1. In Which Our Special Commissioners Make A Start

THE great Professor Challenger has been – very improperly and imperfectly – used in fiction. A daring author placed him in impossible and romantic situations in order to see how he would react to them. He reacted to the extent of a libel action, an abortive appeal for suppression, a riot in Sloane Street, two personal assaults, and the loss of his position as lecturer upon Physiology at the London School of Sub-Tropical Hygiene. Otherwise, the matter passed more peaceably than might have been expected.

But he was losing something of his fire. Those huge shoulders were a little bowed. The spade-shaped Assyrian beard showed tangles of grey amid the black, his eyes were a trifle less aggressive, his smile less self-complacent, his voice as monstrous as ever but less ready to roar down all opposition. Yet he was dangerous, as all around him were painfully aware. The volcano was not extinct, and constant rumblings threatened some new explosion. Life had much yet to teach him, but he was a little less intolerant in learning.

There was a definite date for the change which had been wrought in him. It was the death of his wife. That little bird of a woman had made her nest in the big man's heart. He had all the tenderness and chivalry which the strong can have for the weak. By yielding everything she had won everything, as a sweet-natured, tactful woman can. And when she died suddenly from virulent pneumonia following influenza, the man staggered and went down. He came up again, smiling ruefully like the stricken boxer, and ready to carry on for many a round with Fate. But he was not the same man, and if it had not been for the help and comradeship of his daughter Enid, he might have never rallied from the blow. She it was who, with clever craft, lured him into every subject which would excite his combative nature and infuriate his mind, until he lived once more in the present and not the past. It was only when she saw him turbulent in controversy, violent to pressmen, and generally offensive to those around him, that she felt he was really in a fair way to recovery.

Enid Challenger was a remarkable girl and should have a paragraph to herself. With the raven-black hair of her father, and the blue eyes and fresh colour of her mother, she was striking, if not beautiful, in appearance. She was quiet, but she was very strong. From her infancy she had either to take her own part against her father, or else to consent to be crushed and to become a mere automaton worked by his strong fingers. She was strong enough to hold her own in a gentle, elastic fashion, which bent to his moods and reasserted itself when they were past. Lately she had felt the constant pressure too oppressive and she had relieved it by feeling out for a career of her own. She did occasional odd jobs for the London press, and did them in such fashion that her name was beginning to be known in Fleet Street. In finding this opening she had been greatly helped by an old friend of her father – and possibly of the reader – Mr. Edward Malone of the Daily Gazette

Malone was still the same athletic Irishman who had once won his international cap at Rugby, but life had toned him down also, and made him a more subdued and thoughtful man. He had put away a good deal when last his football-boots had been packed away for good. His muscles may have wilted and his joints stiffened, but his mind was deeper and more active. The boy was dead and the man was born. In person he had altered little, but his moustache was heavier, his back a little rounded, and some lines of thought were tracing themselves upon his brow. Post-war conditions and new world problems had left their mark. For the rest he had made his name in journalism and even to a small degree in literature. He was still a bachelor, though there were some who thought that his hold on that condition was precarious and that Miss Enid Challenger's little white fingers could disengage it. Certainly they were very good chums.

It was a Sunday evening in October, and the lights were just beginning to twinkle out through the fog which had shrouded London from early morning. Professor Challenger's flat at Victoria West Gardens was upon the third floor, and the mist lay thick upon the windows, while the low hum of the attenuated Sunday traffic rose up from an invisible highway beneath, which was outlined only by scattered patches of dull radiance. Professor Challenger sat with his thick, bandy legs outstretched to the fire, and his hands thrust deeply into trouser pockets. His dress had a little of the eccentricity of genius, for he wore a loose-collared shirt, a large knotted maroon-coloured silk tie, and a black velvet smoking-jacket, which, with his flowing beard, gave him the appearance of an elderly and Bohemian artist. On one side of him ready for an excursion, with bowl hat, short-skirted dress of black, and all the other fashionable devices with which women contrive to deform the beauties of nature, there sat his daughter, while Malone, hat in hand, waited by the window.

«I think we should get off, Enid. It is nearly seven,» said he.

They were writing joint articles upon the religious denominations of London, and on each Sunday evening they sallied out together to sample some new one and get copy for the next week's issue of the Gazette.

«It's not till eight, Ted. We have lots of time.»

«Sit down, sir! Sit down!» boomed Challenger, tugging at his beard as was his habit if his temper was rising. «there is nothing annoys me more than having anyone standing behind me. A relic of atavism and the fear of a dagger, but still persistent. That's right. For heaven's sake put your hat down! You have a perpetual air of catching a train.»

«That's the journalistic life,» said Malone. «If we don't catch the perpetual train we get left. Even Enid is beginning to understand that. But still, as you say, there is time enough.»

«How far have you got?» asked Challenger.

Enid consulted a business-like little reporter's notebook. «We have done seven. There was Westminster Abbey for the Church in its most picturesque form, and Saint Agatha for the High Church, and Tudor Place for the Low. Then there was the Westminster Cathedral for Catholics, Endell Street for Presbyterians, and Gloucester Square for Unitarians. But to-night we are trying to introduce some variety. We are doing the Spiritualists.»

Challenger snorted like an angry buffalo.

«Next week the lunatic asylums, I presume,» said he. «You don't mean to tell me, Malone, that these ghost people have got churches of their own.»

«I've been looking into that,» said Malone. «I always look up cold facts and figures before I tackle a job. They have over four hundred registered churches in Great Britain.»

Challenger's snorts now sounded like a whole herd of buffaloes.

«There seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and credulity of the human race. Homo Sapiens! Homo idioticus! Who do they pray to – the ghosts?»

«Well, that's what we want to find out. We should get some copy out of them. I need not say that I share your view entirely, but I've seen something of Atkinson of St. Mary's Hospital lately. He is a rising surgeon, you know.»

«I've heard of him – cerebro-spinal.»

«That's the man. He is level-headed and is looked on as an authority on psychic research, as they call the new science which deals with these matters.»

«Science, indeed!»

«Well, that is what they call it. He seems to take these people seriously. I consult him when I want a reference, for he has the literature at his fingers' end. 'Pioneers of the Human Race' – that was his description.»

«Pioneering them to Bedlam,» growled Challenger. «And literature! What literature have they?»

«Well, that was another surprise. Atkinson has five hundred volumes, but complains that his psychic library is very imperfect. You see, there is French, German, Italian, as well as our own.»

«Well, thank God all the folly is not confined to poor old England. Pestilential nonsense!»

Have you read it up at all, Father?» asked Enid.

«Read it up! I, with all my interests and no time for one-half of them! Enid, you are too absurd.»

«Sorry, Father. You spoke with such assurance, I thought you knew something about it.»

Challenger's huge head swung round and his lion's glare rested upon his daughter.

«Do you conceive that a logical brain, a brain of the first order, needs to read and to study before it can detect a manifest absurdity? Am I to study mathematics in order to confute the man who tells me that two and two are five? Must I study physics once more and take down my Principia because some rogue or fool insists that a table can rise in the air against the law of gravity? Does it take five hundred volume to inform us of a thing which is proved in every police-court when an impostor is exposed? Enid, I am ashamed of you!»

His daughter laughed merrily.

«Well, Dad, you need not roar at me any more. I give in. In fact, I have the same feeling that you have.»

«None the less,» said Malone, «some good men support them. I don't see that you can laugh at Lodge and Crookes and the others.»

«Don't be absurd, Malone. Every great mind has its weaker side. It is a sort of reaction against all the good sense. You come suddenly upon a vein of positive nonsense. That is what is the matter with these fellows. No, Enid, I haven't read their reasons, and I don't mean to, either; some things are beyond the pale. If we re-open all the old questions, how can we ever get ahead with the new ones? This matter is settled by common sense, the law of England, and by the universal assent of every sane European.»

«So that's that!» said Enid.

«However,» he continued, «I can admit that there are occasional excuses for misunderstandings upon the point.» He sank his voice, and his great grey eyes looked sadly up into vacancy. « I have known cases where the coldest intellect – even my own intellect – might, for a moment have been shaken.»

Malone scented copy.

«Yes, sir?»

Challenger hesitated. He seemed to be struggling with himself. He wished to speak, and yet speech was painful. Then, with an abrupt, impatient gesture, he plunged into his story:

«I never told you, Enid. It was too . . . too intimate. Perhaps too absurd. I was ashamed to have been so shaken. But it shows how even the best balanced may be caught unawares.»

«Yes, sir?»

«It was after my wife's death. You knew her, Malone You can guess what it meant to me. It was the night after the cremation . . . horrible, Malone, horrible! I saw the dear little body slide down, down . . . and then the glare of flame and the door clanged to.» His great body shook and he passed his big, hairy hand over his eyes.

«I don't know why I tell you this; the talk seemed to lead up to it. It may be a warning to you. That night – the night after the cremation – I sat up in the hall. She was there,» he nodded at Enid. «She had fallen asleep in a chair, poor girl. You know the house at Rotherfield, Malone. It was in the big hall. I sat by the fireplace, the room all draped in shadow, and my mind draped In shadow also. I should have sent her to bed, but she was lying back in her chair and I did not wish to wake her. It may have been one in the morning – I remember the moon shining through the stained-glass window. I sat and I brooded. Then suddenly there came a noise.»

«Yes, sir?»

«It was low at first just a ticking. Then it grew louder and more distinct – it was a clear rat-tat-tat. Now comes the queer coincidence, the sort of thing out of which legends grow when credulous folk have the shaping of them. You must know that my wife had a peculiar way of knocking at a door. It was really a little tune which she played with her fingers. I got into the some way so that we could each know when the other knocked. Well, it seemed to me – of course my mind was strained and abnormal – that the taps shaped themselves into the well-known rhythm of her knock. I couldn't localize it. You can think how eagerly I tried. It was above me, somewhere on the woodwork. I lost sense of time. I daresay it was repeated a dozen times at least.»

«Oh, Dad, you never told me!»

«No, but I woke you up. I asked you to sit quiet with me for a little.»

«Yes, I remember that!»

«Well, we sat, but nothing happened. Not a sound more. Of course it was a delusion. Some insect in the wood; the ivy on the outer wall. My own brain furnished the rhythm. Thus do we make fools and children of ourselves. But it gave me an insight. I saw how even a clever man could be deceived by his own emotions.»

«But how do you know, sir, that it was not your wife.»

«Absurd, Malone! Absurd, I say! I tell you I saw her in the flames. What was there left?»

«Her soul, her spirit.»

Challenger shook his head sadly.

«When that dear body dissolved into its elements – when its gases went into the air and its residue of solids sank into a grey dust – it was the end. There was no more. She had played her part, played it beautifully, nobly. It was done. Death ends all, Malone. This soul talk is the Animism of savages. It is a superstition, a myth. As a physiologist I will undertake to produce crime or virtue by vascular control or cerebral stimulation. I will turn a Jekyll into a Hyde by a surgical operation. Another can do it by a psychological suggestion. Alcohol will do it. Drugs will do it. Absurd, Malone, absurd! As the tree falls, so does it lie. There is no next morning . . . night – eternal night . . . and long rest for the weary worker.»

«Well, it's a sad philosophy.»

«Better a sad than a false one.»

«Perhaps so. There is something virile and manly in facing the worst. I would not contradict. My reason is with you.»

«But my instincts are against!» cried Enid. «No, no, never can I believe it.» She threw her arms round the great bull neck. «Don't tell me, Daddy, that you with all your complex brain and wonderful self are a thing with no more life hereafter than a broken clock!»

«Four buckets of water and a bagful of salts,» said Challenger as he smilingly detached his daughter's grip. «That's your daddy, my lass, and you may as well reconcile your mind to it. Well, it's twenty to eight. – Come back, if you can, Malone, and let me hear your adventures among the insane.»

2. Which Describes an Evening in Strange Company

THE love-affair of Enid Challenger and Edward Malone is not of the slightest interest to the reader, for the simple reason that it is not of the slightest interest to the writer. The unseen, unnoticed lure of the unborn babe is common to all youthful humanity. We deal in this chronicle with matters which are less common and of higher interest. It is only mentioned in order to explain those terms of frank and intimate comradeship which the narrative discloses. If the human race has obviously improved in anything – in Anglo-Celtic countries, at least – it is that the prim affectations and sly deceits of the past are lessened, and that young men and women can meet in an equality of clean and honest comradeship.

A taxi took the adventurers down Edgware Road and into the side-street called «Helbeck Terrace.» Halfway down, the dull line of brick houses was broken by one glowing gap, where an open arch threw a flood of light into the street. The cab pulled up and the man opened the door.

«This is the Spiritualist Church, sir,» said he. Then, as he saluted to acknowledge his tip, he added in the wheezy voice of the man of all weathers: «Tommy-rot, I call it, sir.» Having eased his conscience thus, he climbed into his seat and a moment later his red rear-lamp was a waning circle in the gloom. Malone laughed.

«Vox populi, Enid. That is as far as the public has got at present.»

«Well, it is as far as we have got, for that matter.»

«Yes, but we are prepared to give them a show. I don't suppose Cabby is. By Jove, it will be hard luck if we can't get in!»

There was a crowd at the door and a man was facing them from the top of the step, waving his arms to keep them back.

«It's no good, friends. I am very sorry, but we can't help it. We've been threatened twice with prosecution for over-crowding.» He turned facetious. «Never heard of an Orthodox Church getting into trouble for that. No, sir, no.»

«I've come all the way from 'Ammersmith,» wailed a voice. The light beat upon the eager, anxious face of the speaker, a little woman in black with a baby in her arms.

«You've come for clairvoyance, Mam,» said the usher, with intelligence. «See here, give me the name and address and I will write you, and Mrs. Debbs will give you a sitting gratis. That's better than taking your chance in the crowd when, with all the will in the world, you can't all get a turn. You'll have her to yourself. No, sir, there's no use shovin' . . . What's that? . . . Press?»

He had caught Malone by the elbow.

«Did you say Press? The Press boycott us, sir. Look at the weekly list of services in a Saturday's Times if you doubt it. You wouldn't know there was such a thing as Spiritualism…. What paper, sir? … 'The Daily Gazette.' Well, well, we are getting on. And the lady, too? . . . Special article – my word! Stick to me, sir, and I'll see what I can do. Shut the doors, Joe. No use, friends. When the building fund gets on a bit we'll have more room for you. Now, Miss, this way, if you please.»

This way proved to be down the street and round a side-alley which brought them to a small door with a red lamp shining above it.

«I'll have to put you on the platform – there's no standing room in the body of the hall.»

«Good gracious!» cried Enid.

«You'll have a fine view, Miss, and maybe get a readin' for yourself if your lucky. It often happens that those nearest the medium get the best chance. Now, sir, in here!»

Here was a frowsy little room with some hats and top-coats draping the dirty, white-washed walls. A thin, austere woman, with eyes which gleamed from behind her glasses, was warming her gaunt hands over a small fire. With his back to the fire in the traditional British attitude was a large, fat man with a bloodless face, a ginger moustache and curious, light-blue eyes – the eyes of a deep-sea mariner. A little bald-headed man with huge horn-rimmed spectacles, and a very handsome and athletic youth in a blue lounge-suit completed the group.

«The others have gone on the platform, Mr. Peeble. There's only five seats left for ourselves.» It was the fat man talking.

«I know, I know,» said the man who had been addressed as Peeble, a nervous, stringy, dried-up person as he now appeared in the light. « But this is the Press, Mr. Bolsover. Daily Gazette special article…. Malone, the name, and Challenger. This is Mr. Bolsover, our President. This is Mrs. Debbs of Liverpool, the famous clairvoyante. Here is Mr. James, and this tall young gentleman is Mr. Hardy Williams, our energetic secretary. Mr. Williams is a nailer for the buildin' fund. Keep your eye on your pockets if Mr. Williams is around.»

They all laughed.

«Collection comes later,» said Mr. Williams, smiling.

«A good, rousing article is our best collection,» said the stout president. «Ever been to a meeting before, sir?»

«No,» said Malone.

«Don't know much about it, I expect.»

«No, I don't.»

«Well, well, we must expect a slating. They get it from the humorous angle at first. We'll have you writing a very comic account. I never could see anything very funny in the spirit of one's dead wife, but it's a matter of taste and of knowledge also. If they don't know, how can they take it seriously? I don't blame them. We were mostly like that ourselves once. I was one of Bradlaugh's men, and sat under Joseph MacCabe until my old Dad came and pulled me out.»

«Good for him!» said the Liverpool medium.

«It was the first time I found I had powers of my own. I saw him like I see you now.»

«Was he one of us in the body?»

«Knew no more than I did. But they come on amazin' at the other side if the right folk get hold of them.»

«Time's up!» said Mr. Peeble, snapping his watch. «You are on the right of the chair, Mrs. Debbs. Will you go first? Then you, Mr. Chairman. Then you two and myself. Get on the left, Mr. Hardy Williams, and lead the singin'. They want warmin' up and you can do it. Now then, if you please!»

The platform was already crowded, but the newcomers threaded their way to the front amid a decorous murmur of welcome. Mr. Peeble shoved and exhorted and two end seats emerged upon which Enid and Malone perched themselves. The arrangement suited them well, for they could use their notebooks freely behind the shelter of the folk in front.

«What is your reaction?» whispered Enid.

«Not impressed as yet.»

«No, nor I,» said Enid, «but it's very interesting all the same.»

People who are in earnest are always interesting, whether you agree with them or not, and it was impossible to doubt that these people were extremely earnest. The hall was crammed, and as one looked down one saw line after line of upturned faces, curiously alike in type, women predominating, but men running them close. That type was not distinguished nor intellectual, but it was undeniably healthy, honest and sane. Small trades-folk, male and female shopwalkers, better class artisans, lower middle-class women worn with household cares, occasional young folk in search of a sensation – these were the impressions which the audience conveyed to the trained observation of Malone.

The fat president rose and raised his hand.

«My friends,» said he, «we have had once more to exclude a great number of people who desired to be with us to-night. It's all a question of the building fund, and Mr. Williams on my left will be glad to hear from any of you I was in a hotel last week and they had a notice hung up in the reception bureau: 'No cheques accepted'. That's not the way Brother Williams talks. You just try him.»

The audience laughed. The atmosphere was clearly that of the lecture-hall rather than of the Church.

«There's just one more thing I want to say before I sit down. I'm not here to talk. I'm here to hold this chair down and I mean to do it. It's a hard thing I ask. I want Spiritualists to keep away on Sunday nights. They take up the room that inquirers should have. You can have the morning service. But its better for the cause that there should be room for the stranger. You've had it. Thank God for it. Give the other man a chance.» The president plumped back into his chair.

Mr. Peeble sprang to his feet. He was clearly the general utility man who emerges in every society and probably becomes its autocrat. With his thin, eager face and darting hands he was more than a live wire – he was a whole bundle of live wires. Electricity seemed to crackle from his fingertips.

«Hymn One!» he shrieked.

A harmonium droned and the audience rose. It was a fine hymn and lustily sung:

«The world hath felt a quickening breath From Heaven's eternal shore, And souls triumphant over death Return to earth once more.»

There was a ring of exultation in the voices as the refrain rolled out:

«For this we hold our Jubilee For this with joy we sing, Oh Grave, where is thy victory Oh Death, where is thy sting?»

Yes, they were in earnest, these people. And they did not appear to be mentally weaker than their fellows. And yet both Enid and Malone felt a sensation of great pity as they looked at them. How sad to be deceived upon so intimate a matter as this, to be duped by impostors who used their most sacred feelings and their beloved dead as counters with which to cheat them. What did they know of the laws of evidence, of the cold, immutable decrees of scientific law? Poor earnest, honest, deluded people!

«Now!» screamed Mr. Peeble. «We shall ask Mr. Munro from Australia to give us the invocation.»

A wild-looking old man with a shaggy beard and slumbering fire in his eyes rose up and stood for a few seconds with his gaze cast down. Then he began a prayer, very simple, very unpremeditated. Malone jotted down the first sentence: «Oh, Father, we are very ignorant folk and do not well know how to approach you, but we will pray to you the best we know how.» It was all cast in that humble key. Enid and Malone exchanged a swift glance of appreciation.

There was another hymn, less successful than the first, and the chairman then announced that Mr. James Jones of North Wales would now deliver a trance address which would embody the views of his well-known control, Alasha the Atlantean.

Mr. James Jones, a brisk and decided little man in a faded check suit, came to the front and, after standing a minute or so as if in deep thought, gave a violent shudder and began to talk. It must be admitted that save for a certain fixed stare and vacuous glazing of the eye there was nothing to show that anything save Mr. James Jones of North Wales was the orator. It has also to be stated that if Mr. Jones shuddered at the beginning it was the turn of his audience to shudder afterwards. Granting his own claim, he had proved clearly that an Atlantean spirit might be a portentous bore. He droned on with platitudes and ineptitudes while Malone whispered to Enid that if Alasha was a fair specimen of the population it was just as well that his native land was safely engulfed in the Atlantic Ocean. When, with another rather melodramatic shudder, he emerged from his trance, the chairman sprang to his feet with an alacrity which showed that he was taking no risks lest the Atlantean should return.

«We have present with us to-night,» he cried, «Mrs. Debbs, the well-known clairvoyante of Liverpool. Mrs. Debbs is, as many of you know, richly endowed with several of those gifts of the spirit of which Saint Paul speaks, and the discerning of spirits is among them. These things depend upon laws which are beyond our control, but a sympathetic atmosphere is essential, and Mrs. Debbs will ask for your good wishes and your prayers while she endeavours to get into touch with some of those shining ones on the other side who may honour us with their presence to-night.»

The president sat down and Mrs. Debbs rose amid discreet applause. Very tall, very pale, very thin, with an aquiline face and eyes shining brightly from behind her gold-rimmed glasses, she stood facing her expectant audience. Her head was bent. She seemed to be listening.

«Vibrations!» she cried at last. «I want helpful vibrations. Give me a verse on the harmonium, please.»

The instrument droned out «Jesu, Lover of my soul.»

The audience sat in silence, expectant and a little awed.

The hall was not too well lit and dark shadows lurked in the corners. The medium still bent her head as if her ears were straining. Then she raised her hand and the music stopped.

«Presently! Presently! All in good time,» said the woman, addressing some invisible companion. Then to the audience, «I don't feel that the conditions are very good to-night. I will do my best and so will they. But I must talk to you first.»

And she talked. What she said seemed to the two strangers to be absolute gabble. There was no consecutive sense in it, though now and again a phrase or sentence caught the attention. Malone put his stylo in his pocket. There was no use reporting a lunatic. A Spiritualist next him saw his bewildered disgust and leaned towards him.

«She's tuning in. She's getting her wave length,» he whispered. «It's all a matter of vibration. Ah, there you are!»

She had stopped in the very middle of a sentence. Her long arm and quivering forefinger shot out. She was pointing at an elderly woman in the second row.

«You! Yes, you, with the red feather. No, not you. The stout lady in front. Yes, you! There is a spirit building up behind you. It is a man. He is a tall man – six foot maybe. High forehead, eyes grey or blue, a long chin brown moustache, lines on his face. Do you recognize him, friend?»

The stout woman looked alarmed, but shook her head.

«Well, see if I can help you. He is holding up a book – brown book with a clasp. It's a ledger same as they have in offices. I get the words 'Caledonian Insurance'. Is that any help?»

The stout woman pursed her lips and shook her head.

«Well, I can give you a little more. He died after a long illness. I get chest trouble – asthma.»

The stout woman was still obdurate, but a small, angry, red-faced person, two places away from her, sprang to her feet.

«It's my 'usband, ma'm. Tell 'im I don't want to 'ave any more dealin's with him.» She sat down with decision.

«Yes, that's right. He moves to you now. He was nearer the other. He wants to say he's sorry. It doesn't do, you know, to have hard feelings to the dead. Forgive and forget. It's all over. I get a message for you. It is: 'Do it and my blessing go with you'! Does that mean anything to you?»

The angry woman looked pleased and nodded.

«Very good.» The clairvoyante suddenly darted out her finger towards the crowd at the door «It's for the soldier.»

A soldier in khaki, looking very much amazed, was in the front of the knot of people.

«Wot's for me?» he asked.

«It's a soldier. He has a corporal's stripes. He is a big man with grizzled hair. He has a yellow tab on his shoulders. I get the initials J. H. Do you know him?»

«Yes – but he's dead,» said the soldier.

He had not understood that it was a Spiritualistic Church, and the whole proceedings had been a mystery to him. They were rapidly explained by his neighbours. «My Gawd!» cried the soldier, and vanished amid a general titter. In the pause Malone could hear the constant mutter of the medium as she spoke to someone unseen.