by Jerry
“It is now,” said the professor, descending from his chair, after attaching the second wire to the rod at the top of the bell, “that the nicety of our experiment comes in. I have had these insulated wires, from the works of the Electric Lighting Company, brought into my apartments in order to save time and trouble in charging my bell, an operation tedious to accomplish by generating electricity by a plate apparatus in the ordinary manner. Still, the great speed and force with which the fluid is generated and transmitted through these wires necessitates extreme care in manipulation. A degree too much tension might be productive of the most serious consequences to any one confined inside. Still, there is no fear in the first stage of the experiment, and none, if strict care is taken, in the second.” So saying, the professor approached the bell with an electrometer, and presently, after disconnecting the rubber-coated wires therefrom, returning them carefully to their respective insulators.
It was now apparent that while we were conversing Ashley had closed his eyes, and was now reclining back in his chair, seemingly in deep sleep, his hands still clasping the handles of the telegraph-wires that ran into the interior of the bell.
“That is the first effect of moderately strong charge of static electricity in the human frame,” explained the professor. “It induces a highly wrought condition of the nerves, which in their turn act upon the ganglion of the brain; that, in its turn, reacting again, through the duplex series of nerves, upon the wire held in the left hand, which brings the holder into communication with whatever object enthrals his attention at the time of the trance. The experiment is, in effect, clairvoyance reduced to an art, the mesmeric trance accomplished by scientific means and conditioned by the recognized and accepted laws of electrical science. Your friend is now, as I verily believe, in direct spiritual communication with her who is dearest to his heart—the last object that held possession of his soul before the mesmeric-electric trance overtook him. I will put myself in communication with him and ascertain.”
The professor then walked around to the side of the bell where the wires entered the glass, and applied the forefinger of either hand to the orifices. As he did so, Ashley gave a visible start. His eyes, however, still remained closed.
“Have you seen her?” asked the professor, in deliberate tones, bending his spectacled eyes upon Ashley. “Where is she? What do you see?”
“I see a vast building—a collection of vast buildings. I see throngs of people, gayly dressed, walking in and out of them, and parading the beautiful grounds which surround them. It reminds me of the Centennial Exposition of 76.”
“He is evidently in New Orleans,” observed the professor to me. “I have no question that Miss Radcliffe is there. Do you see the lady?” he continued, addressing my friend.
“Ha! There!” responded Ashley, with animation. “There is Julia with her father and mother, and stay!—there is another there—a tall, handsome man, who has just approached the party. He takes off his hat and bows. He steps to Julia’s side. She shrinks a little as he approaches. Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe smile as he proffers his arm. They walk on. He is bending over Julia and conversing in low, passionate tones. He is telling her that he loves her. She listens to him as in a dream. He presses his suit more vehemently. They have left or lost her father and mother in the crowd. They are now alone in a little Moorish kiosk. He bends down and kisses her, and though she shudders she does not move away. Merciful heavens!” and with a start Gerald Ashley awoke.
The professor eyed him calmly.
“Are you satisfied?” he said.
Great beads of perspiration were standing on Ashley’s brow. He looked the picture of agony and apprehension.
“You have been there in spirit,” said the professor. “You know and appreciate the position your love is in. Would you regain her? Would you save her to yourself? Do you dare to appear beside her in bodily form, and bring her back with you here, wresting her from the new lover who has gained dominion over her, and whom, if you hesitate now, you will be in a very short time powerless to rival? Do you trust to my art? Believe me, I sympathize with you, and will help you if I can,” and the professor looked calmly and steadily into the eyes of the man inside the bell.
“I am willing to encounter any risk,” responded Ashley, “to regain the love of my betrothed. What must I do?”
“Simply retain your clasp upon the handles,” said the professor, calmly. “Keep your attention fixed, as heretofore, and you will presently be in the kiosk of the New Orleans Exposition, not in spirit as you were a minute ago, but in actual, physical body. When you find yourself there, I leave it to yourself to regain the affections of your betrothed. Leave it to me to bring you both here. Be careful, though, not to loosen your clasp on her hand when the wire sounds the call to return. Go, and fortune attend you.”
Ashley again clasped the handles of the wires with a set determination in his face which betokened that he realized and appreciated every detail of the professor’s advice. The latter walked with somewhat quicker step than was his wont to the insulators where the wires of the Electric Lighting Company lay, and proceeded to adjust them to their respective places on the bell as before. Presently Ashley’s head fell back upon the chair as before, and his eyes closed. The professor took out his watch, looked at it somewhat nervously, approached the bell at intervals with his electrometer, and paced the floor.
“My instrument is based,” he explained to me, “on a centrigrade scale of my own. It will take some time for a bell of the size you see before you to become fully charged with the fluid, even with my wires, which I have had conveyed almost straight from headquarters; and until the bell is fully charged the experiment cannot be consummated.”
We waited patiently for some minutes more, Ashley murmuring meanwhile: “New Orleans; kiosk; I can see her; I can see him but I can not approach her; her father and mother are searching anxiously for her through other portions of the grounds.”
Presently my friend became silent. The professor again, for the fifth or sixth time, approached the bell and applied his instrument.
“Hush!” said he. “The tension in the bell is now augmenting rapidly. A short time more and we shall witness the successful accomplishment of our experiment.”
As he spoke, I noticed a change taking place in Ashley. Seated there, as he was, his head leaning on the back of his chair, his hands grasping the electrodes, I distinctly saw his form become thin, filmy, and transparent. Moment by moment more thin, filmy, and transparent it grew, till the attenuation was such that even the outline was scarcely visible. The hands alone, of all portions of the body, retained something of their pristine substantiality.
“He has gone,” whispered the professor, with subdued excitement. “We must now gauge the time till we can reasonably presume that he has accomplished his purpose, regaining his betrothed, and take measures for their return—the return of both, for if he be without her little would be gained. She would again, doubtless, as soon as her lover has left her, become amenable to him who gained a dominion over her in the absence of her original lover, and whose supremacy would be restored.”
“But how—how”—I stammered—“how is this to be accounted for? What has become of my friend who was seated there but a moment ago?”
“The simplest thing in the world, my dear sir,” replied the professor, earnestly. “You desire to know why your friend’s body has disappeared. Would you ask the same question had that body been exposed to intense heat? You answer, no; because you say that the most refractory substances—rock or metal—are first melted and then volatilized by heat. Heat, in effect, expands and disintegrates the mass, and decollocates the atoms of every known substance. The static electricity, with which that glass bell is charged, is, in one sense, a correlative of heat, and, in another, a correlative of the physical energy which we call spirit. Is it wonderful, therefore, that the intense force with which that bell is laden should suffice to produce the effects which you now witness? There is nothing wond
erful, my dear sir, in any chemical process, no matter how apparently incomprehensible and inexplicable it may be. You have seen a solid block of ice made instantaneously in and projected from a red-hot crucible. Is what is now being done any more incomprehensible than that?”
“Say that the human body you lately saw before you has been volatillized, resolved into its primary elements, and then, through the agency of the psychic power resident within it, has been transmitted to the spot which that psychic power had most in view, along the ordinary telegraph wires which connect us with that spot. Sound waves can be transmitted in this manner by the telephone; light waves are amenable to the same law—why, then, should not this law apply to matter which has been etherealized to the same degree as light and sound? It is but carrying the subject to its legitimate conclusion. But stay! Hush! Here they come!”
As the professor spoke, I became aware of a dim and shadowy form shaping itself within the bell. As it gained shape I discerned, with what feelings of awe can be imagined, that there was not one form but two. Slowly but gradually the dim form assumed a more bodily and distinct aspect. I came in a very few seconds to realize that the forms which stood before me in the bell were those of Gerald Ashley and his affianced bride, Julia Radcliffe. There could be no doubt about the matter. There they stood in distinct bodily form, but still with a bewildered, dreamy look upon them, as though scarcely awakened from sleep.
“We have triumphed!” said the professor, in low tones, as he mounted on a chair to disconnect the insulated feeding-wire from the rod at the top of the bell, at the same time motioning me to do the same for the other wire. I proceeded to do so as fast as I could, when suddenly a blinding flash passed before my eyes, and a report sounded in my ears like that of a cannon. The last thing I remember seeing was the great glass bell with Gerald Ashley and Julia Radcliffe inside, and Professor Vehr standing on a chair beside it, the whole picture illumined by the brilliant light of an electric flash, and the facade of Market Street distinctly visible through the windows of the apartment.
* * * * * * *
A week afterward, when I recovered sensibility, I ascertained several things. First, that Professor Vehr had left the city, the lessee of the Palace Hotel vowing that he would never receive another scientist, or permit another private wire from the Electric Lighting Company to enter the building. Secondly, that Doctor Gerald Ashley had not been seen since the eventful night, the strange experiences of which I have just recorded. Thirdly, that on that very day Miss Julia Radcliffe had disappeared from New Orleans, the last time that she had been seen being in a certain kiosk in the Exposition grounds with a Mr. Arthur Livingstone, though that gentleman avers that he saw her approached by some stranger, who claimed an acquaintanceship with her, and with whom she disappeared in the crowd a short time afterward. When Mr. Livingstone was pressed for a description of the gentleman in question, Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe were at once convinced that it could be no one else but Doctor Gerald Ashley; and while sadly recriminating him for such a hasty and unadvised step as eloping with their daughter, have no doubt that the pair will turn up when it becomes expedient to do so.
As for me, I have taken pains to verify the date of the disappearance of Miss Julia Radcliffe at New Orleans, and find it to be the same day and hour as Dr. Gerald Ashley’s and my own visit to Professor Vehr’s apartments, on the night of the grand explosion at the palace Hotel. I have arrived at a certain conclusion on the facts, and consider that the most judicious as well as the most sympathetic course I can pursue, under the circumstances, is to place the foregoing facts before the public just as they are; thereby, perhaps, affording that poor solace to the afflicted which consists in the removal of an ill-grounded hope of ever seeing their lost and loved ones again.
KASPER CRAIG
Maud Howe
It was at a London flower-show that Leonard Ebury first met the strange old man who was destined to exert so strong an influence over his life. It was in mid-May, the weather was on its best behavior, and Hurlingham was a paradise of bloom and perfume. In the great tents where the roses were displayed, on the banks of the river and in the club-house, scores of gorgeously-dressed ladies flitted about among the flowers, like so many brilliant butterflies. The band was playing an intoxicating Strauss waltz; the sun was shining brightly, its warmth tempered by a gentle breeze from the river.
Leonard was alone; in all that gay company, there was not one person whose face he had ever seen before. He had been in London but two days, and had not yet made an acquaintance. From his seat beneath a spreading oak-tree he watched the jocund scene, forgetting his own loneliness in contemplating the ever-changing crowd before him.
“May I share your seat, sir?” said a voice at his side; and as he moved to make room for the owner of the voice, his eyes fell upon a man who was an incongruous figure in the gay assemblage.
“You seem to be alone like myself,” said the new-comer. “And if I am not mistaken, you are a stranger in London as well.”
“You are not mistaken. I never felt so much alone in all my life as I have for the last hour among all these pleasure-seekers.”
“Your interest, like mine, is in the flowers, I fancy. That is another point of resemblance between us: but we are in the minority to-day, sir. Most of the people”—here he indicated a group of ladies—“have come here to exhibit their own unfolding or unfolded charms.” The stranger spoke in a smooth, courteous voice, his last words followed by an odd, chilly laugh which gave the young American a singular sensation of cold.
“To be quite frank with you, sir,” Leonard replied, “I will confess that no higher motive than a desire to kill time brought me to Hurlingham this morning. The flowers are very interesting, no doubt. But I have just returned from the home of flowers, where the hybiscus and the flame-acacias flaunt their gorgeous colors through the dark forests, where the airy orchids hang from palm and fern-tree, but where the sight of a fair woman’s face is as rare as snow in July.”
“Of what country do you speak?”
“Of the island of Java, where I have passed the last five years. These human flowers have a greater charm for me than the finest roses. Look, now, at that lady in the sapphire dress! Is she not as beautiful, as graceful as yonder peacock, sunning himself on the balcony? See! He spreads his fan, and she turns her lovely head in the sun, and lets its light glisten on her fair curls!”
“I perceive that you are a student of nature like myself. The lady and the bird belong, indeed, to the same class of beings. She wears the colors of his plumage, and imitates his graceful posturing—and see, further, how this woman has found her kin in the other kingdoms. She wears diamonds, hard, sparkling stones, whose glitter masks their shallowness; and she carries camellias: showy, scentless, heartless as herself.”
The stranger spoke with a sudden energy.
“Do you know the lady’s name?” inquired the young American, who was growing interested in the conversation.
“I never saw her before, but I know her species,” answered the stranger with some bitterness. Leonard, who had his full share of the national trait of curiosity, regarded his new acquaintance with a growing interest. He was a tall man, and very slender, but much bent with age. His long, grayish hair and beard floated about his thin face, which wore a greenish pallor and was characterized by an expression of eager inquiry. Whatever else he might be, the man was surely a seeker.
“I perceive that you are no common person,” continued the old man, “and I believe that some of my theories may be of interest to you. They are the result of a long life devoted to the study of nature. If I have learned some of her secrets, it is in return for years of labor.
“First in importance I hold the great law of harmony, which runs through all nature and is recognized by men under the blind name of destiny. Every created thing is in harmony with some creation in every other sphere of nature; is, in fact, one note in a vast chord which echoes through the whole universe. It is the first unconscious effort
of man to find his kindred elements in the other spheres. Only when this is accomplished does he attain his full development; not till he learns to commune and borrow from these kindred substances in the mineral and vegetable worlds the qualities which they possess, does he reach the zenith of his power.”
“You interest me more than I can express,” said the young man, falling in with the stranger’s mood with the facile adaptability of his race. “This new science is allied to astrology. I believe that a man cannot fail to be influenced by the stars under whose light he was born; and if these remoter forces affect his destiny, why not the nearer ones of which you speak?”
The old man nodded assent, and Leonard begged him to unfold more of his theory.
“All in good time, young sir. I feel that I have found in you one whom I may at once profit by and befriend. If I am not mistaken, you are not in the best of circumstances. Come, now! Would you not be glad of a position which would fall in with your taste for travel, and at the same time reward you handsomely?”
Leonard blushed under the keen gray eyes fixed on him from beneath the old man’s shaggy brows. He was conscious that his clothes were somewhat shabby, but the old man’s dress was in a much worse condition. “He may be a lunatic, and he may be a rich eccentric,” thought Leonard. “Well! I have been a soldier of fortune too long to resign my commission now.”
“Sir, you have guessed my case,” he said, frankly. “This morning I had but two guineas in the world.”
“And you spent one of them to gain admittance to the flower-show! Come, I like your spirit. I have often spent my last ha’penny to buy a posy. I will show you something that will repay your generous outlay. Half his fortune on the mere chance of seeing a beautiful flower!”