The Stories of Mystery - [18]

We had the most interesting conversation about her own powers. It is just as well to put her views on record, though they cannot, of course, claim any scientific weight.

‘You are on the very fringe of the subject,’ said she, when I had expressed wonder at the remarkable instance of suggestion which she had shown me. ‘I had no direct influence upon Miss Marden when she came round to you. I was not even thinking of her that morning. What I did was to set her mind as I might set the alarm of a clock so that at the hour named it would go off of its own accord. If six months instead of twelve hours had been suggested, it would have been the same.’

‘And if the suggestion had been to assassinate me?’

‘She would most inevitably have done so.’

‘But this is a terrible power!’ I cried.

‘It is, as you say, a terrible power,’ she answered gravely, ‘and the more you know of it the more terrible will it seem to you.’

‘May I ask,’ said I, ‘what you meant when you said that this matter of suggestion is only at the fringe of it? What do you consider the essential?’

‘I had rather not tell you.’

I was surprised at the decision of her answer.

‘You understand,’ said I, ‘that it is not out of curiosity I ask, but in the hope that I may find some scientific explanation for the facts with which you furnish me.’

‘Frankly, Professor Gilroy,’ said she, ‘I am not at all interested in science, nor do I care whether it can or cannot classify these powers.’

‘But I was hoping – ‘

‘Ah, that is quite another thing. If you make it a personal matter,’ said she, with the pleasantest of smiles, ‘I shall be only too happy to tell you any thing you wish to know. Let me see; what was it you asked me? Oh, about the further powers. Professor Wilson won’t believe in them, but they are quite true all the same. For example, it is possible for an operator to gain complete command over his subject – presuming that the latter is a good one. Without any previous suggestion he may make him do whatever he likes.’

‘Without the subject’s knowledge?’

‘That depends. If the force were strongly exerted, he would know no more about it than Miss Marden did when she came round and frightened you so. Or, if the influence was less powerful, he might be conscious of what he was doing, but be quite unable to prevent himself from doing it.’

‘Would he have lost his own will power, then?’

‘It would be over-ridden by another stronger one.’

‘Have you ever exercised this power yourself?’

‘Several times.’

‘Is your own will so strong, then?’

‘Well, it does not entirely depend upon that. Many have strong wills which are not detachable from themselves. The thing is to have the gift of projecting it into another person and superseding his own. I find that the power varies with my own strength and health.’

‘Practically, you send your soul into another person’s body.’

‘Well, you might put it that way.’

‘And what does your own body do?’

‘It merely feels lethargic.’

‘Well, but is there no danger to your own health?’ I asked.

‘There might be a little. You have to be careful never to let your own consciousness absolutely go; otherwise, you might experience some difficulty in finding your way back again. You must always preserve the connection, as it were. I am afraid I express myself very badly, Professor Gilroy, but of course I don’t know how to put these things in a scientific way. I am just giving you my own experiences and my own explanations.’

Well, I read this over now at my leisure, and I marvel at myself! Is this Austin Gilroy, the man who has won his way to the front by his hard reasoning power and by his devotion to fact? Here I am gravely retailing the gossip of a woman who tells me how her soul may be projected from her body, and how, while she lies in a lethargy, she can control the actions of people at a distance. Do I accept it? Certainly not. She must prove and re-prove before I yield a point. But if I am still a sceptic, I have at least ceased to be a scoffer. We are to have a sitting this evening, and she is to try if she can produce any mesmeric effect upon me. If she can, it will make an excellent starting-point for our investigation. No one can accuse me, at any rate, of complicity. If she cannot, we must try and find some subject who will be like Caesar’s wife. Wilson is perfectly impervious.

10 P. M. I believe that I am on the threshold of an epoch-making investigation. To have the power of examining these phenomena from inside – to have an organism which will respond, and at the same time a brain which will appreciate and criticise – that is surely a unique advantage. I am quite sure that Wilson would give five years of his life to be as susceptible as I have proved myself to be.

There was no one present except Wilson and his wife. I was seated with my head leaning back, and Miss Penclosa, standing in front and a little to the left, used the same long, sweeping strokes as with Agatha. At each of them a warm current of air seemed to strike me, and to suffuse a thrill and glow all through me from head to foot. My eyes were fixed upon Miss Penclosa’s face, but as I gazed the features seemed to blur and to fade away. I was conscious only of her own eyes looking down at me, gray, deep, inscrutable. Larger they grew and larger, until they changed suddenly into two mountain lakes toward which I seemed to be falling with horrible rapidity. I shuddered, and as I did so some deeper stratum of thought told me that the shudder represented the rigor which I had observed in Agatha. An instant later I struck the surface of the lakes, now joined into one, and down I went beneath the water with a fulness in my head and a buzzing in my ears. Down I went, down, down, and then with a swoop up again until I could see the light streaming brightly through the green water. I was almost at the surface when the word ‘Awake!’ rang through my head, and, with a start, I found myself back in the arm-chair, with Miss Penclosa leaning on her crutch, and Wilson, his note book in his hand, peeping over her shoulder. No heaviness or weariness was left behind. On the contrary, though it is only an hour or so since the experiment, I feel so wakeful that I am more inclined for my study than my bedroom. I see quite a vista of interesting experiments extending before us, and am all impatience to begin upon them.