The Land of Mist
OR
THE QUEST OF
EDWARD MALONE
By
A. CONAN DOYLE
ILLUSTRATED BY
F.E HILEY
This month we publish the second instalment of a serial which will, we venture to say, attract world-wide interest. It deals with the borderland of human knowledge and experience which fades away into "The Land of Mist."
Whether one agrees of disagrees, it is an undoubted fact that psychic question are before the world at present as they have never been before. It will also be admitted that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can claim an almost unique experience in such matters, having studied them for thirty-six years. In this story he paints with a full brush both the weakness and the strength of the movement. The false medium is drawn with a relentless accuracy. Many of the almost incredible scenes and incidents which he depicts have, he assures us, either occurred to himself or to those whose testimony cannot be doubted. We venture to think that, whatever are the conclusions of the public, they will be amazed at the adventures which are still to be encountered in this workaday world.
The first instalment gave an intensely interesting description of a visit to Spiritualist church by Edward Malone and Enid Challenger, the Joint Commissioners of "The Daily Gazette." Later, in his flat, her father, the famous Professor Challenger, receives their account with a storm of ridicule and contempt.
IV.
IN WHICH MR. BOLSOVER GIVES AN INVITATION.
THE article by the Joint Commissioners (such was their glorious title) aroused interest and contention. It had been accompanied by a depreciating leaderette from the sub-editor, which was meant to calm the susceptibilities of his orthodox readers, as who should say: "These things have to be noticed and seem to be true, but, of course, you and I recognize who pestilential it all is." Malone found himself at once plunged into a huge correspondence for and against, which in itself was enough to show how vitally the question was in the minds of men. All the previous articles had only elicited a growl here or there from a stern stickler for conventional orthodoxy, but now his post-bag was full. Most of the letters were ridiculing the idea that psychic forces existed, and many were from writers who, whatever they might know of psychic forces, had obviously not yet learned to spell. The Spiritualists were in many cases not more pleased than the others, for Malone had—even while his account was true—exercised a journalist's privilege of laying an accent on the more humorous sides of it.
One morning in the succeeding week Mr. Malone was aware of a large presence in the small room wherein he did his work at the office. A page-boy who preceded the stout visitor had laid a card on the corner of the table, which bore the legend: "James Bolsover, Provision Merchant, High Street,
