The Complete Novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Arthur Conan DoyleЧитать онлайн книгу.
natural cause should be exhausted — and very thoroughly exhausted — before the bounds of what is possible should be enlarged. Both of them had the utmost respect for the ponderous intellect of Challenger and were affected by his strong views, though Malone was compelled to admit in the frequent arguments in which he was plunged that the opinion of a clever man who has had no experience is really of less value than that of the man in the street who has actually been there.
These arguments, as often as not, were with Mervin, editor of the psychic paper Dawn, which dealt with every phase of the occult, from the lore of the Rosicrucians to the strange regions of the students of the Great Pyramid, or of those who uphold the Jewish origin of our blonde Anglo-Saxons. Mervin was a small, eager man with a brain of a high order, which might have carried him to the most lucrative heights of his profession had he not determined to sacrifice worldly prospects in order to help what seemed to him to be a great truth. As Malone was eager for knowledge and Mervin was equally keen to impart it, the waiters at the Literary Club found it no easy matter to get them away from the corner-table in the window at which they were wont to lunch. Looking down at the long, grey curve of the Embankment and the noble river with its vista of bridges, the pair would linger over their coffee, smoking cigarettes and discussing various sides of this most gigantic and absorbing subject, which seemed already to have disclosed new horizons to the mind of Malone.
There was one warning given by Mervin which aroused impatience amounting almost to anger in Malone’s mind. He had the hereditary Irish objection to coercion and it seemed to him to be appearing once more in an insidious and particularly objectionable form.
“You are going to one of Bolsover’s family seances,” said Mervin. “They are, of course, well known among our people, though few have been actually admitted, so you may consider yourself privileged. He has clearly taken a fancy to you.”
“He thought I wrote fairly about them.”
“Well, it wasn’t much of an article, but still among the dreary, purblind nonsense that assails us it did show some traces of dignity and balance and sense of proportion.”
Malone waved a deprecating cigarette.
“Bolsover’s seances and others like them are, or course, things of no moment to the real psychic. They are like the rude foundations of a building which certainly help to sustain the edifice, but are forgotten when once you come to inhabit it. It is the higher superstructure with which we have to do. You would think that the physical phenomena were the whole subject — those and a fringe of ghosts and haunted houses — if you were to believe the cheap papers who cater for the sensationalist. Of course, these physical phenomena have a use of their own. They rivet the attention of the inquirer and encourage him to go further. Personally, having seen them all, I would not go across the road to see them again. But I would go across many roads to get high messages from the beyond.”
“Yes, I quite appreciate the distinction, looking at it from your point of view. Personally, of course, I am equally agnostic as to the messages and the phenomena.”
“Quite so. St. Paul was a good psychic. He makes the point so neatly that even his ignorant translators were unable to disguise the real occult meanings as they have succeeded in doing in so many cases.”
“Can you quote it?”
“I know my New Testament pretty well, but I am not letter-perfect. It is the passage where he says that the gift of tongues, which was an obvious sensational thing, was for the uninstructed, but that prophecies, that is real spiritual messages, were for the elect. In other words that an experienced Spiritualist has no need of phenomena.”
“I’ll look that passage up.”
“You will find it in Corinthians, I think. By the way, there must have been a pretty high average of intelligence among those old congregations if Paul’s letters could have been read aloud to them and thoroughly comprehended.”
“That is generally admitted, is it not?”
“Well, it is a concrete example of it. However, I am down a side-track. What I wanted to say to you is that you must not take Bolsover’s little spirit circus too seriously. It is honest as far as it goes, but it goes a mighty short way. It’s a disease, this phenomena hunting. I know some of our people, women mostly, who buzz around seance rooms continually, seeing the same thing over and over, sometimes real, sometimes, I fear, imitation. What better are they for that as souls or as citizens or in any other way? No, when your foot is firm on the bottom rung don’t mark time on it, but step up to the next rung and get firm upon that.”
“I quite get your point. But I’m still on the solid ground.”
“Solid!” cried Mervin. “Good Lord! But the paper goes to press today and I must get down to the printer. With a circulation of ten thousand or so we do things modestly, you know — not like you plutocrats of the daily press. I am practically the staff.”
“You said you had a warning.”
“Yes, yes, I wanted to give you a warning.” Mervin’s thin, eager face became intensely serious. “If you have any ingrained religious or other prejudices which may cause you to turn down this subject after you have investigated it, then don’t investigate at all — for it is dangerous.”
“What do you mean — dangerous?”
“They don’t mind honest doubt, or honest criticism, but if they are badly treated they are dangerous.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Ah, who are they? I wonder. Guides, controls, psychic entities of some kind. Who the agents of vengeance — or I should say justice — are, is really not essential. The point is that they exist.”
“Oh, rot, Mervin!”
“Don’t be too sure of that.”
“Pernicious rot! These are the old theological bogies of the Middle Ages coming up again. I am surprised at a sensible man like you!”
Mervin smiled — he had a whimsical smile — but his eyes, looking out from under bushy yellow brows, were as serious as ever.
“You may come to change your opinion. There are some queer sides to this question. As a friend I put you wise to this one.”
“Well, put me wise, then.”
Thus encouraged, Mervin went into the matter. He rapidly sketched the career and fate of a number of men who had, in his opinion, played an unfair game with these forces, become an obstruction, and suffered for it. He spoke of judges who had given prejudiced decisions against the cause, of journalists who had worked up stunt cases for sensational purposes and to throw discredit on the movement; of others who had interviewed mediums to make game of them, or who, having started to investigate, had drawn back alarmed, and given a negative decision when their inner soul knew that the facts were true. It was a formidable list, for it was long and precise, but Malone was not to be driven.
“If you pick your cases I have no doubt one could make such a list about any subject. Mr. Jones said that Raphael was a bungler, and Mr. Jones died of angina pectoris. Therefore it is dangerous to criticize Raphael. That seems to be the argument.”
“Well, if you like to think so.”
“Take the other side. Look at Morgate. He has always been an enemy, for he is a convinced materialist. But he prospers — look at his professorship.”
“Ah, an honest doubter. Certainly. Why not?”
“And Morgan who at one time exposed mediums.”
“If they were really false he did good service.”
“And Falconer who has written so bitterly about you?”
“Ah, Falconer! Do you know anything of Falconer’s private life? No. Well, take it from me he has got his dues. He doesn’t know why. Some day these gentlemen will begin to compare notes and then it may dawn on them. But they get it.”
He went on to tell a