There is No Return (7 page)

“I have conscientiously resisted the belief that it takes a congenital idiot to rope in a man,” I said, “but after scrutinizing various wives I meet I wonder if they can be accounted for on any other basis.”

“Attagirl, Miss Adams. Don’t let them get you down,” murmured a voice behind me.

Chet Keith had pulled up a chair at my back. He leaned forward as if he intended to say something else, but Miss Maurine Smith, seeming a bit breathless, slid into the place beside him.

“I didn’t think I could get off,” she said, “but at the last minute old man French offered to take over the desk.”

I had not known till then that Captain Bill French was still managing the inn. It gave me a turn to hear him referred to as an old man. That one summer I had spent on Mount Lebeau, Captain French had been a very dashing and gallant figure, especially among the lady guests. He had acquired his title in the Spanish-American War, and wore it and a handsome black moustache like a pair of decorations. I sighed. I supposed to a young person of Miss Smith’s age anybody over forty had one foot in the grave. There was no way to escape the almost lyrical glance she bestowed upon Mr Chet Keith, a little to his dismay, I thought.

“All’s well that ends well,” he murmured, leaning slightly away.

She beamed at him. “Thank goodness you’re here to hold my hand if I get scared,” she said naively. “The only time I came to one of these sittings I was paralyzed, simply paralyzed.”

“Not really!” murmured Mr Keith, squirming in his seat.

It occurred to me that, like most ladies’ men, he probably had a great deal of trouble ending the flirtation which he started for one reason or another. I did not miss the glance he shot from under his eyelashes at that thin, dejected figure sitting across the room with downcast golden head and locked white hands, but if Sheila Kelly was aware of him or of anyone else in the room she gave no sign.

“If you’ll close the doors,” murmured Professor Matthews to Patrick Oliver, “we will begin.”

With a grimace young Oliver swaggered across the room and shut the doors into the lounge and the corridor. He also, to my surprise, bolted them from the inside.

“It is absolutely necessary,” intoned the professor, “that we have the strictest privacy in an experiment of this nature. Those who have passed on are extremely sensitive to the presence of unfriendly elements.”

“I never knew spooks required so much coddling,” remarked Patrick Oliver in a tone which he intended to sound facetious, although it seemed to me that, like the professor, he was inclined to quaver.

“Remarks like that,” said Professor Matthews in a tone of pompous dignity, “are especially hostile to the forces which we are endeavouring to invoke.”

“Phooey!” exclaimed Patrick Oliver inelegantly.

“For God’s sake,” muttered Jeff Wayne in a tortured voice, “cut out the comedy. Can’t you see nobody’s in the humour for your eternal horseplay?”

It was, however – or so I thought – a reproachful glance from his aunt which caused Patrick Oliver to subside, that and the hand which his sister placed peremptorily upon his shoulder.

“You must understand,” continued the professor with a wary glance at Thomas Canby’s rigid face, “that it is impossible in an experiment of this nature to guarantee results. One can only put oneself in the way of a demonstration and hope for the best.”

He again glanced, almost pleadingly it seemed to me, at Thomas Canby.

“How the old crook would like to be out of this business,” murmured Chet Keith at my elbow, “but he hasn’t a Chinaman’s chance. Canby would crucify his own mother before he yielded a point.”

I rather thought so myself, studying the millionaire’s impassive face with the rat-trap mouth and fixed basilisk eyes.

The tremor in the professor’s voice was more pronounced as he went on. “The fact that during the past two weeks we have been remarkably successful in-er-our endeavours to cross the Great Divide which separates things terrestrial from-er-the spiritual does not necessarily mean that we shall with equal success tonight rend the thin curtain between the visible and the intangible.”

“The man is appallingly third rate,” I muttered. “Even his patter is antiquated.”

“Isn’t it?” murmured Chet Keith behind me.

“One would think he might have thought up something newer, if not cleverer,” I remarked.

“That’s what makes it so impressive,” said Ella sharply. “The professor is not clever at all.”

She was right. There was nothing novel about Professor Matthews. As he explained in his hoarse, faltering voice, he was by no means certain of what to expect, if anything.

“I do not claim, I never have claimed,” he insisted with another abject glance at Thomas Canby, “to possess psychic powers. I have-er-only the gift of releasing those powers in another, providing that person is amenable to my-er-influence.”

He then went ahead to explain in deprecating accents that Sheila Kelly did possess authentic psychic powers which she was, however, unable to free of her own volition. To liberate her psyche it was necessary, said the professor, to put her into a hypnotic trance.

“It’s worse than I thought,” I muttered. “How could even Dora Canby be taken in by such charlatanism? Hypnotism indeed!”

“Wait,” whispered Ella.

The professor, moistening his thick lips, was saying something about Little Blue Eyes which, it seemed, was Sheila Kelly’s control.

At least it appeared that until recently Little Blue Eyes had been the voice through which Sheila Kelly effected communication with the spirit world.

“If that-that other will come through tonight,” said the professor, his words suddenly running together so that I had some trouble understanding them, “or if it will refuse to manifest itself, I cannot say, nobody can say.” He drew a long breath and ended in a tremulous quotation: “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ ”

“Every fake spiritualist on record takes refuge in that statement,” I said scornfully.

“Only,” murmured Chet Keith, “I think for the first time in his chequered career the professor has quoted Shakespeare with conviction.”

I nodded, noting how Professor Matthews’ liverish hand trembled as he clicked off the chandelier in the centre of the room, leaving no illumination except the parlour lamp with its red silk shade, which threw a lurid and rather ghastly shadow upon the small round table where it sat. Nothing else was needed to add to the eerie atmosphere, I thought, stirring uneasily in my place. We were all now seated in the circle which was broken at one point by the table. The professor motioned the girl to a chair directly in front of it while he took up his position before her.

“Are you ready?” he asked in a hollow voice.

The girl’s lips parted, but no sound came. Finally after a painful silence she nodded. There was something almost convulsive in her movement. The professor drew a long breath and then he began to wave his hands before her eyes, murmuring softly in a sonorous voice.

“Sleep. You are going to sleep. Do not fight off sleep. Sleep,” he repeated over and over.

I got the impression that the girl was struggling against the monotonous spell of his voice. Her hands were clenched on the arm of the chair. In the ghastly glow of the red lamp her face was all acute angles, as if she might also be clenching her teeth, but her eyes were already beginning to dull.

“Sleep,” chanted the professor. “You must let go and sleep.”

Sceptical as I was about the whole performance, there was something horrible about that unctuous voice beating down upon the girl’s tense figure. The wind and the hypnotic swish of the rain seemed to be in conjunction with him, as if even the elements were conspiring to rob her of her self-mastery. I found that I, too, was clenching my hands on the arms of my chair and when, almost at once, Sheila Kelly’s slim body went limp and her eyes glazed, I shuddered.

“She’s under,” whispered Ella.

I had not been prepared to believe that the professor possessed genuine hypnotic powers or anything else genuine. I had been convinced that he was a fake in every sense of the word, but I had not expected anything as realistic as the way that girl sagged in her chair.

“Can you speak to us?” inquired the professor. “Is the presence here?”

Sheila Kelly was moaning softly and wringing her hands. Presently she began to speak in a high piping voice, a child’s voice.

“I have a message, I have a message,” she said in a shrill singsong.

“It is Little Blue Eyes,” murmured the professor, looking relieved, or so it seemed to me.

“Theo sends his love,” piped Sheila Kelly. “Theo says you are not to grieve. Theo does not want his Little Butterfly to be sad.”

“Is there anyone here to whom this message means something?” inquired Professor Matthews with unmistakable complacence.

“Yes, oh yes!” cried Fannie Parrish breathlessly. She threw me a reproachful glance. “Isn’t it marvellous? Theo always called me Little Butterfly. You can’t doubt now, Miss Adams, that the phenomenon is authentic!”

I shrugged my shoulders. The message was precisely such as I had expected. I began to shake off the feeling of horror which had enveloped me. To be called Little Butterfly might convince Fannie Parrish that the message came from the other world, but I did not doubt that five minutes after her arrival at Lebeau Inn everybody in the place knew poor dear Theo’s favourite name for her.

“Can Little Blue Eyes tell us anything else?” intoned the professor.

Sheila Kelly moaned again. “Somebody named Catherine has a word for Margaret,” announced the childish voice.

The professor again glanced around the circle. “Is there anybody named Margaret who has a loved one Catherine in the spirit world?”

The anxious young mother leaned forward, looking very white and shaky. “I am named Margaret and Catherine, my mother, has passed on.”

“You are not to worry, Margaret,” chanted Little Blue Eyes. “The baby will get well.”

“Isn’t it wonderful!” breathed Fannie Parrish.

I raised my eyebrows at Ella. “The same old stuff!” I said.

Ella nodded. “Wait,” she said again.

Little Blue Eyes had a message for somebody named James.

The dyspeptic-looking old gentleman admitted that his name was James and that he had a deceased brother Peter, but did not seem impressed when warned by Little Blue Eyes that Peter advised against his taking a trip to the West Indies in his present state of health.

“I have told several people here, including Mrs Parrish, that my brother Peter died last spring,” he said dryly, “and I suppose anybody with eyes could observe that my health is unequal to an extended trip.”

To my relief I discovered that I had completely retrieved my cynical attitude toward the whole business. I had attended enough séances to recognize the messages for the stereotyped forms which they were. I felt sure they originated in the brain of Professor Matthews. How far the girl was involved I was not prepared to say.

That she was actually in some sort of hypnotic trance I was reluctantly inclined to concede.

The professor was speaking again. “Has Little Blue Eyes anything else to give us?” he asked, fumbling nervously at his tie.

Sheila Kelly sat up suddenly in her chair. “To hell with Little Blue Eyes,” she said distinctly.

Dora Canby uttered a stifled wail. “Gloria! Gloria!”

Sheila Kelly looked at her. “Don’t be more of a damned fool than usual, Mother,” she said.

The voice was brazen and defiant, with a mocking, perverse harshness that was indescribably shocking. I saw Thomas Canby whiten. I saw him shrink as Sheila Kelly turned upon him.

“You killed me,” she said. “You think you are God because you have made a god of money and can buy and sell people’s souls. So you killed me, but I can’t rest in my grave. I never will rest in my grave while you are alive.”

She had started to her feet. She stood there swaying as she confronted Thomas Canby, a thin slight girl in a crumpled white evening gown, clutching a large chiffon handkerchief to her breast.

Even in that dim room, lighted only by the red lamp and the dying fire, I could see her blazing cheeks and the dreadful look in her eyes as they travelled slowly around that circle of blanched faces.

“You all hate him,” she said, “just as you hated me. But not one of you has the guts to stand up against him. Even you, Mother, would have let him put me away. Only he couldn’t put me away far enough. Not even six feet under the ground was deep enough or wide enough.”

She laughed horribly, and the blood in my veins crawled as something slid across my instep. I thought for one awful minute that it was a worm which she had brought with her out of the tomb. Then I saw it was merely the extension cord to the red lamp which was attached to a floor socket half the width of the room from the table upon which it sat.

Sheila Kelly had turned again to Thomas Canby, who cowered in his seat. “You destroyed my soul!” she cried. “Doomed me to wander forever without peace, but I will no longer wander alone!”

Her voice had risen to a screech, the hair stirred upon my scalp.

Behind me I heard Chet Keith smother a cry. Ella clutched my hand, and then the lights went out, followed almost at once by that horrible groan which at times still echoes in my ears. For a moment I think we were all frozen in our seats. I know I was still sitting there, petrified with horror, when Chet Keith snapped on the central chandelier. Even then I could not move. I do not think anybody moved or even breathed. The girl, Sheila Kelly, was lying in a huddle in the centre of the room, and in his chair Thomas Canby was weaving slowly from side to side with a hideous gash in his throat from which the blood gushed in a ghastly fountain.

It is difficult even now, in spite of how often it has been threshed over, for me to say exactly what happened in those dreadful ten minutes after the lights came on again and we saw Thomas Canby gasping in his death agony, unable to speak because his throat was cut from ear to ear, but with the most terrible urgency in his sunken eyes as his thin, bloodless hands clawed the air.