhibit? It would possess no
articulate language, its knowledge would not extend beyond the limited
recognition of a few articles of food, its reasoning faculties would be a
blank, its highly convoluted brain a storehouse of potentialities as hidden as
the wonder of its nervous system or the chemical building of its tissue. In a
word, a child which, under tuition, might become the discoverer of a new
province in human thought, would sink instantly to the condition of
palæolithic man. Let the key be lost which should unlock the treasury, and
untold ages of horror and suffering, of seemingly endless and unavailing
effort, must be endured ere it could be found again. Yet the treasure was
there intact, as surely pent within the protoplasmic ovum as displayed in all
its splendor on the printed page of the world-convincing treatise. That was
the great miracle of nature, and Hooper asked himself what phase of her
manifold powers was now unfolding itself before his intent yet
uncomprehending eyes.
He knew that mankind to-day can produce, in facsimile, types of ancestors
found in pliocene strata at least 500,000 years old. Stone knives alone could

make the intentional cuts found on the ribs of a cetacean stranded on the
shore of the pliocene sea, and what that meant to a prehistoric tribe is
clearly shown by Lord Avebury’s (Sir John Lubbock’s) summary of a
description by Captain Grey of a recent whale feast in Australia:
“When a whale is washed ashore it is a real godsend to them (the
aborigines). Fires are lit to give notice of the joyful event. They rub
themselves all over with blubber and anoint their favorite wives in the same
way. Then they cut down through the blubber to the beef, which they eat
raw or broil on pointed sticks. As other natives arrive they ‘fairly eat their
way into the whale, and you see them climbing in and about the stinking
carcase, choosing tit-bits.... There is no sight in the world more revolting
than to see a young and gracefully formed girl stepping out of the interior of
a putrid whale.’”
Hooper had plenty of time to let his imagination run riot in this wise. The
light fell on Grier’s face, but the watcher looked in vain for any indication
of the sights or sounds in which the sleeper was participating. Karl, to
outward semblance, might be either really asleep or brought to muscular
rigidity by the influence of an anæsthetic. He was calm, unmoved, the lips
slightly parted, with healthy color, and an easy rise and fall of the chest.
This late sitting broke the stringent college rules, but Hooper cared little for
penal ordinances. Yet even he grew anxious when Karl failed to arouse
himself after an hour had passed in utter silence. He was very reluctant to
disturb his comrade. This present flight through space promised to
transcend its predecessors in the prolonged sequence of its events.
Nevertheless, there was a limit to his friend’s endurance if not to his own.
When the expiration of another fifteen minutes revealed no sign of Grier’s
return to consciousness, Hooper did not think he was justified in permitting
the trance to continue indefinitely without assuring himself, at any rate, that
Grier’s pulse was normal and his heart beating regularly.
He stooped and caught Karl’s wrist gently. He noticed that the breathing
was slow and measured, and he had just succeeded in detecting the pulse
when Karl opened his eyes.
He gave one surprised, almost bewildered glance at Hooper, laughed
cheerfully when he looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, and said, in the

most matter-of-fact way:
“Have you ever heard of a man named Steindal in New York?”
“Y—yes.” Hooper nearly stammered, he was so taken aback by the
curiously commonplace question.
“Is he connected with the stage?” went on Karl, eagerly.
“Yes, in a sense. He is a dramatic agent, I think.”
“He is unquestionably a dramatic scoundrel. Why did you interfere? At the
very moment I quitted him he was giving his own precious character to
Constantine. Never mind! I will find the rascal and beat him to a jelly.”
“Bully for you! Things have happened, then?”
“My dear Frank, I have not only seen but heard. Think what it means!
Three thousand miles of wireless telephony! And what a first-rate brute that
fellow Steindal is!”
“A regular son of a gun, I have no doubt. But say. I thought you had rung up
Maggie Hutchinson?”
“I did not see her, thank Heaven, but I heard so much concerning her that I
shall make it my business to meet the Merlin at Liverpool and warn her
against that pair of beauties in New York.”
Hooper selected a fresh and extra green cigar.
“Now, indeed, I can smoke the calumet of peace while you talk,” he said,
curling up in an easy chair with the comfortable abandon of one who has
faithfully kept a long vigil.

CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH CONSTANTINE HAS A VISION
Although he had not the slightest difficulty in recounting the precise
phrases of conversations and the exact details of actions which had their
habitat in New York during the previous hour and a quarter, Karl did
unquestionably feel the need of choosing his words when he began to tell
Hooper how a new and wholly entrancing phase of his extraordinary
powers was opened up by the discovery that mere distance no longer
diminished his sense of hearing. It was so vitally important to be accurate.
First impressions are of prime value in describing a sensation. If a man only
retained his first impression of the taste of alcohol what a sober world it
would be!
When his conscious intelligence quitted the room in which he and Hooper
were sitting, he had no fixed objective in his mind. This fresh departure was
noteworthy, and, indeed, absolutely essential to the theory propounded by
Sir William Macpherson, namely, that Karl was a living installation of
wireless telegraphy. If this rough-and-ready definition of the phenomenon
were reasonably correct, it was essential that the human “station” should
have the power of receiving as well as transmitting the electrical influences
which called into activity its sixth sense. Hitherto Grier had, so to speak,
swept the mental horizon with a searchlight, hoping or expecting to find the
object he sought. Now, in a state of quiescence, yet tuned to the proper pitch
by the sound of one of those strong, deep words which vibrate back to the
twilight of human origins, he was encountered by another radio-active
force, and became, for a time, a machine-like recorder of impressions.
After the familiar passing through darkness into light—this momentary
eclipse being apparently a mechanical readjustment of the normal functions
of the brain to their novel requirements—he found himself a spectator of a
meeting between two men, a meeting which was seemingly taking place in
a second-floor office overlooking the junction of two busy thoroughfares.
He could hear nothing. He was in the position of an audience watching the
cinematographic representation of an express train thundering through a

station—there was all the realism of life and motion, but no sound. In his
case, of course, there were the added illusions of color and sunlight, nor
was the vision distracted by perplexing flutterings of a winding film.
One of the men was Constantine, tall, sallow-faced, dark-eyed, habited in
evening dress, but showing an Oriental love of display by the pair of
diamond studs blazing in his shirt-front, the thrilling design of his brocade
waistcoat, and the braid, two inches wide, which seamed his trousers. His
companion, also attired in the garb abhorred by George Bernard Shaw, was,
in all save his un-American aspect (both men being unmistakably “aliens”)
the exact antithesis of Constantine. A short, tubby man, the product, it
appeared, of a Polish-Jew father and a Mexican half-caste mother, he might
be likened to a human olive. He was so round, so greeny-bronze in
complexion, that Karl, summing him up afterwards, said:
“When I meet him, I shall half expect to see him preserved in vinegar inside
a bottle with a flamboyant label.”
The two were discussing a matter of grave interest, judging by their faces.
Karl made a sub-conscious effort to listen to what they were saying, but it
failed, though he subsequently recalled a faint knowledge of vague sounds,
as though he were endeavoring to hear through thick glass.
The room was sumptuously furnished. The walls were decorated with
photographs, large and small, of gentlemen with wide and expressive
mouths and abundant hair, and of ladies with goo-goo eyes and even more
abundant hair, wearing picture hats for the most part. Several framed letters,
either typewritten or hugely scrawled, were crowded together over the
fireplace, and they set forth in unguarded terms the varied excellences of
“Dear Steindal,” or “Mr. Wilhelm Steindal,” or “Wilhelm Steindal, Esq.”
Through the open windows Karl saw electric cars hurrying to and fro
beneath, the bright steel rails commanding a clear center of the street, while
the general traffic was made up of light trolleys, delivery vans and bicycles,
with hardly ever a cab or private carriage. On two sides of a diminutive
street lamp he read “Broadway” and “W. 22d St.,” so he assumed that he
had, for some occult reason, found his way to New York.
His attention was caught by the flush of anger on Constantine’s face. The
Armenian emphasized his comment with a passionate thump of his
clenched fist on the table. Steindal, if the fat man were the recipient of those

flattering letters, seemed to be expostulating. After some argument, in
which Constantine was apparently brought round to the other’s view, the
olive-skinned person stretched out a pulpy hand for a code book, which he
consulted, and framed a message.
And now, for the first time to his adult knowledge, Karl purposely changed
his position without interrupting his sight of events in the least degree. That
is to say, his experiments of the two previous nights had the aspect of a very
vivid dream, but, on this occasion, he acted as if he had the power of
physical movement. When he saw Maggie Hutchinson at Manhattan Beach
he endeavored to “stoop” over the hotel table, and also to “step off” the
veranda on to the grass lawn beyond, but he succeeded in neither instance.
To-day, except that his body was in Oxford, he fancied he had complete
liberty of movement in New York.
So he passed behind Constantine’s companion, looked over his shoulder,
and read what he had written. The words “Margaret Hutchinson” stood out
clearly from a jumble of nonsense. Karl had never used a code, and the
meaningless nature of the script puzzled him until he saw that the writer had
jotted down sentences opposite each word on a separate sheet of paper.
Perusal of this key soon made the message coherent. It read:
“Meet the Merlin on arrival at Liverpool on the 10th inst. Offer Miss
Margaret Hutchinson star concert at St. James’s Hall in my name, and
promise her prolonged engagement on good terms for exclusive contract,
Steindal.”
There was an evil leer on Steindal’s face when he read the draft to
Constantine, and the unpleasant smile with which the latter showed his curt
approval warned Grier that an ulterior purpose lay behind an offer which,
under ordinary circumstances, should prove very acceptable to any girl at
the outset of a professional career. Karl was eager to learn more of the
compact into which these two had entered, but, strive as he might, he could
only distinguish certain faint, quick, vibrating noises which had a vague
resemblance to taps on a cymbal. He did not realize, until later, that he was,
even then, extending his range of hearing, and the sounds he caught were
the clanging bells of the street-cars!

Steindal summoned an assistant, gave him the cablegram, with instructions,
and Constantine and he, donning dust-coats, descended to the street. It was
a perfect joy to Karl to discover that he could accompany them. They were
taken down by an elevator—which smacks of Cork though it is pure
American—and passed out into the street.
And then Karl Grier’s sixth sense took its first ride on a Broadway car!
Being on the up-town track it was crowded with the latest flight of business
people.
“Did the conductor take your fare and ring you up on the indicator?
Anyhow, he would say things if you tried to work in a sixpence for a dime,”
cried Hooper, when Karl reached this part of his story; and the spirit
passenger confessed to a singular dread of being in the way of the men and
women who were standing between the seats and clinging on to the straps.
This was a somewhat remarkable instance of a mental record of a purely
physical sensation. Once he began to roam about during his trances he had
to learn that matter and space did not exist for him in their every-day
acceptance.
The car swung round a curve into Madison Square, crossed 23d Street,
swept past a number of fine hotels, shops, newspaper offices, and theaters,
passed under a section of the elevated railway, and clanged its rapid way
towards newer New York.
At last Constantine and Steindal alighted opposite a spacious restaurant, and
Grier, being a ghost of quick perception, saw that even a rich man like the
Armenian would use the street-car in preference to a brougham, because it
was much safer and twice as speedy.
He went with the pair up the steps of the restaurant and noted the
deferential smirk of the head waiter. Nothing would have pleased him more
than to play some prank on this flunky, but the means did not exist, so he
perforce rested content with a careful scrutiny of his surroundings. In
another week or two the patrons of this fashionable eating-house would be
scattered over the cooler parts of the earth. Already the attendance was thin,
but there were sufficient diners to warrant the cosmopolitan claims of
America’s chief city.

All speculation on this and kindred matters was, however, suddenly
extinguished by a subtle, immensely remote, yet quite distinct sound of
harmonious music. And then, with an exquisite delight that was almost
painful in its intensity, he became aware that he was listening to the strains
of a band playing one of Strauss’s waltzes. With each few bars the lilt of the
composition became clearer, the orchestration more defined, until he could
distinguish the violins, the piano, the piccolo, and, finally, the clarionets.
His brain reeled under the intensity of this new emotion, and there was
some danger that he might react into physical consciousness, had not a
voice whispered, at exceedingly close quarters:
“Dot schwein-hund Steindal says we cahnd gook a poulet en casserole
worth a cent.”
It was the deferential head waiter murmuring confidences to the manager!
So the music had bridged the void! He could hear as well as see across the
Atlantic! Again had that strange gift of language prepared the way for the
exercise of an unknown faculty. Rhythm, singing, those inarticulate sounds
which Noiré calls clamor concomitans, were the first utterances of primitive
man when working in concert. Every savage race sings and dances, whether
in peace or war. Uncivilized men work best when they can sing. In olden
days soldiers sang as they marched against the enemy, and civilization has
only substituted the bugles and drums for the songs.
Beyond all question the unfettered exercise of Karl’s additional sense, that
marvelous adjunct whereby his visual and auricular nerves annihilated
distance, arose from the chance that an orchestra, mainly consisting of
stringed instruments, struck up a measured cadence at a moment when Karl
was actually straining his faculties to obtain some more precise notion of all
that was taking place.
And now Grier, who was somewhat in the position of an operator
controlling some rarely sensitive electrical apparatus, learnt that he must
focus the instrument with delicate precision if he were to avoid confusion.
So he bent his attention on the pair at the table, seated himself
metaphorically astride the iced cantaloup which decorated the center of
their board, and gathered in each word they uttered, with the added zest of
seeing the wary glances, the twitching nostrils, the drawn lips.

Steindal had ordered a meal with the air of a connoisseur. That he had not
exercised much tact in conveying his wants to the head waiter has been
proved by the latter’s private opinion whispered in New York and overheard
in Oxford.
But Constantine merely toyed with the banquet, and his nervous state of
preoccupation only increased as the champagne rose to his head.
“I believe that girl will bring me bad luck,” was the first connected phrase
he uttered which Karl could associate with Maggie Hutchinson’s
personality, granted that she was the unseen attraction drawing him across
the Atlantic. How well he remembered the Armenian’s voice, though a
decade had passed since the last time he had heard it on board the P. & O.
steamship Ganges, in Tilbury Dock, when Constantine gave him a gold
watch and chain. The watch was ticking in his waistcoat pocket at that very
moment, but the chain, being of a size that provoked caustic undergraduate
humor, lay in a drawer.
“Bad luck! There’s no such thing, amigo mio! Bad management? Yes, it
abounds, but, where women are concerned, I flatter myself that I know the
sex. Fair, frail, and fickle, dark, deep, and da capo—that’s how I classify
’em.”
This new voice was that of an unctuous devil. Grier, with his finely tuned
ear for vocal effects, fancied that a boa-constrictor might speak with such a
voice. It was the oil in the man-olive which gave his speech its smoothness.
Steindal laughed softly at his own cheap wit, but Constantine was not
amused.
“I tell you, Steindal,” he said, “that you do not understand the nature of a
girl brought up in the home atmosphere which surrounded Maggie
Hutchinson. Damn it, man, it is that sanctity of hers which renders her
attractive to me. What is a pretty face or a fairy-like figure? A mere
commodity, a ‘cheap lot, slightly soiled’ in the catalogue of life. That’s the
sort of woman you have in your mind, and I don’t want her.”
“Sanctity, at Maggie’s age, consists of soap and water and a soft skin. We
have a Spanish proverb: ‘el corazón manda las carnes’—the heart controls
the body, and I know that when a woman’s desires outrun her means she
begins to weigh her scruples to see if they are really as heavy as she fancies.

Just let Maggie Hutchinson taste success, popularity, the delights of money-
spending, and then withdraw the pleasant cup before she has drunk too
deeply! Bah! Don’t talk to me of sanctity! To the man of the world, es de
vidrio la mujer—woman is made of glass!”
Steindal, scoffing in the complacency of his knowledge, tilted some
champagne down his wide throat. Karl, feverishly anxious to discover what
plot these twentieth century ghouls were hatching against a young and
innocent girl, concentrated his thoughts on Constantine with some
reminiscence of that masterfulness he exhibited as a boy on board the
Ganges.
He carried his intent too far. Constantine suddenly grew livid with fear. He
turned in his chair, gazed at the floor, and sprawled over the table, sweeping
glass and plates away with a crash.
“Look!” he shrieked in an eerie falsetto. “Can’t you see that shark deep
down there in the black water? It will devour me! Oh, help, help!”

CHAPTER VII
“BLOOD IS A VERY PECULIAR JUICE”
You know what people think when a man screams out that a shark is
threatening him from the black depths of the parquet flooring of a
fashionable dining-room. And a shark is a most uncommon feature of such
manifestations. Usually the disturbing vision is a rat, or a green imp with
red eyes, or even a squirming snake. Indeed, reptiles figure so often in
alcoholic apparitions that I have often wondered why there are not more
frequent “scenes” in the London Strand, owing to the presence on the kerb
of a number of street vendors who cause make-believe serpents to wriggle
all day long on a small board.
Several ladies rose with startled cries. A passing waiter was so unnerved
that he dropped a laden tray, and the crash added to the alarm of those
seated at a distance, to whom the hubbub, but not its cause, was audible.
The band stopped playing, a clarionet breaking off with a funny squeak in
the middle of a cadenza, and, adding fuel each instant to the wild-fire
commotion, Constantine sprawled over the table and yelled for succor.
Wilhelm Steindal, convinced that his companion had suddenly gone mad,
showed that he was endowed with some of the grit essential to a scoundrel
of any real importance. He picked up a carafe of iced water, and dashed the
contents into the Armenian’s gray-green face, being prepared to follow up
the attack with the bottle itself, if needful. He acted better than he knew.
The physical shock of the liquid dissipated the magnetic influence which
Karl had unwittingly exercised on the man he had rescued from the Bay of
Bengal. Forthwith, Constantine recovered his self-possession. He mopped
his dripping face with a serviette, apologized to the astounded manager and
those diners seated near, and went out, followed by Steindal.
The latter was too flustered to garnish his speech with Spanish phrases, a
habit he affected in order to disguise the Polish-Jew element in his
composition. Indeed, his language now savored more of the Bowery than of
Spanish America.

“Wot’n hell did you go’n kick up that sort of circus for?” he growled, his
shining face exuding oil in his excitement.
“I couldn’t help it. I was overpowered by a—by a memory.”
“It was a tomfool performance, anyhow. Seems to me it’ll be all round
N’York that Steindal was out at a skate wid some flea-sucked blighter who
had brought into the country a new variety of jim-jams!”
“Look here, Steindal, I may be afraid of some things, but I have no fear of
you. If you talk to me in that fashion, I’ll smash your face.”
Constantine looked so murderous that the stout man retreated a pace, and a
stalwart hall-porter moved ponderously forward. The Jew felt he had gone
too far. The Armenian was too rich a prize to be flung aside because he had
created a scene in a restaurant and spoiled a good dinner.
So he cried, with ready complacency:
“Don’t get mad with me, dere’s a good fella. I only wanted to shake up your
wits a bit. Come on! Here’s your hat. Let’s walk round to your hotel. You’ll
soon be all right. Carramba! You scared me worse’n you scared yourself.”
Up-town in New York you can turn out of a brilliantly lighted and crowded
avenue into a side-street of utmost quietude. The two passed into one of
these convenient thoroughfares, and were instantly removed from the glare
of the restaurant.
Steindal halted to light a cigarette. He eyed the Armenian covertly.
“Tell you what,” he chuckled, “thinkin’ of that girl has put you off your
base.”
“No, you are mistaken. Something altogether different upset me. I can’t
explain matters to you here. Wait till I’ve had a highball in my room. Then
I’ll give you the lines of it. You need have no fear of a further outbreak. I’m
all right now. And you’ve got strong nerves, eh?”
“I need ’em my boy, in my business. I’m a peach on nerves. In the
profession they call me ‘The electrocutioner,’ because I can stiffen a
contract in five seconds. Por Dios! Nerves!”
His gurgling laugh surged in Karl’s ears as Hooper awakened him. Steindal
and Constantine had not yet reached Sixth Avenue from Broadway ere the

two young men in far-away Oxford were eagerly discussing the incidents of
the preceding hour and a quarter in New York.
For once, the scientific necromancy of Karl’s flights through space failed to
enlist all their attention. Hooper, no less than Grier, was thrilled by the
thought that his friend had been drawn by some subtle magnetic influence
to participate, in many ways save actual presence, in a conclave of such
grave significance to a girl whose fortunes already interested them.
And it is, perhaps requisite, here and now, to protest against the smile of
supercilious incredulity with which some may read of the earnestness
betrayed by these youthful collegians.
It is a fact of common knowledge that a telephone company, sufficiently
enlightened to endeavor to please its customers, has arranged for a board of
directors, consisting of three men in New York, two in Baltimore, and one
in Philadelphia, to sit in their respective offices, holding the combined
receiver and transmitter to ear and mouth, and conduct a board meeting, to
all intents and purposes as efficiently as if they were gathered in the same
room. Company directors, or others resident in London, Birmingham, and
Liverpool, could do exactly the same thing if the British telephone officials
did not require an earthquake followed by a month’s deliberation before
they would undertake to provide the necessary facilities.
It is exceedingly probable that, in a few years, the same instrument which
permits speech and hearing over practically unlimited distance will carry a
“seeing” apparatus as well. Will the scientific miracle be any the more
explicable because a certain quantity of insulated copper wire intervenes
between the persons seeing, hearing, and speaking to each other? I am
tempted into this disquisition because, as it happens, the direct outcome of
the conversations between the two sets of men (than whom the English-
speaking world could scarce produce four persons more opposed in
personal characteristics) was the introduction of myself, the writer of this
memoir, into the affair. Early in life, journalism had taken me to India,
where I met Karl’s father. He was a man after my own heart. Many times,
when the business of his tea estate brought him to Calcutta, I had dined with
him in the “Wilson-’otel,” the strange name by which alone the gharri-wala
knows the Great Eastern Hotel, or he had been carried off from the Red

Road by me to my own sanctum overlooking Chowringhee and the smooth,
tree-dotted maidàn that stretches towards Fort William and the river.
And you will guess readily what we poor exiles talked of while the ice
clinked in the long glasses and the blue smoke-rings of Bangalore cheroots
rose to the ceiling. He of his wife and child, I of a deluded girl waiting in
England until the rupee recovered from the heat-wave which melted silver
—Heavens! How we flung those topics back and forth, like two tennis-
players battering a ball. And we never bored each other. Each man was far
too thankful to have a sympathetic listener to be weary of the other’s
stories.
So, in that way, I knew a great deal of Karl, and when, years having passed,
and the aforesaid girl (the rupee having long since steadied itself at 1s. 4d.)
being gone to visit her mother in Devonshire with our young hopeful, I
decided to indulge in a long deferred trip to Oxford, it was only natural that
I should seek out the son of my old Indian crony, and ask him to guide my
steps along the ancient paths of “the home of lost causes and impossible
beliefs.”
The odd thing was that no man in Britain was more prepared to give
credence to Karl’s “visions” than myself. I had long since read Sir William
Macpherson’s book, and constructed Frank Hooper’s theory of the definite
bounds of human inventiveness out of my own thought-producing
laboratory. “Blut ist ein ganz besondrer saft!” said old Mephisto, when he
wheedled Faust into signing his soul away with his own blood, and the
same “peculiar juice” of the Celtic stream ran in Grier’s veins and in my
own. Moreover, Grier père had told me of the adventures of Grier fils in the
matter of the Hutchinson Raid and the saving of Constantine, so it was
another of the strange coincidences of life that brought a note from me,
ensconced in the Mitre Inn, to Karl at his college on the morning after his
excursion to Steindal’s office and the Broadway restaurant.
Grier and Hooper come to me during the afternoon. Instead of admiring the
glories of Oxford, I had the recital of recent events poured into my willing
ears as we sat together in my private sitting-room on the first floor. Dear
me! how the years slipped back as I listened. The rounded tree-tops and
gracious spires of the English University town did not differ so greatly from
the dim outlines of the palatial city on the left bank of the Hughli. What a

mere hand-span is a vanished decade! The magic carpet of Tangu, which
instantaneously transported its possessor whither he wished to go, was not a
more wonderful vehicle than a man’s memory. And Karl, even thus early in
life, had a way of talking that compelled attention. He spoke to the point, in
simple words. Evidently he had a horror of exaggeration. His explanations
were clear, logical, as a proposition of Euclid, and he was hardly ever at a
loss for a simile when illustrating one of the less easily understood features
of his new and extraordinary force.
Being his senior by a good many years, I thought it my duty to point out the
hazardous nature of these excursions into the unknown. I was fascinated by
his story, of course, together with Hooper’s singularly definite
corroboration of its chief features, yet I feared lest such playing with
nervous excitability might result in paralysis or mental trouble.
But Karl’s cheery laugh reassured me.
“I have taken a very precise set of notes of a lecture on Seismic Waves this
morning,” he said, “and at this very moment I could break that poker across
my knee. There’s little wrong with my brains, and still less with my
muscles, I can assure you.”
He leaned forward, picked up the poker, and examined it critically. It was
an old-fashioned, heavy implement, with its point sharpened by years of
forgetfulness, which, in pokerdom, takes the form of slow consumption in
sulky fires.
“Now that I come to examine it, I don’t think I can break it. Being honest
wrought iron, it will bend into a hoop. But I’ll polarize it, by way of a
change.”
He pulled up his coat sleeves, and turned back the cuffs of his shirt so as to
bare his wrists. Then holding the poker point downwards on the hearthrug,
he began to stroke it softly with the tips of his fingers and thumbs. His
hands were white, long-fingered, and finely molded, his wrists square and
hard. Looking at him, watching the smile playing on his eager face, and the
athletic poise of his body as he kept the poker from falling, I was struck by
his physical resemblance to the Vatican Discobolus, with its wonderful
combination of repose at the completion of the backward movement of the
thrower, and of action at the commencement of the powerful forward cast.

But such thoughts were dispelled by the uncanny antics of the poker. It was
broad daylight, and any sleight-of-hand performance was out of the
question in every sense. Yet both Hooper and I myself saw Karl withdraw
his support from the poker, continuing the stroking movement in the air, and
gradually widening the distance between his hands.
And the poker did not fall! It stood there immovable, as though its point
were stuck in the floor through the rug. At first I candidly admit that I was
certain Grier had found a hole in the carpet which coincided with a crack in
the flooring. But when he inclined the imaginary axis of his hands, thus
changing the direction of the magnetic current that flowed between them,
the poker adjusted its poise to the new line of force. It described circles,
leaned over at impossible angles, lifted itself fully a foot in the air, and
twice traced in space the figure of a Maltese cross. I lay stress on this
simple yet peculiar manifestation of Karl’s powers, because it was the first
instance of them which had actually come under my personal notice.
Certainly I was amazed, and even Hooper, notwithstanding the marvels he
had witnessed, expressed his surprise at the new feature of his friend’s
astounding qualities.
“I can’t explain why I should have the gift of magnetic induction,” laughed
Karl. “I discovered it accidentally one day when I was making an
experiment with a freely suspended needle to determine a magnetic
meridian. I became very interested, the adjustment required delicate
manipulation, and suddenly my hands went cold, while the needle followed
their movements. Feel my hands now!”
I caught his right hand. It was so icy to the touch that I believe I started.
“I really think I could magnetize your hands,” he went on. “Shall I try?”
Naturally, I agreed. Without permitting the poker to fall, he commenced to
stroke my hands from the finger-tips to the wrists. Soon I felt a sensation
akin to plunging them into snow. And behold, when he quitted me, that
most eccentric of pokers yielded to my blandishments!
But in my case a more orthodox circulation quickly shattered the magnetic
axis. In a few seconds the poker tottered, and would have fallen had I not
caught it. The marked diminution of temperature experienced while I was
under the influence of Karl’s electric energy was not the least interesting

feature of a curious incident, seeing that it is an axiom of the classroom that
all magnetic phenomena vanish completely if a magnet be made red-hot!
All this has astonishingly little to do with the more exciting personal affairs
of a charming young lady like Maggie Hutchinson. But it is reasonable to
suppose that Karl, anxious to secure the counsel of an older man, thought fit
to show this imaginary Solomon how necessary faith was to the
performance of good works, and it is in this same spirit of convincing the
incredulous that I have related the trivial yet quite extraordinary poker-
balancing of that summer’s afternoon in the Mitre Hotel, Oxford.

CHAPTER VIII
MAGGIE HUTCHINSON INTERVENES
“When you two have finished your parlor-tricks,” said Hooper, endeavoring
to copy a judicial eye-glare he had seen used by the Lord Chief Justice,
“this committee will proceed to the business of the sitting.”
It was, indeed, necessary for our budding lawyer to recall our wandering
thoughts to the affairs of the girl whom we believed to be then half-way
across the Atlantic on a journey to the British Isles. We might accept Karl’s
mediumistic statements to the fullest extent, not only reading into them the
literal significance of the conversations and scenes he reported, but also
paying heed to the logical outcome of these episodes; yet there were serious
difficulties in the way of applying the information thus acquired.
Put baldly, what would Karl say to Miss Margaret Hutchinson, who was
presumably accompanied by her mother, if he went to meet the Merlin at
Liverpool?
Let us, in imagination, reconstruct the incident, after the manner beloved of
the French juge d’instruction. The great liner draws up to her berth at the
landing-stage. Gangways are lowered, and there is a frantic rush of
passengers to enter the Customs shed, though the last philosopher who
walks placidly ashore knows that his luggage will be decorated with little
printed crowns in ample time to permit him to travel to London by the same
train that conveys the first triumphant struggler.
Hovering between a portion of a wall marked “H” and the ticket barrier of
the railway station will be found Maggie and her mama, both looking
exceedingly well after the voyage, and in a state of repressed excitement
arising from the conviction innate in every woman’s soul that she will never
see her boxes again, once they have been so carelessly mixed up with other
people’s belongings.
Karl, exercising a degree of tact blended with silver, obtains admission to
the enclosure, and recognizes Maggie at once, having seen her ten days ago
at Manhattan Beach.

But it is fully ten years since Maggie last saw him, so there occurs a social
embarrassment in the nature of what our sporting friends call a “bull finch.”
Nevertheless, Karl, having ingratiating manners, and being really an old
friend and the son of Mrs. Hutchinson’s special crony, surmounts the
obstacle, and is received with enthusiasm tempered by a certain shyness on
Maggie’s part (her memory of youthful caresses becoming clearer each
instant) and by speculation on the part of mama as to the reason which
induced this very good-looking and well-dressed young man to come all the
way to Liverpool to meet them.
Clearly, Karl must talk platitudes about the weather, the fine sea-going
qualities of the Merlin, the ridiculousness of all Customs examinations, or
any other inane topic at the outset; it would never do to plunge straight off
into the occult cause of his presence. Moreover, the train leaves for London
in five minutes, and hosts of acquaintances, some of long standing, others
of the ship-board or moth variety, exchange cheery greetings as they pass.
“I suppose you are staying in Liverpool, Mr. Grier?” says Mrs. Hutchinson
at last, and Karl is impelled to say that he intends to accompany them to
London, when, at this critical state of affairs, there enters the villain of the
play in the shape of Steindal’s agent with a contract in his hand and a
stylographic pen in his waistcoat pocket.
After all is said and done, pretty Miss Margaret is making music her
profession, the Darjeeling tea-garden not having proved a great success; and
what chance does Karl, with his visions, stand against Steindal, the concert
director of international fame? For the great “Wilhelm” has risen from the
dramatic agency in which Hooper had heard of him to the higher level of
controlling the maestri, prime donne, and other prodigies of that strange
world which finds all its inspiration in the first seven letters of the alphabet.
His influence is so far-reaching, his verdict accepted so unhesitatingly by
managers and publishers, that not many stars in the musical firmament can
move in orbits apart from Steindal. For a novice to attain notoriety without
his assistance would be almost impossible. Both mother and daughter have
already been taught by bitter experience that one must move circumspectly
where such a man is concerned, and, above all things, not dare to interfere
with plans he has made for professional advancement. So, when Karl would
urge Maggie to refuse the highly advantageous offer made by Steindal’s
London agent—who had actually come from London to press it on his

client’s acceptance—both the girl and her mother must regard him as
somewhat akin to a lunatic.
The more mysteriously accurate the statements he made concerning recent
events on the other side of the Atlantic, the less the ladies would regard
their value from the common-sense point of view. Mrs. Hutchinson, of
course, remembered the escape from death she and her husband, and
probably her child, owed to Karl’s intervention years ago in India. But that
was a “strange dream,” a “queer coincidence,” and any one who permitted
her life to be governed by such supernatural revelations must either be
distinguished by Providence outside the plane of ordinary mortals or be
qualifying speedily for the “dangerous” ward in an asylum.
All this, and more, did I set forth temperately before my young friends.
They agreed with me, Hooper completely, and Grier with reservations.
“My advice is that you ask your mother to communicate with Mrs.
Hutchinson and her daughter,” I said. “It will surely follow that you all meet
in London or elsewhere, and you will have no difficulty in leading up to a
disclosure of your knowledge in what may be described as a reasonable and
convincing manner. They will be surprised, of course, but they will be
forewarned if evil is contemplated. It is not that Steindal’s help will be
injurious to Miss Hutchinson. He has brought out a great many eminent
artistes, and the public regard his introduction of a newcomer as a sort of
hallmark on precious metal. Moreover, long before any nefarious plot can
mature, you may have information of a far more convincing sort.”
“Exactly,” broke in Hooper. “I told Karl last night that he was in for a series
of first-rate biograph adventures now. He can’t avoid ’em. It is perfectly
evident that Constantine will ring him up at any hour of the day or night.
Great Scott! What a world it will be when we all possess a telelog number!”
We ignored the new word, and neither Karl nor I had as yet hit on
“telegnomy.”
“I suppose you are right,” said Karl, submissively. “When a journalist and a
lawyer come to dissect a modern miracle they leave precious little of its
mysticism. But there is one thing you ought to do. You, Frank, as an eye-
witness, to a certain extent, should set down in writing all that has taken

place and all that I have told you, while our friend here can affix his
signature as further testimony of its truth.”
“Holy gee! Do you think I have missed a word of it?” cried Hooper,
triumphantly producing his note-book.
“This is only the first chapter of a romance,” I said.
“It may be the end as well as the beginning,” was Grier’s quiet comment.
“Do not forget that many years have elapsed between these different
excitations of a faculty I cannot control. Last night I advanced a long stage
in my attainments, and it is possible my extra sense may disappear as
rapidly as it has developed.”
“I cannot agree with you,” said I. “The history of your gradual extension of
power seems rather to prove the opposite contention. By a slow and well-
marked process, nature has perfected in you an amazing apparatus which
probably heralds the advent of some mechanical contrivance far beyond the
range of our present knowledge. Why should she suddenly destroy that
which she has taken so long to fashion? It is unquestionable that birthmarks
on human beings are produced by a curiously simple variant of the
photographic lens. I have seen the dial of a clock reproduced in a girl’s
eyes, the clear drawing of a rose on a child’s shoulder. Such pre-natal
photographs are not common, but they have always been and will continue
to be, while the human race possesses its present characteristics.”
“I would be better content if some other subject were chosen for this new
demonstration,” said he.
“Oh, cheer up, Grier!” cried Hooper. “For all you know, you may be the last
of the Mohicans. I was reading Pliny’s description of the ‘Agate of Pyrrhus’
the other day. Ever hear of it? No! Well, you have seen polished agates, and
any one can find amusement in discovering heads, figures, animals, even
landscapes in them. A good specimen is called a ‘gamaheu,’ and Pliny’s
agate was a rip-snorter. It contained the Nine Muses with Apollo in the
midst of them. Having attained the dignity of classic art, poor old nature
grew tired, and now we have nary a gamaheu.”
“You are scoffing,” I said indignantly. “Let us adjourn the session. I came
here to see Oxford, not to indulge in physiolatry.”

“The fact is that you are surfeited with wonders,” retorted Hooper. “It is a
common failing of the species. Think what a supreme genius was the first
pithecoid man who invented a wheel, who used fire, who fashioned a bow!
How we ought to grovel at the mere mention of the great unknown who
perceived that the other beasts were created to serve mankind!”
I rang for a waiter. Lager beer alone could quench this young sage’s
enthusiasm.
Perhaps Grier had exhausted some accumulation of nervous force, perhaps
the supply cells of the electric waves which carried sight and sound across
the Atlantic were unequal just then to sustained calls on their resources, but,
whatever the reason, it is certain that he was untroubled by visions, waking
or asleep, during several days. I prolonged my visit to Oxford, passing all
the available time in Karl’s company, and, more often than not, Hooper was
with us.
The latter tried every artifice, especially during the undisturbed eventide, to
induce in his companion that which he considered the fitting conditions for
a telegnomic trance.
“Guess Maggie’s feelin’ fine an’ dandy by this time,” he would say, after
alluding to the “sickening monotony” of the first days at sea.
Or again:
“Wonder if Steindal is going to Delmonico’s to-night? It’s a sure thing he’ll
give the other place a distant nod of recognition for some time to come.”
But it was of no avail.
Once there was a chance of success. We were talking of the uselessness of
certain lines of thought, and I instanced as an example of fallacious
reasoning the famous problem of John of Salisbury:
“When a hog is driven to market with a rope round his neck does the man
or the rope take him?”
“I read Plato a good deal,” said Hooper, “and there are times when I more
than half suspect him of asking a question akin to that with his tongue in his
check.”

“That is because you have a small head, Frank,” said Karl. “Plato was a
broad man. Indeed, his proper name was Aristocles, and he was called
Platon, the broad-shouldered one, as a nickname. Hence, I should credit him
with a big head, and big-headed men lead in intellect. Observe, I have a big
head. My size in hats is seven and a quarter. My natural modesty prevents
me from drawing further conclusions.”
“That fellow Constantine has a small head, I fancy?” murmured Hooper,
with a quick sidelong glance at me.
“Yes, I think so. Oh, yes, I am sure. It is hatchet-shaped, with the animal
propensities dominant and yet a certain intellectuality of forehead, aided,
perhaps, by the large, dark eyes.... But Steindal! He has a head modelled
like an egg, a type curiously capable of the highest and most debased
attributes.”
He was silent after that. Hooper signalled to me to remain stolid as a Red
Indian. But Karl soon moved restlessly.
“You fellows imagine I am on the verge of a new display,” he cried with a
certain impatience. “I don’t say it is impossible, but there is something
holding me back. I don’t deny that I tried just then to send forth an
investigating ray. But nothing happened, not even the preliminary umbra.”
He was fretful this evening, annoyed that the power should apparently have
escaped him. He dreaded, I believe, lest the tremendous strain of the
incidents in the Broadway restaurant should have permanently impaired the
hyper-sensitive membranes and nerve-cells which were called into play.
None of us had the slightest suspicion of what had really happened, namely,
that Karl himself, by perplexing his ordinary faculties with doubts anent
pretty Maggie Hutchinson, had set up a hostile influence (using the phrase
solely in its magnetic meaning) which temporarily benumbed the delicate
organism of his sixth sense.
It took him some time to acquire the exact poise of mental placidity most
favorable to the exercise of his unique faculties. Meanwhile, a startling
confirmation of his “visions” came in a very unexpected and prosaic
manner.
Hooper and I were awaiting him at the door of the Mitre, a drive to
Woodstock being the order of the afternoon, when Karl came to us in a

great hurry, his lips apart, and his big blue eyes shining with excitement.
“Say,” whispered Hooper, “the Merlin has arrived and things have
happened.”
And Karl had actually received this most surprising telegram from his
mother in Scotland:
“Mrs. Hutchinson and daughter Maggie arrive in England to-day from
States. They proceed direct to Pall Mall Hotel, London, and are most
anxious to see you at once. Wire them and me. With love, Mother.”

CHAPTER IX
THE CONFOUNDED HOTEL CLERK
“Whoop!” shouted the American, joyously. “Didn’t I tell you things were
going to hum? You stand on me! Steindal, Constantine and Co. haven’t a
dog’s chance!”
I pointed out that such unseemly behavior at the door of a busy hotel in the
High was likely to cause unpleasant comment, if, indeed, it did not excite
proctorial wrath, and he retorted that a freeborn Yankee was entitled to
unfurl the Stars and Stripes on all such occasions as seemed personally
fitting. In fact, we both were very elated by the really remarkable
confirmation of Karl’s story given by Mrs. Grier’s telegram, and we
exhibited our emotions after the manner of our respective kith.
Though we Anglo-Saxons, the Siamese twins of the Atlantic, are so closely
bound together by the ties of speech and history, though the best blood of
Britain has been generously given to the building up of the great nation of
the west, there are differences of temperament, probably induced by
climate, which divide us into well-marked varieties of the human family.
Thus, while Hooper did not hesitate to express his wordy delight, and with
animated face and lively movement exhibit the dynamic energy called into
play by Karl’s announcement, I strove to stiffen myself into a passable
representation of a wooden image. I suppose we Britons do that sort of
thing because we think that sort of thing is the correct thing, don’chyno.
You have but to cross the Atlantic a few times to obtain clear mind-pictures
of the expansive Jonathan and the bovine Bull. An American liner puts off
from Pier 14 in the Hudson River and swings slowly in the stream until her
nose points towards the Statue of Liberty. Look back at the wharf banked
high with people, and see the innumerable little flags, the countless
handkerchiefs, signalling frantic farewells! That is enthusiasm! If Brown
and his wife set forth for Europe, Smith, Jones, and Robinson and their
respective wives gather on the steamer to see the Browns off. There is a lot
of excitement, flowers, and flag-wagging—perhaps some furtive tears—
but, anyhow, an honest display of unbridled human nature. Then see that

same vessel edging away from Southampton quay, and note the guarded
leave-taking of those rare individuals who depart so greatly from British
traditions as to speed their voyaging friends as far as the ship’s gangway.
The last time I was there, a dozen of us, cowering behind rain-swept
railway trucks, had journeyed from London to see off a whole ship’s
company. Do you fancy we flagged anybody, or waved handkerchiefs, or
yelled cheery messages? Not we! We watched the steamer disappearing into
a squall and then eyed each other suspiciously, if not with active hostility;
while some of us negotiated for the only available cab.
Yet it is all gammon, this seeming stoicism, a smug respectability which
“goes well,” as the milliners say, with a silk hat and an umbrella. Indeed, if
for “climate” you read “umbrella,” you have what Max Müller would call
the “root concept” of my philosophy. John adapts his garments to suit his
uncertain weather, and he carries this covering-up method into all the affairs
of life.
Certain explanations to the authorities procured permission for Karl to go to
London. I accompanied him in the time-honored rôle of amicus curiæ, but
Hooper, of his own accord, said it would be more seemly if he were held in
reserve as one who could offer confirmatory evidence if it were required.
Three hours after the receipt of Mrs. Grier’s telegram we were at the inquiry
office of the Pall Mall Hotel. It was then 6 p.m.
“The Merlin is not in yet,” said the hotel clerk, in the curt, off-hand manner
which the Londoner is beginning to learn from his American fellow-official.
“Not in yet!” I gasped. “Why, man, we received a message hours ago at
Oxford concerning people on board.”
“That is more than we have done.”
He made pretence to be exceedingly busy with a ledger; but prolonged ill-
usage by ticket examiners, platform inspectors, and the rest of the Jacks in
office who seldom know much about their duties, has hardened me.
“Are you so overworked that you cannot attend to me, or shall I ask Mr.
Schmidt’s assistance?” I demanded.
Now here I have given you a most useful tip. Always ascertain the name of
the manager of the hotel. The prompt, familiar reference to the august

“Schmidt”—whom I did not know—warned the clerk that here might be
some person of importance, worthy to be on terms of intimacy with the
great gun of the Pall Mall Hotel. He groveled, closing the ledger carefully
lest the bang should annoy me further.
“I beg your pardon, sir. I hope you did not misunderstand me,” he said,
smiling—oh, how I hate that false smirk—“the Merlin was signaled from
Queenstown yesterday, but she has not reached Liverpool. We place a
notice in the vestibule the moment we have any news, and the telegram
itself states—what time—the special—Excuse me, sir, but your friend—”
Karl was standing by my side during the brief colloquy with the clerk. I saw
the pert Londoner’s eyes droop. His lips parted and whitened, his voice
faltered, his demeanor was that of Richard III on the eve of the battle of
Bosworth Field. I half expected to hear him yelp:
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
I gazed anxiously at my companion, and became partly aware of what had
happened. Karl had magnetized the clerk! In another instant the dapper little
man would be crawling over the counter, looking up with uncomprehending
terror at the Jove-like being who bent those lightning shafts on him.
I caught Karl by the arm. Instantly the concentrated energy which had
shrunk the pupils of his eyes to pin-points relaxed, the relieved motor and
sensory nerves returned to their ordinary functions, and he looked
benignantly at the quivering clerk, whom he had not seen at all during the
transient oblivion of his surroundings.
“It is all right,” he said, turning towards me. “A railway porter has just told
Maggie that the train will leave the landing-stage station in twenty minutes.
In fact, at this moment she is talking to Steindal’s representative, a man
named Bocci. And, do you know, from what she said I imagine—”
I caught the clerk listening now with a rabbit-eared amazement that nearly
equaled his previous alarm. I was sorry for him. He must be in a state of
agitation somewhat akin to the flutterings of a sparrow rescued from the
deadly fascination of a snake.

So I laughed, with the best assumption of the actor’s art of which I was
capable.
“Let him off, Karl!” I cried. “The next time we seek information I am sure
he will give it to us readily.”
Karl took my cue and grinned in concert. I led him away to a lounge, but,
ever and anon, the clerk watched us from the corner of his eye, and I
chortled to see him comparing the clock with the time stated on a telegram
which reached him a few minutes later, wherein the departure of the Merlin
special was announced in exact concord with Karl’s statement.
Meanwhile I learnt what had taken place. No sooner had Grier heard the
unexpected fact of the steamer’s non-arrival than he, quite carelessly, “sent
out,” as he phrased it, to find Maggie and the ship. He experienced no
difficulty this time. He saw the girl and her mother standing in a huge shed
and conversing with a foreign-looking person. Through several doors he
distinguished the brass-rimmed port-holes and white rails of a large vessel,
and he heard a hum of voices, the clanking of cranes, and the tramping of
many feet.
“From what I gathered,” he said, “Signor Bocci was surprised, even
annoyed, to learn that Miss Hutchinson was not prepared to accept at once
the contract which Steindal offered. ‘No artiste has ever obtained more
favorable terms from my principal,’ he told her. ‘Is it that you demand more
money, or more frequent appearances?’ ‘Oh, no,’ said Maggie, and she has
such a nice, sweet voice; ‘I am, indeed, greatly obliged to Mr. Steindal, and
to you, signor, for having troubled to come to Liverpool. But I really must
ask you to let arrangements stand in abeyance until my mother and I meet
you in London.’ ‘But what am I to cable to Steindal?’ he asked. ‘Why cable
this evening?’ she persisted. ‘Am I such an important little person that the
world is waiting breathlessly for my decision?’ That is all I heard while I
was paralyzing the clerk.”
“How was Miss Hutchinson dressed?”
“In a navy blue costume trimmed with black braid. She wore a white
yachting cap and white gloves. Mrs. Hutchinson was dressed in black, with
a sort of black lace mantle and a black bonnet of lace and feathers.”
“And Bocci—what is he like?”

“An ordinary, under-sized, pasty-faced Italian, fiercely outlined with black
hair, eyebrows, and moustache.”
I went to the bureau again. The inquiry clerk was apprehensive, but I only
wanted the London Directory. And therein I hunted up the entry: “Bocci,
Giovanni, concert agent,” with a number in a Strand side-street.
“How did you know that Steindal’s London representative was named
Bocci?” I asked Karl.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you that Miss Hutchinson held his card in her hand.”
He rattled off “Signor Giovanni Bocci,” and the rest of the copperplate
legend! I wonder what the inquiry clerk would have thought had he
overheard the whole of Karl’s story. Afterwards, when steeled to the marvel
of it all, I did not hesitate to prod the dull wits of the heavy tribe which
Emerson describes as “only understanding pitch-forks and the cry of
‘Fire!’” But that evening I forebore, lest we should be turned out of the
hotel.
Indeed, that monstrous British dread of a “scene” induced me to beseech
Karl not to go wandering off through space until the conditions were more
private. We had four hours to spare, so we dined, strolled to Hyde Park and
back, and finally awaited in the hotel vestibule the advent of the two ladies.
It was the height of the London season. One of the many fine days which
the world’s capital manages to smuggle in between layers of fog and
sheeted storm was drawing to a close. And how majestic, how radiantly
calm, is London at such an hour! The purple haze of evening glorifies the
harsh lines of myriad roofs; the long rows of twinkling lights might have
been designed by Whistler; beneath the opulent robe of the great city one
can hear its tremendous heart beating peacefully.
It was Grier’s first adult experience of London, and I was certain that it
affected him powerfully. He told me later that he was tempted many times
to expand those awesome caverns of his brain, and seek to understand with
their seemingly immeasurable receptive capacity the giant influences at
work amidst that vast aggregation of humanity. But he resisted successfully,
feeling somewhat awed, even a little frightened, by the belief that he alone,
among the passing thousands, was endowed with almost omniscient
knowledge of the actions and utterances of his fellow-men. Not of their

thoughts. There was something of that to come—a grand expansion of that
sympathetic transmission of ideas vaguely known to men and animals since
the Spirit moved over the face of the waters, and the heavens and the earth
and all the host of them were designed. But not yet. The most sceptical of
scientists could not accuse Karl of flights of imagination, for he recorded
naught save positive facts of contemporary occurrence. That, to me, was the
most startling feature of his sixth sense. There scarcely exists a man or
woman of any real intelligence who has not, at one time or another,
communicated the unspoken thought to another at a distance. Truly, this
comparatively general attribute of mankind is a far more stupendous and
less comprehensible achievement than Karl’s telegnomy. But, as Hooper
said about the wheel and the use of fire, we soon become surfeited with
wonders.
The hands of the great clock over the fireplace crept slowly past 11.30 p.m.,
the hour named in the telegram from the shipping company as that at which
the Merlin passengers would reach Euston. Thence, with the best intentions,
otherwise a fast hansom, the Hutchinson ladies could not arrive at the hotel
much before midnight.
Nevertheless, at a quarter to twelve, Grier showed some signs of
restlessness. I have often thought that these physical indications of the
psychic force pent up in certain tiny pyramidal cells situate within the
cortex of the gray matter of the brain greatly resembled the throbbings and
strainings and extraordinarily minute movements of a boiler getting up
steam. Your inch-thick, riveted cylinder may be bolted to iron beams
imbedded in granite-like concrete, yet the living power of steam makes its
presence felt long ere the engineer bids the impatient giant get to work.
And it was so now with Karl. He could not sit still. The vestibule was full of
people waiting to meet the Merlin contingent—oh, no, not of English
people, but of Americans, anxious to welcome other Americans—yet Karl
and I, amidst all the lively throng, enlisted the sustained attention of the
inquiry clerk.
Once, after catching his eye, an impulse of sheer devilment sent me to greet
Mr. Schmidt most warmly. The manager, of course, being an affable man
who liked to stand on pleasant terms with his patrons, was quite amenable

to that kind of polite attention. We entered into a lively conversation for a
minute or two, and I kept darting expressive glances towards the clerk.
I am sure the poor fellow quaked. Quitting Mr. Schmidt, I rejoined Karl,
and the inquiry clerk ran across the vestibule. He was most anxious now to
be civil.
“I have just heard of a telephone message from Euston,” he said to me.
“There are ninety passengers for this hotel, and they will be here in a few
minutes.”
“The first station omnibus is just coming round the corner,” said Karl,
quietly. “Maggie and her mother are in the next one, not in a hansom.”
Now, from where we stood, there was no visible vehicle of the type
mentioned. The clerk looked puzzled, as well he might, thinking my
companion had commented on his statement. I knew what had happened.
During my momentary talk with Schmidt, Karl had taken a peep beyond.
Sure enough, almost at once a London and North Western Railway ’bus
deposited the first consignment of Merlin folk at the hotel entrance. Out of
the next conveyance stepped two ladies whom I recognized, from the
description supplied by Karl, as Mrs. Hutchinson and her daughter.
I must confess that the sight of them gave me a shock, well prepared though
I was for their appearance. Yet it is one thing to expect a certain experience,
but quite another to undergo it—as, to wit, being ready for the sensation of
a needle-bath and receiving the impact of the icy jets of water on your bare
skin.
It was so exceedingly strange to see the mother and daughter, unconscious
objects of experiments of epoch-marking importance, quietly appearing at
the door of a London hotel under ordinary conditions open to any of the
well-dressed, unheeding crowd within or the hurrying multitude without.
They passed through the revolving doors, and looked about them. Karl
stepped forward, somewhat shyly, though there was an instant charm in his
smiling disingenuousness. You see, he fancied he had to introduce himself,
being now a tall man in place of the little boy Mrs. Hutchinson had last
seen, and whom Maggie must wholly fail to remember.

So far as mama was concerned, be sure she could not distinguish Grier, at
first glance, from any other man present.
But Maggie saw him instantly. She became very pale, and her eyes,
extremely pretty eyes they were (and are), dilated.
“Oh, mother!” she cried aloud. “There he is!”
So curiously perturbed was she, so timid and childlike in her words and
attitude, that Grier’s conventional welcome died away in his throat. Yet he
held out his hand, and the girl, stepping forward impulsively, caught it in
both of hers.
But her eyes filled with tears, and the corners of her mouth quivered, and
not another word could she utter. The scene was unexpected, embarrassing,
and, of course, dreadfully un-English. And what did it all signify?

CHAPTER X
MAGGIE TELLS WHAT BEFEL HER
I think I came to the rescue, but I was so flurried, so completely driven out
of myself, that ordered recollection begins only in the middle of the blather
which usually serves as conversational counters at such meetings. I made
myself known to Mrs. Hutchinson, and she, worthy soul, much perplexed
by certain mysterious incidents soon to be made clear (after a fashion),
extricated us from a difficult situation by the true motherliness of her
surprise and admiration at finding Karl grown to be a bigger man than his
father.
She was a Scotswoman, and she delighted in proclaiming the fact. Thus,
although a lady of good birth and refined manners, she did not disdain to
use the homely phrases of “her ain people” when they expressed her
thoughts better than the polished slang which passes current for English in
society nowadays.
“Eh, but it’s a cure for sair e’en to see you, honey,” she cried, when she had
assured herself that this six-footer was really the young Grier whom she had
heard so much about of late. (This cryptic remark will explain itself
presently.) “I was sure my letter to your mother would bring you quickly to
us if you were not abroad. Did she telegraph to you? I suppose she could
not have written in the time. And how kind it is of you to hurry up to
London in time to receive us! Did you say you came from Oxford? Well,
from what I have heard of young gentlemen at the ’Varsity, they seldom
object to an urgent call that brings them to London.”
Now that sort of rattling talk is admirably calculated to dissipate
metapsychic puzzles into thin air. I was exceedingly grateful to Mrs.
Hutchinson. From that moment dated my lasting admiration for her dear,
outspoken, open-hearted qualities. Excellent soul! She was trustworthy as
oak, and quite as dense to anything beyond the circle of her comprehension.
The two young boobies gazing so pathetically at each other were enabled in
the interim to recover their speech and their every-day faculties. Karl’s eyes

kindled with a friendly interest which threatened developments, and Maggie
gazed at him with a smiling, fawn-like wistfulness calculated to drive any
heart-whole and well-regulated young man frantic in five minutes by the
clock.
It was my first actual, if vicarious, acquaintance with that pleasant malady
known as love at first sight, and, judging by the symptoms of this well-
matched pair, the disease is one which, like measles in childhood, is
calculated to do the cynic good.
I suppose it is my duty, right here, as Hooper would say, to describe Maggie
Hutchinson. I would prefer to give a definition of the differential calculus—
one can hunt up these things so readily in any work of reference—but to
what encyclopedia can a man turn when he wishes to limn in mere words
the elusive charms of a beautiful, well-educated girl, in whom a delightful
femininity is blended with the rare artistic temperament—blended, too, with
the deftness of a skilled gardener who grafts one lovely and sweet-scented
plant on another? If the human soul were ever visible to our mortal senses it
must most nearly attain tangible form in fragrant young womanhood. Every
artist who seeks inspiration in nature, every poet who writes a stanza to
Spring or the Dawn, knows that this is so. And that is why it is not good for
mankind that woman should, by training or environment, weaken the God-
given maternal instinct which is the golden halo of the Madonna.
Some such thought came to me when I first set eyes on Maggie Hutchinson.
She realized an ideal and that is saying much. Not that she was so strikingly
handsome that men must stare and women sniff merely because she passed,
nor that her pose of head and general shapeliness would have enraptured a
Greek sculptor. No, I am compelled to state that by the generality of critics
Maggie would only be placed among the nondescript “good-looking”
section of young ladies, and she might, or might not, be molded like the
Capuan Venus for all that her orthodox “tailor-built” (that is the right
description, I believe) traveling costume revealed.
But the peculiar circumstances under which I met her, and the rapt
spirituality of that look which she flashed at Karl through the gathering
tears, added a spice of romance to an otherwise colorless incident. The
musician who extracts a thousand tumultuous words out of a single lied
ohne wörte can best understand the emotional flood of thought which

conveys a whole volume of meaning. For an instant I experienced some
glimmering perception of Karl’s sixth sense. I fancied I actually felt the
physical and psychic influence of that “magnetic personality” which we all
of us talk about but seldom endeavor to explain.
And then “Miss Hutchinson” told me that she was not tired, “not the least
little bit”; that mother and she had “dined on the train”; that it was, indeed,
most kind on my part to have secured a private sitting-room for the joint
and several use of our party and our party’s friends. So you see, the first
impression fled quickly enough, leaving behind it a glowing streak of
recollection like unto the half-remembered track of a shooting star. But,
thank Heaven, in Maggie’s case it was renewed and developed and
perfected until, whether under the spell of her unwavering friendship or
thrilled to ecstasy by the inarticulate rapture which, at times, she drew from
the infinite storehouse of the violin, in order to please those near and dear to
her, I can say candidly that she was the goddess of one small circle, its
Athéne and Euterpe rolled into one. Nor was it long before my wife claimed
her as her greatest friend. That last saving clause is necessary. This is not
my love story, but, as the astute reader must have perceived long since,
Maggie’s and Karl’s. Yet I shall be exceedingly surprised—almost as
greatly taken aback as I was by the discoveries of the next hour—if the said
reader, though an expert dissector of love stories, from the long-drawn-out
wooing of Rachel by Jacob, down to the motif of the very latest crime
passionel in Paris, shall have guessed already the reason why Maggie wept
when first she met Karl in the vestibule of the Pall Mall Hotel.
Apparently, we have all been standing there an unconscionably long time.
Really, we have done nothing of the sort, for I am quite adept in bringing
about the right combination of luggage porters, lift attendants,
chambermaids and waiters, to secure the best and quickest results in making
people at home in a modern big hotel.
“I am so glad to be off the steamer,” sighed Mrs. Hutchinson, gratefully, as
she sank into a spacious chair in our sitting-room. “Walking along the
corridor just now, I caught myself wondering why the other folk using it did
not lean over at absurd angles. Even yet the carpet seems to heave gently
each half-minute.”

That was just the sort of remark calculated to place us at our ease. We
chatted freely while the ladies drank a little champagne and nibbled a
biscuit; I sampled the hotel whisky, and smoked, together with Karl, at the
earnest request of our fair companions.
Karl, by the way, did not know the taste of alcohol, or of any intoxicant.
The wisdom of the gods kept him free from that obsession. Goodness only
knows what would have happened if the man with a superhuman sense
(which it was, according to our present lights) yielded to drink!
Hence, when Mrs. Hutchinson, beginning at the end of the story, told us that
she wrote to Mrs. Grier from Queenstown, and a computation of hours
revealed that the mystery of the telegram was no mystery at all, the way
was paved by growing familiarity to permit the conversation to wander off
into less well-defined paths. For the good lady made no secret of the raison
d’être of her letter.
“Maggie had a dream, or a vision—something akin to what my old
Highland nurse used to call taichitaraugh, a Gaelic mouthful meaning
‘shadow-sight.’ It was so realistic that it nearly made her ill, and she startled
me considerably, when she confided it to me, which was not until twenty-
four hours later.”
Mrs. Hutchinson, of course, could not guess what a spark on tinder was one
of those time-worn words in Karl’s ears. I glanced at him to see if the
winged barb had struck home, but I was not long in discerning that
Maggie’s presence occupied his ordinary senses quite sufficiently to keep
his telegnomic sense dormant. It might, indeed, stimulate and intensify the
others, but no man would use a telephone or an opera glass to hear or see
his best girl when she was seated in the same room as himself, would he?
Science can do a lot for us, but I will back Dame Nature’s idea of a magnet
in the shape of a pretty woman against any wizard device of the latter-day
alchemist.
Then the mother, at Maggie’s request, essayed to give us the history of an
afternoon dream on board the good ship Merlin. The day was Sunday, and
the weather had been bad. The ship was traversing that choppy belt of the
Atlantic which makes the day of rest so particularly unrestful in the
majority of vessels sailing from New York or Liverpool on a Wednesday.
Indeed, the “White Star Sunday” is an ocean proverb.

“Neither of us felt equal to taking luncheon in the saloon,” said she, “so a
deck-steward brought us some tempting dishes. The sea subsided rapidly
under the change of wind, and we were comfortable enough after our meal.
I fell into a slight doze. Maggie says she did not.”
“No, mother, I am sure I was awake, because I was running over in my
mind Almaviva’s song, ‘Ecco ridente il cielo,’ with the guitar
accompaniment for the violins,” interrupted Maggie.
Then why, my dear young lady, should your cheeks flutter now between
white and pink, like a Marie Vornhoot rose, beneath the most attractive and
healthy brown with which sun and sea have decorated you? And why, with
even greater emphasis, should you have been warbling to yourself then the
love-sick outpourings of the Seville gallant to his Rosina? I thought those
old operas were, if not dead, for they are immortal, at least buried alive
beneath a mound of Gaiety muslin and the striped cotton habiliments of
many musical comedy coons.
“Girls get such whimsies in their heads that they often do not know what
they are thinking about,” replied practical Mrs. Hutchinson. “Yet there can
be no doubt, my dear, that something extraordinary did occur.”
“When I woke up,” she continued, addressing Karl and me, “I found
Maggie crying softly to herself. Naturally I was alarmed, and when she did
not answer I caught her arm. Then she appeared to recover her wits, but she
frightened me even more thoroughly by murmuring something about the
utter bliss—”
“Mother!” broke in the girl, evidently nerving herself for an ordeal, though
her face was aflame, “let me describe what happened.”
“Well, well!” said Mrs. Hutchinson, “tell it your own way. I admit I never
got the hang of it to rights.”
It was impossible to watch both Karl’s face and Maggie’s, so I devoted
myself to an intent study of the subtle emotions which sent their
undecipherable shadows across the girl’s eyes. But the woman does not
breathe, or is not worthy of breath, who cannot be an actress when the great
crises of existence throb across life’s stage. Indeed, she controlled her
expression and chose her words so well that she soon led my rambling
fancy back to the sufficiently bewildering climax of her own adventure.

“Mother has left out what you might call a predisposing influence,” she
said, smiling, and she spoke to me, not to Karl. “Have you ever heard of the
agonic line?”
“Has it anything to do with the ‘Personal’ column in the Times?” was my
banal reply.
“No!” It was Karl who answered, and there was a timbre in his voice I had
not heard before. It silenced Maggie for the moment. Perhaps it suggested a
chord drawn with nerve-thrilling effect from her own beloved violin.
Anyhow, he took up the parable.
“An agonic line is an irregular line, running generally north and south,
which marks those parts of the earth’s surface where the magnetic needle
points to the true north. There are three of them, and they are slowly
changing their positions,” he said.
“Thank you! I could not have explained it so clearly,” smiled Maggie,
though she persistently averted her eyes. “Well, during the morning, the
Chief Officer had been telling me things about the deviation of the
compass, the importance of the agonic lines, the magnetic vagaries of some
parts of the globe, and the great value to sailors of a recent discovery that at
a certain point in front of the foremast the compass ceases to be affected by
the polarization which is set up in all iron ships.”
Ting! Some tiny nerve-bell jingled in my head. Polarization! Karl and I
exchanged looks. We had rapidly made the same calculation. Allowing for
difference of sun-time, Miss Margaret’s disturbing dream-vision, whatever
it disclosed, must have been exactly contemporaneous with Karl’s poker-
juggling in the Mitre Hotel.
“Now what is it?” demanded Mrs. Hutchinson, whose shrewd Scottish eyes
were quick to detect the secret telegraphy between the others, for Maggie
flushed most charmingly again, and we three established a circuit of
intelligence. “Why do you all gowp like that? You make my flesh creep.
The next thing you will be telling me is that there are ghosts in the room!”

CHAPTER XI
THE KEY OF THE TREASURE-HOUSE
Well might Mrs. Hutchinson rail at us with a certain peevishness; here was
true midsummer madness, if ever the dog-days’ frolic gamboled within the
bounds of staid London. And what a wild jostling of ideas, apparently
remote as the poles, contributed to the medley; agonic lines, polarization of
ships and fire-irons, a curious experiment in an hotel at Oxford, and a girl
humming Il Barbiere di Siviglia in mid-Atlantic—these were the magic
passwords, it would seem, to a new wonder-cave of Ali Baba. I fancied I
could hear those fiddles singing the accompaniment to the lovelorn count’s
impassioned verses. In this latest version of the immortal comedy I was
playing Figaro, and Mrs. Hutchinson, if judged by her present impatient
mood, provided a fair substitute for Dr. Bartholdo.
Yet, what did it all mean? Karl, to my own knowledge, had not despatched
his telegnomic sense on a roving commission that Sunday afternoon at
Oxford. He had subjected a poker to what he termed “magnetic induction”
merely in order to illustrate his unimpaired bodily and mental vigor when I
expressed some anxiety about the effect on his health of practising too often
a new and perhaps dangerous force. Again, if not at that moment, he had
striven subsequently to glean some intelligence of Maggie’s doings, only to
encounter repeated failure day after day, until she met Signor Bocci in
Liverpool a few hours previously. Nevertheless, I was sure that
communication between those two was established in that instant, a
sympathetic contact, conscious in the maiden’s case, unconscious in the
youth’s. Perhaps, while humming Almaviva’s strains, the Rosina of the
Merlin applied the words to herself.
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.
I turned my eyes for a second from Maggie’s face and looked at Karl. He
reminded me of a youthful warrior of the age of chivalry, who, guarding his
armor in some holy fane during the still watches of the night, found a sweet
vision smiling on him instead of the stone saint or stained-glass picture of

crude daylight. Evidently he was unaware of having exerted any perturbing
influence on Maggie. He was quite genuinely surprised by the coincidence
revealed by her words.
The girl herself seemed to be anxious that we should not answer her
mother’s question.
“It is difficult to tell you exactly what happened,” she exclaimed hurriedly.
“I was so confused afterwards that I scarcely could form a coherent idea,
and that is why mama complains that I have not said much about it. But I
can give you certain incidents which stood out clearly. In the first place, I
seemed to lose my senses. I had a curious sensation akin to that felt if one’s
arm goes to sleep, as we say; only this was general in its effect, and I had
not been sitting in an awkward position. Then I heard voices. Everything
was dark, though, of course, you understand it was broad daylight on board
the ship. Still, I thought I heard two men talking about me, and their
remarks were so peculiar that I could not help listening. I should explain
that the men were not on board. Indeed, I believe, they were then, and are
now, in New York.”
“Were they Wilhelm Steindal and Paul Constantine?” said Karl, eagerly.
The question was out before he realized that it had better have remained
unspoken. The effect was as instantaneous as any writer of melo-farce could
hope for. Mrs. Hutchinson clapped her hands in her excitement, and Maggie
became very red indeed.
“So you, too, knew all about it,” she murmured.
“No,” said Karl. “I know absolutely nothing of any incident on board the
Merlin which affects, in any way, the experience you are relating.”
“Or afterwards?”
“None, whatever. But I am interrupting you. I am sorry. It was quite
involuntary on my part.”
Miss Hutchinson appeared to gain confidence after this. She and Karl, and,
to a certain extent, I myself, were in the position of ships of different
nationalities on the high seas, using the same code-signals, but unable to
interpret them without reference to a translation.

“It is very astonishing to my mother and me to hear you mention those
names,” she said. “We only met Mr. Constantine a week before we left the
States. He introduced us to Mr. Steindal. At that time, and, indeed, during
the past year, I entertained the hope of earning some degree of fame as a
violinist. I have made successful appearances in Berlin, London, New York,
Boston, and other places, and Mr. Steindal should have proved to be an
exceedingly valuable acquaintance. But Mr. Constantine offended me the
evening before we sailed, and the words I heard in my dream bore out his
previous conduct so completely that I have almost resolved to abandon the
idea of a professional career.”
“Did you ever hear anything like it?” demanded Mrs. Hutchinson, who was
brought back with a bump from psychical manifestations to the hard matter-
of-fact details of existence. “Here is this foolish girl thinking of foregoing
the results of several years of expensive tuition and some very flattering
public receptions, just because she had a queer vision in mid-Atlantic.”
“Mother, dear, there was no vision about Mr. Constantine’s behavior at
Manhattan Beach?”
“No, but that wretched Armenian is not all the world! It is a nice thing if
two Anglo-Indians allow a dark person of his type to affect their lives.”
Neither Karl nor I moved a muscle when Manhattan Beach was mentioned.
But how quaintly these youngsters’ careers had become interwoven after so
many years of separation! And what an amazing thing it was that Maggie
heard but did not see, when one remembered that music broke the seal of
Karl’s spiritual hearing! However, I must restrain my speculative thoughts,
for Maggie was speaking again.
“I call it a dream,” she said earnestly, “but I use that word for want of a
better. I feel in my heart, in my brain, that I really did hear what
Constantine and Steindal said to each other. They planned a great many
things, and, if proof were wanted, Steindal’s agent met us at Liverpool to-
day and made the offer I told my mother of last Sunday.”
Mrs. Hutchinson, poised on the very pinnacle of doubt, nodded her head.
“That is true enough,” she admitted, smiling in her perplexity, “and it is all
through you, Mr. Grier, or shall I call you Karl? That is why I wrote to your

mother. We were delayed by fog in the Irish Sea, or we should have been in
London before her telegram could have reached you.”
Karl only smiled in reply. It was almost impossible for either him or me to
comment on the broken narrative which reached us. How bewildered and
unnerved the two ladies would be if they realized the minuteness with
which we fitted each statement they made into the detailed story we already
possessed!
“Yes,” said Maggie, speaking very slowly, “no doubt you have been
wondering how you can possibly be bound up with my affairs?”
She paused, as if to permit Karl to give some hint that he already possessed
the clue to her wanderings in the maze of intangible things. He helped her
by saying:
“We have a story to tell, Miss Hutchinson. I, too, have undergone some
extraordinary experiences, but most certainly I did not encounter you in
spirit-land while you crossed the Atlantic. I may say that I endeavored to do
so, for reasons that shall be made clear, but I failed.”
She smiled delightedly. It occurred to me that Karl had said exactly that
which she wanted him to say. I pictured Hooper reveling in analytical hair-
splitting when we related this conversation to him. Nevertheless, the
solution of this latest problem in occultism baffled both him and me for
many a day.
“I will pass from Steindal and Constantine,” she said, “and come to the next
phase of my novel experience. Their voices ceased, and I seemed to recover
some sense of my true surroundings. I knew I was at sea in a moving vessel.
I could feel the vibration of the propeller, but the only human being of
whose presence I was conscious was you, Mr. Grier.”
“What an unreceptive soul I must possess!” cried Karl, gallantly.
“You came and took hold of my left hand,” she went on. “You said,
‘Maggie, don’t you remember me? I am Karl Grier.’ I think I endeavored to
reply, but the words seemed to die away in my throat. You bent over me and
told me not to accept the contract Steindal’s agent would offer me at
Liverpool. Then, you gave me a lot of news about yourself and your father
and mother. The years seemed to slip back until we were children again in
the Kalanullah tea-garden. I don’t believe I have ever been so delighted as I

was by the knowledge that we had both gone back to our childhood. Have
you really no knowledge whatever of all this?”
Hooper himself could not have discharged that final question with more
unexpected forensic skill than did this mere girl. It seemed to afford her the
supreme test of his assurance. Thenceforth, she gave herself no further
trouble on that point.
Her natural vivacity now replaced the somewhat hysterical restraint which
she had exercised hitherto. She told us that she had both seen Karl and
heard his voice on three subsequent occasions, and these visitations, though
in no way alarming while they lasted, were so mysterious in their
semblance of actuality, and dwelt so constantly in her thoughts, that her
mother, to whom she had related each incident after its occurrence,
determined to seek an interview with Karl, at the earliest opportunity which
presented itself on their arrival in England. The mother bore out her
daughter’s story at all points, though she stoutly held to the opinion that the
whole affair was the outcome of over-study—Maggie having worked very
hard during her visit to the States—combined with the exercise of some
telepathic gift which Karl had undoubtedly exercised when a child.
But even Mrs. Hutchinson was compelled to retreat from this logical
fortress when Karl asked me to tell his old friends all that had taken place at
Oxford. Maggie listened with a ferverish intentness that did not escape me.
Her shining eyes and parted lips betrayed her. She impressed me as
searching for some key which should open the door of complete
understanding, but the search was not rewarded—that much I knew when
we bade each other “good-night” at a late hour.
Karl and I escorted the ladies to the corridor in which their room was
situated, the hotel being so full that we were scattered over three floors.
Mrs. Hutchinson, glad to escape from the brain-tangling problems which
we could not shirk in discussing recent events, was chatting with Karl about
his father and mother, and I seized the opportunity to put a question to
pretty Miss Margaret as she walked by my side.
“In your subsequent visions of Karl,” I said, “did you ever attempt to speak
to him?”
“No. It was either impossible or I did not experience the desire.”

She answered so readily that I was encouraged to go a step further.
“Did you, of your own will, strive to resist these appearances,
notwithstanding their seemingly pleasurable nature?”
She looked at me quickly, and the ghost of a smile dimpled her cheeks.
“Yes,” she said simply. “I do not mind confessing that they frightened me
terribly, afterwards, when I thought about them, but not at the time.”
“Were you thinking of Karl when you met Bocci this afternoon?”
“How could we help it, when his predictions were verified the instant we
stepped off the steamer’s gangway? I must have spoken of him to my
mother just before he saw us standing in the Customs shed. Oh, how strange
it all is! What will be the outcome?”
A man passed us and glared at me as though he would like to wring my
neck. I imagine he thought I was worrying Maggie. She had changed her
travelling costume for a dinner-blouse and a light silk skirt. I noticed that
her bosom heaved tumultuously and a soft light leaped into her eyes. But I
pursued the topic no further, and we parted a few seconds later.
Next morning, Karl and I were waiting in the vestibule to take the ladies in
to breakfast, when the inquiry clerk slipped from behind his desk and
approached me with a business-like air.
“Are you Mr. Grier, sir?” he asked.
“No, this is Mr. Grier.”
Karl looked at the little man, who seemed half prepared to tremble before
another Olympian glance. But Karl’s face would reassure a timid child
when, as Hooper put it, he was “disconnected.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the clerk, “but I thought you would like to know
that there was a man here last night inquiring for you.”
“A man?” said Karl, blankly.
The hotel official, even if he had curt manners with unprotected travellers,
was smart enough to discriminate between real mahogany and veneer.
“Yes,” he answered off-handedly, “a foreigner, an Italian, I think. He did not
want to see you, but he seemed anxious to find out if you were staying here,

and if you had met Mrs. and Miss Hutchinson. Of course I told him you
were in the hotel, but as for the ladies, I knew nothing whatever about
them.”
“Did he give you his name?”
“No, sir.”
Karl described Bocci, and the inquiry clerk recognized him instantly.
“That’s him,” he cried (people always do say “That’s him,” no one save a
parson or a school-master uses the nominative); “I hope I did right in
choking him off?”
“You’re a wonder,” said Karl, laughing, and the clerk quitted us, feeling that
he must have greatly mistaken the looks and utterances of this exceedingly
nice young gentleman on the previous day.

CHAPTER XII
THE SCENE IN THE GARDEN COURT
Of course, it was not to be expected that these morning hours of sunshine
(London having embarked, as it turned out, on a giddy whirl of a fortnight’s
fine weather) would find us in the tension to which we were strung over-
night. Such a thing would be unreasonable, almost inhuman. The merry
jingle of the hansoms coming through the open windows, the glimpses of
omnibus tops freighted with wearers of flower hats and frivolous muslins,
the gay horn-blown ta-ran-ta-ra of the coaches crossing Trafalgar Square or
climbing the Haymarket—this gladsome medley must banish problems
which appealed to either science or credulity. London was astir and
enjoying itself, and who were we that we should resist its decorus gaiety?
At that period motor-cars were still sufficiently uncommon in England to
lend a piquant novelty to my suggestion that we should avail ourselves of a
friend’s offer to me and borrow his car for the day. That was soon arranged.
I sat with the chauffeur on the front seat, Karl and the ladies occupied the
tonneau, and when Mrs. Hutchinson and her daughter had recovered from
the silent dread of whirring past all other traffic and utilizing apparently
impossible openings between heavy vehicles, they began to enjoy the ride
immensely.
We ran through Surbiton, Esher, and Guildford, over the Hog’s Back to
Farnham, where we ate with the normal appetites of four healthy Britons.
We came home by way of Aldershot, Virginia Water, Windsor Great Park
and Staines, driving gloriously not only through the royal domain but
through several Acts of Parliament as well.
Karl, by reason of the nearing end of the Midsummer Term, must return to
Oxford that night, so it was interesting to note how much he made of those
flying hours of freedom. At least a year a minute fell away from the
conventional coating of the decade which had sped since he and the girl
were children together. “Mr. Grier,” and “Miss Hutchinson” quickly gave
place to “Karl” and “Maggie.” We were not at Barnes Bridge on the
outward journey before Karl had declared his fixed resolution to wheedle a

motor-car out of his father the day he quitted the University, and the pair of
them were planning where “we” should drive this chariot of delight during
the wonderful summer of next year!
Maggie, it appeared, was much enamored of cathedrals. Here was a fine
inspiration to provide excursions for long summer days! Bless you, they
had seen Canterbury, Salisbury and Ely in a sentence, and were doing sums
in the following breath to find out if far-away York were achievable. Ah,
how potent the engineer who constructs that magic machine which carries
the day-dreams of the young! What feats it accomplishes, how smoothly do
its noiseless wheels glide over the most perfect of roads! Yet we all possess
the treasure, and happy the man or woman who has not lost the joy of
living, losing with it the willing slave which carries them whither they list.
This wonder-coach is capable of astounding performances. It shall whisk
you through many cities and strange lands. What does it matter if the scene
be new to your eyes when you are brought to it by the sober stuffiness of a
railway plus a return ticket? You have been there twice, that is all, and
surely the first visit, in imagination, far surpassed the second, in reality.
Indeed, we enjoyed ourselves so greatly that the crassness of things in
general was sure to bring about some unpleasantness. There is a substratum
of truth in the old Celtic idea of certain people being fey before death. None
of us died, I am glad to say, but we should have been wise had we
outrageously made off with that motor-car, scurrying far from London ere
nightfall, and leaving it to my ingenuity to explain matters to my lending
friend.
We reached the hotel at six o’clock, and there was Signor Bocci impatiently
awaiting the return of Mrs. Hutchinson and her violin-playing daughter.
“Business is business,” you know, and really I could see no reason why the
girl should not accept the splendid offer made by Steindal’s agent. He
showed no disinclination to discuss it before Karl and me. Nay more, the
little man said he was glad of our presence.
“You are-a men of affairs, yes,” he said volubly, “and in-a dis oafer I haf-a
displayed to de signorina de career mos’ magnificent, is it-a not?”
Certainly his words were justified to outward seeming, though the very
hyalescence of Steindal’s undertaking should have warned us that things
were not so clear as they looked. Here was a girl of little more than

eighteen, yet the agent, one of the few men in the world of music who could
make or break an artiste, was binding himself to give her two “star”
performances in London, with full orchestra and distinguished vocal
soloists, guaranteeing an expenditure of £200 on each concert, one in the
autumn and another in the spring of the following year, agreeing to hand her
three fourths of the proceeds after (and if) they exceeded the sum named,
and, finally, pledging at least thirty public appearances at a fee of twenty
guineas each within the ensuing twelve months! Think of it, ye budding
geniuses! How the strings would twank and the pens splutter if some moon-
frenzy seized impresario or publisher to give you a start like that!
Karl, like Mrs. Hutchinson and myself, advised acceptance, though I
discovered afterwards that he had a great repugnance to the notion of
Maggie appearing on a public platform. That was natural enough, poor
fellow. He didn’t want to have all the young sparks about town telling each
other, and, what was even less endurable, telling Maggie, that she was the
most beautiful creature under the sun. No man, short of an actor, can
pretend that he likes his inamorata to face the footlights. Stageland has its
own domestic idylls, to be sure—and very sweet and wholesome they oft
may be—but they are of a different blend to those which find general
acceptance.
Yet Maggie, who listened seriously to us all, urged with gentle insistence
that no harm would be done if we gave Steindal’s magnanimity another
day’s thought, and, when I saw that her mother was quite willing to accede
to this request, I backed it up, with the result that Signor Bocci’s eyebrows
became very fierce, and he murmured something about the impossibility of
his principal keeping the offer open indefinitely.
“I do not think my daughter is asking for any unreasonable delay,” replied
Mrs. Hutchinson with some spirit. “This is practically our first business
interview. Your meeting with us on the landing-stage, though exceedingly
kind on your part, can hardly be regarded as giving us an opportunity for
full discussion. Therefore, to promise a decision to-morrow is speedy
enough in all conscience, seeing that when I wrote to Mr. Steindal eight
months ago he never even replied to my letter.”
This was a facer for Bocci. Nevertheless, he struggled gamely.

“Herr Steindal has a great-a many letters from-a de amateur,” he said. “He
hear in New-a-York ’ow Mees Ootchinson blay—”
“He did nothing nothing of the kind,” cried the elder lady. “That is the
extraordinary part of it. He met her, it is true, but he admitted he had not
been to any of her concerts. I am beginning to think, signor, that my
daughter is right and we others are wrong. Will you leave a copy of the
contract for our consideration?”
“O-ah, yes,” said he instantly, and, being a man of rapid perception, he did
not press any more for completion that day.
Certainly I was puzzled by Steindal’s tactics. Allowing that he was actuated
by the basest motives, that Constantine was paying the bill, and that their
precious compact would reveal its intent before many weeks had passed, it
was, nevertheless, a singular course they had chosen. What possible harm
could result to Maggie Hutchinson if she seized the splendid opening
dangled before her eyes by the Jew? All he asked in return was a reasonable
monopoly, voidable by his failure to carry out his undertakings in their
entirety. From her point of view, it was the most convincing case of “Heads
I win, tails you lose” I ever heard of in connection with a profession where
contracts are apt to be one-sided.
And the haze did not lessen when Maggie became confidential that evening
after dinner. Karl had gone, Mrs. Hutchinson was writing letters, and I had
secured two chairs beneath the palms in the Garden Court. Here we could
hear the band, watch the celebrities of the hour, and talk without listeners.
“I hope you are not a materialist,” said the girl, after I had uttered some
truism about modern life.
“Perish the thought!” I answered, “though, as one more than double your
extreme age, will you permit me to ask what is your definition of a
materialist?”
“A gross person—a species of pig man,” was her sufficiently amazing reply.
“Are you thinking of Steindal?” I asked involuntarily, though I had resolved
to keep clear of the topic for the hour.
“Oh, no. He was not in my mind at all. The music, the lights, the soft tones
of the women’s dresses, all the harmony to eye and ear of our present

surroundings, carried a thought to me. I cannot help knowing that within a
very short distance of this pleasant place one can find great misery. Which
of these states reveals the truth in life?”
“Both. It is well to hold a balance between them.”
“Thank you. Now, one has read how rich and well-born men and women, in
other days, have had a vision which so influenced their lives that they
forthwith abandoned wealth and rank, and devoted themselves to the
painful service of their suffering brethren. Such visions may not be so
frequent to-day, but it is a matter of constant occurrence for a similar result
to be achieved, and achieved in a single hour, whereby the future years of
existence are cast irrevocably into a new mold.”
“You are speaking solely of spiritual influences?” I asked.
She moved slightly. My question was unexpected. Some of these tender
plants of human growth are so delicately constituted that they wince
physically if you prod their souls with a verbal arrow.
“I can scarce distinguish between states,” she said, “nor have I thought or
read deeply enough to claim any clear idea as to what constitutes
spirituality. I suppose it sounds strange to hear a girl not yet nineteen
talking of such matters at all. But in Berlin one is taught to think earlier
than in England, and a musical training is prone to develop fanciful
moods.”
She was fencing with me. I determined to risk another of those insidious
arrow-flights.
“May I take it that your present introspective condition of mind arises from
your experiences on board the Merlin?” I said.
“Yes.”
Her lips set with a snap. It was quite clear that however little Karl’s
supernormal powers affected him they had exerted a truly remarkable
influence on Maggie Hutchinson, an influence, too, so novel and mysterious
that she seemed almost to fear its analysis. So I endeavored to help her.
“The man would be a fool who denied the enduring effect on the mind of a
moment’s inspiration,” I said. “He might as well argue that the

inconceivably rapid passage of an electric current through the body could
not contort it permanently or even shrivel it into practical annihilation.”
“Ah!” she cried impulsively, “that is how it seems to me. Our poor frail
human form cannot choose but obey the soul. At least it must be so if we
would be governed by noble instincts and strive ever to reach a higher
individual ideal. When the soul yields to the body there you have the
downfall, the yielding of the man to the ape.”
She leaned forward, with her right elbow on her knee and her well-modeled
chin supported by the thin, long, nervous fingers which bespoke the artistic
faculty. Spatulate-fingered folk should keep away from strings and easels.
As it pleased her to attach an ethical significance to my words I did not
gainsay her. Indeed, something told me to leave her to her thoughts for a
little while, and, as she appeared to be listening intently to the music, I sank
back into my chair and gave her the choice of continuing the conversation
or not, as she saw fit.
The band, a small but most excellent orchestra, had just rendered a soft and
harmonious prelude. I did not recognize the air until a violoncello,
exquisitely played, struck into the swelling grandeur of Vulcan’s song from
Philemon et Baucis. Perhaps the girl knew the words as well as the music. I
did not. Looking them up afterwards, in Santley’s translation, I found them
curiously à propos of the strange, all-surmounting force which was in our
minds at the moment.
Where loud the brazen hammers sound,
With lurid light the furnace glowing,
Down in my kingdom underground,
Aside vain ceremony throwing,
I’m sovereign of all around.
Certainly my companion was given a glimpse of some underground
kingdom illuminated by lurid light, for I quickly discovered that she was
rapt into a state of exaltation which paid no heed to the visible world of
fashion and light and music which surrounded us. I spoke to her gently
more than once. It was useless. She sat there, with tireless eyelids and
glistening eyes, to all outward semblance absorbed in Gounod’s majestic

chant, but really, as I alone knew, unseeing and unhearing save to sights and
sounds not given to my comprehension.
The suddenness of the thing was positively startling. According to Hooper’s
experiences, supplemented by my own with Karl, it was probable she would
regain ordinary consciousness if touched. Yet I forbore, hovering between
anxiety on the girl’s behalf and desire not to break in on a trance which
might yield some knowledge of actual value. I have often wondered since if
any observant eyes among the crowd of loungers were watching us. We
must have offered a queer picture, a scene from the charade of life as it is
staged in a big London hotel—the wistful-eyed girl, in a graceful pose,
gazing blankly into space, as it seemed, and pondering some wordless
problem, and the gray-haired, sparely built man watching her with a
keenness that must have been very puzzling to any onlooker.
At last the music ceased. There was some applause, and, to my great relief,
Maggie regained her wits.
Then a spasm of real passion convulsed her face, as though some fierce gust
had swept from a thunder-cloud to distort the smooth mirror of a lake.
Reasoned thought was slow in resuming its sway. I was sure she would
spring to her feet and scream aloud. Yet it was evident that each instant she
was becoming more conscious of her environment and gaining strength to
repress the agony which wrung her bosom.
With all my world-wandering and its consequent carelessness of mere
outward effect, notwithstanding that wayward Celtic temperament which is
apt to set Mrs. Grundy at defiance, the upper British crust of
conventionality was sufficiently hard on me to demand a rapid glance
around the Garden Court to see if anybody was looking!
The whole roomful of people might have been gaping at us with twenty
scandal-power for all I cared a moment later. Maggie grasped my wrist with
a strength which I would not have credited her with, though your skilled
violinist must need have good muscles.
“I have heard Constantine raving most terribly,” she whispered, in tense
accents, close to my ear. “He has arranged to sail from New York on
Saturday, and his object in coming to England is to murder Karl!”

CHAPTER XIII
CONSTANTINE TAKES A JOURNEY
My first lucid intent was to lead the girl away from that place of gapers. She
was overwrought. Perhaps the music, flooding her soul with harmony, had
proved a mischievous adjunct to the somewhat exciting topic of our
discourse. But, with a little gasp or two, she recovered her self-possession.
Some experience of a platform, of facing singly the dim rows of upturned
faces, is of utmost value in these emergencies. In my youth, being both shy
and nervous, I was speedily cured from those ailments by becoming a
newspaper reporter. Many a time, walking towards the platform through a
densely packed audience, have I been cheered loudly as the candidate, or
lecturer, and then boohed vehemently by people annoyed at their own
mistake. This treatment, repeated every night for a week, will remove the
worst attack of bashfulness.
So Maggie, now, with a well-simulated laugh, drove the terror from her lips
if not from her eyes.
“No,” she said; “it has passed. Let us remain here.”
She seated herself again. To deceive the curious, in case we were being
watched, I lit a cigarette, strolled towards the orchestra, and asked the
leader, whom I knew, to play a favorite waltz, one of Waldteufel’s. The
obliging Hungarian (whose name was O’Rourke!) promptly exhibited an
“Extra” card, and I returned to our alcove, “the cynosure of every eye,” as
we used to say in good journalese.
Maggie’s brown eyes had grown larger and darker, her face smaller and
white, during my brief absence.
“Better not risk another experiment like that,” I suggested, feeling guilty in
not insisting that her mother should be warned at once.
“You need have no fear in that regard. I am quite incapable of undergoing
such an ordeal again to-night.”

Certainly her appearance bore out her words. It occurred to me instantly
that she shared with Karl the intuitive knowledge of a temporary exhaustion
of the dynamic store which fed this wonderful sixth sense. It was not a
continuous endowment, like sight or hearing. Its use drew upon a fund,
obviously of limited extent in Maggie’s case, which, when depleted,
restored itself by slow, natural processes. I fitted this discovery into other
parts of the puzzle. Like a child arranging one of those interesting toys
made of a number of equal cubes bearing a section of a picture on each
face, no sooner did I identify any special feature in telegnomy than I
marked its assigned place on the chart I had constructed in my mind.
“You seem to have had a trying experience,” I said, encouragingly.
“Do I? What did I say, how did I look, when I awoke?”
When a girl asks a question of that sort she is quite normal. I reassured her.
“I have no recollection of being afraid while I was listening to
Constantine,” she explained. “It was the half-waking remembrance of what
he said that terrified me. I seemed to think that he was about to—to stab
Karl with a knife that very instant. Oh, it was dreadful!”
“Tell me what took place. Did you see him?”
“No. I only heard vaguely, as one might hear violent words and the sound
of blows through a thin partition. When the ’cello began to play the lament
of Vulcan, I suddenly understood that a great many mythological attributes
of gods and goddesses must have arisen from a more or less accurate
perception by studious ancients of unknown or, rather, little-used human
powers. But why are you smiling? Is that a very old discovery?”
“It becomes newer every day. Forgive me, Miss Hutchinson. I was really
congratulating myself on my own perspicacity. I was sure that the words, as
well as the music, had affected you.”
“But why am I so helpless against these attacks?” she murmured,
pathetically. “What is this man, Constantine, to me that his voice should
sound in my ears though half the earth intervenes?”
Her eyes became suspiciously limpid, but she lifted her head defiantly.
“Why should I dread him, too?” she cried. “It seems, somehow, that were it
not for him I should not have met you and Karl. There can be no doubt that

we should not have met so soon. And, with you two to help, it should
certainly be an easy matter to circumvent Constantine.”
“Is it placing too great a strain on you to ask what you have heard?”
She bent nearer. Almost a child in years, she seemed to be changing into a
woman—with all a woman’s passion and capacity for endurance—changing
even while we sat there amidst the babel of talk in many a foreign tongue,
with the tender voluptuous plaint of the waltz beating like a heart in
rhythmic diapason.
“This is the time I grow frightened of myself,” she said, with a wistful little
smile. “Just now I was afraid on Karl’s behalf. I wish—and yet I do not
wish—that some one else were favored with these visions. Sometimes they
are—quite—thrilling. But this one thrilled me in an exceedingly unpleasant
way. Have you seen Sarah Bernhardt in that awful play, wherein she hears
her lover being tortured to make him confess a secret which she knows?
Well, I felt something like that when I came to a knowledge of my
whereabouts. What time is it now in New York?”
I glanced at my watch. It was 9.30 p.m.
“A little after four o’clock in the afternoon,” I said.
“Then Constantine is in his office. He deals in grain, among other things.
One day he explained to me the manner in which a silver currency in Russia
and India affects the business done on a gold standard in Canada and the
States. Sometimes his agents are instructed to buy above the market rate so
as to equalize quotations. He is reputed to be a very clever financier.”
“You know him fairly well?” I asked. There was never a woman born who
could tell a story without parentheses. These side issues are as essential to
her recital as gussets to a dress.
“I have met him several times. I must confess he was interesting until he
asked me to marry him.”
“Oh, he reached that stage?”
“You can put it that way if you like. Such a thought had never crossed my
mind previously. He became hateful to me at once. I could not endure his
presence. I would as soon think of embracing something cold and clammy,
like a snake.”

I did not point out that a snake is neither cold nor clammy. A nice young
python, for instance, in his multi-colored spring suit, is as grateful and
comforting to the touch as a roll of soft plush. But the antipathy of woman
for the serpent is an old feud, harking back, I fancy, to the beginning of
things. You ought to hear some of the queer tales about snakes current
among the natives of India.
Maggie brushed away the memory of the Armenian’s love-making with a
gesture of disdain.
“Gounod’s music set me a-dreaming,” she said. “If you indulge in
composition there is no better jumping-off place than one of those delicious
minor chords wherein the motif flutters for a moment before it enters upon
a new phase. I had run away ahead of the air when I experienced that pins-
and-needles sensation I have spoken about——”
“Were you cold?” I broke in.
“Slightly. Not as one feels an icy draught of air, but rather the chilliness of
sitting motionless in a cold room. Instead of the music I heard a telephone
bell. Constantine’s voice answered. There was a pause, and some one,
Steindal I expect, told him that Karl Grier was with me in London, and that
I was unwilling to sign the contract offered by Bocci. Constantine’s
exclamations made me understand so much. There was more ringing, and I
distinctly heard Constantine reserving a cabin on a steamer which sails on
Saturday. Then he appeared to give way to a fit of passion. He used horrid
words, and he vowed to stab Karl through and through. I actually heard the
blows of his hand on the table, and he almost shrieked in his rage. Yet I
thought there was fear in his voice, too. Oh, please tell me, do you think
that this is all madness? I am afraid again, now, not of that man, but of
myself!”
Here was a bright and imaginative girl on the verge of hysteria owing to the
startling exercise of a sense the existence of which neither she nor any one
connected with her had even suspected a week earlier. To my thinking, the
best way to calm her natural fears was to insist on the scientific accuracy of
impressions which might otherwise be regarded as dangerous delusions. So
I took her, with the preciseness of a road-surveyor, along the strange path
already traversed by Karl, and took care to prove that the human machine,
so far as hearing was concerned, only acted more speedily and over greater

distances than its iron and copper imitators. Its limits were exactly the
same.
“If I were favored as you and Karl are, I should strive to cultivate my
knowledge rather than retard its growth by needless alarm,” I said.
“Luckily, in these days men have learnt to inquire causes instead of falling
flat on their faces in superstitious awe when they encounter some new trick
of nature. It is only a few months since a patient, lying in a hospital ward
containing a crucifix, had a complete facsimile of the sacred image
imprinted on the skin of his shoulder during a thunderstorm. More recently,
a man bathing in the sea, running for shelter when a storm broke, was
struck by lightning. When picked up, a perfect photograph of a neighboring
building was found on his breast. Now, these incidents are rightly regarded
as exceedingly interesting, but they are neither supernatural nor conducive
to insanity. Nature acted as a photographer, dispensing with the tripod, the
camera, and the black cloth. That is all.”
“It is a good deal,” said Maggie, a trifle awestricken, but nevertheless
pleased, I thought, to know that others than herself were subjected to
disturbing phenomena.
Not far distant was sitting a lady of pronounced shapeliness rendered
impressive by her exceedingly décolleté dress. I recognized in her the
widow of a wealthy provision merchant. I pointed her out to my
companion.
“The pity is that such genuine lightning effects are so rare,” I said.
“Otherwise our adipose friend there, passing one of her late husband’s
shops some day, might be indelibly branded ‘Best Home-cured Bacon’
across the broad of her back.”
A harmless joke of that kind, even as the humble necessary worm, can serve
a useful purpose. Maggie was kind enough to laugh, and we dropped from
the clouds forthwith. Mrs. Hutchinson joined us, but her daughter was so
quiet—being ordinarily a lively girl, with all a girl’s readiness to quiz good-
humoredly her neighbors’ dresses and looks—that the sharp maternal
scrutiny quickly detected her abstracted air.
So there was nothing for it but an adjournment to our sitting-room, where,
after prolonged conclave, we decided that Maggie should not only decline

Steindal’s help, but place herself in the hands of —— another agent, and
risk the Polish-Jew’s hostility. Again, when Karl’s murder was being spoken
of—though I attributed little weight to the love-sick Armenian’s threats—it
was essential that his father should be taken into our counsels. By this time
I was as convinced of the reliability of these telegnomic sights and sounds
as of the existence of animalculæ invisible to the naked eye but seen
through a microscope.
Early next morning I telegraphed to my friend, Grier senior, asking him to
come to London on important business. I also cabled to a firm in New York,
saying it would oblige me if they ascertained definitely whether or not Mr.
Paul Constantine sailed from that port during the following day.
Now, Karl had promised me that, in the event of any further trances taking
place, he would write to me without delay, giving details and carefully
noting exact times. It came as no surprise when I opened a telegram from
him:
“Constantine sails by to-morrow’s Cunarder. Letter follows.”
I showed it to Maggie.
“You two are beginning to indulge in simultaneous magnetization,” I said.
“You may depend upon it, Karl had a look round New York about half-past
nine last night, Greenwich time. He brought you with him. If you were not
so timid you would soon be able to see as well as hear.”
“You forget that I can see him,” she said, and her voice was so low that I
glanced at her and was surprised to find her cheeks suffused with color.
“Did you see him last night?” I demanded.
“No, but I was conscious of his presence.”
“Conscious! How?”
“I cannot tell,” she answered simply. “I only know that it is so.”
“Yet you have astonished me frequently by your direct way of expressing
your meaning. There are so many forms of consciousness.”
“Some of them are new to me. When Karl magnetized your hands did you
know what was happening?”

“I felt a numbing cold from the wrists to the finger-tips.”
“That is akin to my sensation, too, but it is general, as I have told you
already.”
I laughed. Being an old fogy, I had omitted a most important factor in the
affairs of these young people. If, as I suspected, Maggie was as badly
smitten as Karl with that curable disease of the heart called love, it was
fairly certain that these two were thinking of each other at every spare
moment of the day, not to mention their dreams.
Karl’s letter, explicit enough in all details, bore out Maggie’s statement.
Constantine was behaving like an incipient homicidal maniac. He had
purchased a deadly looking dagger, of Sicilian manufacture; hence, it was a
reasonable assumption that the blade would be efficient if properly used.
“I purpose meeting the scoundrel and kicking him into his senses,” wrote
Karl, coolly; but his father and I, assured that Constantine had, indeed,
quitted the States, considered the matter far too serious to be left to such a
haphazard method of treatment. Grier père, what between anxiety on his
son’s account and annoyance that the dawn of a splendid career should be
clouded by this rejuvenescence of a faculty which he fondly believed was
long since dead as a doornail, was not the best of counselors at this crisis.
In view of the tragedy which did actually take place, I have often wondered,
in those quiet hours when a man reviews the past without prejudice,
whether any better course was open to us than that which we adopted.
Our difficulties were many and embarrassing. It was not Constantine but we
who were liable to be treated as lunatics if we told our story to any self-
respecting policeman. Imagination boggles at the picture of the “intelligent
officer” when asked to arrest a man on telegnomic information. As it is not
my design to treat jocosely a most lamentable chapter of Karl’s biography, I
must omit any analysis of the official mind on that topic.
After much debate, we decided to deal with the situation ourselves, and
collectively. I must insist that this was the elder Grier’s plan. True, I fell in
with it, but not without grave foreboding. Your prosperous, hard-headed
man of affairs does not lay sufficient stress on the overwhelming power of
the primary instincts, and Grier would have scoffed at any theory that in the

triangular conflict of positive and negative forces set up by Karl, Maggie,
and the Armenian, we had gone back æons in the life-history of humanity.
However, I was a party to the scheme, so I must share its responsibility.
Karl’s tutor set him free for the requisite twenty-four hours, and we three
went to Liverpool to meet the mail steamer. We intended to persuade
Constantine to remain in that city a few hours, talk over the whole matter
fully and squarely, and point out to him the utter folly of his pursuit of
Maggie and his design on Karl’s life.
It was so very straightforward and easy when viewed in the “common-sense
aspect.” As if muddle-headed saws and statutes would avail against a law of
creation! Will you believe it, we two grayheads completely omitted Karl’s
sixth sense from our calculations! There were we, full of wise aphorisms
and sapient advice, ready to deal with Constantine on the basis of a
transaction in wheat, awaiting on the landing-stage the coming of the big
steamer, when Karl, whom neither of us had addressed for a minute or two,
suddenly attracted our attention by a choking noise.
He would have fallen had not his father caught him. His face, usually so
cheerfully healthy, wore a distressing pallor, his lips were tremulous, his
eyes distended.
I knew, too late, what had happened.
“Good heavens, Grier!” I whispered, “Karl has seen Constantine on board
the ship!”
“Yes,” murmured Karl, hoarsely, gazing wildly from one to the other of us.
“I saw him, and he saw me. He has just committed suicide! He jumped
overboard! His body was caught by the screw! Oh, may the Lord pardon
me! I believe I impelled him to it!”

CHAPTER XIV
CONSTANTINE ENCOUNTERS THE SHARK
Some brass-buttoned official of the railway company or harbor authority
was near enough to pay heed to our strange behavior. He also caught
sufficient of Karl’s excited words to attach some significance to them,
though, of course, they must have sounded in his ears like the broken
gabble of dementia. Quite civilly (seeing that we bore the tip-giving
appearance) the man approached.
“Is the young gentleman ill?” he asked. “Can I git him anythink?”
Karl turned and looked at him. The man’s jaw fell and he stepped back a
pace. Away out in mid-stream of the Mersey I saw the Cunarder stop; a tug
in attendance reversed engines and dropped astern. There was no need to
tell me that Karl was not mistaken. Constantine’s soul was even then
passing, somewhere out there amidst the swirling waters. Within twenty
minutes, at the utmost, the tragedy would be reported ashore, and there was
no knowing what this suspicious policeman might say, if, as I suspected, he
were able to piece together Karl’s disjointed sentences.
The situation demanded coolness—it was no time for vain regrets. I advised
Grier to take Karl to our hotel without an instant’s delay, and there await my
arrival.
“Make him talk to you,” I insisted. “Keep him occupied incessantly until I
join you.”
The older man was dazed, frightened a little, I think, by the glimpse he had
caught of a strange light in Karl’s eyes, but still incredulous, as we mortals
are apt to be when faced with truth. Indeed we only yield prompt and
unquestioning belief to glib imposture, and the more outrageous it is the
more perfervid dupes do we become.
“For Karl’s sake and your own, Grier,” I whispered, emphatically, “do not
hesitate. You can trust me. I will bring all news. Constantine is surely dead,
but, if we are wrong and he still lives, I will bring him to you.”

My earnestness had its effect. Grier hurried his son away from the landing-
stage. Then I tackled the policeman.
“You saw that my young friend had a sudden and severe attack of
neurosthenia?” I said.
The bewilderment left the man’s face.
“Is that it, sir?” he said. “By gum! it must be an awful thing. He fairly
scared me.”
“He scares every one connected with him. It is not really serious, but it is
induced by excitement, and he often receives strangely accurate
impressions of events that are taking place at a distance. Just now he
imagined that a friend of his had fallen overboard from the liner.”
“So I heard him say, sir, and, s’elp me, if somethink hasn’t gone wrong!”
Nothing could be clearer now. The huge vessel was motionless, her rails
were black with passengers gazing aft, and the tug had lowered a boat.
“Well,” I said, “whatever it is there is little to be gained by adding to the
publicity of it, and you know what fiends these newspaper men are when
they get hold of a sensational paragraph.”
My hand went to my pocket, a fine instance of hypnotic suggestion.
“I never did see anythink like his eyes, sir,” said the man, dubiously. I
produced a sovereign.
“Poor fellow!” I murmured in commiseration. “He is a great trial to us. We
really should not have brought him here. But you can quite see that we do
not want any comment on his—er—peculiar—”
“Oh, of course, sir. We chaps often have to keep eyes and ears open and
mouths shut, sir.”
We moved apart. The Cunarder gained her berth after a quarter of an hour’s
delay. A stream of passengers flowed down the broad gangway. Running
through the boisterous greetings of friends and the turmoil of people
anxious to secure their luggage, I heard a crescendo of broken exclamations
which carried their special import to me alone:
“Oh, my dear, it was perfectly shocking. It has quite spoiled my trip.”

“Must have been cracked!”
“A young man like him! Just fancy it!”
“Guess he was tired of bein’ rich. Never had that complaint myself.”
There was no need to ask of whom they spoke. It was an awkward moment
to seek information from the ship’s officers. The triumph of organization
which marks the Atlantic mail service would speedily empty the crowded
decks, and already two cataracts of boxes and steamer trunks were hurtling
over the side into the Customs shed. My opportunity would soon arrive. So,
stifling my horrible imaginings as best I might, I mixed with the throng, and
thus, by chance, encountered one who had been an eye-witness of
Constantine’s last madness.
My most recent acquaintance, the man in uniform, while helping a
passenger with his portmanteau, asked if there had been an accident before
the vessel warped alongside the landing-stage. The answer he received led
him to hail me in passing.
“Here’s a gentleman who can tell you all about it, sir,” he said, thinking, no
doubt, he ought to consolidate the gift of that sovereign.
“Are you a friend of Mr. Constantine’s?” demanded the stranger, a pleasant-
looking, square-faced man, whom I found afterwards to be the London
partner of an important Anglo-American house of discount brokers.
“No. I only happened to accompany some people who came here to meet
him.”
“Are they waiting yet?”
“No. They heard of the affair and have gone. Of course it upset them a good
deal.”
“By Jove, it was ghastly. I knew Constantine—have done business with him
for years, in fact. He was always a quiet, sober sort of fellow. I, for one,
never suspected he was given to drink.”
“Was he?” I asked.
“Well, I am not exactly an expert where delirium tremens is concerned, but
surely this could be nothing else?”

“All I have been told is that he threw himself overboard.”
“That was the finish, natural enough when one comes to review things
again. He kept very much to himself on board, rather avoided me and
others, we thought; but we put that down to illness. He had a deck cabin,
and seldom appeared unless the sea was rough. Then he would find a
sheltered place and gaze at the waves for hours. Yet, whenever I spoke to
him, he was quite civil, a trifle reserved, perhaps, but as sane as I am
myself. Like everybody else, he seemed to brighten up when we entered the
Mersey. He was standing on the promenade deck, near the saloon hatch,
within a yard of me, and, like the rest of us, looking at the shipping in the
docks. Suddenly he let out a screech like a wild Indian. He made me jump, I
can assure you. He was a swarthy-skinned chap, but his color was green
when I turned towards him. He seemed to be gazing at something in the
water, and so far as I could understand his words, gurgled deep in his throat,
he thought he saw a shark.”
“A shark!”
“Yes. It was all utter rot, of course. I was so taken aback that I could only
stare at him. Several ladies screamed, they were so frightened; but
Constantine put his hand inside the left breast of his waistcoat, whipped out
a dagger, and began to stab savagely at the air. I was certain he had gone
mad, until, a few minutes later, a steward told me he had practically lived
on champagne all the way from New York. Like other men in the
neighborhood, I was thinking seriously of grappling with him from behind,
when he gave another yell and bounded across the top of the
companionway to the starboard side. That is the Birkenhead side of the
ship, you know, and the deck there was almost deserted. He knocked three
people down who were in his way, and began to climb the rail. I made after
him, but just missed him, though my hand touched his heel. He struck the
water, vanished, and just then the ship swung round towards the landing-
stage.”
“So the screw caught him when he rose,” I blurted out involuntarily.
“Ah! you heard of that? I never saw him again, but his bedroom steward
said that when the tug’s dingey picked him up he was still living, though a
propeller blade had taken a leg clean off.”

“Do you mean to say—”
“Oh, he died while they were lifting him out of the water. Strange thing he
should have had that notion about the shark and then lose a leg, wasn’t it?”
I managed to find words to thank my informant, whose name and address I
obtained, though I was so agitated that he expressed his regret if he had
harrowed my feelings with his recital. Luckily, he was discovered by a
Liverpool merchant whom he knew, and we parted with a promise to meet
in London.
Though I have seen many distressing sights during the course of a varied
life, I have never felt so near sickness, so physically overcome, as amidst
that cheery, bustling, chatting crowd. I drifted away aimlessly, filled with an
absurd terror, which caused me almost to cringe when I passed a policeman.
Ridiculous as the notion was, I fancied that Karl, his father, Maggie, and
myself were participes criminis, sharers in the awful secret which led to
that poor mangled body being carried to a mortuary. It is all very well now
to smile at the shaken nerves which induced this shrinking, self-
condemnatory frame of mind. It was very real and terrible then, nor was it
lessened by the knowledge that my friends would probably suffer from the
same delusion in their turn.
Slinking, conscience-stricken, through the barrier, I saw a refreshment
buffet. To this day I can recall the surprise of the barmaid when I grabbed a
bottle of French brandy and poured out what she said was two-shillings’
worth of best cognac, “warranted pure,” which I drank neat.
“Well, I never!” she gasped.
“Nor I, hardly ever,” I managed to say, for the ardent spirit reinvigorated
me. And let me interpolate here, as a breathing-space in a thrilling moment,
that it is a fine thing never to drink brandy when in good health; thus it
becomes an invaluable tonic in physical suffering or mental depression.
Well, I hastened to the hotel, refusing a cab, in the belief that the brandy and
the exercise would restore the disturbed poise of my faculties. The walk
was a trifle longer than I had counted on, so a full hour elapsed between our
parting and our meeting. As I expected, Karl was in a very distressed state,
and I was called on to deride in him the foolish conceit which had shaken
my very soul at the docks. His father’s British phlegm was superb on this

trying occasion. To him, Constantine was an admitted scoundrel, and a
“nigger” at that.
“Never heard such nonsense in my life!” he declared, in the true “Confound
it, sir! what d’ye mean?” manner of John Bull, which a Scotsman quickly
makes his own when he comes South. “Of course, I am sorry this Armenian
firebrand has taken his own life, but it is quite evident that if he did not face
an Eternal Judge he would soon be called on to face an earthly one. You talk
about personal responsibility for the death of a madman, a loony who has
visions and carries a long knife concealed on his person! What next, I
wonder? My firm belief is that his untimely decease was a dispensation of
Providence!”
Having thus called in the big battalion of the British nation, Mr. Grier
preened his chest and was for an immediate return to Oxford, where he
would remain with his son until the end of term. You cannot argue with a
man who describes such a tragedy as Constantine’s as an “untimely
decease.” The phrase lent to our discussion a grim humor, of which my
excellent friend was sublimely unconscious.
And, indeed, looking back in calmness to the tumultuous thoughts of that
day, I have ever been thankful that his stolid good sense came to our aid. It
must not be forgotten that Grier the elder had small experience of Karl’s
sixth sense. He remembered the events of early years in India, of course,
and had heard of Constantine’s rescue at the time of its occurrence, while
Mrs. Grier’s faithful reports told him that his son remained a prodigy. But
was there ever an only son who, if ordinarily intelligent, had not some
wonderful attribute known only to his parents? “So many single chicks so
many prodigies,” the proverb might run. And since the tea-planter quitted
India he had been exceedingly prosperous in his financial undertakings,
mostly connected with the ever-expanding tea trade. He was one of the wise
men who resisted the temptation to grow the coarse leaf on his plantations,
and now he was reaping the reward, as the “large output” school was
discredited, whereas Grier’s “fine growth” companies were amassing
wealth.
Hence, a mind which was wont to be receptive of esoteric ideas during the
long Calcutta nights of past years was now more occupied with the affairs
of commerce. He was piling up money, and for what? To enable Karl to

enter Parliament, marry well, and earn a peerage. That is one form of
heredity, when the father’s ambitions center wholly in the son. So Grier
senior valued foresight, but, as our cousins say, he had no use for “far sight”
as practised by Karl. I suspected that he was profoundly annoyed with me
for seeming to encourage the exercise of the telegnomic sense (wherein he
was misled by the accident of our coming together again owing to its
revelations), and it was a proud moment for me when, not long ago, he
confessed his error and recanted his opinions.
However, he was a rock to which we clung for salvation during that storm-
tossed afternoon in a Liverpool hotel, for we had barely resolved to take the
next train to Oxford and London respectively, than there came a telegram
addressed to Karl.
He opened and read the message with a strange listlessness.
“I was expecting something of the kind,” he said, handing the slip of pink
paper to his father. “I knew it had ended; I knew it on the landing-stage.”
The telegram was from Maggie. It ran:
“Sympathize with you in dreadful event. We leave England to-night.
Farewell.”
“What does it mean?” I asked incredulously. “Why is she going so
suddenly? How does she know anything about Constantine? And what has
ended?”
Karl turned aside and pretended to look out of the window. The soft-hearted
fellow was ashamed to let us see the tears in his eyes.
I examined the telegram more closely. It had been a long time on the way,
nearly an hour. It was despatched before any one on the landing-stage (save
three people, none of whom could communicate with her) had the least
inkling of the Armenian’s suicide.
Had Maggie, too, been a spellbound witness of that elfin spring into the
river? Had she seen all? And what was the significance of Karl’s weary cry:
“I knew it had ended?”
I glanced at him again, but his head was bowed, his face hidden by his
hands. Silence was best, just then.

CHAPTER XV
THE OTHER WOMAN
Where grown men are concerned—men of the Anglo-Saxon breed, that is
—emotion cannot be other than spasmodic. I have seen a gentlemanly
convict conduct himself with great dignity during the march to the scaffold.
It was not, poor devil, that he did not fear death, nor that it was a grateful
thing to be dropped ignominiously out of life on a June morning, but rather
that he, after breaking many of his country’s laws, obeyed the one inflexible
social edict which regulates good and bad “form.” Therefore, with a wry
grimace when he emerged from the whitewashed corridor, and saw that his
earthly pilgrimage would end near the further wall of a small courtyard, he
carried himself with a composure far beyond that manifested by any other
member of the melancholy procession. A criminal in one instinct, he was a
man in all the rest. I suppose the real wrench had come and gone weeks
before.
Now, I had no knowledge of the torture Karl had undergone until he turned
towards me again, and I found a gravity in his face which had not been
there before. Since that morning two little lines had developed between his
eyebrows at the junction of nose and forehead. That is nature’s way of
minting her crude gold—just a touch of the finger of experience, no matter
if the agony be of soul or body, and there is no machine can stamp its token
more indelibly.
“Maggie’s message is her last word to me,” he said. “She means that she
will endeavor never to see or hear from me again.”
Even his father was troubled by the marked restraint in his voice, but I felt
that the mere effort of discussion would be helpful.
“That is a blank impossibility,” I cried. “You two will find each other
whether you like it or not. You did so before and you will do it again. The
settlement is not in your hands, unless I err greatly.”
“You do not understand,” said Karl. “Perhaps you may meet her sometime.
Please tell her what I have said. Let it rest at that.”

“If you mean that all this tomfoolery is going to stop here and now I am
heartily glad of it,” broke in his father. “Had I been aware of what was
going on it would have been ended long since. Good gracious! what was
this unfortunate fellow, Constantine, to us that we should bother our heads
about him? I assure you, Karl, that the only thing which troubles me is the
fear lest this latter-day witchcraft of yours may not be interfering with your
work if not actually undermining your health.”
I regret to say that my respected friend reminded me just then of Balaam
smiting the ass when she refused to follow the path he had chosen. But I did
not urge the parable aloud. How could a modern man of business agree to
the contention that his son had set in motion an irresistible natural force?
Most certainly he “stood in a narrow place, and there was no way to turn
either to the right hand or to the left.”
But Karl’s obvious wishes should be respected. I pretended to agree with
his father. I used the customary platitudes anent his career and the necessity
there was to endeavor in future to repress any manifestation of his sixth
sense. And while I was talking, I saw the ghost of a sad smile flickering on
Karl’s lips, because he knew that I knew better. I laughed myself (ostensibly
at some trivial remark by the elder Grier that there would be some sense in
telegnomy if Karl could summon a waiter quickly by its exercise) when I
thought of Hooper’s scorn of the notion that a fellow shouldn’t see through
a brick wall if he had the power. I was sure that he would pounce on the
suggestion as another instance of British disinclination to adopt new ideas!
We parted soon, and I regard it as not the least amazing feature of my really
close association with Karl that I did not see him again for five years.
That is the sort of queer prank the tides of existence will play occasionally
with the flotsam and jetsam of humanity. The great highways of rail and
ocean may be bringing the whole family of the globe into closer
communion, but they have, too, the strange result of separating units in a
way not dreamed of by our forefathers. Thus, when my wife and I were in
the Western States of America, Karl was in Germany, making the
acquaintance of his mother’s relatives, and learning again the iron-clamped
syllables which bind German thought in words which are whole phrases.
We came back to Europe, to watch the upspringing of our own youngster,
and we transferred bag and baggage to Heidelberg at the time chosen by Mr.

and Mrs. Grier to establish themselves in a house in Curzon Street, Mayfair.
Of course we kept in touch by correspondence. Mrs. Grier and my wife sent
each other family news, Grier gave me occasional “tips” which, by
operation of that wonderful machine, the Stock Exchange, took money from
some stranger’s pocket and put it into mine, merely because one of us
bought and the other sold stock, which neither of us possessed, in a railway,
or a mine, or an industrial company, in which we had not the slightest
commercial interest.
Karl, beyond semi-humorous hints, said little about telegnomy. He kept me
duly advised of his progress in the University. During the month of May of
the year following Constantine’s death he obtained that much-sought
document of little future value which set forth the degree of: “Grier, Karl,
é Coll. Æn. Fac., die 30° Mensis Maii, Anni—Examinatus, prout Statuta
requirunt,” and the rest of it. Then, with other youthful sages, he wrote his
name in a leather-covered book, subscribed himself “Filius Generosis,” and
was finally admitted “ad gradum Baccalaurei in Artibus.”
He did not secure honors, and in this respect justified his father’s fear that
the adjectival sixth sense was anything but a help to him. The truth was that
Karl, to whom scholastic work was too easy, was prone to dream away
many an hour which might have been applied more profitably from the “Ita
testamur” point of view of the examiners.
He never alluded to Maggie in his letters, and his omission in this respect
reminds me that I also have been slow in recording the one really
interesting bit of news I learnt from Hooper when I met him in New York.
After Constantine’s death, who do you think hunted up the whereabouts of
the girl and her mother and brought back into their lives, with redoubled
poignancy, the unhappy memory of a tragedy? None other than
Constantine’s solicitors! The unfortunate Armenian made a holograph will
in New York (which, though self-written, was quite to the point and
properly witnessed), leaving to Margaret Vane Hutchinson, daughter of the
late William Hutchinson, tea-planter, Darjeeling, Bengal (an archaic
description of Darjeeling), and at that present date residing with her mother,
Mrs. Alice Holroyd Hutchinson, in the Pall Mall Hotel, London, England,
“all the real and personal estate” of which he died possessed. To account for
this astounding bequest he stated that the said “Margaret Vane Hutchinson

is the woman I intend to marry,” a written testimony of his views which is
all the more to his credit seeing that Steindal’s Mephistophelian method of
securing the girl’s submission contemplated no such honorable course.
Indeed, I have thought better of the Armenian ever since I heard of that
clause in the will.
Naturally, Constantine’s Armenian and Levantine relatives were very wroth.
They would have liked to torture with hot irons the straightforward
American secretary who found the will among his employer’s papers, and
took good care that it reached the hands of the trustees and solicitors to the
estate. They wanted to contest it on various grounds, none creditable, it may
be safely inferred, and had the matter been left to the girl herself she would
have executed any legal transfer of the property to the disappointed crew
without consideration.
Her mother, however, thought they had done quite enough already for
Constantine’s sake. Maggie, after a terrible scene in London on the day we
were in Liverpool, obtained Mrs. Hutchinson’s consent to the abrupt closing
of a professional career and a departure forthwith to the Italian Lakes,
where they could live in economical retirement, and Maggie might devote
herself to painting.
The mother yielded because she feared for her daughter’s reason. In sober
earnest, the girl was nearly distraught, and was not in her right mind until
they quitted England. But although adamant in her resolve to withdraw
from the world (had Maggie been a Roman Catholic nothing could have
kept her from entering some religious community), she rapidly recovered
her normal good health and abounding good spirits. Hence, Mrs.
Hutchinson exercised her native shrewdness when the solicitors ran her to
earth, and it was proposed that her daughter should forego the fortune thrust
upon her.
She referred the lawyers to the firm who looked after her own moderate
investments; there was much legal squabbling, and, you may be sure, some
nice grapes off the bunch fell into the legal maw. Ultimately, the other
Constantines purchased the business interests of their kinsman at about half
their value—it would never do for Christian accountants to be taking annual
stock of their dealings—and Maggie received, from this source and from

the dead man’s personal investments, nearly three quarters of a million
sterling!
“Yes, sir,” said Hooper, in whom the keen air of New York had brought out
the latent financial instinct, “over three and a half million dollars”—how he
rapped out those wonderful syllables in clear staccato accents—“that was
what Maggie scooped out of the pot when Karl called Paul and she saw
both hands.”
“Where are Maggie and the millions now?” I asked admiringly.
“I’ve bin thinkin’. There ain’t much in this codification-of-laws notion
anyhow. Guess I’ll take a vacation, an’ work up some sort of telegnomy that
will materialize,” said he.
But he was not serious. He was already earning a reputation as a smart
young lawyer, having passed with distinction all the qualifying
examinations in the States, and, indeed, he told me later that he was
“chewing on,” the offer of a post as legal adviser to the Paris Embassy. So
far as he knew, the Hutchinson ladies never left Italy. In the winter, Maggie
might be seen copying pictures in the galleries of Florence or studying
architectural effects in Rome or Venice—her pictures having attained some
fame for their vivid handling of sunlight on the brilliant Italian exteriors. In
the summer, she and her mother dwelt in a small castle, the Castello Rondo,
to be precise, on a wooded hill overlooking Lake Como. These details
Hooper had gathered from people who had friends among the American
colony at Florence. Maggie was very pretty, very reserved, devoted to her
art and to old silver. That was all he knew about her.
I was in Heidelberg when the curtain rose again on the Grier drama.
“Adventures come to the adventurous,” says the old saw, and the homeless
literary free-lance of to-day has his surfeit of excitement, full measure, just
as spicy a draught as ever tickled the palate of any wanderer through the
Dark Ages. I have already commented on the peculiar way in which the
tragedy of life obtains its stage effects, for all the world like any writer of
those thrilling “spectacular” plays which in England used to be labelled
“transpontine.” Here is a typical first act. Scene, a peaceful village; the
good young man and the rustic beauty are discovered living in Sunday-
school innocence with their bucolic parents. Enter two well-dressed villains,
of both sexes, and, after quarter of an hour’s excitement, the stalwart hero is

lugged off, R., to penal servitude for a crime he never committed, and the
heroine falls fainting, L., while the cloth descends to slow music, tremolo
con molto espressione. Something of the kind happened to me. We, that is
Mr., Mrs., Master and friends, had been enjoying a boating excursion on the
Neckar, with a grand drive through the Schonau woods, a fine meal in an
ancient inn, and a moonlight-cum-mandolin journey homewards.
And there, at our comfortable lodgings, I found a telegram awaiting me:
“Karl is causing us some trouble. Can you come and help?—
Grier.”
My wife had heard from Mrs. Grier only a month ago. There was no
mention of any shortcoming on Karl’s part in that missive. Indeed, it was
chiefly intended to warn us of an impending visit by a tremendous person,
the Baroness von Liebenzell-Zavelstein, one of Karl’s maternal great-aunts,
the stoutest and most aristocratic lady in the Grand Duchy.
Yet Grier was not a man to telegraph for me without good cause. Never did
I regret more keenly the inspissated brains which refused to exhibit the least
sign of a sixth sense. How useful it would have been now if I could “send
out” Hertzian waves and “call up” Karl on our private installation of
wireless telephony! But my dense membranes forbade any such short cut
towards knowledge, even if the remainder of the machinery were not rusty
with disuse, so, while I was packing, I could only indulge in theorizing.
“The sure thing is that Maggie has vacated the Castello Rondo,” said I to
my better half. “A beautiful and rich young Englishwoman could never
immure herself for life in the Italian hinterland.”
“It is the height of the season in town. Karl and she have met in society,”
was the practical response.
“Um! A coincidence.”
“What is the coincidence?”
“It is just five years ago to-day since I went to London with Karl. It was
then the ‘height of the season’ as you call it.”
“That is what everybody else calls it.”

“My dear, the phrase is hackneyed. The wife of a writer should seek a
polished synonym. Let me help you to a selection: the fashionable zenith,
the apotheosis of Park Lane, even the saturnalia of society—”
“Are you going without your boots?”
Well, I reached Charing Cross next evening, and there, on the platform,
stood Grier père to meet me. He was alone.
“I have taken rooms at an hotel,” he said after our first hearty greeting. “I
don’t want you at the house, because I fancy you will do more good by
getting Karl to yourself of an evening, so I must ask you to be my guest at
the Pall Mall Hotel.”
“That is odd,” I said.
“You will understand better when we have had a talk.”
I did not explain that my ejaculation referred to the choice of the hotel and
not to his action in sending me there. We entered his carriage and quitted
the station.
“I hope there is nothing seriously wrong with Karl?” I began.
“No, no. Not at all. But you are the only man who really knows, or pretends
to know, anything about this inf—— this wretched sixth sense of his, and it
has come on again, worse than ever, since his engagement.”
“Hertzblut! Is he going to marry Maggie after all?”
“Maggie! Maggie! Why do you mention her? He is engaged to the
Honorable Nora Cazenove, daughter of Lord Sandilands.”
I leaned back in the carriage. I could almost have chuckled.
“Ah,” I murmured softly to myself. “The other woman has arrived! Now
there will be ructions!”

CHAPTER XVI
WOMEN CALLED HIM “THE MAGNET”
Nevertheless, there must be some more convincing explanation of the
telegram which brought me from Heidelberg than Karl’s matrimonial
intentions.
“Doesn’t the engagement meet with your approval?” I asked.
“Most decidedly. It is a suitable match in every way. Karl has been nursing
a constituency for a year or more. He is sure to win the seat at the next
election. Lord Sandilands has such interest that his son-in-law will be quite
a personage in the parliamentary world if he has any brains at all, and no
one can deny Karl’s gifts in that direction.”
“It would be difficult indeed. I think I have heard that Lord Sandilands
himself is—er—”
“A noodle, to put it mildly. But his daughter is a fine woman, an amazingly
fine woman when one sees her father. They tell me his wife was an actress,
and a great beauty; so perhaps the only wise thing his lordship ever did was
to marry her. Nora is an only child. Both title and estates will pass to her
son if she has one. So you see—”
“I can see everything except the raison d’être of my presence in London to-
night.”
“For an expert in telegnomy—if that is what you call the thing—you are
surprisingly slow to grasp my meaning. Never since we said good-by to you
in Lime Street Station has this spook business troubled Karl in the least. He
has done some remarkable things, it is true. I have seen him make people
jump nearly out of their skins, but only by way of a joke. The women call
him ‘The Magnet,’ you know. Oh, you hadn’t heard that? There is nothing
in it but sheer fun. He wouldn’t look at a girl until I spoke to him seriously a
couple of months ago, and then he told me that he was quite ready to marry
the first girl I chose for him. So Sandilands and I fixed matters.”
“Did you?”

There must have been a note of irony in my voice. Grier bounced round in
the carriage, and I may mention, as a matter of personal observation, that
the accumulation of riches tends to shorten a man’s temper.
“Yes, we did,” he snapped, “and, what is more, we fixed matters
uncommonly well. Karl cared as much for Nora as for any other nice young
woman of his acquaintance, while she was infatuated about him. Just the
right combination, to my thinking, in a marriage which is intended to start a
man on a great career.”
“Ach Himmel!” I murmured. “Where is the planter of my youth? Does Mrs.
Grier subscribe to that sentiment?”
Even as I spoke, I felt sorry for the bantering tone I was adopting. It may be
that I was tired after my journey, or that my old friend’s sudden
announcement of his son’s engagement had driven all other considerations
from my mind, but assuredly I would not have wrung a father’s heart if I
had guessed how he was suffering.
He caught my arm, and the glare of light from the hotel entrance, at which
the carriage was then pulling up, showed me a face haggard and convulsed
with pain.
“Don’t!” he almost sobbed. “I can’t stand it. My God, have you forgotten
how Constantine died?”
“My dear fellow—” I began, but a Swiss hall-porter in the undress uniform
of a British field-marshal was at the open door.
Though wretchedly ashamed of myself, what could I say? I was tongue-tied
with surprise. Had things reached such a pitch that Grier was trembling for
his son’s sanity? Nothing short of some terrible crisis could have wrung that
cry of despair from a man of the money-making temperament. To be sure,
we are apt to err greatly when we describe a millionaire as “callous,” “steel-
nerved,” and other foolish epithets of that ilk. Constantine was a
millionaire, and he was as sensitive as a plate full of iron filings exposed to
the influence of static electricity. And then, look at A. and B., men whom
you hear of daily; their hyper-nervousness is a matter of common
knowledge.
Of course I put things right with Grier when we were alone once more. By
that time, the momentary rift in the cloud which revealed the grim abyss

had vanished. His face was impenetrable as a dense fog; the cold intellect
had subdued the throbbing heart.
Calmly and carefully, with the precision he would exercise if recounting the
assets of one of his companies, he went through the full history of recent
events. It is not necessary to repeat his statements here. Karl, when I met
him, was more explicit, because he explained causes as well as effects.
Grier asked my help as a friend and trustworthy counsellor. My mission was
to win his son back to a more rational view of life. As in many another
desperate plight, of nations as well as individuals, the status quo ante was
the one desirable solution of the difficulty.
I promised to co-operate to the best of my ability, and I was pleased then to
think, as I am now to know, that my distressed friend quitted me in a more
hopeful mood than he had experienced during the previous month. It was no
child’s task he imposed. A week earlier Karl had promised his father, on his
word of honor, that he would commit no rash or desperate act until four
weeks had passed. Seven days had gone already, and the extraordinary
circumstances which lay behind that sinister promise were more potent than
ever. “Young fool!” the cynic may mutter, but even a cynic can be asked to
suspend judgment until he has heard the facts.
Well, Grier had gone. I was going out for a light supper at a quiet restaurant
—the full-dress magnificence of the hotel dining-rooms was distasteful to
an Ishmael in tweed—when a waiter came with a card: “Mr. Karl Grier!”
Honestly, it did not occur to me at once how Karl became aware of my
presence, in view of his father’s assurance that the telegram to Heidelberg
was an absolute secret. Every man has his limitations, and the use of a sixth
sense in the ordinary affairs of life was ever new to me. Nevertheless, here
was Karl himself, and his appearance gave me a shock productive of that
imaginary shakiness which elderly ladies of considerable weight describe
when they say:
“You might have knocked me down with a feather!”
Light literature, helped by the stage, must have created a lean, hollow-eyed,
somewhat consumptive type of person when the ravages of passion, aided
and abetted by darkly mysterious natural attributes, come to be portrayed.
Of course, I last saw Karl in the heyday of youth and physical perfection,

when face and figure might have served Phidias as model for the sculpture
of Helios, the sungod. I am not exaggerating. Even the famous Greek,
contemplating some chryselephantine marvel, found no higher ideal than
the human form at its best, and nature, having determined to break the
fetters of that long-imprisoned extra sense, took good care to select a
notable subject for its display.
Therefore, while such a fine combination of athlete and thinker could scarce
have fallen to the poor standard of the popular novelist’s cataleptic hero, the
elder Grier’s revelations had prepared me, by inference, for a wasted and
shrunken Karl, a six-foot volcano whose inner fire had wofully consumed
the outer substance. Indeed, I may ask what you would have thought if told
piteously to remember the manner of Constantine’s death, and bidden to
strive and avert a tragedy with a definite date assigned to it. How would
such facts look on a life insurance proposal, for instance?
Hence, the pleasant voice and outstretched hand of a Karl who had the
physique of one of Ouida’s Horse-Guard captains came as an agreeable but
nevertheless bewildering surprise. Here was a man whose splendid
proportions would attract attention anywhere. He was faultlessly dressed, so
far as modern fashion may garb the mere male. He carried himself with the
ease of good society. His eager face had the bronze of the open air and the
clear texture of healthy living. Altogether, there could be no more
astounding contrast submitted to a stubborn intelligence than this fine-
looking young man, with his distinguished air, his happy insouciance, and
his gray-haired father pleading for a son’s life.
“You didn’t expect to see me, eh?” cried he, throwing aside his overcoat
and subsiding into a chair. “Poor old dad! I’m a dreadful worry to him just
now, and I knew he had some scheme in his mind last night when he kept
glancing at me under those deep eyebrows of his. So to-night, when he was
late for dinner, I sent a telegnomic ray after him. I was just as glad to see
you step out of the train as he was. And you are far more sympathetic. I
simply can’t get him to realize that I am unable to control my unhappy
faculties at times. He thinks you can cut off the sixth sense as one switches
out the light. By Jove! I wish I knew the electrician who could disconnect
me!”

“I don’t understand you, but I am delighted to find you looking so well,”
said I. “From your father’s brief report—”
“You expected to meet a most wobegone individual. Well, I’m not. I was
never better in my life. But the pace cannot last. Unless something happens,
some planet-sent intervention which I fail to foresee, I am condemned like
any felon. Was I right in warning the old man of a pending catastrophe? I
think so. The news of my sudden death might be fatal to him. Now, at any
rate, he is prepared for it.”
He caught my critical, not to say suspicious, glance and laughed. Never did
a “condemned felon” regard his doom so cheerfully.
“That is quite right,” he said. “See if you can detect any signs of insanity.
Sir Harley Dresser did the same thing when, to please my father, I went to
him. He abandoned the idea, however, and gave me some fever mixture, as
he fancied I might have caught a chill after some hard chukkars at polo.”
“You have no need to convince me that you are a phenomenon,” I protested.
“No. I should think not, indeed, after poor Constantine’s affair.
Nevertheless, you absolutely refuse to believe—and I am speaking only of
rational, scientific belief—that this most unpleasant telegnomy may kill me
as it killed him.”
“Did it kill him?”
“There is nothing more certain. I tell you that because you know I was in no
way responsible. I simply burnt him up, fused him, as the motor-men say,
and it was his own fault, because he persisted in getting in my way. You
know that resistance is the principle of the incandescent electric lamp. Of
malice aforethought, the electrician sticks a thin carbon filament in the
middle of a thick wire which will carry a certain current. The filament
cannot carry the load, so it becomes red-hot and shrivels, the process being
retarded by the creation of a vacuum. Constantine was the filament; that is
all.”
“Have you—er—are there other human filaments—”
“I hope not. I have not encountered any, I am glad to say; but there is a
reason for everything if only we can discover it, and my current is not
murderous unless it has a certain direction and intensity. Both of those

conditions have been absent for five years, so there are no other crimes,
even involuntary ones, to my charge.”
“I hope you are overrating your power, even in the case of Constantine,” I
said.
“It may be so. I am only guessing vaguely at a theory, and using the analogy
of known things. But Macpherson was right when he described me as an
induction coil. I give off magnetism at a terrific voltage. Apply this
interesting mechanism to the ordinary means of seeing and hearing, which
you may liken to a bar of soft iron, and you have the first feasible definition
of telegnomy.”
“I shall be only too glad to hear an intelligent scientific explanation of your
sixth sense when the fog which has settled steadily over my wits since I
reached London has cleared away,” I broke in. “What I am really concerned
with now is the alarm which your father is experiencing on your account,
and quite needlessly, I suppose.”
He leaned confidentially nearer, his arms resting on his knees; and his finely
chiseled face thrust forward with keen intentness.
“You had better follow the track I am providing,” he said. “I have the
consoling belief that you will ultimately comprehend me, and that will be
something gained. Since we tried experiments in polarization in the Mitre at
Oxford I have advanced somewhat in knowledge. Of course it is difficult to
describe thought in language adapted to mechanical apparatus, though,
when comparisons are set up, the similarity of the body to a steam engine
driving a dynamo, to which certain electrical devices are attached, is simply
amazing. Have you ever studied electricity?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, then, I must explain two things to you. In the first place, you can
imagine a current passing along a wire from one side of a room to the other.
When a circuit is made a bell rings. Now, the wire which carries that current
may be insulated thoroughly, yet it diffuses around it a certain quantity of
static electricity, or magnetism, which constitutes an aura.”
“Ah, an old friend, met in many a clairvoyant novel and mesmeric séance!”

“Yet the aura has dynamic existence apart from fiction. Place a smaller
wire, equipped with an electro-magnet yielding to one tenth of the force
carried by wire No. 1, in the same field, but wholly separate, and you will
find that by completing the first circuit the resultant magnetism affects the
second wire, and its bell rings also, only with considerable diminished
strength. Well, sweep away your visible appliances, regard me as wire No.
1, and mankind in general as wire No. 2, and you have a fairly accurate
notion of the manner in which I can ascertain, and even control, other
people’s words and movements at any given moment.”
“How about me?” I demanded. “I was exceedingly anxious to communicate
with you the other evening, but nothing happened, to my knowledge.”
“Had I known your wish, and you had given voice to it, it would have been
different. But that brings me to my second illustration. The force, whatever
it is, which travels forth comes back again with absolutely unimpaired
vigor, though possibly in some other form. You can prove that little
recognized fact by experiment with any sparking machine. Now, there is
only one human being alive, so far as I know, who can actually supply the
full magnetic complement of my electric field. In different words, there is
but one other creature on earth tuned to my pitch. Owing to certain
impending circumstances I fear a collapse for her, or through her, which
will, beyond question, be accompanied by a more complete catastrophe for
me.”
Karl was speaking so seriously, his words were so evidently the outcome of
deep reflection, that I found myself as profoundly imbued with the vital
importance of the matter as he was himself.
“Are you alluding to the Honorable Nora Cazenove or to Miss Margaret
Hutchinson?” I asked.
The bewildering pendulum-swing from talk of sudden and unprovided
death back to light-hearted and careless gaiety was not the least puzzling
feature of Karl’s present attitude; he straightened himself in his chair and
laughed gleefully.
“I wonder if you can discover the answer unaided!” he cried. “I’ll tell you
what. There’s a reception at Sandilands’ house to-night. Just slip on your

regulation clothes, and I’ll take you there. After you have seen Nora, you
shall give me your opinion!”

CHAPTER XVII
I MEET NORA CAZENOVE
“Having carried what may be termed your technical exposition so far, why
do you stop short at the really important issue?” I asked.
“Oh, come now!” he cried with ready raillery, “when a patient describes his
symptoms to a doctor he does not pass to the next stage and name his
disease.”
Amidst present perplexities and the confusion of quickly gathering
memories of earlier years, there was one distinctive characteristic of Karl’s
Mahatmalike faculty which stood out prominently. The exercise of his sixth
sense never affected his gay personality. If he showed anger or concern it
was wholly vicarious, a sympathetic sentiment inspired by certain facts
which influenced the lives of others. Once, indeed, to my knowing, if not
more frequently, he had obtained a reflex or sub-conscious knowledge of
Maggie Hutchinson’s emotions. But even in this instance my theory
apparently held good. Alas for romance and the first shaft of love! Five
years ago he was not only ready, after a pang or two, to fall in with her
decree of banishment, but to-day I was to meet his fiancée in a young
woman of the market type! This contradictory, self-effacing attitude was, of
course, brought out more pronouncedly than ever by the haphazard views
he expressed on the chance, or, it might be, the certainty, of his own early
death. To see Karl, the personification of manly strength and good health,
sitting in my room, and hear him coolly endorsing his father’s heart-broken
statement as to his approaching dissolution, was the most absurdly
exasperating experience ever vouchsafed to me.
I know quite well that men and women of high degree—and by that I mean
the true aristocracy of man, not the base metal so often stamped with
misleading titles—will face unavoidable death with a sedateness, even a
sober humor, which is the topmost rung of the long ladder climbed by
human progress. A shipwreck, a battle, a lost cause—these are tangible
things and excuse all. “This is the most glorious day of my life,” said the
crippled Girondist, Sillery, when sentenced to death. “What, Valazé,” said

Brissot to another, who fell in seeming faintness, “are you losing your
courage?” “No, I am dying,” was the reply; Valazé had plunged a dagger
into his heart. A British officer, about to be crucified by Chinese, was
offered an easier death if he would admit that China was greater than
England. His enemies knew some French but no English. His French was
that of the provincial grammar school of other days, but he cried boldly:
“La Hongleterre est la première nation de la monde!” They understood him,
not being Frenchmen, and an enraged mandarin gave the signal for his
instant execution. Well, you take off your hat to the memory of the brave,
and you hope that, in similar straits, you would carry yourself with equal
dignity.
But I do not think the man breathes who could gage Karl’s dispassionate
mood in that hour. I admit that I was utterly befogged. I went into my
bedroom to change my clothing. The door was open, and I heard Karl rise,
approach the window, obviously with no more serious intent than a glance
into the street, and begin to whistle. That might be the stoicism of despair.
But the whistling changed to humming, and from humming he verted to
singing:
For she was the Belle of New York,
The subject of all the town talk.
She made the whole Bowery
Fragrant and flowery
When she went out for a walk....
This was too much. I stuck my enraged head round the corner of the door.
He stopped his lilting.
“By Jove!” he said, “you must be a lightning change artist.”
“Karl!” I cried indignantly, “for goodness’ sake jump into a hansom, go to
your father, and tell him to dismiss from his mind the stupid nightmare with
which you have managed to imbue him.”
“You have evidently missed the exact point of some of my remarks,” he
retorted pleasantly. “I told you, among other things, that I wrestled with the
problem of candor versus concealment some time ago.”
“But you cannot be in earnest. Either you are mad or I am.”

“Both, my dear fellow. Believe me, temporary insanity is largely on the
increase. The average man cannot withstand the strain. I fancy you will find
there is a quaint analogy between the number of maniacs per mille and the
number of editions published each day by the evening newspapers. When
the jaded intellect is called on, every few minutes, to watch three race
meetings, six county cricket matches, and probably a test match, the war—
there is always a war—the German Emperor, the yacht race, the latest
scandal, the latest play—”
Pshaw! I let up, as Hooper would have said, and determined to drift with
the tide into the realm of queer happenings. The change in my costume
rendered the hotel’s restaurant approachable. Eat to-day I must, no matter
who died to-morrow. Karl agreed to keep me company while I tackled the
homeliest plat which a £3,000 per annum chef would condescend to cook,
and thus, unwittingly, was I advanced a stage in my inquiry.
We found the palatial apartment tenanted by late diners and early suppers. A
waiter would have whisked us into an inconvenient corner, but Karl stayed
him.
“Where is Jules?” he asked.
“Le voilà, m’sieur,” and the man indicated the bulky form of the head
waiter in the far depths of white and gold.
Karl looked steadily across the little tables with their twos that were
company and their threes that were not. Had he fired at Jules with an air-
gun that ponderous person could not have wheeled round more readily.
Moreover, he came straight to us, his broad face set in a wide grin.
“Ah, dere you are, M’sieur Karl!” he cried. “I alvays know ven you come
in, is it not?”
“Always,” replied Karl, imperturbably. After compliments, I gave my order.
The manner of Jules’ summoning was hidden from both the head waiter
himself and his satellite.
“Is that what the women mean when they call you ‘The Magnet’?” I
inquired.
He laughed, with that contagious merriment which sends ripples of content
across his hearers’ faces whether they are in his company or not. But he

took care that his answer reached no other ears than mine.
“No,” he said, “the women mean something quite different. At any ordinary
distance I can attract practically any one whom I know. They come and talk
to me, without being aware that I have summoned them. It is not a very
remarkable feat when you realize that we all do something like that, in any
church, or theater, or other place where people are gathered together. The
magnetic effect is doubled, at least, when you use opera-glasses. Why?”
These red herrings drawn across the trail were useless.
“What do the women mean?” I persisted.
“Ask ’em, my dear fellow. Perhaps they may explain. The dear creatures
adore sensation. I am told that some of them will stick on a switchback
railway until their purses are emptied. A woman’s nervous system is more
refined than a man’s. That is why she likes swinging, or, to be accurate,
being swung. It thrills her.”
Karl, in this bantering mood, was a revelation. Were I not really very much
distressed and concerned by the statements made by him and his father I
should have been somewhat annoyed with him. As it was, I determined to
meet him on his own ground.
“You have evidently become quite a man about town since last I saw you,” I
said.
“How have I earned that questionable distinction in your eyes?”
“On the post hoc propter hoc principle. Your nickname, your philosophy,
your light generalities about the opposite sex, are labels of the brand.”
“Ah! It has not struck you that both you and the women may be mistaken?”
I looked up quickly. The mocking laugh had gone. The grave, earnest face
of the Karl of five years ago was before me. Nevertheless, his fencing had
stirred within me the spirit of resistance.
“I am prepared to vouch for the fact that one woman knew you well enough
not to be mistaken,” I said.
“May not her knowledge explain her attitude? Of course you are speaking
of Maggie Hutchinson. Do not forget that she shut the door in my face.”

“If it be not treason to the Honorable Nora Cazenove, may I say that the
door might yield to a resolute attack?”
For answer he leaned on the table, intertwined his fingers, and gazed at me
straight in the eyes.
“Never was fortress besieged more patiently,” he said. “It is only within the
past few weeks, that I have received any answer, and that is why—But
surely you will agree with me that the full and explicit story of my life had
better be deferred until a more convenient occasion.”
Now, lest I be accused of romancing, I shall not endeavor to analyze very
closely the most curious and agreeable illusion which held me during the
few seconds needed for the delivery of his protest. Instead of the crowded
restaurant I saw a moonlit lake, with the terraces of an Italian garden rising
in black and white lines of closely clipped hedges, gravel paths, smooth
lawns, and broad stairs with curving balustrades. On the topmost and widest
lawn, where the grass had the resemblance of a black carpet owing to the
shadows cast by a castellated building in the background, three people were
walking—actually in motion, that is—not in the fixed attitudes of a picture,
but moving. Two were women, one dressed in black and the other in white,
and the moonlight glinting on their robes had an effect worthy of Gustave
Doré, so startling was the contrast, so instantly did they hold the eye. With
them was a man, a tall man; but that was all I caught of the scene, for my
ears were listening to Karl throughout, and the change in his voice brought
back my scattered senses.
And a waiter spoke.
“Your fish, sir. Sole Colbert, sir.”
I think I must have gazed at him blankly, but Karl came to my assistance.
“Tell the chef we are in a hurry,” he said. “Then there will be no delay in
the kitchen.”
The man quitted us. I stuck a needless fork into the amiable sole.
“Have you been hypnotizing me?” I demanded angrily.
“You may call it that if you like,” he said calmly. “You saw Maggie and her
mother.”

“Did I!” I snapped. “And who was the man?”
“I do not know his name. I decline to listen. But I am fairly certain he is an
Italian, of good birth, and he is madly in love with Maggie.”
I thawed. There was a reason for the trick he had played me.
“And she?” I demanded.
“Like me, she thinks that marriage is a duty.”
“There appears to be material for a neurotic novel in the present situation.”
“Far more. It may supply two tragedies. But why are you harpooning that
unresisting fish?”
Again I resolved to drift. It was clear that Karl meant me to travel along the
road he had already mapped out. So I ate my dinner, and drank a couple of
glasses of wine, and kept asking myself how it was possible for my young
friend to produce so easily a slight but distinct hypnosis in a veteran like
me.
Then I remembered the poker-polarizing of the Mitre Hotel, and I dug my
elbow into his ribs as a hansom carried us westwards.
“By Jove!” I cried, “I have it! Constantine’s death interfered, in some way,
with the private telegnomy line Maggie and you had set up; but recent
events have repaired the breakage. Constantine, living, supplied the earth
contact for your ethereal wires. When he died you were forcibly separated,
practically torn asunder, and his place had to be filled again before you
could resume communication on the same basis as before.”
“You are not far wrong,” he said dryly. “But you have lived so much abroad
that you forget the propriety due to the British hansom. If you wave your
arms so excitedly, the policeman at the top of St. James’ Street will stop us,
and I shall be compelled to magnetize him.”
“Could you?” I inquired irrelevantly.
“Ask the guv’nor what I did to the douanier at the Gare du Nord who
wished to confiscate a pound of the only tobacco the old man can smoke. I
made him chalk a whole ship-load of luggage like an automaton. I have
progressed somewhat since I left Oxford. Were it not for other less
agreeable features, I could get a fair amount of amusement out of my

powers of suggestion. It is not altogether puzzling when you come to reason
it out. Granted that I am a sort of human magnet, I must obviously be able
to control my fellow-men, especially those who are most susceptible to
external influences.”
“When I extricate Maggie and you from your present dilemma I shall
demand your aid for the utter squelching and making everlastingly
ridiculous of some of my dearest enemies,” I said cheerfully.
“Better use me soon,” said he lightly, yet there was a chilling and somber
significance in his words that recalled me to the reality of the peril of which
he spoke so jestingly.
When we reached Lord Sandilands’ town house our cab took rank behind a
score of broughams and other conveyances setting down guests at the
striped canvas alley which shut off the sacred portal of fashion from the
vulgar gaze. Odi profanum vulgus et arceo: “I hate the common rabble and
keep it at a distance,” wrote Horace, who must have lived in the Berkeley
Square of Old Rome. What stern barriers are those strips of canvas and
lengths of red carpet.
We passed several gorgeous footmen (it is an old phrase, but the truth is
ever thus) and two detectives, deposited our hats and coats somewhere,
made our way up a flight of broad stairs, and my inquisitive eyes fell on a
very handsome young woman, exquisitely dressed, but a trifle on the heavy
side of the scale to my thinking, whose position, no less than the equal
delight with which she welcomed all comers, proclaimed that this was the
hostess, Nora Cazenove.
The conventional smile flew from her face as painted scenes grow mawkish
in sunlight when she saw Karl. She blushed very prettily, and her very soul
leaped to her eyes.
“I have been looking for you this hour or more,” she cried, and I half
expected her to throw her splendid arms around his neck.
“I would have been here sooner were I not detained by the unexpected
arrival of an old friend. Let me present him.”
She extended her hand to me.
“The older the friend of Karl’s the more pleased I am to see him,” she said.

“And now that I have met you I can only wonder that any friendship could
have resisted the strain he must have felt during the last hour.”
There we stood, the three of us, two men and a woman, murmuring nice
artificialities, bowing and smirking in the glare of a London drawing-room,
while in an Italian garden, at that hour, three others, two women and a man,
were talking of Heaven knows what topic, which, nevertheless, was
indissolubly bound up with our trivial discourse.
For a fleeting instant I had a glimpse of some strong, imperishable,
intangible bond which held together the hidden things of life. Then I heard
Nora Cazenove’s aristocratic accents.
“Soon I shall be relieved from my present duty. Then you and I must have a
nice long talk.”
So I passed on with the crowd.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE PROBLEM TAKES SHAPE
There are certain mortals, I suppose, who take delight in “At Homes,”
receptions, musicales, and the rest of the social devices which enable
fashionable folk to meet of evenings and learn the latest scandal. Personally,
I would pass an hour far more agreeably in a fever hospital, provided the
resident doctor were a good fellow, and not too busy to smoke a pipe with
me. Hence, because of the unusual transactions of that memorable night, the
proceedings at Sandilands’ house stand out in my mind in quite cameo-like
precision as contrasted with other similar gatherings I have attended. Nor
was this result achieved by meeting notable personages. There was the same
setting of tow-headed fiddlers and stout sopranos—judicious artistes who
earn a bank manager’s annual salary in twenty minutes—the same well-
bred insolence on the part of some, the same toadying by others, the same
ruthless incivility in the supper rooms by all, that may be seen at any like
festival in the West End of London any night during the season. But, as
shall be revealed speedily, the unrehearsed incidents of this particular
society comedy were such as cut notches in the memory.
I met a man with a grievance. He insisted on telling me why the
Government had denied him the poet-laureateship. That was a safe topic.
Politeness demanded an occasional “Dear me!” or “You don’t say so!” from
me: he did the rest.
From the safe anchorage of his eloquence I was able, at leisure, to watch
and, to a certain extent, sum up, Nora Cazenove. Her genealogy, briefly
sketched by the older Grier, partly accounted for certain deficiencies in her.
It was reasonable to assume that her mother was a beautiful woman, of
extraordinary acuteness within a somewhat narrow sphere. Like the girl in
the ballad, her face was her fortune, and she deemed herself well paid, I
doubt not, when she bartered her good looks and faultless form for a title
and a big annual rent-roll.
Lord Sandilands, whom I had never seen until that night, instantly reminded
me of that scathing dictum of Swift’s: “A weak, diseased body, a meager

countenance, and sallow complexion are the true marks of noble blood.”
Gulliver, you will find, if you look the passage up, gave his horse friend an
even more drastic explanation of an occasional lapse by the aristocracy into
robustness of physique; but Lord Sandilands, judged by the Dean’s
standard, was a genuine peer. Yet he was a harmless little creature. I fancy
he received a mild shock every time his Juno-like daughter called him
“father.”
At any rate, I amused myself by studying the girl, and I came to the
conclusion that had Karl scoured the earth he could not have found a more
exact antithesis to Maggie Hutchinson than her successful rival, the
Honorable Nora Cazenove.
They had the common attributes of good looks, good style, and what passes
current for good education among young ladies of twenty-three or
thereabouts. In all else they differed. If I were seeking worthy tabernacles
for merely intellectual concepts of what we mean when we speak of soul
and body, I should choose those two girls as supplying the requisite shrines.
Though my recollection of Maggie was not quite definite, I could recall her
Madonna expression, the spirituality which diffused its mild beams over a
grateful world from her brown eyes. Nora, on the other hand, was what her
lineage proclaimed, a purchased standard of bodily excellence. Maggie
could forget all, even life itself, in the exaltation of music, the passion of a
song, the transient loveliness of a sunset, whereas Nora must be a fine
equestrian, fond of good food and hearty exercise, a woman in whom the
wonderful maternal instinct would be less divine than human. I am not
blind to the lack of precision in that last distinction. Some day a man may
be free to write as he thinks, provided always that he has honorable and
useful intent, but that day is not yet.
I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I made a rather bad break with the
would-be laureate.
“What would you have said,” he fiercely demanded, “if the Prime Minister
told you that your latest volume of poems was a collection of turgid
nonsense?”
“I would have said that he was quite right,” I answered blithely, for a man
can always run down his own work with safety.

Then it dawned on me that the Prime Minister had expressed himself thus
strongly, not on my book, but on the poet’s.
“Of course,” I added, “it was quite evident that he had not read a line of
your verse.”
“Confound it, haven’t I just related to you how I found him in the summer-
house, and compelled him to listen? yes, blocked up the only exit, until I
recited to him the whole of my ode to ‘Eternity.’”
“The subject was too vast for his intelligence.”
“Not it. It is a shameful fact that no man of poetic tastes can gain a
politician’s ear nowadays unless he titillates it with a patriotic jingle. As a
forlorn hope I have written a threnody on the fleet. If I can find a good
rhyme for ‘guns’ I am made. Can you help? ‘Buns,’ ‘duns,’ ‘nuns’ and
‘tuns,’ are hardly suitable. ‘Suns,’ ‘runs,’ and ‘shuns,’ I have used. Just
come into this corner while I—”
Miss Cazenove rescued me.
“At last I have a moment,” she cried, showing her perfect teeth in a
thoroughly good-natured smile. “You don’t mind my carrying him off, do
you?” she went on sweetly, as she noted the look of disappointment on my
companion’s face. “I have such a lot to say to him.”
We hurried away. She laughed merrily when I told her of my escape.
“He is a real terror,” she agreed. “One day he tackled dad after luncheon.
Do you know my father? He says ‘Gad’ to everything he doesn’t
understand, and most other things as well. But on that occasion he lost his
temper and said ‘Rats!’”
That put us on good terms. I looked forward to an agreeable if not very
soulful chat with my radiant hostess, but I was fated to learn, for the
hundredth time, that every woman is a born actress. Even the angelic
Maggie was a stage adept when it became necessary to cloak her emotions
from the public ken.
“Are you hungry?” asked Miss Cazenove, guiding me skilfully through the
crowded suite of rooms.

“No,” I said, flattering myself that the question was only prompted by
hospitality.
“Then come this way.”
Before I well knew what was happening, I was whisked through a curtained
door into a passage left purposely unlighted. Clinging to my arm, but really
compelling me onward, the girl led me to another door. She entered, and
switched on the electric light. Evidently this was her boudoir, but she left
me little time to take stock of my surroundings.
“Sit down here,” she said. “I don’t care what people think. I must talk with
you about Karl. Of course I might have waited until to-morrow and asked
you to call, but now that you are here I am consumed with impatience. No,
sit just where you are, please. I want to see your face.”
“I am a most skilled prevaricator,” I said, for her maneuvering was of the
Napoleonic order. I was to be attacked by horse, foot, and artillery, cross-
examined and scrutinized at the same time. We sat on a roomy Chesterfield,
an article of furniture which suggests insidious confidences; a cluster of
lamps equipped with reading reflectors shot their rays directly at us.
Moreover, she did not seem to heed the fact that she laid herself open to
equally searching criticism on my part. The first shot fired in the encounter
showed that my adversary scorned subterfuge.
“Who is she?”
“Really—” I protested.
“Oh, you know very well whom I mean. Karl is engaged to me now, and is
going to marry me—I shall see to that. But I must know who the girl is with
whom he has been in love since five years ago.”
I temporized.
“Five years ago! You can hardly expect me to recollect anything of serious
importance concerning the love affairs of a young gentleman at college and
a young lady who may have worn her hair in two plaits, tied at the ends
with a big bow—”
“Please, please!” she insisted. “As if I did not know how some girl has
entered his very life, until he regards all other women with unheeding eyes,
and even conducts himself towards me in what he considers to be the

correct attitude of an engaged man. What is the spell she has cast upon him?
Is she more beautiful than I, more sympathetic, more capable of devotion?
Why is his father so troubled about him? Why have you been brought from
Heidelberg to help in dispelling the cloud which has settled on him?”
“Did Mr. Grier, senior, tell you that?”
“No. No one tells me anything. Won’t you have pity on me? I have the
wildest dreams, but I know some of them are true. And I dreamed of you. I
even saw you. I would have known you anywhere. When you came up the
stairs with Karl to-night I could have shrieked aloud, but I dug my nails into
my hands and restrained myself. See, here are the gloves I wore. I have
changed them for others, but I kept them to prove to you how truly I am
speaking.”
She took from a pocket a crumpled pair of white gloves, peau de chevreau.
The finger seams were burst, the palms cut in four half moons. So, though
the words nearly choked me, I was forced to say soothingly:
“I imagine you are troubling your pretty head about a matter of little
moment, Miss Cazenove. I am quite certain you have no serious rival. Karl
is the soul of honor—”
She started to her feet and grasped my shoulder with a vehemence she was
hardly conscious of.
“You men everlastingly prate of honor. Honor explains everything.
Provided Karl is scrupulously attentive to me he can take another woman to
his heart, kiss her lips, her eyes, her hair, breathe her breath, inhale her
fragrance, mingle his very soul with hers—that may be honorable to me,
but it is the madness of love for her.”
“Surely, Miss Cazenove, you are saying that which is not,” I cried, and I,
too, facing her angrily, jumped up from the cushioned depths of the
Chesterfield.
“Am I? Then you do not understand Karl, and still less do you understand
Maggie Hutchinson. Ah! touché? Think me a jealous woman, if you choose.
I am, and I glory in it. But I have a woman’s wits as well, and you know in
your heart I am not mistaken.”

Something must be done to allay the tempest. I had to fling the sixth sense
to the winds, and trust to the five of our common heritage to calm this
excited beauty.
“I speak in all honesty and truth,” I said, “when I tell you that, to the best of
my belief, Karl Grier has neither seen, nor spoken to, nor written to Maggie
Hutchinson since he was an undergraduate at Oxford.”
She wrung her hands passionately.
“Heaven keep me from tears!” she wailed. “If I cry I shall yield utterly. Oh,
dear, oh, dear! I so looked forward to meeting you and securing your help.
Are you really so ignorant of Karl’s powers that you lay stress on what we
call seeing and hearing? They mean nothing to him. I am not blind if others
are. Oh, if only I did not love him so I might perhaps be more to him!”
I am free to admit that her words stirred me strangely. Could it be that while
I was puzzling my brains with the formulæ of the least considered branches
of science, this girl, unaided, almost untaught, had solved the mystery
which enfolded the broken love story of Karl and Maggie? Did she share
with the dead and gone Armenian the most disastrous attribute of a vector
equation to the unmeasured force which united the spiritual existences of
her rival and her lover? From the apparently secure foundation of physics
and magnetic attraction I was projected into an astral shadow-land, whirled
away on an unbridled steed into a kingdom of wild imaginings.
On a sudden in the midst of men and day,
And while I walk’d and talk’d as heretofore,
I seemed to move among a world of ghosts
And feel myself the shadow of a dream.
Yet it was no mystic but a real woman who faced me in that delightful
room, with its Louis Seize furniture, its charming little Corots and water-
colors by David Cox, its fragrant perfume of Provençal flowers, and all that
air of subtle refinement which clings to the abode of a young and beautiful
girl as a well-made gown clings to the contour of her body, never obtrusive,
always in exquisite taste, and ever revealing fresh harmonies of line and
tint.
Her actress-mother dowered her with the trick of speech, of impassioned
gesture. She flung an accusing hand towards me.

“Why do you stand silent?” she demanded. “Is it because of a wayward
phantasy that I should have revealed my torturing thoughts to you, a mere
stranger? Why are you here to-night? To help Karl, you may say. Then help
me, also, or you may go through the rest of your life haunted by most
unpleasing specters.”
“I will gladly do all in my power to help Karl, my dear young lady, and it
will be an added joy if the counsel and assistance I can lend to my friend
prove equally beneficial to you. But surely you must see that I am moving
in a maze. You speak of that which I do not comprehend. If, indeed, you
and others are subject to unexplained manifestations, it is all-important that
we should discuss them fully, rationally, and in an environment more
suitable than the present time and place. Then, and only by such means, can
we reach anything in the nature of a logical conclusion.”
I felt that my speech was stilted, but I was vainly searching for a more
equable base of action than her wild statements afforded. Her lips curved
into a bitter smile, but there was no softening in the gleaming eyes.
“Leave me to judge of conventions which appeal so powerfully to you, a
writer, a Bohemian, a man who stood on a Liverpool quay while Paul
Constantine was drowning!” she cried, and each word formed a crescendo
of scornful negation of my right to dictate to her.
Nor did she pay heed to the positive start of alarm with which I marked her
utterance of the Armenian’s name. Her mood changed in an instant. She
caught my arm again in pitiful entreaty.
“Forgive me if I say that which may sound outrageous in your ears,” she
said. “I am so unstrung, so much in need of one who will sympathize rather
than chide, believe rather than question.”
“I take you at your word, Miss Cazenove. Now, let me recant my
momentary lapse into smug propriety. I admit my belief. I am convinced
that Karl possesses some dreadful force which is quite demoralizing when it
meets resistance. It is not his fault, nor Miss Hutchinson’s, nor yours, nor
was its influence wholly condemnable in the man whose name you have
just mentioned. It is something outside and beyond our ordered senses. Very
well, we can only deal with it by the use of those same senses. The first
requisite is candor, the second, critical analysis. But, however distraught

you may be, you must admit that midnight, in your boudoir, in a house
overrun with your guests, gives us no opportunity of sanely examining a
disturbing problem. Come now, be guided by me; I have a son nearly your
age, and you may trust me to take a calm view of these things which excite
you so terribly.”
“And you will not deem me mad when I tell you that when Karl marries me
it will kill me if I still feel that his soul belongs to another woman?”
“Indeed I shall not hold any such vain thought. Don’t you see that marriage,
under such conditions, is not to be thought of? But there! Let us not
commence our inquiry now. I am even resisting the temptation to ask you
how you knew of Constantine’s death. No! please begin by being patient. I
shall perhaps ask for a little obedience, standing, as I do, in loco parentis.
Let us arrange a meeting to-morrow. What do you say to a stroll in the Park
after luncheon? Or, if the weather is wet, shall I call here if you can count
on being alone?”
Tacitly, we ignored both Lord Sandilands and Mrs. Grundy. They were
estimable persons, doubtless, but they would need electrocution ere they
understood telegnomy.
She was about to answer when a light knock on the half-open door
announced a visitor. It was Karl. He smiled wistfully. He had the semblance
of one who knows that a catastrophe has occurred, a catastrophe foreseen
yet unpreventable.
“I expected to find you here, Nora,” he said. “In fact, I followed you here in
my mind, and I agree that it will be better for you, and possibly for others, if
certain explanations are given. Let you two meet to-morrow, by all means.
Then, you must send for me and tell me what has to be done.”
He spoke with a weariness which the tender inflection of his voice did not
disguise from me. He knew already what was to be done. It came upon me
with a shuddering dread that the only way to destroy his inexplicable power
was to destroy its origin. Had he the right to live, and, whether conscious or
not, inflict mental suffering and ultimate death on certain unfortunate
human beings who strove helplessly to check the overpowering force of the
magnetism which flowed from him? That was an affrighting problem. Nor
was it made easier by Nora Cazenove’s present amazing attitude.

The fiery anguish which convulsed her lithe frame and blazed up in her
eyes while she poured forth her woes to me had gone with the mere sight of
him. The change was miraculous, as wonderful in its way as the conversion
of Pygmalion’s marble goddess into flesh and blood.
A moment ago she was the central figure of a tragedy; now she was just a
girl hopelessly in love, and she clung to Karl’s arm and gazed up into his
face, as they passed before me along the corridor, for all the world as any
smitten Phyllis might fondle and adore her Corydon. And then, an
astounding thing happened.

CHAPTER XIX
THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
The corridor was a short, broad passage. It was adorned with Raeburn
portraits, a Lely or two, and some small Sheraton cabinets laden with rare
china—treasures dimly revealed by rays borrowed from the electric lamps
in Miss Cazenove’s boudoir. The open door of her room permitted a bright
panel of light to fall across the parquet floor. Beyond lay artistic gloom,
bounded, as I knew, by the curtained entrance to the suite of apartments
given over to the reception.
My eyes were fixed directly on Karl’s tall figure and on the magnificent
creature, in some wonderful Paris gown worthy of her statuesque
proportions, who clung so trustingly to his arm. My thoughts—well, my
thoughts were busy enough, but I vouch for it that my mind was clear and
my perceptiveness neither alert nor abstracted. Yet, no sooner did I step into
the darker area than I saw distinctly a glow, or radiance, emanating from the
girl’s bare neck, shoulders, and arms.
Imagination played me no trick, or, if I were indeed the victim of fancy, the
delusion was extraordinarily accurate in detail, because it seemed that
clothing, however slight its substance, choked the feeble gleam. Therefore,
only the visible portions of her arms between the semi-diaphanous
shoulder-straps and the ends of the long gloves were irradiated. The
phosphorescent effect was indescribably beautiful. Of course, in sober
reflection, I think phosphorescence a misnomer, being a sheer impossibility,
and I am driven to adopt a natural simile in likening it to the pure, green,
shining light emitted by the female glow-worm, so-called, to attract the
male beetle of its species.
I would have voiced my amazement, notwithstanding the spell cast on me
by the loveliness of this fascinating apparition, were it not that, even as I
tried to find words, both Karl and his companion vanished from my sight,
and I was confronted by a totally different scene. Instead of the half-visible
corridor, I tenanted a large room, brilliantly illuminated. It is noteworthy, as
testifying to my normal condition, that I believed, for an instant, that the

communicating door had been opened to allow the pair in front to enter the
music salon.
This impression quickly yielded to realities. Yes, I repeat, realities. No
ambiguous phrase would describe the clear-cut recollection I have of that
vast square chamber, with its low, Arabesque ceiling, its huge fireplace of
Carrara marble, its deep Italian windows, its wealth of carved wainscoting
and antique furniture. A log fire burned dully in the grate. Kneeling on a rug
near the hearth, but in such a position that I could see her profile, was a
slimly built girl, dressed in white, whom I recognized as Maggie
Hutchinson.
Seemingly, she was alone. Tears were streaming from her eyes, and her lips
quivered, yet I had a queer belief that her agitation arose from some
unhappy combination of sorrow fraught with gladness, one of those
tantalizing experiences sent to vex frail mortality, wherein, if only
circumstances could be altered, abiding melancholy would forthwith
become extravagant joy. Were I a painter, seeking inspiration to depict an
angel tempted to rebel but faithful to an eternal vow, I should strive to place
on canvas the expression of Maggie Hutchinson’s face caught in that
transient glimpse.
And that was all.
The door leading to the heedless throng of guests was really flung open, I
heard the cackle of conversation blending with a piano solo, my dazed eyes
rested on Karl holding back the curtain with a questioning smile on his face,
and I returned to solid earth again. Now, I had seen Nora Cazenove
surrounded with a halo, and Maggie Hutchinson on her knees crying, within
the space of six and seven short strides. Nevertheless, keen as my wits were
to note these things, they were slow enough to return to a just appreciation
of my surroundings.
Karl told me afterwards that I arranged to meet Nora at the Stanhope Gate,
or call at her house, at 2.30 p.m., next day, and he said that I left it to the
Meteorological Bureau to decide which rendezvous we would attend.
Anyhow, I forget using any such phrase or even making the appointment,
and I first regained my grasp of current events when we were seated in the
brougham which Karl had caused to be summoned by telephone.

“What do you think of it all now?” he asked in the unemotional voice of a
man who might be alluding to the singing and the fiddling and the scandal.
“Karl, I am worn out,” I answered. “I cannot center my ideas to-night.”
“I also am worn out,” he said. “I shall be even more weary to-morrow, but I
must endure my weariness without complaint. Therefore, I wonder what
you will say when you know the truth.”
“That light—on Nora—did you see it?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“Was she conscious of it?”
“Not of the light. That is resistance. You saw Maggie, too?”
“Of course. You made me see her.”
“That is better. You are on the right track. Soon you will understand the
magnitude of the task I am called on to accomplish during the next few
weeks—until I crack up, in fact. Here is your hotel. À demain! I shall dine
with you, and then you can tell me what Nora says. I know what she thinks,
but women are secretive.”
The drive through the cool night air restored my faculties, but I was
physically exhausted. The long journey, the shock of seeing Karl’s father in
a paroxysm of agonized fear, the change in Karl himself, and the quite
extraordinary æsthetic manifestations I had received—these latter probably
taking a good deal more out of me than I allowed for—were sufficient to
weary any man. Nevertheless, my brain was active enough in a
commonplace way, and the thought was borne in on me that I needed
assistance if the fiend which threatened the very lives of several estimable
persons were to be exorcised successfully.
To appeal to some distinguished alienist was out of the question. He would
begin by assuming that Karl and Maggie and Nora, not to mention Grier
père and my eminent self, were mad. In my dilemma I remembered Hooper.
Had he accepted that appointment at the Paris Embassy? There was no harm
in trying. I wrote a telegram, which I left with the night porter for despatch
early in the morning, and it was a real pleasure to read the typewritten slip
brought to my bedroom about 9 a.m.:—

“Charing Cross seven this evening. Get Karl to ring off until I
arrive—Hooper.”
His was a cheerful soul. The careless badinage of his message was
agreeable, and I ate my breakfast in good spirits.
It was a fine morning, with a summer sun beaming from a cloudless sky. It
is taking a great risk to state this in cold print, because readers have good
memories, and many a dubious eye will be cast on a narrative which
records unbroken sunshine in London. Nevertheless, it is true, and, as shall
be seen, the weather was an essential factor in the proceedings of that
memorable time.
After prolonged absence from Britain, my hats, ties, gloves, and boots
required to be Anglicized. Piccadilly and the Burlington absorbed the
morning comfortably; half-past two o’clock found me loitering, like any
young sprig awaiting his best girl, in front of the flower-beds at Stanhope
Gate.
The minutes passed. Nora, like every other woman, was unpunctual. The
notion did not occur to me at the time, but I am fairly sure now that the
girl’s dilatoriness, adding a slight pique to the somewhat clandestine nature
of the appointment, helped to chase from my mind the shadows of the
previous night’s troubling experiences.
She came at last. A flower-garden hat, a veil, a fine lace dress and a pink
parasol, were effective disguises after the candor of evening attire. I did not
recognize this frilly young lady until she spoke to me.
“So you really are here?” she cried, with a little laugh, and looking, I
fancied, a trifle embarrassed.
“Did you not expect me?” I countered.
“Oh, one never can tell. Things which look serious under the electric light
are apt to assume less dragon-like proportions on such an afternoon as this,
and in the Park, of all places.”
“I am glad you think so. Some such thought has winged its way to me, too.”
Rather a neat allusion to the object of our meeting, don’t you think?—a
quiet reference to the sixth sense, without dragging it in by the scalp, so to
speak—but Miss Cazenove shied off the topic.

“I chanced to remember that you said you would be here about this time,”
she said lamely. “I fear I bored you with my silly confidences last night,
even more than poor Mr. M—— with his poems.”
Que diable! Was this the fiery beauty who regaled me at midnight with her
tantrums because her lover was moistening with imaginary kisses the lips,
the eyes, the very hair of a rival?
“Where a nice young woman is concerned I have neither memory nor
conscience,” said I, gaily.
“If you keep the one unburthened I shall not trouble the other,” she retorted.
And then, with an airy dismissing of the subject, she asked: “Which way are
you going?”
Will you believe it, I escorted her across the Park, by the diagonal path to
Albert Gate, where she parted from me on some shopping pretext, without
another word being spoken which referred in any way to Karl or her
somewhat strenuous fiançailles! I was puzzled, annoyed, elaborately
sarcastic with myself, for how was I to know that this youthful goddess’
veins were filled with a new ichor, her passions soothed and her doubts
dispelled by the wonder-working force which her own heart-broken appeal
for help had set loose?
A thrice fortunate chance kept Karl and me apart in that hour. Nothing
could have restrained me from pooh-poohing the elaborate make-believe in
which he and the two girls were living. Had it been so, I tremble now to
picture the probable outcome. I can see Karl waving me aside in his quiet
way, disdaining to reclaim the pervert by compulsion, and refusing me any
further trust. I believe the sequel would have killed me with grief.
As it was, after some hours of undisturbed reflection, I saw the stupidity of
my reasoning. Nora Cazenove was natural in her boudoir, artificial in the
Park. Once launched on this new stream of logic, I was carried along with a
rapidity that left me gasping. Why should I, in a mere pet induced by a
woman’s vagary (as I fancied it), be so ready to deny that which I had
affirmed during several years? Was there aught outrageous in Karl’s
telegnomic equipment? He, a man—mentally and physically almost perfect
according to the precise enough laws which govern human perfection in its
ideality—might well possess additional sense-activities when the lowest

forms of creation are similarly gifted. There is hardly a vertebrate fish in the
sea which has not, on both sides of its body, a mucous canal bristling with
nerves to enable it to perceive changes in water pressure, or other unknown
properties of the element in which it lives—unknown, that is, to us, but
quite thoroughly known to the fish. Even man’s legitimate sense-organs are
inferior to the specialized functions of certain animals. How would
Nimrod’s nose compare, in the sense of smell, with the fine scent of his
favorite hound, or the range of my lady’s vision with that of the very much
smaller eye of a vulture? As for hearing, ask some friend, learned in
anatomy, to discourse to you upon the higher sensitiveness and comparative
size of the cochlea, or snail-shell, formation in the internal ear of a desert-
bred animal as contrasted with the same appliance in the genus homo. This
branch of research chastens and humbles the mere man.
While dressing early for dinner, so as to reach the vestibule in good time to
welcome Hooper, I wondered how Karl had passed the day. “Worn out” last
night, he expected to be “even more weary” when next we met. And then an
explanation of his words suggested itself which caused a sudden nerve-
shock similar, in some respects, to that felt by the man who, in a crowded
house, slept on a made-up bed over the bath, and, awaking drowsily, pulled
the string of the shower-bath when he wanted hot water in the morning.
“By Jove!” I yelled, “I have it!”
“Qu’ est-ce que vous avez trouvé, m’sieu’?” demanded the startled valet
who was arranging my studs.
I suppose the civil young Frenchman thought I was ill, but I reassured him,
though my excitement must have made him believe that I was on the verge
of lunacy. Karl was using his magnetic force continuously in order to
preserve Nora from the torturing consequences of her love for him. That
explained her attitude in the Park. He had beaten down in her what he
termed “resistance.” She was quite passive, utterly permeated with his
influence. And Maggie? In all probability she, too, was unconsciously
benefiting by her affinity to this human loadstone, while he was wearing
himself out, actually consuming himself, in the fierce persistence of the
effort to spare them further suffering.
This theory—I might almost term it a positive knowledge so thoroughly did
it hold me—explained nearly every feature of the strange events of the

preceding twenty-four hours. It fitted in with and amplified my views on the
happenings of earlier years, and it gave me the first satisfactory clue to the
emotions exhibited by two such contradictory personalities as Nora
Cazenove and Maggie Hutchinson.
I am sure the valet was glad to see the back of me. I jammed my right foot
into the left boot, tried to put on my waistcoat inside out, and fumbled with
my tie until he volunteered to arrange it, being prepared (I could see it in his
eye) to fight for his life if I grappled with him.
At last, I raced to the elevator. I wanted to telephone to the Griers’ house
and ask Karl to come at once. But he saved me that period of suspense. He
was standing in the atrium, smoking a cigarette. He strolled towards me,
and not even my tensely nervous condition—all the more soul-devouring in
that I was forced to appear outwardly calm—prevented me from seeing the
discreet admiration he won from such ladies as were seated there.
“Ah! there you are!” he cried in his frankly pleasant way. “The papers
report another fiasco in the yacht race. Is there ever any wind in New York
Bay?”
“Heaps,” I said, “or so many hoodlums would not have blown into the
States.”
We were near enough to shake hands.
“How is Nora?” he asked.
“Just about the same as Maggie.”
He winced. In the absorption of my new discovery I had forgotten that any
flippant allusion to the woman for whose sake he was ready to lay down his
life must be painful. Yet, with a single keen glance into my face, he read my
true feelings, which, goodness knows, were far removed from the pert
words of my lips.
“Forgive me,” I said. “I am unnerved by reaching what you described last
night as the ‘right track!’”
“It must be disturbing.”
“If my conclusions are justified,” I went on, surveying him with as much
coolness as I was capable of, “you ought not to have that appearance of

abounding vitality which you undoubtedly possess.”
“That is because the weather is clear,” he answered lightly. “If it were
cloudy, I should be a mere wreck. When the sun shines, or the stars are
visible, I have five times the potentiality of a dull day. But you must eat,
man alive. Why are we discoursing here? Shall I telephone Jules?”
“No. Wait a few minutes. Hooper is coming.”
“Hooper? Frank E. of that ilk?”
“Yes. Luckily, I located him in Paris and wired him. He is due here any
moment.”
“Well, I shall be delighted to meet him. But I cannot allow my affairs to
travel outside a very small circle.”
“And I cannot allow you to wither away on my own responsibility.”
“My dear fellow, don’t be vexed with me. I am so eaten up with the mad
helplessness of it all that I resent the least prying by sceptical outsiders. But
if Hooper, or any other man on God’s earth, can save me and others from
the doom which awaits one or all of us, lay me on the dissecting table
before him. I am ready.”
Knowledge on his part, and a simple imitative action on mine, turned our
eyes simultaneously towards the revolving door of the hotel. Mr. Frank E.
Hooper entered, spick and span as if a troubled channel and grimy railway
were not. He was followed by a rotund personage, olive-green in
complexion, bearing all the outward and visible signs of an inward
Jewishness. The sight of this stranger gave me an indefinable thrill, a
compound of surprise and fear, with, perhaps, a touch of bewilderment.
Why, I cannot tell, but I knew him instantly. I was so taken aback that I
found myself staring stupidly at Hooper, who advanced with a cheery cry:
“Well now, who’d have thought to find you both here, and lookin’ so fine
and dandy, too. This is real good.”
He winked at us portentously.
“That’s Steindal!” he muttered in a stage aside. “Met him in the Gare du
Nord, and talked him into comin’ to this hotel. Guessed you’d like to see
him.”

“We are delighted,” said Karl, gently. “Won’t you introduce us?”
“Eh? Oh, this is great. Mr. Steindal! lend me thine ear a moment. I want to
make you and my good friends known to one another. Mr. Karl Grier—”
No sooner did Steindal hear Karl’s name than he flushed uncomfortably and
backed away. He was perturbed so greatly that Hooper’s flow of language
stopped abruptly.
But Karl advanced a pace, and there was a steady dominance in his glance
which seemed to fascinate while it disconcerted the Jew.
“It is, indeed, a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Come and dine with us.
Come just as you are; and you, too, Hooper. It is too late to change.”
Without another spoken word he wheeled towards the restaurant, walking
across the vestibule with head erect and hands clasped behind his back.
And we three followed, Steindal with the sulkiness of a stricken dog,
Hooper somewhat awed by the unexpected outcome of the surprise he had
planned, and I—well, I felt as though some wizard had converted me into
an electric eel.

CHAPTER XX
STEINDAL GIVES A PUBLIC PERFORMANCE
“Say,” whispered Hooper to me, “Karl looks like a high priest of Baal
leading Steindal to slaughter as a sacrificial bull.”
I babbled something, it matters not what. All my eyes were bent on the
strange meeting between those two. Karl, suavely stern, motioned the Jew
to a chair at a table laid for four. They faced each other. Hooper and I took
the vacant places. Jules, of course, hastened to us, and his attendant sprites
relieved the travelers of overcoats and hats.
Steindal, manifestly ill at ease, glanced around the crowded restaurant. He
soon recognized several habitués. One man, a well-known Stock Exchange
broker, hastened to greet him. While they were speaking, I murmured to
Karl:
“Under the circumstances, is this wise?”
“At any cost, I shall punish the man,” he said. “I had almost forgotten his
existence. Fate sent him here to-night. I regret it, for one reason, but I
rejoice for many.”
The one reason, I fancied, was that the strain on his already weakening
powers entailed by the subjugation of Steindal would demand a
corresponding relaxation of the tension needed to preserve the woman he
loved and the woman who loved him from relapsing into their lamentable
excitations. I was right in this, as also in the surmise that the erstwhile
purveyor of musical celebrities (Steindal was now a mining expert and a
man of great wealth in share certificates) would prove a most stubborn
subject before he yielded to the demands of telegnomic reciprocity.
It was to be a contest of Mind against Matter, of the Soul in man against the
Brute in man. That is a primeval fight, a battle begun ere many of the hills
were fashioned or the oceans charted as we know them; nor did I doubt the
issue of its latest renewal. But what form would it take? Would Karl kill

Steindal? If Steindal were the bull of sacrifice, would Karl supply the fire to
consume him before our very eyes?
Haply, I had no opportunity for ordered thought. Events began to march, as
they say on the Boul Mich, and, for a little time, I remained an outwardly
quiet spectator of doings which soon set the restaurant in an uproar.
Steindal, who had drawn somewhat apart in earnest conversation with his
friend from Capel Court, came back to us. He looked confidently enough at
Karl. Evidently he was determined to brazen out a difficult situation.
“I feel a little hors de concours in these garments,” he said, quite affably,
speaking in the smooth, sibilant voice which reminded me of Karl’s
likening his utterance to that of a boa-constrictor.
“Ah, you speak French, too!” exclaimed Karl with a grim geniality. “The
last time we met you indulged mostly in Spanish.”
“The last time! We have never met before. I—er—think I have heard of you
from a man named Constantine.”
Certainly Steindal had splendid nerves. He arranged himself comfortably at
the table. The chef of the Pall Mall Hotel had a great name for appetizing
dishes, and Jules was hovering about with alert pencil and memoranda
tablets.
“Yes. Poor Constantine! Killed himself, didn’t he? Did you ever hear why?”
Karl, I noticed, had his hands clasped and resting on the table. The
significance of this attitude dawned upon me then. He thus completed some
magnetic circuit of intense potency.
“Never heard a word,” said Steindal, who seemed to accept Karl’s presence
with greater complacency each moment. “That is to say, I knew he was
worried about some girl. As if any woman were worth suicide! Sango la
Madonna!”
“That is more like the Steindal of old, though the appeal is to a strange
patroness,” cried Karl. “Oh, do not worry, Jules! Give us fish, flesh, and
fowl, and bring the best wine of France. We leave details to you.”
The head waiter whisked off. That sort of order is comprehensible. The
diner surrenders at discretion, no matter what the charge.

“Your references to past acquaintance puzzle me,” said the Jew, politely
keeping to the thread of the conversation.
“Then I must be mistaken. Perhaps Constantine gave me a picture so vivid
that it burnt itself into my memory.”
“That is a popular attribute of the fiend, and hardly flattering to me,”
laughed the other.
“Well, there is some truth in it, and it may even contain a germ of adulation.
Unless I err again, you played Mephisto to Constantine’s Faust, eh?”
“Very likely. I knew many Margarets in those days.”
I expected an explosion after that singularly apt, yet unfortunate, reply, but,
beyond a slight contraction of the eyelids and twitching of the nostrils, Karl
gave no sign. Steindal was so unctuously candid, so shielded by the armor
of money and conceit, that I deemed him impenetrable by the hidden
lightning with which Karl was enveloping him. I changed my opinion ere
many minutes passed.
“Many Margarets,” repeated Karl, musingly, “and many Fausts, but only
one devil, Steindal.”
“Do you think so? Then he exists in numerous forms. Sapristi! Here is
another and familiar imp in a sole diable. And an ’84 champagne! You can’t
get this wine in Paris.”
Steindal had that insufferable habit of tucking a napkin under his chin. He
began to eat. He swallowed two glasses of wine with surprising haste. Karl
relapsed into silence. Hooper and I spoke of generalities. An orchestra was
tuning up, and Karl whispered to a waiter. I saw that the conductor held a
confabulation with the bassoon-player, and the band struck into an allegro
movement which I did not recognize at once.
Suddenly Karl leaned forward. His eyes blazed with fire. Had the hotel
clerk of former years been in the room he would have remembered that
look.
“That is your cue, Mephisto,” he said, his low-pitched voice vibrating with
intense energy. “Up you get! On the chair! You know the words:
Dio dell’ or del mondo, signor,

Sei possente risplendente
Culto hai tu maggior quaggiù.
That’s it! Now!”
And Steindal, skipping to his feet, mounted the chair with surprising agility,
and began to sing, with a fine assumption of the basso profundo manner, the
rollicking song with which Mephistopheles disturbed the village revels.
What could be more amazing than the action, more appropriate than the air?
It has been rendered in English:
Clear the way for the Calf of Gold!
In his pomp and pride adore him;
East or West, in heat or cold,
Weak and strong must bow before him!
Wisest men do homage mute
To the image of the brute....
Steindal, posturing on the chair in absurd caricature of a Plançon or
Edouard de Reszke, was fairly launched into the opening strofa before
Hooper or I quite realized what was happening. Some ladies at neighboring
tables shrank from us with alarm. People farther away rose and gazed at us
wide-eyed. A sharp-witted genius, scenting some mischief, shouted
“Bravo!” and the band, thinking an artistic joke was in train, kept up the
accompaniment. Jules and an under-manager hurried towards us, but, seeing
that the diners were, if anything, inclined to applaud, they resolved to defer
their appeal for orderly behavior on Steindal’s part until he made an end. He
sang both verses admirably, the band helping in the chorus, and, with the
final wild phrase:
Tuo ministro è Belzebù,
a perfect hurricane of encouraging cries and rattling of cutlery came from
all sides.
Steindal bowed in the approved style, and descended from his rostrum. He
was not disturbed in the least. Obviously, Karl held him in a state of
complete aphanasia, and this magnate of a Rand which he had never seen
had not the remotest notion that he was making a supreme ass of himself.
Nor was it altogether patent that others took that severe view. Certainly, the
stock-broker regarded him with a pained curiosity, but most of those present

seemed to look upon the escapade as the light-hearted ebullience of a
foreigner.
Our waiters brought some variety of meat, goodness knows what, and
Steindal tackled it with keen zest, first sluicing his strained vocal cords with
more wine. The orchestra swung off into a pleasing waltz. Hooper and I,
though disconcerted by the covert attention our party attracted, were
beginning to take an intelligent interest in the dinner when Karl called on
his medium for another “turn.”
“In your vanished youth, Steindal,” he hissed, “you were a circus acrobat.
Before you gorge too much give us a contortion or two!”
Instantly the unhappy Wilhelm sprang upright again. He grabbed his chair,
set it apart from the table with a professional bang on the floor, and
forthwith stood on his head and hands. His coat and the white napkin
flapped down over his face, coins rattled from his pockets, and his obese
figure looked exceedingly comical as he poised himself feet upwards and
slowly turned, so that all might see and admire. After a pause, he bounced
back to the floor, but only to grasp the chair in a new way and extend
himself horizontally, resting on his hands.
This time there were no plaudits. Something approaching a panic reigned
throughout the room. The song was deemed a pardonable extravagance, but
these grotesque posturings savored of madness. Like everybody else, I was
so taken up with Steindal’s antics that I paid no heed to Karl, nor did my
flurried thoughts credit him with creating the wave of fear and disgust
which now converted popular tolerance into disapprobation.
Women shrieked; there was a rush of excited guests and perplexed waiters.
Then somebody—probably the gentleman who cried “Bravo” a few minutes
before—bawled:
“Turn him out! He is either mad or drunk!”
Absolutely heedless of the commotion he was causing, Steindal finished his
balancing, gave a little skip reminiscent of the ring, smiled blandly, and
kissed his finger-tips. Then he squatted on the carpet, and endeavored to do
that which was impossible for a man of his build by trying to cross his feet
over his shoulders.

This was too much. Jules, aided by a couple of waiters, clutched Steindal
and pulled him out of the knot. He became very angry, swore outlandishly,
fought, kicked, squealed, and was hauled out by main force, while a man
gathered up his scattered money.
“And now,” said Karl, with an air of placid relief, “now that I have made
that self-satisfied little wretch the laughing-stock of London, let us have
some dinner.”
So that was the explanation of the extraordinary scene! Karl had not
forgotten Steindal’s outspoken rage when the hapless Armenian created a
similar disturbance in a New York restaurant. He divined that Steindal could
only be scarified through his colossal vanity. “The laughing-stock of
London!”—that would be a barbed shaft; its wound would never heal.
When Steindal regained possession of his senses he would learn the
disastrous truth. Even if he escaped prosecution for disorderly conduct,
some kind friend would surely tell him how he sang, and balanced, and
contorted! He would howl and writhe in impotent fury. There was no legal
redress. None would credit him, nor would he dare take that course. He
could only accuse Karl of exercising some terrible influence upon him, and,
in that event, the laughter would be even more wide-spread, while his
overbearing reputation, which stood him in good stead in financial circles,
must be lost irrecoverably.
The disordered diners were beginning to arrange themselves once more.
The band, owing to the conductor’s happy thought, broke into the
magnificent trio, “O del Ciel,” for those Italians can play you anything of
Gounod’s or Verdi’s right off the reel, and a great many persons smiled
broadly as they caught the musical satire.
The stock-broker hurried out.
“He has gone to look after his friend. It is a kindly act,” I said.
“Guess he has gone to glue himself on to the Paris telephone,” commented
Hooper, dryly. “Steindal’s stocks are mainly held in France. Let it once get
round that he is cracked, and they will drop into the place beneath like the
gentle dew from heaven.”
Hooper’s perversion of Shakespeare was condoned by his knowledge of
human nature. The telephone girl told me afterwards that the broker paid a

fabulous sum for half an hour’s talk with Paris that night.
“What will happen to Steindal, do you think?” I asked Karl.
“He is gradually recovering. In less than an hour he will be all right. I
expect the hotel people, knowing his identity, will put him to bed and send
for a doctor. But he wants no doctor. He will clamor for a purveyor of guns
and daggers.”
“You believe he will plan vengeance against you?”
“Most decidedly. He is no coward. His mother was a Mexican dancer. She
taught him to throw a knife before he learnt the alphabet. Ask him the
meaning of la cuchillada and you will see his eyes glisten.”
Here was a nice outcome of a freak worthy of some light-headed schoolboy
with a taste for practical joking. In addition to his other troubles, Karl had
saddled himself with a mortal feud.
“Oh,” I cried in a sudden heat, “this is intolerable. What a counselor your
father brought from Heidelberg when he summoned me!”
“Have no fear,” said Karl, toying with a salad; “Steindal cannot injure me.
The little beast! I could paralyze his uplifted hand.”
Karl could do that, I knew. Nevertheless, I was a prey to disquieting
thoughts.
Hooper, blessed with a temperament which could take an equable view of
the Day of Judgment, began to review events in his practical way.
“I can credit you with accomplishing almost anything in the present tense,
Karl,” he said; “but I am taken out of my stride when you dip into history.
How did you know Steindal had been a circus acrobat?”
“You knew.”
“Yes. Some one told me years ago. I thought of it while he was singing, but
I have never mentioned it to you.”
Karl smiled wearily.
“That was enough,” he said.
“My dear fellow, can you read my thoughts?”

“A little while ago I read the thoughts of every living being in this room.
And what is more, I supplied the thoughts of most of them. Now, I would
like to forget Steindal. Why did you fail to let me know you were in Paris?”
“I have a notion that any giving of information on my part would be kind of
superfluous,” laughed Hooper.
“You are mistaken. Here you are at my mercy; in Paris you are safe. The
world holds nearly two thousand millions of people. Except under special
circumstances, I cannot pretend to single out individuals.”
I listened to their talk with little real comprehension. I was wondering what
would be the outcome of the scene I had just witnessed. I seemed to be
sitting in some theater, watching a drama of intense interest, with its thrills
of pathos and human agony, and its snatches of comic relief. While the
clown was setting the audience in a roar with his unconscious buffoonery
the sad-hearted heroine was waiting in the wings to harrow us in the next
breath.
And was it so in sober earnest? Was Maggie Hutchinson waiting, in her far-
off Round Castle on the shores of Como, fully aware of the farce being
enacted in the restaurant, and ready to take her cue when the moment
arrived for her tribulation? How could I be sure? Was it possible to be
certain of anything when all the common laws of nature were being turned
topsy-turvy by a youngster whose weird powers were as yet but vaguely
acknowledged by those few doubting believers acquainted with them?
I have often looked back on that extraordinary dinner in the Pall Mall Hotel.
I know now that a great deal was revealed to me in that hour, but I was so
overcome by the exciting outward aspects of the manifestations that I
missed the inward message they carried. I am not alone in this crass
blindness to hidden truth. When Gounod wrote the opera which gave Karl
the text for Steindal’s undoing, Mr. Gye, the then chief operatic manager of
London, saw nothing in it but “a waltz and a chorus of old men.” Paris
would not have it. The Théâtre Lyrique produced it with financial loss. And
one man, Choudens, thought he was taking a tremendous risk when he
purchased the publishing rights for £400. Happy Choudens! He cleared
nearly £120,000 by the venture.

Yet Faust was as great in 1839 as it is to-day. Only man has become
enlightened.
I was brought to see things clearly in much less than half a century. But it
saddens me to know how much I missed while Steindal was singing his
devil’s song and gyrating on his head and hands!

CHAPTER XXI
HOOPER SUGGESTS A WAY OUT
Though Steindal was gone, we remained the center of observation. Perhaps
others wondered, like Scapin, what the deuce he was doing in our boat.
Karl, who was distinctly fatigued, did that which I had never seen him do
before—he drank some wine. He seemed to be willing enough to talk
freely, but held in leash by the presence of so many strangers. Hooper, I
knew, was consumed with impatience, but he preserved the outward
demeanor of a North American Indian. So there was a common agreement
when I suggested that my sitting-room was the right place in which to
smoke. Once there, Hooper threw aside the mask.
“I have the accumulated questions of five years to fire at you. Are you
ready?” he said to Karl.
“Quite ready. I would only ask you to remember that a Hindu ascetic once
devoted thirty years to the consideration of one great question: ‘Whence?’
and when he emerged from retirement he astonished his disciples by merely
propounding another: ‘Whither?’”
“I go one better by putting both. Whence comes this amazing sense of
yours, and whither does it tend?”
“If it amuses you to hear my guesses on those points, I am not disinclined to
bring them into the light. Have either of you heard of Paul Flechsig’s
‘organs of thought’ theory? Yes? Well, he holds, as you know, that in the
gray bed of the brain there are four inner spheres of sensation—the sphere
of touch in the vertical lobe, the sphere of sight in the occipital lobe, the
sphere of smell in the frontal lobe, and the sphere of hearing in the temporal
lobe. These are the sense-centers. Between, and in active communication
with them, lie the four great thought-centers, containing an elaborate and
peculiar nerve-structure. Take away the enveloping tissues and bones, and
you have a wonderfully complex instrument, balanced, so to speak, on the
spinal cord. This, in the descent of man, is not the outcome of, but an
essential preliminary to, the brain. I imagine that a comparative anatomist

would assign far more importance to the spinal cord than, let us say, a
philosopher would give it. Be that as it may, I am quite certain, in my case,
that the spine possesses magnetic polarity to an extraordinary degree.
Without going into an extensive lecture on the subject, I believe that I have
answered your first question. The second bristles with difficulties. I can
only tell you that I affect others, who have the same latent attributes, by the
exercise of the principle roughly known to science as magnetic induction.
Notwithstanding the curious things you have seen, my powers are strictly
limited. At a given moment I can induce varying sensations in different
subjects, and these sensations, carried to the thought-centers, set in motion
the sense-centers. If such faculties were common to all, life would be more
simple, and, perhaps, less mechanical.”
“That is an extraordinary conclusion,” I broke in.
“It sounds contradictory, but I think analysis of my meaning will bear me
out. Come now, Hooper, I look to you for support. I recall your famous
thesis that man contains within himself all the possibilities of invention.
Man required the power to communicate speedily with his fellows. After
long ages, he has evolved the electric telegraph and the telephone. I reach
the same end without the cumbrous means. Certain people would dub my
sixth sense supernatural, or transcendental, meaning thereby something
which can exist and operate without a material basis. That is ridiculous. If
such well-known beverages as tea and coffee can stimulate thought, if
alcohol can intensify feeling, if musk can reanimate the fainting
consciousness and ether deaden it, is it not clear that the ordinary senses
have an anatomical basis yielding to chemical action? My sixth sense is a
true natural phenomenon, and, when I come to be dissected in the interests
of science, you must ask the anatomist to explain—”
There was a sound at the door as of one fumbling at the handle.
I rose, surprised that any one should seek to enter without knocking. Then
the door opened, and Steindal appeared. I learned afterwards that he had
recovered very rapidly from his seeming madness, and had persuaded the
hotel attendants to leave him alone, on the plea that he would sleep. A
doctor, too, summoned hastily, bore out his statement that he was in a
normal condition of health. By tipping a housemaid, who knew nothing of
the scene in the restaurant, he reached my room.

So far as I could judge, he was unarmed. Nevertheless, I barred the way, but
he paid no heed to me. He dodged, in order to see Karl.
“I want to speak to you,” he said thickly, addressing Karl.
“Come in, then,” was the answer.
Thinking that three of us could surely overpower him at once if he
attempted violence, I stood aside.
Seen in the half-light of the corridor, Steindal looked his own tubby,
commonplace self, but the bright interior of the room revealed the rough
usage to which he had been subjected. His chin was scratched, his collar
and shirt loosened by the breaking of a stud, the breast-pocket of his coat
was torn, and his long, black, smooth hair ruffled.
The expression of his face offered a study in physiology. The corners of his
thick, salacious lips turned upward with the scowl of an enraged animal.
His eyes, usually black and beady, were now dark red, and darting shifting
glances at all parts of Karl’s body. Their constant movement was
fascinating. If you have ever seen a bull-fight, and watched the last stand of
the Andalusian monarch of the herd as he faces the matador, well aware that
the bright straight blade in the man’s right hand is ready to seek his heart’s
blood, yet compelled to watch the flutterings of a bit of red silk on the
muleta in his predestined slayer’s left hand, you will form some notion of
the suppressed fury which gleamed from Steindal’s quickly-moving eyes.
Yet his voice, though it had lost its smoothness, was well under control.
“Whatever else you may be, I don’t suppose you are a coward,” said he.
I believe, to this day, that Steindal could actually smell blood in that instant.
His nostrils twitched slightly, and his tongue darted forth to salivate his lips.
Hooper and I might have been non-existent for all the heed he paid to us.
“No, I am not,” said Karl.
“Then you will travel with me to France to-morrow?”
“That would be useless, Steindal. I can paralyze your arm, root you
immovable to the ground.”
“Ah, but that would make you, indeed, a coward. Yet, I take the chance. I
will fight you with my hands tied, if need be. My teeth will serve.”

“I cannot fight you,” said Karl, slowly. “I refuse to murder you, and
certainly I shall not let you murder me. No, Steindal, you must live. I am
sorry to be so hard on you, but you really must continue to exist.”
“Is that your final answer?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you assign a cause?”
“For you, punishment, and, it may be, retribution, to be followed perhaps by
the emergence of a soul from your bloated body. For me, suffering too, in a
form you cannot understand.”
“I decline your terms,” murmured Steindal, moistening his lips again and
advancing a pace.
“Go!” said Karl, sternly, and, to my utter surprise, the other man turned and
quitted the room. We heard him walk steadily down the corridor, and caught
the click of his boots as he stepped on to a marble staircase. It was Hooper
who broke the queer silence which fell on us.
“You seem to have taken the measure of Steindal’s backbone, at any rate?”
he commented.
“Where I am concerned, he is no longer a free agent,” said Karl, wearily.
“Tell me,” I interposed, “why you deal so harshly with a man you have
never actually met before to-night?”
“Because I loathe such a creature. He represents the pig in man. He has
brought horror and abasement to hundreds. Now he must wallow in the only
degradation that makes him contemptible in his own esteem. But forgive me
if I leave you. You and Hooper can find much to discuss, and I must be
alone.”
He stood upright, and drew a hand across his eyes. I seemed to perceive a
slackening of the muscles of his finely molded frame which was almost a
symptom of complete enervation. It was a new and unaccountable alarm
which impelled me to say:
“Will you go home, Karl, and promise me to try and sleep?”
“I am going home,” he replied. “Good-night!”

Clearly, he did not desire any courteous leave-taking in the vestibule. I did
not offer to accompany him. When I knew that he had descended the stairs
—thus avoiding the elevator and its possible publicity—I rejoined Hooper.
He was smoking, and his gaze was fixed on the ceiling. I was in no mood
for talk just then. More by force of habit than otherwise, I rang for a waiter
and ordered whisky and soda. The mere presence of the man, with his
servile affability and his laden tray, was a tonic in itself. He brought me
back from illimitable depths to the workaday world.
“Do you partake?” I asked Hooper.
“Yep.”
The cigar wedged between his teeth rendered the final labial the easier
manner of speech. I found his presence soothing, too. I poured out a small
quantity of spirit, and, while the waiter was uncorking a bottle of soda
water, I looked out of the window. It was a glorious summer evening when
last I saw the streets. Now the flaring lights were reflected in wavering
zigzags on road and pavements, while the shining capes of ’bus-drivers and
cabmen caught the eye as moving pyramids.
“Good heavens!” I cried, “it is raining!”
There was a loud report. The attendant had drenched himself.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he stammered, “but you did make me jump, an’ no
mistake.”
“Better have the remainder of the soda poured over your head,” snapped
Hooper at me.
“But I tell you it is raining,” I shouted excitedly.
“Give it to me, waiter, if you are afraid,” said Hooper, firmly.
“Oh, I had forgotten you did not know that Karl has to exert many times the
force in unsettled weather that he requires when the sky is clear. Hooper, he
may not live days, let alone weeks.”
I quailed before the American’s warning glance, and ceased speaking. The
waiter was glad to close the door on us, I am sure. Hooper led me to a chair.

“Sit down, partner,” he said. “I have been trying to theorize. A certain Greek
gentleman named Empedocles, dated 500 b.c., believed that he had solved
the puzzle of life when he defined the love and hatred of the elements. I
think we have reached his track. But you know the kind of elements we
have to deal with, and I do not. Discourse to me of Karl, and Maggie, and—
is there another woman?”
“There is,” I said.
“Bully for me!” he cried delightedly. “The eternal feminine would have the
shortest life on record if there weren’t two of ’em. Now, let’s have the
whole yarn. I am a good listener.”
So I told him everything, fact and fancy, until my voice gave out, and we
were amazed to find I had been talking for nearly three hours. It was long
past midnight when I noticed the clock.
“Let us to bed,” I wheezed. “We must consult in the morning.”
He, in his turn, looked out at the weather.
“It has ceased raining and the stars are visible,” he said.
“Thank goodness for that! Karl will experience some relief.”
“I think not. If he and the rest of us are not qualifying for an asylum by
believing the truth of what you have told me, don’t you see that the strain is
cumulative? He cannot, I may almost say he dare not, sleep. He is
deliberately sacrificing himself to save those women. He thinks, and we
agree with him, that his death will snap the tension. They will grieve over
his loss, no doubt, but their tears will be a measure of salvation. I tell you,
my friend, we are up against a hard proposition. Were it not utterly selfish, I
could almost wish you had left me in Paris.”
“I was tempted to share the responsibility with some one whom I could
trust.”
“Yes, I see that. And don’t think I would shirk my duty to a comrade like
Karl. Yet, I fear for him. Something must be done, and done quickly, if we
would rescue him. Oh, if only I knew more of science and less of law! What
is the meaning of this resistance we hear so much of? Is it the same thing in
Steindal and Nora Cazenove? It seems to stir up ignoble passion in both,

though the manner of it is so different to our perception. And that is strange,
unless the question of sex enters largely into it.”
“Affinity and repulsion are the two fundamental principles of all creation. I
have heard you say, years ago, that Karl threw us back to first causes.”
“We are dealing now with men and women of to-day,” he cried, pacing up
and down the room.
I had never before seen him so genuinely disturbed. His artificial coolness
had melted, as ice might fall off a volcano in eruption after long quiescence.
I had great respect for the clearness of his mental vision; there was also a
certain consolation in witnessing this sudden upheaval. That a skilled
lawyer, a man of great acumen in affairs, and, for one of his years, an
astonishingly cool-headed judge of human nature, should be so perturbed
by the issues submitted to him, offered some proof that I had not magnified
their gravity.
“Do you think we can regard Steindal as a negligible quantity?” he asked,
halting in front of me and piercing me with his large earnest eyes.
“It would seem to be reasonable from his latest attitude,” I admitted.
“Then we are driven back on the women. What of this girl, Nora? She is the
chief difficulty. It is perfectly evident that the sympathetic bond, or
whatever it is, which exists between Karl and Maggie, was broken, or
remained in abeyance, from the day of Constantine’s death until there
sprang up some lover-like relationship between Karl and Nora. Then
Maggie intervened, whether by her own volition or not is unknown, and, to
an extent, inconsequent. Karl recognized the impossibility of marriage with
Nora, but it was beyond him to give a reason that would be accepted by his
father, nor was he so callous as to offer up Maggie as a holocaust.
Therefore, he has definitely adopted a course of action which demands his
own death. There is no other alternative. Either Maggie or he must die. The
way out—if there is one—lies with Nora—or Maggie.”
“But what can we do? We cannot kill one of them, even for the sake of our
friend.”
“No, but we can bring them together before it is too late.”
“What good purpose will that accomplish?”

“It may achieve a hundred different purposes which are impracticable when
one woman is in Italy and the other woman in England. Let us get them
face to face and things will happen. Sit right down and write me a letter of
introduction to Nora. Just say I am a friend of all parties, and leave the
remainder of the explanation to me. I will take care of her, and of Karl, too,
not to mention Steindal, until you bring Maggie from the Castello Rondo.”
“Until I—bring—”
“Repetition is the vainest form of argument. Don’t speak, there’s a good
fellow. Indeed, you can’t. When all this trouble is through, I would advise
you to consult a specialist. Weakness of the vocal chords is an early
symptom of decay. Now write, while I look up the train service.”
I compared Hooper to a volcano; I might go further and say that the lava-
stream of his impetuosity quite swept me off my feet. It is a splendid thing,
in a crisis, to have a masterful ally. His confidence lent me new life. He
rushed off to make inquiries beneath, and I sat down to write a note to Nora.
In black and white the task was not so easy as Hooper would have it.
Ultimately, I wrote as follows:
“It would not be just to you or to Karl were I to conceal my firm
conviction that you both are faced with a most serious problem.
Certain events which took place in this hotel to-night, combined
with my own observations of Karl’s health, force me to tell you
that the ensuing week may see the gravest developments, so far
as he is concerned. In my opinion, I can best help him by taking
a journey to Italy, without losing an unnecessary hour. I want
you also to help, and I am sending you this letter by the hands of
one who is a friend of Karl’s, anxious to be of service to you,
and thoroughly acquainted with the present critical condition of
affairs. Trust him, as I hope you will trust me, to act for the
common good.”
I read through what I had written, not once, but half a dozen times. Letters
to excitable young ladies are dangerous as the boomerang in the hands of a
novice. If the worst came to the worst, and Karl died, who could tell what
hubbub might be raised by Nora Cazenove? At any rate, it was quite

inadvisable to allude more specifically to the uncanny workings of a sixth
sense.
“Telegnomy and a coroner’s jury do not run in tandem,” said Hooper, taking
my view of the need there was to use guarded phrases.
He also approved of the reference to Italy.
“She has jumped Maggie’s claim and she knows it. It may be my regrettable
duty to make that clear right away,” he remarked.
“Do not blame the girl,” I said. “Remember that the match was made by Mr.
Grier and Lord Sandilands.”
“I guess that didn’t worry Nora. But your best train leaves at nine in the
morning, and you have a voice like a crow. If you don’t give it a rest you
will not be able to ask for your ticket. Leave Nora to me, there’s a good
chap. I’ll fix her.”
I had seen Nora ablaze with the fire of the gods, so I doubted the effect of
Hooper’s coercion or persuasiveness. Yet he had brought action where there
was uncertainty, substituted ordered effort for chaos, and I was grateful to
him.
Hence, I slept and breakfasted, and caught the first morning express for the
Continent.

CHAPTER XXII
NORA FACES THE INEVITABLE
I am inclined to believe that each one of my fair readers, and a majority of
those mere males of less account, would gladly accompany me in my
journey south by east across the map of Europe. I say this, not by reason of
over-weening pride in my personal charm as a compagnon de voyage, but
because of the journey’s objective. At the present stage of my story, Maggie
Hutchinson is surely an interesting personage. Have you ever heard or read
of another heroine so situated? Mark you, she knew Karl when she was a
little child. After ten years’ separation she met him, under very peculiar
conditions, for a few hours in a London hotel. And now, five years later,
without ever a word exchanged between them during all that long time, her
life was indissolubly bound up with his, a passionate love united her to him
with ties never dreamed of by tender Juliet or devoted Héloïse, and to
crown the midsummer madness of it all, Karl was deliberately killing
himself to save another woman’s life.
It is a pardonable assumption, therefore, that every true devotee of romance
should be eager to meet her face to face. I know that I was. I quitted
Charing Cross in a state of nervous exaltation to which my seasoned heart
had long been a stranger.
But Fate, the master playwright, had ordained that influences I had not
foreseen should fill the stage for many an hour ere I reached the Castello
Rondo in far-off Italy. In fact, none of us had taken into account Karl’s
mother.
Mrs. Grier was not enamored of high society as it is understood in London.
She was a German, and she had never lost her Teuton’s tastes. First, and
necessarily, a good housekeeper, she gave her spare time to reading. She
hardly ever glanced at a newspaper, nor did she dawdle through more than
one novel a year. She kept her household accounts, contrived economies in
an annual expenditure of many thousands, looked after the practical
management of certain estates, and, for the rest, saw as little as possible of
fashionable folk, but isolated herself with some portentous professorial

treatise on the more serious matters of life, or sought relaxation in the pages
of her beloved Schiller.
This was excellent while Grier senior was accumulating riches, and Karl
followed the beaten track leading to a suitable marriage and a peerage. But
she had lost none of her maternal love for her wonderful son, and her
shrewd eyes soon divined the anxiety of her husband, the silent endurance
of Karl. At first, her questions encountered a certain gentle evasiveness. She
persisted, and the elder Grier admitted that all was not well between Karl
and Nora.
Then the mother entered the arena, and you need never ask in whose behalf
she drew the sword.
“If Karl does not want to marry Nora Cazenove, why are you trying to force
him into a distasteful match?” she demanded of her distressed partner.
“I am doing nothing of the kind,” was the instant answer.
“Then who is doing it?”
“No one. He seemed to be happy in his engagement. All went well until this
inf—this dreadful sixth sense of his seized upon him, threatening to wring
the very soul out of him.”
“I believe he has always hankered after Maggie Hutchinson.”
“How can that be? We have not coerced his judgment. He has not made the
slightest effort to meet her for years. I am not prone to superstition, but
there are times when I imagine that the watch Constantine gave him is an
evil thing, a constant reminder of the man’s unhappy death.”
To what a depth of misery must my old friend have been reduced before he
would seek such an ignoble explanation of his sorrows!
“Unberufen! Unberufen!” cried Mrs. Grier, for she was born in the Black
Forest, and the scientific essay was not yet written which should rescue her
wholly from belief in cryptic omens of malign import.
On the morning of my departure for Como, Karl did not appear at breakfast.
His mother went to him. She found him in his dressing-room, smoking in
seeming content.

“Now, Karl,” she said, sitting on an arm of his easy chair and placing a
loving hand on his shoulder, “tell me all about it.”
He was far too wise to pretend to misunderstand.
“There is not much to tell, mother,” he said placidly. “I find that I cannot
marry Nora, and, in view of the wide-spread interest taken in our
engagement, that is a sad thing, is it not?”
“What is stopping you from marrying her?”
“Some intangible influence which you women call love. It is an affinity
whose properties are shared by all creation, from unicellular protozoa up or
down, to the highest anthropoids. Even air and water are composed of
sympathetic gases, so—”
“Karl, be serious.”
“Mother, I am serious. Paris was drawn to Helen by a living force which
leaped the strongest walls of reason and morality, and the same impetuous
movement unites two atoms of hydrogen to one atom of oxygen in order to
form water. Now, wait a moment! Introduce a Menelaus or an atom of
nitrogen, and you have an explosion.”
“You are fencing with me, liebchen.”
“Indeed, I am not.”
“Then, if Margaret Hutchinson is your Helen, and there is no Menelaus, you
must tell Nora Cazenove that it would not be fair to her to take her as your
wife when you love another.”
“Do you think that is the best thing to do?”
“I am so sure of it that if you dislike the task I will go to her myself.”
Karl saw that his mother meant what she said. Heavy-hearted by the
necessity of it, he set himself deliberately to deceive her.
“There is no harm in waiting a few days,” he said.
“There is every harm. Your father is quite beside himself with care. I have
never seen him so disturbed.”

Karl bit his pipe firmly between his teeth. His father had kept the secret,
then? His mother did not know all.
“I have a reason for saying that,” he continued, after a slight pause.
“However faithfully I may have worshiped Maggie from afar there is no
knowing how she regards me.”
“But you do know.”
“Not in the accepted meaning of the term. I may be blinded by my own
conceit. To settle matters, an old friend has gone to Como to see how my
inamorata regards me.”
“An old friend! Who is it that is so interested in my son?”
He knew that his mother’s heart rebelled against the suggestion of a
stranger taking part in affairs so vital to himself of which she had been kept
in ignorance.
With a well-assumed carelessness, he told her how Hooper and I were
planning to expedite his wooing, and he so insisted on the humor of our
dark conspiracy, when he was fully aware of each act and word, that he won
a smile to her kindly face.
Yet her alarmed perplexity did not abate. There was a subtle change in Karl
which in no way escaped her. He was thinner, altogether unstrung and
devitalized. She was conscious, too, of a physical tension in his attitude
which was strangely at variance with the wonted suppleness of an athletic
youngster of his fine proportions.
“When does this embassy return?” she asked musingly.
“I cannot say. You forget that I have not been consulted,” he grumbled with
a well-feigned laugh.
“And Mr. Hooper remains in London?”
“That is a part of the plot.”
“Very well. Be ready to take me to the hotel in half an hour. There is a
flower-show at Richmond which I wish to visit. We shall call for Mr.
Hooper, drive to Richmond, pass some time at the show, and return here for
tea.”

In a word, Karl was to be tied to his mother’s apron-strings for a while. And
Hooper was to be drawn judiciously. It was a simple expedient; for Mrs.
Grier had failed utterly to recognize the real nature of the problem which
faced her, and not her alone, but all of us. Her son’s sixth sense had always
remained a thing apart and wholly incomprehensible. She had heard little of
it during recent years. The pranks he used to play occasionally served but to
amuse her. Thus, he could summon any servant in the house by causing that
particular domestic to fancy he or she heard a bell or a voice. He was
exceedingly reliable as a weather prophet, especially when the conditions
were settled for either rain or sunshine. Once, when a guest, a malade
imaginaire, was bothering Mrs. Grier and her cook by the multiplicity of
dishes he could not eat and the few he could eat but which disagreed with
him, Karl made him tackle an outrageous meal of many courses with a
hearty gusto. The poor man’s famished digestion stood the ordeal well, and
he slept for twelve hours thereafter, to the great joy of the household and his
own confusion.
I might multiply hundreds of these minor happenings, and it is not
surprising that Mrs. Grier came to regard them as of slight importance,
whereas the existing grave situation was not only of recent growth, but its
nature and extent had been sedulously kept from her. So, there never was
less tangible connection between trivial cause and actual effect than
between the mother’s resolve to keep an eye on her son for a day or two and
the outcome of that resolution.
Examining events in critical review afterwards, I saw that a host of things
which might have occurred were diverted from their obvious channels by
Mrs. Grier’s interference at that moment. Some of these became clear
before many hours had sped.
First and foremost of these baffled circumstances—Hooper’s acquaintance
with Miss Cazenove was delayed a whole day. Secondly—but here I avail
myself of the only chance given me in the course of a singularly
straightforward tale to whet the reader’s appetite somewhat by refusing to
raise the curtain on the last act of the drama before the penultimate scene
has been packed away with the other stage accessories.
And, indeed, I am concealing nothing from you in the ordered narration of
the story. Mrs. Grier kept the two young men busy all the day, and insisted

on Hooper remaining to dinner that evening. She learnt not a word which
cleared the puzzle. Hooper and Karl were chiefly reminiscent in their talk.
The shrewd American quickly took the cue of his friend’s attitude. Neither
by look nor speech did he betray the trust reposed in him.
Mrs. Grier twice swung the conversation round to the occupants of the
Castello Rondo. She did this neatly and without undue insistence, and quite
as cleverly did Hooper express his desire to meet such an exceptionally
gifted girl as Maggie Hutchinson was, by all accounts.
Dear lady! She remained awake that night until assured that Karl was safe
and sound in his room. She was bewildered, but far from alarmed. Yet she
knelt and prayed long and earnestly for the welfare of her loved ones,
husband and son, and her last conscious words, uttered with trembling lips
ere she closed her tear-laden eyes, were:—
“Karl, mein liebchen, Gott befolen!”
Little did she dream that she owed her restful sleep to the influence which
Karl exerted in her behalf, nor has she ever known the terrible strain she
imposed by her well-meant efforts to pierce the mystery which surrounded
him. That was mercifully kept from her. Had she ever realized that the long-
drawn-out programme she devised in order to distract his mind was really
the quickest means to bring him to utter destruction, she would never have
forgiven herself.
Hooper was on the rack all the time. The signs which an anxious mother
interpreted as lassitude and a weariness of spirit were clear evidence to him
that Karl was suffering an agony of restraint.
“I was at my wits’ end what to say or do,” he told me subsequently. “I was
afraid that Karl might crack up at any moment. Brain fever was the best
thing I could hope for him; but, somehow, though doctoring is a science I
know less of than conchology, I felt that relief would not come in that way.
Once or twice I managed to touch his hand as if by accident. He was cool
and firm as a block of ice. He knew what I was up to, and smiled at me in
such despair! Guess I had a cold chill down my spine enough to give a
rhinoceros influenza!”
Strange, was it not, that Hooper should use such a simile after what Karl
had said? But I must guard against digression. There is a fitting place for

analysis, but a man may not stand up in a canoe and make a speech on the
laws of bodies in motion when his frail craft is hurtling through rock-strewn
rapids.
“It was a heavy risk I took,” went on my fellow-conspirator, “but I was sure
that Karl was more taxed by his mother’s close observation than by the
manifold demands on his stamina entailed by other considerations. So I
bluffed. Oxford was a natural goal. I suggested that he and I should visit our
old ’Varsity next day, and Mrs. Grier approved of the idea. That is how I
managed to install him in our sitting-room at the hotel early on the
following morning. There he was at peace.”
Karl showed a great desire, at that time, to discuss his sixth sense fully and
freely with one who might be trusted to listen without scepticism. He
acquainted Hooper with many marvels which reached my ears in due
course. And, happily, the freedom from restraint had the good effect of
inducing a slight drowsiness. He would not admit it, but Hooper was quite
convinced that he had not slept during the preceding four days at least.
That afternoon he yielded sufficiently to the demands of outraged nature to
sink into a heavy sleep, though we found, on inquiry—not from him but
from those whose well-being he was protecting at his own irreparable loss
—that his control over them never slackened for an instant.
Thinking that the best thing possible had happened, Hooper calmly locked
him in, and told the floor attendant to ask Mr. Grier to await his (Hooper’s)
return if he woke up and rang.
Then, fast as a hansom could carry him, he hurried to Sandilands House,
there to learn that the Honorable Nora Cazenove had driven to the Griers’,
with laudable intent to take Mrs. Grier and Karl to Hurlingham.
The pen almost refuses to write these colorless annals of ordinary life in
town when they are contrasted with the extraordinary incidents to which
they directly contributed. Yet they are essential to my story as plain brick
and mortar to some noble edifice which inspires the muse of many
generations of poets.
Hooper ascertained that Miss Cazenove would return home about half-past
six, to dress for dinner and the opera. None but an American could have
extracted this information from a severe London footman. There is a

charming affability, a dramatic good-fellowship, about our transatlantic
cousins which ignores the traditional reserve of England.
Racing back to the hotel, Hooper found Karl still asleep. At 6.35 p.m. he
coolly telephoned to Miss Nora, and quite as coolly read her my letter of
introduction over the wire.
“I guess I shook her up good an’ hard,” he said to me, in the exchange of
further confidences, and I quite believe it.
He pressed inflexibly for an immediate interview. At all hazards, now, he
was determined to make known to her the dangerous atmosphere in which
her fiancée was existing.
“Her voice was a bit scared as she discussed things,” he declared, “but, after
chewing on it for a minute or two, she asked me to meet her at the opera at
eight o’clock sharp. The lady who would chaperon her, and some other
friends, would not be there until nearly nine. She would go in advance,
leaving a message for her chaperon, and we could talk undisturbed. I allow
I rather cottoned to a girl who could fix things as slick as that.”
Karl was seemingly sunk in the sleep of sheer weakness. Hooper counted
on meeting Nora and returning to the hotel in time to arouse Karl for a late
meal, and then see him safely home, or even detain him for the night after
explaining matters to his father and mother.
Indeed, things were going so well that he was buoyed up with a new hope.
He dressed rapidly, reached Covent Garden, and saw a lady whom he took
to be Nora Cazenove descend from a brougham, cross the vestibule while
darting an interrogatory glance at its denizens, and hasten up the stairs.
He was right. An attendant took his card, the lady halted smilingly, and
Hooper made himself known.
A well-bred, bright-eyed, alert young American is seldom at a discount
under such conditions. The spice of the unusual procedure, flavored by a
certain curiosity, led Nora to receive him graciously, if with a not unnatural
shyness arising from the innuendoes of my letter and Hooper’s own
persistence in seeking the meeting.
He lost no time in tackling the subject for which she had accorded the
rendezvous. Once they were seated in the box, and the strains of the

orchestra (how remarkably was music interwoven with the vital events of
Karl’s career!) made it impossible for his voice to carry through the thin
partitions on each side, Hooper plunged into a clear, decisive, and, to any
ears save those of a woman in love, convincing history of Karl’s sixth sense
and its latest astounding developments.
Though she protested vehemently, and threatened (though probably not
quite in earnest in this) to leave the theater, Hooper spared her no shred of
the evidence which proved that Karl was killing himself on her account.
Never did a nice young man carry out an harder self-imposed ordeal with a
nice young woman than Hooper that evening in his impassioned plea to
Nora Cazenove for his friend’s life.
“I never let up on her for an instant,” he said in his own picturesque way.
“We had a heart-to-heart talk. The storming of San Juan Hill was child’s
play to the way in which I hurled my battalions of fact against her
entrenchments of romance. When I pictured Karl’s impending collapse, the
inconsolable despair of his parents, her own unending self-reproach, and
even the broken-hearted sorrow of her successful rival, I got her to the point
of yielding. I pitied her for her suffering, but I promised her the reward of
the consciousness of having acted nobly. She, and Karl, and Maggie, were
the victims of circumstances. They could no more help what had happened
than moths driven out to sea by a summer hurricane. One of them must let
go for the good of all. If she renounced Karl voluntarily, there was a chance,
and perhaps only a remote chance, that a tragedy might be averted. I could
not guarantee that. But it was the one way out, in your judgment and mine,
while her marriage with Karl was simply not to be thought of, because he
would be dead within a week.”
Think of this strenuous advocate piling Pelion upon Ossa to scale the
fortress of a woman’s fierce love, asking her to believe the incredible, to
sacrifice herself, not only for the sake of the man she worshiped, but to
secure the happiness of another woman! And yet, he nearly won. Of that he
was certain.
He kept until the last the fact that Karl was even then lying in the hotel,
weary almost unto dissolution, utterly spent by the struggle which he had
waged in her behalf. It seemed to him that the intensity of his convictions
had borne down the barrier Karl himself had erected in Nora’s heart and

brain. She was on the point of yielding. The words trembled on her lips
which would set Karl free, but the dénouement came in a fashion which
neither of them expected.
Hitherto she had been greatly distressed, yet the exigencies of the time and
place restrained her protests to the spoken word, the flashing eye, the
tremulous lip.
Suddenly she rose to her feet and staggered back into the dark interior of
the box. Had not Hooper caught her in his arms she would have fallen.
“Oh, take me home, take me home!” she wailed. “For pity’s sake, do not
leave me! Karl is dead!”

CHAPTER XXIII
“A STRUGGLE ’TWIXT LOVE AND DEATH”
And now you shall hie with me to Italy. I had missed the over-night
Engadine Rapide to Lucerne, and Hooper’s enthusiasm sent me to Dover
two hours too early. As it happens, I take a lasting delight in getting the
better of the terrible line between London and the channel, which any man
may do by catching a fast train slightly in advance of the boat express and
carrying his grip from the town station to the pier. He thus avoids the
scandalous over-charge of the boat trains, and lays the unction to his soul
that he is not a holder of “Doras.”
All day long I was looking at scenes familiar to my eyes. Lille, Douai, St.
Quentin, Laon—how the old cities of French Flanders and Picardy brought
the ghosts of past years trooping before me. Then, as night fell, began that
interminable running into and out of frontier stations on rails laid in
crescents, so that you are seldom certain where the engine is, and it is hard
to persuade your nervous fellow-passenger, who has never taken the
journey before, that he or she is not in the wrong train.
Thus, accompanied by the babel of funny noises inseparable from French
railways, I dozed through a rumbling journey and reached Basle in the early
morning. It will perhaps scarce be credited (seeing that I have posed, and
justly, as an experienced voyageur) that I quitted London without
ascertaining the exact locality of the Castello Rondo. At Lucerne I
purchased a guide-book to the Italian Lakes, virgin territory to me,
notwithstanding all my jaunts in strange lands. I discovered, to my dismay,
that the shores of Lake Como cover nearly a hundred miles, while towns
cluster round its “efflorescent loveliness” in a fine profusion. Bellagio,
Cadenabbia and Como I had heard of, but who was to distinguish Domaso
from Dongo, or Colico from Cremia?
To add to my annoyance, the writer of the guide-book spread himself on the
fact that each jutting peninsula or verdant slope held “castles with turreted
towers, peeping out, ever and anon, from the sylvan woods which hide
them.” Cheerfully could I have wrung his neck for that sentence. It tortured

me until the slow Italian train deposited me at Como at eleven o’clock,
which, allowing for mid-Europe time, was slightly in advance of the hour
Frank Hooper called at Sandilands House.
You will remember that Nora had gone out, meaning to drive Mrs. Grier
and Karl to Hurlingham. Karl, of course, was then asleep in the Pall Mall
Hotel, so the two ladies went together, and a fine fencing-match they
indulged in, without a doubt. But they, at least, used words which they
understood, even if they tried to cloak their meaning, while I used a
language which I did not understand in striving to wrest from several
voluble Italians the whereabouts of the Castello Rondo and the Signora
Hutchinson. One brigandish person reeled off fourteen likely places, so I
quitted the terminus in wrath, found the English-speaking proprietor of a
hotel, and luckily ascertained from him that the lady and mansion I was in
search of would surely be in the neighborhood of Bellagio.
I believed him, and took a steamer for a two hours’ journey on the lake.
When I saw the superb panorama opening up in front, when the Villa d’Este
spread its wondrous array of terraces, temples, waterfalls, gardens, and
fountains before my astonished eyes, I forgave the guide-book man. Some
day I mean to ramble along those enchanted shores—some day, ere the
world grows dim—if only to visit that sixty-foot monument erected at
Laglio by Joseph Frank to his own memory and in grateful
acknowledgment of his own worth. His was a noble idea. If the rich and
distinguished people we know would but adopt it, and justly appraise
themselves at their own valuation, the face of the earth would soon be
covered with costly memorials.
The lake is shaped somewhat on the lines of the Three Legs of the Isle of
Man, with Bellagio perched on a dividing promontory. I reached the
landing-stage at exactly 6.45 p.m., Greenwich time.
At no great distance, I noticed the round towers of a castellated building
nestling among the trees of a rock-guarded point. Pace Shakespeare, there
is a good deal in a name.
An intelligent-looking vetturino seized me, but, ere I yielded, I pointed to
the building which caught my eye.
“Castello Rondo?” I cried.

“Si, signor.” He smiled.
“Signora Hutchinson?”
“Per certo, signor.” He grinned all over his face. No doubt you have noticed
the stupid habit of foreigners (when you do not know their language) in not
replying “Yes” or “No” to your questions.
Anyhow, the words had a reassuring sound. I gave him the name of the
hotel, and he appeared to regard my advent as a license to kill all who dared
to cross his path. I think I heard every bad word in the Italian tongue before
the vehicle deposited me, with a series of wild bounds up hill and down
dale, at the hotel portico. The coachman swore at his horse, at pedestrians,
chickens, dogs, and other charioteers, and interlarded his scurrility with
appeals to the saints.
I believe he informed me that if I patronized him exclusively during my
stay in Bellagio he would always drive like that. To do him justice, he kept
his contract. I only saw him twice again, and in the second drive we bagged
a hen, an apple-barrow, and the crutch of a cripple, who recovered
miraculously when our fiery steed snorted down his neck.
A tub and a change of raiment removed the dust of empires. Now that I was
actually in the same locality as Maggie Hutchinson, the means whereby I
was to achieve my object were not so clear as the object itself. By hook or
by crook I hoped to bring Miss Margaret and her mother back with me to
London. The first train, in reason, left Como the following afternoon, and
was timed to reach Victoria twenty-nine hours later.
So two whole days must pass before Hooper (to whom I had telegraphed
my arrival) could expect relief. Would it be too late? And, in any event,
would the ladies consent to accompany me? I was consumed with
impatience, so perplexed and worried that I despatched a second telegram
to Hooper, asking him to wire me news of some sort. I strove to eat, but I
was too eager for action to sit through a dinner of many courses.
Ultimately, I resolved to visit the Castello Rondo much earlier than
politeness permitted, on the supposition that its occupants dined at the usual
hour.
Outside the hotel my vetturino was watching for me, vulture-like, as his
ancestors for many a generation had watched for the passing of unwary

travelers through Cis-Alpine gorges. I have already recounted the exciting
nature of our transit across Bellagio. The man was evidently mad with the
joy of securing an Englishman.
The killing of the hen, the frenzy of the apple-vender, the curses of the
cured cripple, each in its way tended to fend off the weight which a difficult
task imposed on my spirits. Nevertheless, my heart sank in my boots when I
raised a ponderous knocker, a wrought-iron ring in the mouth of a
beautifully modeled lion’s head, and delivered the first note of my mandate
to Karl’s lady-love.
That was a lasting peculiarity of my friend’s sixth sense. Once removed
from its aura, the mind began to deny it, faith wavered, the familiar things
of life forbade its acceptance. Its nature and influence stood apart from all
accepted theories of existence. It was inexplicable, insoluble, more
nebulous than the Nirvana of the Buddhists. One felt as awkward as a
professed scientist who purposed addressing a critical audience on the
demonstrable truths of astrology or the doctrines of Mrs. Mary Baker G.
Eddy.
My Jehu promised to await me tutta via, and I was admitted into a medieval
courtyard—ancient in architectural design, that is—because the building
was not old. Troubled though I was, a glance showed that the mansion was
modern enough in its luxuries and equipment. Beyond a Grecian colonnade
lay a smooth carpet of grass. Behind it, a series of terraces stretched down
to the lake. Although the water was crimson with the glory of the setting
sun, although clipped shrubs and ornamental flower-beds were still glorious
in the light of day, I was positively startled to see that the nearest lawn was
the identical spot I had visited during the momentary spell Karl had cast
upon me when we dined together on the night of my return from
Heidelberg.
The knowledge shocked distrust out of my heart. I was thrice armed now.
The whole crowd of extraordinary experiences which I had undergone since
the uneventful picnic in the Schonau Forest rushed in on my memory. To
lose belief in Karl was to account myself insane.
In popular idiom, we speak of certain events serving to “stiffen our
backbone.” The phrase has an added peculiarity when examined in its
telegnomic significance, but, whatever its inward meaning, it had a salutary

force for me just then. I had scarce noted the landscape of my waking
dream when a tall elegant-looking young man came to me. I recognized him
at once. He was the third figure of that uncanny moonlit scene—the
“Italian, of good birth, madly in love with Maggie.”
“I regret to say Miss Hutchinson is indisposed,” he said in excellent
English.
I have encountered several well-born Italians who are warranted to get up a
frantic passion in five minutes for any nice young lady dowered with great
wealth. I am glad to say I took this cavalier’s measure at a glance. Perhaps,
by and by, I may cultivate a sixth sense of my own. At any rate, I was quite
sure he had snatched my card from the stupid domestic who came with him
to the courtyard, and was interposing a barrier between Maggie and me.
“Did Miss Hutchinson send that message to me?” I asked.
“No; not exactly. She does not receive at this hour.”
“You have mistaken an urgent matter for a mere social call,” I answered. “I
have come straight to this house from London. I must see Miss Hutchinson
immediately. Kindly send my card to her. She knows my name.”
To avoid a scene, I let him down lightly. But when one man wishes to tell
another that he is a cur, there are many varieties of speech. He flushed
darkly, yet he had the wit to take the via media I offered.
“I am sorry,” he said, with a bow of excessive courtesy. “The servant did
not explain matters.”
He gabbled some instructions in Italian, handed over my pasteboard, and
proceeded to question me politely about my business. I found this amusing,
but I had no wish to quarrel with him, so I gave him verbally what my old
friend, Toff Wall, the “Brummagem Pet,” used to call a “steadier on the
breadbasket” by hinting at falling stocks, and followed it up with a
“smasher on the snuff-box” in the shape of lachrymose comment on the sad
reverses of fortune some people were subjected to.
This by-play was ended by the appearance of Maggie herself. In the rich
half-light of that evening in wonderland, I thought I had never seen a
woman so ethereally beautiful.

The plump school-girl contour had given place to a delightfully piquant
femininity. Surprise, pleasure, a vague feeling of alarm, enlivened her
mobile face and incardinated her pale cheeks with a delicious rose tint.
I was quick to note, too, that she glanced at the Italian with some
astonishment, even as she flitted towards me with outstretched hands, nor
did she pay heed to the explanatory lie he murmured rapidly in his own
language. I learnt afterwards that it was his presence for which she was
“indisposed.” But let him pass. I only set eyes on him once again—at the
railway station.
“I am delighted to see you,” she cried. “Remember you? Of course I do. But
is it true what Baptisto said—that you have traveled from London on some
errand of importance to me?”
“It is quite true,” I said.
“Oh, come this way. It is nothing serious, I hope? Is—is Mrs. Grier ill?”
“No. It is on Karl’s behalf I am here.”
“Karl! Why Karl? I have not—met him for many years.”
The slight pause, with its distinctive choice of a word, did not escape me.
She was leading me through the house, a treasury of art in canvas and stone,
and she had now ushered me into a room which, as I fully anticipated, was
the boudoir-studio in which I had already seen her.
We were alone. I last beheld her on her knees in that identical apartment,
and the memory of her tear-stained face surged in on me. It was no time to
pick and choose expressions. The stereotyped language which I had framed
to convey my thoughts was wholly inadequate to the demands of an
interview fraught with such a momentous result.
I placed a hand on her shoulder, and I fear there was somewhat of a break in
my voice as I said:
“I know much about you two. I cannot hold back my message. Karl, in this
instant, is engaged in a desperate struggle between love and death. I come
to you for him if not from him. I want you to return with me to England and
save him.”

“Save him!” she repeated, her large brown eyes dilating with a terror the
true cause of which I did not divine instantly.
“Yes. I am speaking from my heart. Karl is at death’s door. I, and another
acquainted with all the circumstances, believe that you can bring him back
to life. But you must come quickly. Even now you may be too late.”
She faced me with a vehemence that was altogether unexpected.
“What do you mean?” she cried. “You speak in riddles. What is Karl to me?
I have driven him out of my heart, crushed his very image in my brain. He
is nothing to me.”
Her excited protest aroused my resentment.
“You, too, are using words which are meaningless if judged only by the
common laws of entity. Yet it is not a week since you knelt here, in a
passion of tears, and wrapped Karl in your innermost soul. Do not deceive
yourself any longer. He is your preordained mate, and he is pining for you.
Yet he is giving his life to rescue you from emotions which cause you
poignant suffering. Go to him! Clasp him in your arms! You cannot, you
must not, continue to resist him.”
Poor girl! She looked wildly into my eyes, and then shrank away from me
with a heartbreaking sob. She could not choose but believe me. In some
respects, I was as thoroughly unstrung as she. I did not stop to consider
whether or not I had taken the best way to win her to my point of view. Yet
I endeavored most desperately, and it is somewhat to my credit, I fancy, to
rescue the situation from the tornado into which it was plunged so suddenly.
“Try and listen to me calmly,” I said, for Maggie was crumpled up in a low
chair, and gasping, without tears, in that agonizing manner of women when
misery vanquishes them. “Karl loves you, and you love him. The sovereign
passion has made a battle-ground of your hearts. You are at once happy and
miserable, conscious of a superhuman ecstasy, yet self-condemned to
separation from the one being who is all in all to you. The tension cannot
endure. For five years the voluntary screen erected by you placed him and
you in a spiritual trance. It has fallen now, and forever, yielding to the rude
assault of those who dare to sever the bond which unites you until death. Is
it not time you flew to your lover’s embrace? Do you hold your scruples
dearer than his life?”

“No, no, not that,” she whispered. “None can be to Karl what I have been.
But I am fearful of myself, fearful that I may destroy what I cannot create.
Oh, what shall I say to make you understand that I have withheld myself
from him not for my own sake but for his?”
“Let me reassure you there. Though Karl has never spoken to me of his love
for you, I am sure he appreciates your self-sacrifice to the uttermost degree.
And I, too, vaguely yet sincerely as I conceive a life beyond the grave, have
formed some idea of the burthen you have borne. You are an inseparable
element of Karl’s existence. Owing to you, and through you, he developed
faculties whose potency now threatens to overwhelm him. You are part of
his very being, the spontaneous Eve of his earthly Paradise. Joined with
you, he rises beyond the clouds of our present knowledge. Bereft of you, he
sinks back to the level of every-day humanity. Do not force me to say harsh
things of an obstinacy which keeps you apart.”
“It was through me that Constantine died. I saw him torn to pieces. I heard
his last cry. Would you have me eternally branded with a crime?”
Were it not for the tragic consequences of her decision, I could have smiled
at this despairing effort to divert me from the track of the shadowy truth I
was pursuing.
“You know full well that Constantine paid the penalty of the heedless man
who touches a live wire,” I protested. “You must blame his folly, not the
relentless force which he incredulously despised. Come, now, Miss
Hutchinson, I have said sufficient to prove to you that one other in the
world, besides you and Karl, has probed the depths of the enigma which has
terrified you for years. You are a woman to-day, not the timid girl who first
saw visions on board the Merlin, and you have all a woman’s capacity for
boundless love. The fight and the dread are ended. You must come with me
to Karl, and all will be well.”
Going back to-day to the memories of that astounding scene, when I, to
rescue my friend, flung prudence and a great many other wise restraints to
the winds, I am guiltily conscious that the possible effect on Nora Cazenove
of a marriage between Karl and Maggie did not weigh greatly in the scale
of my argument. A man who sees a ghost may be pardoned if he uses
certain extravagant expressions and entertains one-sided views on the
subject of specters. I was nearer to the mysterious essence of telegnomy

than I knew. Here, in the actual presence of the fair creature who was
symbolic of the everlasting revivification of nature, I was carried out of
myself, rapt to the skies in a mystical mood of awestricken exaltation. “My
heart was hot within me, and while I was thus musing the fire kindled.” I
seemed to be hovering on the very lip of knowledge. That which is sown in
weakness and raised in power, sown a natural body and raised a spiritual
body—that which men loosely style eternity—was clothing its enduring
divinity with the perishable garments of earth.
How long I stood there, dazed with the immensity of this new intellectual
horizon, I know not. The need of further speech had gone. Maggie, clasping
her hands on her knees, was gazing at me with eyes which saw not, and I
was waiting as though for some dread sentence which should snap invisible
chains of wondrous strength, when a great change came over her face.
From abounding melancholy her aspect altered to that of transfixed horror.
She sprang from the chair in which she was sitting and caught my arm with
the tenacious strength of partial dementia.
“It is too late!” she muttered in a terrible voice. “Steindal has murdered
Karl! And I, too, have helped to kill him! Oh, may Heaven forgive me!”
She herself sank as one dead. I held her while I cried in a frenzy for help.
The wonder is that I did not collapse by her side.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE FALL OF THE CURTAIN
I suppose there are some supercilious mortals who will cavil at what they
may be pleased to term the sensationalism of those doings in the London
opera house and the Italian villa. There will surely be others ready to scoff
at the fine rage into which Hooper and I worked ourselves in order to
arrange the somewhat involved love affairs of a friend. Well, to the one set
of critics, I can only reply that Karl did not die—in fact, if they turn back to
the opening lines of this history, they will find his future career, a peaceful
life blessed by an enchanted matrimony, set forth in the clearest words at
my command. As for the others, the utterers of jibes, I have no such logical
hammer with which to pound them to a jelly. There are those who have eyes
and see not, ears and hear not; and who shall give them the additional
senses the lack of which was thus deplored by the Evangelist Mark?
Indeed, I must not expect a host of believers. Some few will understand me
when I say that it is possible for a man or a woman to love at first sight,
instantly, absolutely, and forever. But—goodness me!—that doctrine will
not go down with the multitude, and my natural candor impels me to admit
that it would be a very troublesome and evil thing for the multitude if it did.
Nevertheless, I wish to explain, for the benefit of the elect (and we, dear
fellow-visionary, you who are blessed with the full heart and the dreaming
brain, we are the elect—of that there can be no manner of doubt in our
minds), why it came about that Nora Cazenove and Maggie Hutchinson
actually knew that Karl was suddenly stricken out of consciousness, a state
which, to their overladen souls, was equivalent to his death.
Karl, locked in the suite of rooms at the Pall Mall Hotel, awoke from his
restful sleep about eight o’clock. He was surprised to see by the shadows
and the appearance of the streets that the hour was really as late as a glance
at a clock revealed to his incredulous eyes. He wondered why and where
Hooper had gone. Thinking that his friend, having evidently dressed for
dinner, was dining alone rather than disturb him, he rang for the valet, and
then came the explanation of the locked door.

It was the easiest thing for Karl to discover what Hooper was doing. The
additional demand on his telegnomic sense made by such a quest was
infinitesimal. But, probably because he was exceedingly run down and
weak from want of food and sufficient rest, he yielded to a quick anger,
determinedly set himself against any inquiry, and ordered the attendant to
open the outer door immediately.
Of course, he was obeyed.
He could not change his clothing, but he laved his face and hands in cold
water. This was refreshing in itself, but thenceforth he became aware of a
steadily increasing strain on his magnetic energies. His nervous system was
a delicate organism vastly more sensitive than the finest instrument known
to science, though some have reached such perfection that a suspended
needle in England can scratch on a prepared plate a record of the direction
and magnitude of a ten seconds’ earthquake at the Antipodes. He did not
fear immediate dissolution as the result of the added burthen. He had
devoted himself continuously, during many days, to maintaining the mental
poise, so to speak, of the two human beings whose lives were so intimately
linked with his own. He knew the exact strength of magnetic current needed
for the task, and the perceptible growth of the tension now puzzled but did
not alarm him.
The slight feeling of irritation against Hooper was succeeded by a species
of teeth-setting, a back-to-the-wall attitude, which hardened his resolve not
to seek any information but simply to devote his dynamic powers to the
new and strange tax made on them.
In a mood which may almost be termed one of bravado, he went down-
stairs and entered the restaurant.
“Have you seen anything of Mr. Hooper?” he asked Jules, the head waiter.
“Mais non, M’sieu’. He hass not been here at all.”
“Perhaps he will turn up soon. Ask the chef to prepare us a poulet en
casserole. That will give the wanderer twenty minutes’ grace.”
Jules, an acute observer of men, eyed his young patron covertly.
“You don’d look ver’ well,” he hinted. “Let me bring you a leetle pick-you-
up—un fortifiant—shall it be a vermouth and Angostura?”

“It shall not,” said Karl, a smile chasing the weariness from his face. “Don’t
worry about me, Jules. I am neither bull nor bear, backer nor layer. Nor has
my best girl proved fickle. What I really do lack is that chicken.”
Jules did not understand. But he knew that the trouble, whatever it was, was
not to be removed by the revivers of general acceptance.
Left to himself, Karl’s thoughts began to wander. He asked himself how
Hooper and I were speeding on our missions, because, by this time, he
knew what Frank was doing. It is no matter for surprise that he followed me
rather than the American in his musings. He was aware of that which I only
suspected—that Maggie had deliberately shut him out from the sanctity of
her presence until her edict was burnt up in the electric ardor of the new
conditions set in motion by Karl’s proposed marriage to Nora and the mere
suggestion of her own union with the Italian.
Still fully alive to that ever-growing strain, which, of course, was caused by
the opposing influence Hooper and I were establishing, he strove to keep
his faculties within bounds. He shut his spiritual eyes, guarded his ears
against the far-off sounds which might have troubled them, and endeavored
to take a passive interest in the other people in the restaurant.
Notwithstanding his marvelous self-control, he was restless. He wished
Hooper would return and put an end to the suspense by his agreeable rattle.
He strove to eat some of the tempting hors d’œuvres set before him, but,
like any sick child, he fancied he could touch nothing except the dish he had
ordered, and it seemed to be unreasonably long in the cooking.
Then he looked at his watch, Constantine’s gift, and, after noting the hour,
8.40 p.m., he idly read the inscription inside the gold cover. By a queer trick
of memory, his mind went back to the starlit sky and the black waters of the
Bay of Bengal. He heard again the plash of the oars, saw the Armenian
clinging to the buoy and plunging frantically, and renewed his childish awe
at the long rows of shining lights in the ship’s hull and the way in which her
huge, dark bulk towered above the tiny boat when the sailors pulled
alongside.
Then the black mass seemed to topple over on to him, there was a blaze of
vivid light, and Karl lost consciousness.

What had happened was this. Steindal, vengeful as an infuriated ape,
entered the restaurant just as Karl opened his watch. His dark eyes
contracted and darted a lambent glare at the stalwart figure seated, as it
transpired, at the very table where the Jew had indulged in his antics a few
nights earlier. There came to him the maddening knowledge that many of
those present exchanged nods, and winks, and inaudible asides, the moment
he appeared. It may be that some subtle influence, some weakened
inductive current, leaped out at him without Karl being either responsible
for or aware of its action. The exact motive will never be known, but its
result was lamentably evident. Steindal snatched a full bottle of champagne
from the ice-pail in which it rested beside a neighboring table, and dealt
Karl a murderous blow with it on the back of the head.
Maggie, who actually saw and heard what took place, gave a far clearer
account of it than the horrified witnesses in the restaurant.
“Steindal’s face assumed a demoniacal expression,” she said, when, long
afterwards, she was able to speak calmly of the unnerving spectacle. “I have
read of the lust of murder, but I never knew what it meant until I saw his
black eyes emitting a dull, red light, and his lips parting with an animal
snarl. He leaped forward at Karl in a peculiar way. He seemed to bring
down the bottle with an awful force just as his feet touched the ground. The
bottle burst, and its fragments flew on all sides, some of the bits of glass
cutting Steindal’s forehead. With an activity I would not have credited in a
man of his corpulence, and which he certainly did not exhibit in his normal
life, he turned and ran out of the room, upsetting two tables and some
chairs, and disappearing through a narrow doorway. Some gentlemen
rushed after him, and others helped to raise Karl, who had fallen as one
dead headlong on the table. I cannot say why it is, but my last sight of
Steindal, bounding across the floor in the effort to escape, reminded me of
that dreadful orang-outang described by Edgar Allan Poe in the ‘Murders of
the Rue Morgue.’”
Nora Cazenove knew nothing of this. She was only acutely aware of the
snapping of the invisible link which held her fast. Hence, it is easy enough
to understand the different cries of horror and bewilderment with which
each girl announced her dread discovery.

A policeman, strolling past the Pall Mall exit from the hotel through which
Steindal gained the street, supplied a succinct narrative of subsequent
events so far as the would-be murderer was concerned. At the kerb was
standing an empty hansom, the driver of which was fastening the nose-bag
on its accustomed hook beneath the “dicky.” Steindal sprang into the
vehicle, leaned over the splash-board, seized the reins and shook the horse
into a fast gallop.
The animal, a Londoner by adoption, was accustomed to this frenzied leap
into activity when a whistling fare was to be secured from a rival. Being a
careless beast, it kept on the right side of the road, which, in England, is the
wrong side, and after a brief career in comparative safety, encountered a
heavy ’bus crunching round the corner from Waterloo Place.
Steindal, yelling hysterically in Spanish (he went back to his Mexican
mother’s tongue, you see, when the lightning struck him), urged the horse
to charge the oncoming Colossus. But the horse knew better than that, and
swerved into the open space in front of the Duke of York’s column. The
unoccupied square was traversed at full speed. Ere the steed, far wiser than
the man, could check his wild progress, he was flying down the long flight
of steps into St. James’s Park.
Most happily, the Jew’s lunacy involved no further tragedy. At that
particular hour, even on a summer night, central London is fairly empty.
Therefore, the few privileged spectators of this unparalleled feat by a horse,
cab, and man, saw the mad descent and heard Steindal’s incoherent shrieks
without being called on to tend some other unhappy sufferer from the
escapade.
The horse, thoroughly frightened now, lost his coolness when the level
ground was reached once more. He dashed on blindly, caught the vehicle
against a tree, and the policemen and startled passers-by who then came on
the scene extricated the insensible Jew from the ruins of the cab. He had
been badly injured by the plunging hoofs, and fully six months elapsed
before he was restored to health and Paris. In that time a great many things
had happened. Steindal thenceforth passed out of Karl’s life. No action was
taken against him for the attempted murder. The mad act was attributed to
sudden mania, but he was warned that he must avoid England in future, if
he would not undergo the peine forte et dure.

Hooper was the first to restore order out of chaos. The manner in which he
rushed Nora Cazenove out of the box and into her own brougham
astonished the opera-goers and made the “front of the house” gasp.
Did he take her to Sandilands’ House? If ever you meet him, ask him, and
you will hear an expressive Americanism.
Somewhat unjustly, he rated Nora all the way from Covent Garden to the
hotel. His indignation was pardonable. Karl was his friend, and Nora he had
seen for the first time half an hour earlier. If Karl were really dead, Hooper
held that Nora’s unreasonable passion was the chief cause of his death.
Perchance, the masterful spirit he showed during that turbulent drive went a
long way towards taming the impulsive nature of a very lovable and
beautiful woman, for, queer whirligig of a world that it is, Nora is now Mrs.
Hooper, and a very dear friend, indeed, of Maggie’s. Don’t imagine, for an
instant, that Frank smirched the fair fame of all American husbands by
“bossing” his charming wife. Next to Karl, and myself, he is a model
Benedict.
Well, the anguish of that night in Como has long passed away, so I will not
attempt to harrow your feelings by describing the heart-broken grief of
Maggie, the scarcely less frenzied anxiety of her mother, the turmoil and
worry and wild guessing at eventualities which racked us during three
weary hours. When Steindal vanished from the restaurant so did Maggie’s
perceptiveness fade away. She strove, with a fierce longing, to follow the
little cortège which carried Karl up-stairs. It was useless. The veil had
fallen. She moved and spoke with the hopeless air of a woman beaten to her
knees. I think she was overborne by the experiences of that trying period.
Had Karl died, I am sure she would not have survived him long.
I quitted the castle at ten o’clock. Some English-speaking servant told the
vetturino to drive slowly. Yet, an hour later, I needed his daring, because a
lame horse brought me back all too slowly to show Maggie a second
telegram from Hooper:
“Karl lives. Doctors predict recovery.”
By some miracle it reached me that night. Be sure I pounded hard on the
lion’s head knocker of the Castello Rondo to convey the glad news.

Other messages to hand in the morning rescued our journey to London from
the misery which must have attended it otherwise. The Italian count saw us
off from Como. I did not grudge him that happiness. It was his parting
glimpse of his divinity—and her fortune.
Slow as the mail train seemed to us in its scurry through Italy, Switzerland,
and France, we passed many a weary hour in England before Karl
recovered his five senses, to say nothing of the sixth. During four days he
lay prone at the gate of death, his breathing slow, labored, and stertorous,
the pupils of his eyes dilated unequally.
But splendid surgery saved him. The injury was so serious that a prompt
operation, carried out before his parents were even aware of his condition,
alone pulled him back from the void. Steindal’s blow, delivered on the side
rather than the back of the head, caused a depressed fracture of the skull, a
tiny bit of bone being driven into the temporo-sphenoidal lobe. The
resultant concussion, too, passed rapidly into a compression of the brain
arising from effusion of blood. It was the breaking of the bottle which
delivered Karl from instant death. Had such a heavy implement retained its
solidity, the shock must necessarily have been fatal.
The expert surgeon who carried out the requisite trephining gave me these
details after one of his visits. Karl was yet unconscious, and this was the
fourth morning after the attack!
Maggie, frail ghost, waylaid us in the corridor.
“Doctor,” she whispered, “may I see him?”
Medical men are telegnomists in their way. He had noticed her on the
previous day, soon after our arrival, in fact, and his professional eye was
attracted by her ethereal beauty.
“Yes,” he said. “That will do no harm. But you must promise to keep quiet.”
“I promise,” she answered.
He led her to the room where Karl lay, tended by hospital nurses. None
hindered, so I went with them. Maggie was braver than I thought. She
moved noiselessly to the head of the bed and stooped over the recumbent
form. Karl was restless, almost fretful. The light was dim, yet I distinctly

caught the unspoken question on Maggie’s lips as she turned and looked at
the surgeon. He nodded.
She bent and kissed Karl lightly on the forehead, where the bandages left a
little space. Then she murmured, ever so tenderly:—
“Karl, mera piyárá, I am here!”
What heaven-sent inspiration moved that “maiden with the meek, brown
eyes” to utter those Persian words of endearment? Many a year had passed
since Karl and she spoke Hindustáni to each other. She had almost forgotten
the language, yet the first gush of impulse renewed the fount, and here was
she calling him her sweetheart as she was wont to do in the lisping
childhood of far-away Darjeeling.
The doctor told me that it was coincidence—blessed explanation!—that
consciousness frequently returned on the fourth day in such cases—but,
however it may be, Karl looked up at Maggie in the most natural way and
said quite rationally:
“I thought you would come, dear. Don’t leave me again.”
He thought she would come! And when had he done the thinking? Oh, that
wonderful, misunderstood brain of ours! How little do we appreciate its
awful mystery!
Were I writing a mere novel I would, of course, dwell on the joys of
convalescence—describe in touching phrase the quiet content of those two
turtle doves, when one might sit and read the other bits of news of the outer
world, pausing ever and anon to ask, with the love-light in her glance, if he
was sure she was not tiring him. What between Mrs. Grier, and Maggie, and
two of those human angels who wore the uniform of some great hospital,
never was man so waited on. Plenty of good fellows of my acquaintance
have come a cropper at polo, scrunching their craniums on a maidán hard as
iron, without a quarter so much fuss being made over them. Yet, seeing that
I embarked on a semi-scientific voyage with the pen, so must I end my
quest in similar strain. The surgeon who described Karl’s injuries so lucidly
became curious as to the meaning of certain hints dropped by Hooper and
myself, more especially when he chanced to hear the elder Grier
denouncing telegnomy and all its arts.

Gradually, feeling my way with the wariness of a mole, I led him along the
underground paths of the sixth sense so far as I could track them. He
listened with increased interest. Ultimately, he asked me to introduce him to
Sir William Macpherson. They discussed learnedly for a long time, and they
agreed, at last, in a mild definition:
“The upper temporo-sphenoidal lobe contains the cortical auditory center,”
they said. “The functions of the middle and lower lobes are not definitely
ascertained. Karl Grier is stated to have exhibited abnormal manifestations
of unrecognized cerebral activities, and, as these seem to have ceased since
he received the blow, it is advisable to point out that the resultant fracture of
the skull caused a lesion of the two lobes in question.”
They would go no further than that in writing. But they went a long way
further in speech, and, if any encouragement on the part of those eminent
specialists could have induced Karl to recover his lost faculties, that
encouragement was certainly forthcoming.
He has unhesitatingly declined to attempt any such thing. He is happy in his
wife, his children, and his surroundings, and he is not willing to tempt the
fates again. He has admitted to me that he is still aware of tidal influence
(which, be it remembered, affects the solid earth as well as the unstable
water), and he believes he has the power, if he chose to exert it, of seeing
and hearing far more of other people’s business than he desires to know.
But he refuses to face the unknown again. He carried the experiment far
beyond the bounds of present scientific investigation. I have described some
part of the inquiry and its outcome. Both of us are content to allow others to
take up the threads of knowledge where they have fallen from our hands.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been
standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KARL GRIER ***

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