The Professor's Mystery Part 27

I rose from my chair. "Of course I've no idea of putting in my oar without authority. Give me credit for that much sense--and thank you for making me understand the facts. Tell Mr. Tabor of this conversation, will you? I'm off to New York."

"Certainly. Certainly. By the way, Crosby, I suppose I ought to congratulate you. Fine. Fine. Well, we've all got to be patient and hope for the best. It's hard, of course. But life's a hard struggle. A hard struggle. Good-by. Can you see your way down?"

As Reid had intelligently observed, it was hard. And the hardest part of it was the waiting. I saw Maclean that same night, and without evincing more than an ordinary curiosity about spiritualism, arranged to be taken to the next of the seances. After that, there was nothing to do until one should be held. The slender thread of coincidence between Sheila's ghost-stories and my experiences at the last one was my single chance of discovering a remedy of which the doctors did not know. Probably I should discover nothing of any use; but until I could contribute some definite help, I would not go back to Stamford. I had made more than enough trouble there already.

It was another week before the chance came. And I was a little surprised when Maclean conducted me not to the closed house we had before visited, but to the house on Ninety-second Street to which I had followed Doctor Paulus on his way home.

"Oh, they meet around at one another's houses," Mac explained as we went up the steps. "It's a gang of social lights that's runnin' these stunts as a fad, you see? An' the psychic researchers, they ring in. Now this time, see if you can't keep something on your stomach besides your hand.

You missed a pile of fun last performance."

It was a very different sort of house from the other; wide open and full of the sense of family inhabitance, a house full of silk hangings and new mahogany and vases of unseasonable flowers, an orchid of a house, a house where people would be like their own automobile, polished and expensive and a trifle fast. Professor Shelburgh was there, looking a little out of his element; and the others, by what I could tell, were mostly the same people as before; but there were more of them, twenty or twenty-five all told, chattering in groups about the brilliant room and giving it almost the air of a reception. It was evening, and the electric light and the formal dress of most of the guests added to the impression. I had my first good look at the medium before the proceedings began; a fattish, fluffy woman with large eyes, pale-haired and slow-moving, whose voluble trivialities of conversation and dress exaggerated both vulgarism and convention. For a moment or two, I wrestled with an uncanny certainty of having seen her somewhere before, groping about among recollections. Then all at once I remembered; she was the woman who had been with us in the trolley accident, the woman who had so curiously discovered the whereabouts of the chain.

As before, the circle formed about the center-table consisted of only a dozen or so, and the rest of us were left sitting about the walls. The doors were closed, and the extinguis.h.i.+ng of the lights left the room in almost utter darkness. The greenish pallor about the edges of the windows made it possible to imagine rather than to see. The gloom had the solidity of closed eyelids; and perhaps because of the sudden transition from brilliant light, it had the same fullness of indefinite color and movement; as when one suddenly buries one's face in the pillow, with the light still burning. I caught myself unconsciously straining my eyes to observe these half-imaginary after-images. And despite the difference of environment, the sitters had hardly begun their tuneless crooning of old songs before I felt the same breathless closeness as before, the same saturated oppression, the same feeling of uncomfortable and even indecent overcrowding.

I steadied myself with long breaths, bracing involuntarily against the tension. Then all at once, the door opened silently and softly closed; and as I turned to look some one rustled past me, visible only as a solid shadow in the gloom, and without a word slipped into a seat at the table. The others made room, and a chair was moved up quietly, no one speaking or even pausing in the song. But my heart pounded in my ears and my hands heated as I clenched them, for somehow I knew as certainly as if I could have plainly seen that the new-comer was Mrs. Tabor.

And it was as if she brought with her an increase of the already tense expectancy, as if her own nervous trouble spread out about her like a deepening of color, like a drop of blood falling into water already tinged with red. It was my own imagination, of course, the excitement of being close upon my quest, and the reaction of silence closing over the interruption of her entrance; but I felt the exertion of breathing, as if I were immersed up to the chin in water. If the atmosphere had been like a weight before, it was now like a deliberately closing vise. In the intervals of the droning hum at the table, the silence took on a quality of brittleness. Little brus.h.i.+ngs and rustlings ran in waves around the room, and I thought how a breeze runs over a field of tall gra.s.s, where each tuft in turn takes up its neighbor's restlessness. It occurred to me suddenly that most of the people here were women; and the sense of crowded presence led me to imagining crowds and throngs of women grouped in pictures or dancing in rows upon the stage. And then I remembered sharply that I could not see Mrs. Tabor and wondered whether my certainty that it was she had any more foundation than these other fantasies. I heard my own breathing, and that of many others. I felt vaguely irritated that all these breathings were not keeping time, and instinctively brought my own into the rhythm of the predominating number.

A chair creaked softly, and I started, while the skin tightened over my cheeks and my tongue dried and tasted salt. The medium seemed to be writhing about, making little soft urging noises, like m.u.f.fled groans or the nameless sound that goes with lifting a heavy burden or suddenly exerting the whole strength of the body. Then the peculiar padded rapping began. The incongruously matter-of-fact voice of the professor asked: "Are the hands all here?" and the circle counted in a low tone while the raps went irregularly on. Some woman across the room giggled nervously. Why these trivial details did not interrupt and relieve the tension, I do not know; but their very absurdity seemed to intensify it; I was hot and puffy and a trifle faint. Suddenly Maclean gripped my knee, and muttered: "Look at the table-- My G.o.d, look at the table--!"

I do not know just how to describe it; to say that I saw is not literally accurate, for it was really too dark to see; the table and the group around it were no more than a bulk in the midst of darkness. But as I strained my eyes toward it, that blur of unconvincing cloudiness which I had seen or fancied before swelled into mid-air, showing against the dark like black with light upon it against black in shadow. And illuminated as it were by that visible darkness, the table beneath it rose up from its place under the circle of hands, wavered as though afloat upon the rising stream of a fountain, then settled with a thud and a creak down again upon the floor. There was a momentary silence, full of crowded breathings. While I was wondering confusedly how much of it I had only imagined, Professor Shelburgh said calmly: "That's the best levitation we've had so far. Who did it? Who is there?" And the throaty, querulous contralto answered: "I did. Miriam. Do you want any more?"

Another man somewhere in the circle stammered uncomfortably: "I--well--er--I beg your pardon, but--could you move something quite beyond our reach? One of those things on the bookcase, for instance?"

"What for?" whined the voice, "you wouldn't believe it anyway-- I don't want to talk to you-- Is mother there?"

Maclean's hand relaxed upon my knee, and he sniffed audibly. But the answer brought my heart into my throat, for I knew who made it, beyond the possibility of mistake.

"Yes, dear," Mrs. Tabor said quietly. "What is it?"

"I wanted--to see you-- Why didn't you come last time?-- I get--lonely sometimes--"

"I couldn't come before. Aren't you happy?" She might have been speaking to a child crying in its bed.

"I want to--come back-- I want--you, mother dear-- I'm very happy, but I--went away too soon."

"But I've seen you every day at home, dear child."

"It isn't the--the same-- I can't talk--to you--there-- You're afraid of--something-- I see fear--in your heart--and--that frightens me."

"You mustn't be afraid, Miriam--you mustn't. n.o.body shall take you away!"

A flush and a wave of nausea went over me, and I felt my hair bristling, not with nervousness, but with a kind of anger. The unwholesomeness of the whole scene was too sickening--the poor mother's hysterical fondness, the utter sincerity of her emotion, and the sentimentalism that whined in reply, so perfectly calculated to irritate and control the crippled mind. And the element of distorted love made it all the worse, a beauty turned sour. I thought of the dainty little lady that had fenced with words so deftly; and only the need to understand once for all made me endure to listen.

"Ask something that no one but yourself can know," the professor put in.

Perhaps even he felt some embarra.s.sment.

Mrs. Tabor hesitated. "I wonder if I ought," she said, half to herself, "I do so want to know."

The voice grew steadier: "Ask me what you will--mother darling-- I know already--what you fear."

"Miriam, did I understand what--what I saw the other day?"

I grew suddenly cold, and felt as if the floor were sinking under me.

"The other day--? Fix your mind upon it, mother dear-- I see you now-- I see you very much frightened-- You thought a new trouble was coming--Another trouble like the first--not for yourself--but--"

"Oh, it wasn't myself!" The dry terror of the tone was dreadfully like something I remembered. "It was for her--you know it was for her. They looked as if-- Does she love him, Miriam? Does she love him?"

That was more than I would bear. The whole unnatural dialogue had been profane enough; but this new sacrilege-- The switch of the electric light was in the wall behind me, and before the spirit voice could speak again, my fingers had found and pressed it.

The medium gave a tearing scream that was horrible to hear, twisted herself out of her chair, and jerked and wriggled on the floor, choking and gurgling. In the sharp yellow glare, the whole room was one hysterical confusion, men and women scrambling to their feet, or sitting dazed, their hands before their eyes. The professor cried angrily: "Confound it, man, you're crazy! You're crazy! You may have killed her.

Don't you know how dangerous it is to turn on light that way?" and stooped over the struggling woman on the floor, with scowling sidelong glances back at me. A couple of other men came forward threateningly, and a bejeweled woman, who seemed to be the hostess, cried acidly: "Mercy on us, who is the fellow? One of those reporters?"

"Madam, I can promise you no publicity," said I, and I strode over to where Mrs. Tabor had sunk forward on the table, her head motionless upon her outstretched arms. Maclean came to my rescue just in time.

"One moment, ladies and gentlemen! Look there--the lady had fainted, you see? Fainted before the lights went on, you see? My friend did exactly right. Now let's keep this all as quiet as possible--we don't want a sensation in the papers." Then as he helped me to raise Mrs. Tabor from her chair, he muttered: "Darn you, Laurie, what in blazes was bitin' you anyhow?"

Between us, we half carried her from the room, while the others were attending to the medium and at cross-purposes among themselves. She had not actually fainted away, and in spite of her shock was able to walk down-stairs with a little help. The door-bell had been ringing violently as we came into the upper hall; and we were still upon the stairs when a fl.u.s.tered maid opened the door upon Mr. Tabor.

"Is Mrs. George Tabor--" he began. Then he caught sight of us and sprang past the maid with a growl.

"It's I, Mr. Tabor--Crosby. She's been to an entertainment here, and broken down. I'll tell you later. Have you got the car outside?"

"Yes, thank G.o.d. And Sheila's out there too. Come."

"I'm perfectly well," Mrs. Tabor said faintly. "Nothing to worry any one. Why are you all so nervous about me?"

"I'll go back now," said Maclean, as we reached the front door, "an'

hush up this gang up-stairs. There ain't goin' to be any disturbance about this. That crowd's more afraid of the leadin' dailies than they are of the devil, you see?"

I nodded, and the door closed behind us. Mr. Tabor did not say a word as we led his wife across the sidewalk and into the palpitating car. He motioned for me to follow her.

"Not if you can spare me, sir," I said. "I'll be out early to-morrow. I think I've found a key to the whole trouble, and I've got to see about it."

He turned, frowning into my eyes under the white bristle of his brows.

"Crosby," he growled, "either we've a good deal to thank you for, or else--or else you'd better not come to-morrow."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE CONSULTATION OF AN EXPERT AND A LAYMAN

It was a situation in which I felt that I needed counsel, and that of an expert order; so I made my way as fast as a taxicab could carry me to the home of Doctor Immanuel Paulus. Unless I was very much mistaken, I had something which would interest him. A messenger boy was running down his steps as I climbed them, and in the hall stood Doctor Paulus himself, opening the yellow envelop of a telegram. He nodded without looking at me, and with some sibilance of excuse, read the message. Then he thrust it into his pocket.