Who but the dead can
write a treatise on life
after death? Yethow
can the dead write?
Doctor Dufrey is faced
with an astounding
problem
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"No," she said, "he wrote it after he died."
Yet when I raised my eyes, I saw that door, standing open. I set it down to the wind.
Then I became aware that my thoughts had been of a mingled sort. With musings on my experiment and my work in general, had been mixed reminiscences of my father, whose kindness had made my career possible. I had thought of my mother, too, who had sat in silent dreams so often before this very fireplace.
And then, through that open door, cameshall I call it a light, a refulgencea shape? No, it was my mother, just as in life. She glided toward me, with never a word, gazed at me with her kindly eyesand was gone. And the door shut of itself!
I confess I was shaken. For many moments I sat motionless, staring at the door through which the apparition had vanished. Then I shook off the spell and laughed.
"Certainly," I said aloud, "I was thinking of mother. My imagination played me a queer trick."
After those hours of talk with Fuller . . . certainly! It was easy to understand. I had been dozing too. There was the entire explanation. I went over the analysis again in the morning, to Fuller.
"When you see spirits, Fuller, examine your own thoughtsor your eyesight."
"Dufrey," he said, "you have seen, yet you will not believe."
"Come into my laboratory," I replied with a smile. "I shall show you an ugly little devil under a slide. I hope he hasn't an eternal soul. None of us would care to meet him oftener than necessary."
My disbelief remained unshaken. I was invited to séances and to other such gatherings, but I refused to go.
But in the course of time, I met Emma. She was of "that tribe." Yet I loved her. And she loved me.
Love will do much. When Emma talked of an hereafter, I listened with delight. But it was her voice that delighted methe unutterable music, the exquisite tones, veiled and mystic, that came from her lips. I argued, of course, against her beliefs. Yet at last she made me break my resolutions and I went with her to a séance. Throughout, in the dark. I held Emma's hand. The hocus-pocus going on around me, earned nothing but my derisive smile.
A halo of light floated through the blackness. Something that might have been called a human shape materialized (as they called it) in one corner of the room. Voices, seemingly far away, replied to hysterical questions, and painted beautiful word-pictures of a better world than ours. And, of more importancethe fat medium, at the end of the farce, collected a dollar from each of us.
Hocus-pocus? I'd say it was!
When we were out again in the brisk air, I said, half laughing, half piqued:
"My dear, do you really expect me to put stock in that shameless fraud?"
"Can you explain it away?" she asked, softly.
"I can think out a plausible explanation," I retorted.
She merely smiled.
The following week she lugged me to another meeting.
Raps sounded in the walls. A table tipped and jigged. A planchette wrote, apparently unguided, a message from a
