Mr Scarletti's Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

be confronted by a person of coarse manners and appearance, and then I would have been obliged to leave immediately, but that was not the case. She was most tastefully attired, and behaved throughout with great decorum. She was seated on a chair in front of the curtain, facing us, and I am sure that she did not move from her place, yet all around us we saw lights and heard noises that no living soul in the room could have made. Professor Gaskin showed us a bell and a tambourine behind the curtain, also a pencil and paper. All of us heard the bell ring several times and a good hard rattle on the tambourine, then the sound of the pencil moving. None of us was near enough to touch them.’
    ‘All this was behind the curtain, hidden from view?’ asked Mina.
    ‘It was. One of the gentlemen present said he wanted to draw the curtain and see what was happening for himself, but Professor Gaskin explained that any disturbance could injure the medium, and so he refrained, but very unwillingly. He was a bad influence and I think he will not be admitted again.’
    Mina thought that had she been present she too might have been tempted to part the curtains, and wondered what she would have seen. A bell suspended in the air ringing itself; a tambourine in the grasp of a ghostly hand? Somehow she doubted it. Surely a more earthly and tangible arrangement of wires and black thread would answer the purpose.
    ‘Then, as if that was not wonderful enough, Professor Gaskin announced that he could feel a hand on his shoulder. Of course we all felt somewhat alarmed, but he reassured us that there was nothing to be afraid of, and if anyone should feel the same thing they should not try and clasp the hand, for it disturbed the energy. And then,’ Louisa went on, her eyes glowing with excitement, ‘I felt it – very briefly – fingers touching my cheek. It was quite extraordinary!’
    ‘It could not have been anyone in the room?’ asked Mina.
    ‘Oh no, most assuredly not. We were all, on the strict instructions of Professor Gaskin, holding hands, so no person in the room could have touched my face, and of course Miss Eustace was the furthest away of all. The surprising thing was that I had imagined a spirit hand to be somehow different, less … well, less like a real solid warm hand of a living person. But there was nothing insubstantial about it at all. If Miss Eustace can manifest things of this nature she must have very considerable powers.’ Louisa waved a hand at Simmons to attend to her plate, and the young woman, anxious to please, scurried to comply.
    ‘So a spirit hand feels just like the hand of a living person,’ said Mina, without a change in her expression. ‘That is most remarkable. I wonder how Professor Gaskin can explain such a thing.’
    ‘He has many years of study before him,’ said her mother who, if she detected irony in Mina’s tone, chose to ignore it, ‘but he remains hopeful that one day he will be able to reveal to the world how the spirit powers manifest themselves. Miss Eustace was, as you may imagine, quite exhausted, so that was all we were able to experience on that occasion. We all sang another hymn and then when the gas was turned up—’
    ‘The gas?’ said Mina. ‘The gas had been lowered? That is a detail you omitted. Was there candlelight? Or was the séance conducted in darkness?’
    Louisa looked offended at the question. ‘Of course there was darkness; you don’t suppose we could have seen the little spirit lights otherwise? But I can assure you that Miss Eustace did not move, or we would have heard her. When the gas was turned up she was barely conscious, and had no memory whatsoever of what had occurred. Then Professor Gaskin drew the curtain aside and all was as it had been before – except for the paper.’ She poured more tea, exhumed a warm roll from its napkin and applied a salve of butter and honey. ‘You, Mina, have a hard inflexible mind, and will no doubt find this impossible