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Page 5
I like none of these mystery-mongers, but the amateur
least of all. With the paid performer you may pounce
upon him and expose him the instant that you have seen
through his trick. He is there to deceive you, and you
are there to find him out. But what are you to do with
the friend of your host's wife? Are you to turn on a
light suddenly and expose her slapping a surreptitious
banjo? Or are you to hurl cochineal over her evening
frock when she steals round with her phosphorus bottle
and her supernatural platitude? There would be a
scene, and you would be looked upon as a brute. So you
have your choice of being that or a dupe. I was in no
very good humor as I followed Wilson to the lady.
Any one less like my idea of a West Indian could not be
imagined. She was a small, frail creature, well over
forty, I should say, with a pale, peaky face, and hair
of a very light shade of chestnut. Her presence was
insignificant and her manner retiring. In any group of
ten women she would have been the last whom one would
have picked out. Her eyes were perhaps her most
remarkable, and also, I am compelled to say, her least
pleasant, feature. They were gray in color,--gray with
a shade of green,--and their expression struck me as
being decidedly furtive. I wonder if furtive is the
word, or should I have said fierce? On second
thoughts, feline would have expressed it better. A
crutch leaning against the wall told me what was
painfully evident when she rose: that one of her legs
was crippled.
So I was introduced to Miss Penclosa, and it did not
escape me that as my name was mentioned she glanced
across at Agatha. Wilson had evidently been talking.
And presently, no doubt, thought I, she will inform me
by occult means that I am engaged to a young lady with
wheat-ears in her hair. I wondered how much more
Wilson had been telling her about me.
"Professor Gilroy is a terrible sceptic," said he; "I
hope, Miss Penclosa, that you will be able to convert
him."
She looked keenly up at me.
"Professor Gilroy is quite right to be sceptical if he
has not seen any thing convincing," said she. "I
should have thought," she added, "that you would
yourself have been an excellent subject."
"For what, may I ask?" said I.
"Well, for mesmerism, for example."
"My experience has been that mesmerists go for their
subjects to those who are mentally unsound. All their
results are vitiated, as it seems to me, by the fact
that they are dealing with abnormal organisms."
"Which of these ladies would you say possessed a normal
organism?" she asked. "I should like you to select the
one who seems to you to have the best balanced mind.
Should we say the girl in pink and white?--Miss Agatha
Marden, I think the name is."
"Yes, I should attach weight to any results from her."
"I have never tried how far she is impressionable. Of
course some people respond much more rapidly than
others. May I ask how far your scepticism extends? I
suppose that you admit the mesmeric sleep and the power
of suggestion."
"I admit nothing, Miss Penclosa."
"Dear me, I thought science had got further than that.
Of course I know nothing about the scientific side of
it. I only know what I can do. You see the girl in
red, for example, over near the Japanese jar. I shall
will that she come across to us."
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