On the Borderland

by F. Britten Austin

SECRET SERVICE

“But, Excellenz——!” The entreaty, from such a man, was oddly and strikingly sincere. About forty years of age, sprucely dressed in a well-cut lounge suit, spats over patent boots, he was the type to be seen any day gazing rather aimlessly into the shop-windows of Piccadilly or the Rue de la Paix, the type that haunts the hotels frequented by the best society and yet is not of that society, the type that drifts behind the chairs of every gambling casino in the world. A dark moustache, carefully trimmed, curled over lips whose fine curves were unpleasantly thin and clear-cut. His complexion was sallow; his dark eyes, fixed on his companion in an accentuation of his entreaty, implored now with an expression of genuine truthfulness which was certainly not habitual to them. He gesticulated with a white and exquisitely manicured hand.

“But rubbish!” The speaker was an oldish, thick-set man in evening dress. His round red face, barred with a clipped white moustache, with a pair of small gray eyes vivacious behind pince-nez, was set upon a short apoplectic neck which rucked into folds above his collar. The scalp showed pink through close-cropped white hair. He stood warming himself with his back to the fire—a very large fire for Berlin in the winter of early 1918—and glared angrily at the young man. He spoke with the irascibility of a brutal superior whose impunity is of long date and unquestioned.

“Are you mad, Kranz? Do you take me for an imbecile old woman? Am I feeble-minded—do I look feeble-minded—that you should dare to—to play such a trick upon me?” He was obviously working himself up into one of his official rages. “You—you tell me that you have an infallible means for obtaining secret information, no matter how hidden. You persuade me to come and test it—me! I give you credit for your impudence!—and this is what it is!” He almost choked with offended dignity. “Be careful, Kranz! You have traded this once upon your record with us—you will never do it again! To bring me—me!—to this absurdity!—to expect me to listen to the hypnotic ravings of that idiot girl! I wonder you didn’t offer me crystal-gazing!”

“But, Excellenz——!”

The old man waved a hand at him.

“My dear Kranz,” he said, dropping suddenly into a tone of tolerant contempt. “I forgive you this once. I daresay you have been the victim of a genuine hallucination. You would not have dared else.—You don’t drug, do you?” The question was asked with a disconcertingly sudden sharpness. The younger man made a gesture of emphatic denial, defying the piercing gray eyes that probed him. The old man grunted. “Keep your sanity, Kranz—or the Bureau will lose a valued servant. Drop this nonsense. I know what I am talking about—I studied psychology under Wundt of Jena. The whole thing is a hallucination—the raving of the dream-self released from control—dummes Zeug!—Give me my coat!”

“Excellenz, I implore you!”

The old man looked at him with a snarl of savage mockery.

“Don’t waste any more of my time, Kranz! Look at her—is it even probable that an imbecile creature like that can be of use in our business? Look at her, I say!”

He flung out a hand toward a young girl who stood with obvious reluctance in the centre of the luxuriously furnished apartment. She was perhaps eighteen but her youth had neither beauty nor charm. Her features were soft and heavy; the nose thick; the chin receding; the eyes weak and protuberant. Unmistakably, her personality was of the feeblest. Her face flooded scarlet with shame and her eyes swam with tears at this brutal insult. Yet evidently she did not dare to rush away. Only she looked beseechingly toward Kranz, like a dog who awaits a sign from its master.

His sallow face blanched. The thin lips under the dark moustache lost their curves, became a straight line.

“Agathe!” he said, and his voice of command was strangely in contrast with the tone in which he had entreated the old man. “Go into the next room and wait!”

The girl vanished without a word. Kranz waited until she had closed the door, and then he turned once more to his superior.

“I implore Your Excellency to listen!” he said with a desperate gesture. “I stake my reputation upon it——”

The old man grunted scornfully.

“Your reputation!”

The dark eyes flashed.

“My reputation with you, Excellenz,” he corrected in a gentle voice of complete cynicism.

The old man stared at him.

“Well, go on!” he said brutally, after a short pause which was eloquent of his appraisement. He cleaned his pince-nez to mark his contemptuous indifference to anything that might be said.

“You remember Karl Wertheimer, Excellenz?”

The old man swung round on him, replaced the pince-nez.

“Shot by the English.—You’ll never equal him, Kranz.”

Kranz shrugged his shoulders.

“Excellenz, I believe neither in God nor Devil—until the other day I believed that death finished us completely—but I assure you solemnly upon my—upon anything which you think will bind me—that the soul, or whatever you choose to call it, of Karl Wertheimer speaks through that girl!” There was a pause of silence in which the old man’s eyes probed him to the depths. He proffered no comment and Kranz continued, his voice intensely earnest. “The English shot Karl Wertheimer in London—but they did not kill him. His—his soul is here, in Berlin, in this room, alive as ever, as eager as ever to work for the Fatherland!”

“He always had patriotic notions,” murmured the old man, with a sly smile at the obviously cosmopolitan Kranz, “—that is why he was such an invaluable agent. Go on with your little romance.”

“It is no romance, Excellenz, I assure you—it is living fact. Karl Wertheimer was a useful agent while he lived upon this earth—but he is immeasurably more useful now that he is a—a spirit. There are no walls that can keep him out—there is nothing he cannot see if he chooses to—there is no conversation he cannot overhear——”

“H’m!” grunted the old man, “admitted that if he is a spirit he can do all this—how can he communicate it to us?”

“Through this girl!”

“Who is she, this girl?”

“The daughter of some shopkeeper or other. I followed her ankles one evening in the Park—it was night, and I could not see her face.” He smiled cynically. “I won’t trouble Your Excellency with the details. I brought her in here and no sooner had she sat down in that chair when she swooned off. I was just cursing my luck—I saw her face for the first time then!—and wondering how I was going to get rid of her, when Karl spoke to me. I confess, Excellenz, it gave me a pretty bad turn. It was so utterly unexpected—his voice coming from her lips. However, I pulled myself together—and we had a most interesting conversation——”

“He could answer your questions?” interjected the old man, sharply.

“Just as if he were himself sitting in the chair. So, naturally, I kept a tight hold on the girl. She has not been allowed out since.”

“H’m!” The old man grunted again and looked at his watch. “Well, I have missed my appointment,” he said with the factitious bad temper he owed to his dignity. “I may as well see her performance. Fetch her in!”

Kranz went to the door and called.

“Agathe!”

The girl entered, stood with her eyes fixed timorously on him. He pointed to a large armchair by the fireplace.

“Sit down!” he commanded. The girl obeyed dully, one little apprehensive glance at him the only sign of any mental life in her. She sat upright, her hands on her lap, staring stupidly into the fire. Two heavy tears collected themselves in her protuberant eyes rolled down her cheeks. They seemed but to emphasize her degradation. Her tyrant stood over her, his dark eyes hard.

“Lean back and go to sleep!”

She sank back among the cushions. Obviously, she had no will at all of her own. Her eyes closed. Her expressionless face twitched for a moment and then was as still as a mask. Her bosom heaved in the commencement of deep and heavy breathing which continued in the normality of slumber. The old man watched her, keenly and contemptuously alert for any sign of simulation.

Kranz pulled a little table across to the fireplace. A telephone instrument, incongruously utilitarian in this luxurious room, and writing materials were on it.

“You should note down what is said, Excellenz,” he said earnestly, in a low voice.

The old man ignored him, his eyes on the girl. Suddenly he shuddered in a rush of cold air. The paper on the table fluttered as in a draught. He turned to Kranz in savage irritation.

“Shut that window!”

Kranz shook his head.

“They are all shut, Excellenz!” His whisper was one of genuine awe. “Hush! It’s beginning! He’s come!”

The old man favoured him with a glance of inexpressible contempt. The scorn was still in his eyes when he jerked round to the girl again in an involuntary start of surprise at a sudden greeting.

“Good evening, Excellenz!” The words issued from that expressionless mask of the deeply breathing girl, but they were uttered in a tone of easy jocularity, followed by a little good-humoured laugh, which was uncanny in its contrast with her degraded personality. Despite the feminine vocal chords which had articulated the phrase, the timbre and intonation were vividly those of a man of the world.

The old man stared speechlessly. His faculties seemed inhibited under the shock. The red faded out of his round face, left it ashen gray under the close-cropped white hair. Kranz, watching him narrowly, feared for his heart. He made a brusque little gesture as though seizing control of himself.

“Herr Gott! It’s—it’s his voice!” he gasped.

His eyes turned to Kranz and there was fear in them, a primitive fear of the supernatural. Trembling, he reeled rather than walked to the chair by the table with the telephone, dropped heavily into it. Kranz broke the oppressive silence, posed himself as master of the situation.

“Good evening, Karl!” he said as though welcoming an everyday acquaintance into the room.

“Hallo, Kranz!” came the easy, jocular voice through the lips of the entranced girl. “Wie gehts? I am glad you persuaded His Excellency to come. Now we can start!”

The old man pulled himself together, moistened his lips for speech.

“Is—is that really you, Karl?” he asked, unevenly.

The merry little laugh, so uncanny from the only origin visible, preceded the answer.

“Really I, Excellenz—Karl Wertheimer, shot six months ago by the English in the Tower of London, and as alive in this room as ever I was.” The tone changed to that of a humorously bantering introduction. “Karl Wertheimer, Excellenz, the terror of the English counterespionage department, at your service—still!”

The old man fumblingly produced a handkerchief and mopped at the perspiration on his brow. He hesitated for an appropriate remark.

“Why——?” he asked falteringly, and stopped.

The merry little laugh rang out again in the silent room.

“Why, Excellenz? Because in my earth-life I had only one passion—and it is as strong as ever it was. Stronger, for I owe our enemies a grudge for that little early-morning shooting party in the Tower. You’ve no idea how I long for a really good cigar, Excellenz,” he finished in a tone of jesting complaint.

The old man stared into the empty air beyond the girl.

“And you can really obtain information and convey it?” He was recovering his poise. The question was asked in the brusque tone familiar to his subordinates.

“Test me, Excellenz!”

“I assure you, Excellenz——!” interjected Kranz, eagerly.

His superior waved him aside. The brow under the short white hair had recovered its normal ruddiness, was wrinkled in cogitation. He felt in his pocket and produced a letter in a sealed envelope.

“Tell me from whom this comes,” he said.

He proffered the letter as though expecting it to be taken out of his fingers. Then, as it was not, he dropped his hand with a gesture of hopeless bafflement. There was so real a feeling of the actual presence of Karl Wertheimer in the room that the quite normal fact of the letter remaining untouched emphasized suddenly the uncanny nature of this conversation.

“Permit me, Excellenz,” said Kranz, politely. He took the letter and laid it on the girl’s brow. Her lips moved at once.

“This purports to be from the firm of Wilson and Staunton, Boston, to the firm of Jensen and Auerstedt, Christiania, with reference to an overdue account.” The voice was still the chuckling voice of Karl Wertheimer. “Actually, it is a communication in code to you from Heinrich Biedermann at New York. Do you wish me to read the message? I still remember the old code, Excellenz!”

“No—no!” interposed the old man. “Never mind!”

“Perhaps you would like me to tell you what Heinrich Biedermann is doing at this moment, Excellenz?”

“But he is in New York! You can’t be here and there, too!”

Again came the merry little laugh.

“Time and Space are an illusion of matter, Excellenz. I half forget that you are still subject to it.—Well, Heinrich Biedermann is sitting with a young woman in a restaurant, having tea. They are both very cheerful, for he has just received a remittance from you, and he has bought her a new hat. The sun is setting and he is lost in admiration of the glow of her red hair against the background of the illuminated sky which he can perceive through the window. He is hopelessly in love with her, which is unfortunate, as the lady happens to be a spy, by name Desirée Rochefort, in the pay of the French Secret Service.”

“The devil——!” ejaculated the old man.

“But,” said Kranz in a puzzled tone. “Sunset?—It is nearly midnight!”

The old man turned on him.

“Fool! There is a difference of six hours in time between here and America. That proves it—if anything can be proof of such wild improbability!”

“Test me again!” said the amused and confident voice of Karl Wertheimer. “Something really difficult this time!”

The old man leaned back in his chair and pondered. Then the gleam of an idea came into his malicious gray eyes.

“Right!” he said, emphatically. “You know the library in my house?”

“Certainly, Excellenz!”

“Go into my library. Read me the fifteenth line of the ninety-first page of the sixth volume on the third shelf of the right-hand side, without opening the book. Can you do that?”

“You shall see, Excellenz,” replied the voice, cheerfully. “The sixth volume counting from the left, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“I will note that,” said Kranz, coming to the table. He wrote the particulars and looked up to his superior. “Do you know what the line is, Excellenz?” he asked.

“I don’t even know what the book is!” replied the old man, harshly. He wrinkled his brows in impatience at the silence, which prolonged itself through several seconds. The girl seemed quite normally asleep.

“Here you are, Excellenz!” It was again the mocking voice of Karl Wertheimer which issued from her lips. “The book is Shakespeare. The line is ‘England, bound in with the triumphant sea.’ Can you interpret the omen, Excellenz?”

“The U-boat war——” murmured Kranz, as if to himself.

“Write it down!” commanded the old man. Kranz wrote the line.

His Excellency took up the telephone receiver.

“Hallo! Hallo!” He gave a number and waited. “Hallo! Is Wolff there?—Tell him I want him at once! Yes—a thousand devils!—Wolff! my secretary! Are you all deaf?” he vociferated irascibly. “Hallo! Is that you, Wolff? Yes, of course it is I speaking! You ought to know my voice by this time!—Go into the library and get—” He hesitated. Kranz passed him the sheet of paper “—get the sixth volume from the left on the third shelf of the right-hand side. Bring it to the telephone. Hurry now!”

Again he waited. There was a tense silence in the room, a silence which was emphasized by the heavy and regular breathing of the sleeping girl.

“Hallo! Are you there?—Is that you, Wolff? Be quiet! Answer my questions!—Have you got the book?—Right—What is it?—An English book?—Shakespeare—right!—Now turn up page—page ninety-one. Got it?—Count to the fifteenth line——” He turned from the telephone to Kranz. “Write down what I repeat!” Then again speaking into the telephone: “Yes? Read out the line!—what?—‘England, bound in with the triumphant sea’—a thousand devils!—Wolff! Wolff! wait a minute!—where did you find the book? On the shelf? Had it been touched? You are sure that it had not been touched—not opened? Oh, you have been in the library all the evening, working——”

“Tell him that the love-poem he has been writing to Fräulein Mimi in your library to-night is not only banal but it does not scan,” interjected the mocking voice of Karl Wertheimer. “The line ‘Unsere Herzen schlagen rhythmisch’ is particularly bad.”

The old man glanced toward the vacant air over the girl and grinned. He repeated the message into the telephone. He waited a moment—and then burst into chuckling laughter.

“Famos!—He’s smashed the receiver. Scared out of his life!—I heard him yell.” He put down the instrument and turned again to the chair. “Karl Wertheimer, I believe in your reality—I believe in your powers.” His voice was solemn. “The Fatherland has work for you to do.”

“That is why I am here, Excellenz.” The voice came jauntily through the expressionless lips of the unconscious girl.

The old man pursed his mouth under the clipped white moustache and pondered. Kranz watched him with acute interest.

“Listen!” said the old man, looking up in a sudden decision. “At the present time the Allied Military Missions in Washington are negotiating with the United States Government with regard to the despatch of the American Army to Europe, for the coming campaign. We know this—we know that any day now they may come to an agreement. It is of the utmost importance to us that we should know, immediately, the numbers promised and the schedule of sailings. The fate of the world depends upon it. The secret will be most jealously guarded—triply locked out of reach of any ordinary agent. Can you read it, as you read the line in that closed book?”

“I can, Excellenz—if you can give me some indication where to look,” replied the voice. “We must, so to speak, focus ourselves—I can’t now explain the conditions with us, but you will understand what I mean—spirit pervades——” For the first time in the colloquy the voice spoke with hesitation, as though despairing of explaining the inexplicable. “Direction—definite direction—is essential——”

“H’m,” the old man grunted. “Well, I suggest Forsdyke—you know, the permanent Chief of Department—as the man most likely to prepare the schedule. You know where he lives?”

“The very house in Washington!” replied the voice triumphantly. “Good enough! I will do my best, Excellenz.”

“To-day is the 21st of February,” said the old man. “We must know by the end of the month. Vast issues depend on it. Can you do it?”

“I will try.” The voice came feebly and as from far away. “I must go now, Excellenz—the power—the power is failing—fast. Good-bye—good-bye, Kranz—take—take care of the girl—she—she is the—only means—of—communication——” The last words came in a whisper, ceased. The girl appeared to be in normal slumber.

The old man turned to Kranz, spoke out of preoccupation which otherwise ignored him.

“Give me my hat and coat!”

A sudden anxiety paled the sallow face.

“Your Excellency remembers what Karl said,” he murmured as he assisted his chief into the heavy fur-lined garment.—“The girl is the only means of communication. I need not remind Your Excellency that the girl is my——”

“You need not remind me of anything, Kranz,” interrupted the old man, harshly. “You will not be forgotten. Good-night!”

Kranz accompanied him obsequiously to the door.

* * * * *

On that evening of the 21st of February a cheerful little party was assembled around the dinner-table of Henry Forsdyke, Chief of a certain department in the United States Administration. The large room, which had been built by a Southern magnate who led Washington society in pre-Civil War days, was illumined only by the shaded lights of the table, and beyond the dazzling shirt-fronts of the men it lapsed into a gloom that was intensified by the dark curtains over the long windows and was scarcely relieved by the glinting gilt frames of the pictures spaced on the walls hung in a dull tint. In that half-light the servants moved, scarcely real. Only the party within the illuminated oval of white napery, sparkling glass, and gleaming silver was vividly actual, plucked out of shadow. It was a fad of the host’s, this concentration of the light upon the table. He alleged that it emphasized the personalities of his guests. His daughter, who was irreverent, accused him of an atavistic tendency that craved for the candle-light of his ancestors.

Within the magic oval the party exchanged light-hearted talk that effervesced every now and then into merry laughter where a young girl’s voice predominated. All were in evident good spirits. The host himself, a man of between fifty and sixty years, with shrewd gray eyes looking out of a face characterized by a pointed and neatly clipped iron-gray beard, set the tone. He smiled down the table with a contentment that seemed to spring from a secret satisfaction, the contentment of a man who has completed an anxious and difficult task and can now relax. He was in his best vein of sententious humour.

The same undertone of relief could have been discerned by the acute in the gaiety of young Jimmy Lomax, Forsdyke’s private secretary, although one alone of the little glances between him and his host’s daughter, if intercepted, might have seemed sufficient reason.

Captain Sergeantson, Jimmy Lomax’s chum, had obvious cause for cheerfulness. Attached to a Special Service Department, he had just returned from Europe, where he had fulfilled an extremely difficult mission with conspicuous success. His home-coming had provided the excuse for this little dinner-party.

As for Professor Lomax, Jimmy’s father, no one had ever seen him other than in high spirits. The author—after a lifetime of profound and exact scientific research that had earned him a world-wide reputation—of an enquiry into the possible survival of human personality, which was the controversial topic of that winter and which threatened to deprive him of that reputation, he was in striking contrast with the idea of him propagated by the sensational Press. There was nothing of the visionary about those clear-cut features. A stranger would have diagnosed him as a lawyer—a lawyer whose judicial perception of evidence was clarified by a sense of humour. The mobile mouth, even in silence, hinted at this latter quality. The eyes twinkled, eminently sane, under a well-balanced brow. He joked like a schoolboy with his host’s daughter, exciting—for the secretly selfish pleasure of hearing it—her gay young laugh. Occasionally he glanced across to his son, approbation in his eyes.

Hetty Forsdyke, the only woman of the party, was a typical specimen of self-reliant, college-bred American girl. Good to look upon, her beauty hinted at a race which had been proud of its exclusiveness long after Napoleon had sold Louisiana to the States. Her vivacity and charm had roots, perhaps, in the same stock, but the cool, level-headed understanding of life, which she expressed in a slang that provoked her father to vain rebuke, and the genuineness of which was vouched for by her clear gray eyes, was an attribute of the Forsdykes and the North.

The dinner was nearly at an end. Forsdyke, launched on a story of a Presidential campaign in the Middle West a generation ago, had arrived at the stage where the chuckles of his hearers were on the point of culminating in the final burst of laughter. Hetty, her glass between her fingers, half-way to her mouth, was looking at him with a smile that pretended the story was quite new to her. Suddenly her expression changed. She stared, as if spell-bound, at the dark curtains from which her father’s oval face detached itself in the illumination of the table. The glass slipped from her fingers, smashed.

Forsdyke’s story ceased abruptly. Four pairs of alarmed eyes focussed themselves upon his daughter. Jimmy, involuntarily, had half risen from his chair. The movement seemed to recall the girl to her surroundings. She shuddered and then, with an evident effort of will, brought back her gaze to the table. Her smile routed the momentary anxiety of her companions.

“How careless of me!” she said easily, quelling, with quiet self-control, her confusion ere it could well be remarked. “I don’t know what I was thinking of!—Do go on, Poppa! It was just getting interesting.”

She signed composedly to a servant to pick up the broken glass, and settled herself, all attention, to the familiar story.

“What a hostess she is!” thought her father. “Just like——” He did not finish the complementary clause and stifled another which began: “I wonder what I shall do when——” He picked up his story again and was rewarded by his meed of laughter. But his eyes rested uneasily on his daughter and he promised himself a later enquiry into this abnormality.

The party withdrew into the drawing-room, where, since Forsdyke was a widower of many years’ masculine supremacy, the men lit their cigars. Hetty, at a request from her father, seated herself at the grand piano in the far corner, and commenced the soft chords of a Chopin prelude. Jimmy Lomax stood over her. There was already something proprietary in his air. But the girl, after one glance up at him, seemed to forget his presence in the spell of the music. Her position commanded a full view of the room and she looked dreamily across to where the three men were gathered by the white marble fireplace.

Suddenly the music stopped on a crashing discord. The girl had jumped to her feet, was trembling violently. Young Lomax clutched at her.

“Hetty! What——?”

She broke away from him, came swiftly across the room to his father.

“Professor!” she said. “You were once in practice as a doctor, weren’t you?”

The twinkling eyes went grave as they met hers. There was unmistakable seriousness in her question.

“Yes, my dear——”

“Then I want you to examine me right here, Professor!” she said. “Tell me if I’ve got fever!”

She met the amazed eyes of the other men with a look which announced that she knew her own business.

Without a word the Professor lifted up her wrist and felt her pulse. “Now show me your tongue!” She obeyed. He nodded his head, and placed his hand upon her brow. His eyes plunged into hers for one second of searching scrutiny and then he nodded his head again, satisfied. “My dear,” he said, “I haven’t a thermometer here, but I should say you are absolutely normal in every way. Your pulse is a shade rapid, perhaps.”

The girl took a long breath.

“Thank you, Professor,” she said, simply. She turned to the others. “You heard what the Professor said? There’s no fever about me. Now—listen! I want to tell you something. I’ve been waiting to tell you ever since we sat down to dinner—and now I must tell you! And you mustn’t laugh!—Poppa, this is serious!”

The four men, puzzled at her demeanour, grouped themselves round her. She assured herself of their gravity.

“This evening,” she began, “between five and six o’clock I suddenly developed a dreadful headache. It was so bad that I just had to go to my room and lie down. I went to sleep straight off. And then—then I had a—a dream—only,” she interposed quickly, to hold their interest, “it wasn’t like an ordinary dream. It was so vivid that I felt all the time it meant something. I dreamed that someone or something that I could feel was sort of loving and kind and earnest—very earnest, I could feel that strongly—took me into a room. And, somehow, I knew that the room was in Berlin. It seemed quite a nice room but I don’t remember much about the details of it. I only remember that I saw myself there with two men, one young and dark, the other old and white, who were staring at a girl sleeping in a big armchair. They took not the faintest notice of me, and I didn’t worry much about them. The girl was the interesting thing to all of us—and yet, though I was staring at her with a sort of fascination I couldn’t shake off, I didn’t know why. Then a strange thing happened. The girl kind of faded away—I don’t know how to describe it, because I felt all the time she was still there—and as she faded, there came up the figure of a man. He seemed to grow out of her—to take her place. It was real uncanny. This man that grew out of the girl like a—like a ghost—was somehow more living than any of us. It was as if he were in the limelight and we were in the shadow. I shall never forget his face. It was handsome but wicked—mocking—malicious—like a devil. And he had an ugly scar over the right eyebrow which made him look even more devilish——”

“What colour was his hair?” interposed Captain Sergeantson. “Any moustache?”

The girl looked at him in surprise at the question.

“Fair—sticking up straight. No moustache—why?”

Captain Sergeantson nodded.

“I only wondered. Go on, Miss Forsdyke.”

The girl resumed.

“Well—it seemed that we were all looking at this man and not the girl at all. She had disappeared behind him, or into him, I don’t know which. The other two men were talking to him—talking earnestly. And it seemed to me that it was extremely—oh, immensely—important that I should understand what they were saying. I listened with all my soul. It almost hurt me to listen as hard as I did—And yet I couldn’t get a word of it. What they said was, somehow, just out of reach—like people you see talking on the bioscope. And then, all of a sudden, I heard—one sentence—as clearly as possible, ‘Forsdyke is the man who prepares the schedule!’”

Jimmy Lomax uttered a sharp cry of amazement.

“What!” He turned to Forsdyke. “Chief, that’s strange!”

Forsdyke imposed silence with a gesture.

“Go on, Hetty,” he said, calmly. “What then?”

“Then I woke up. The words were ringing in my ears. They haunted me all the time I was dressing for dinner. I wondered if I ought to tell you. Something was whispering to me that I should. But I was afraid you would laugh at me. But that’s not all. You remember at dinner I dropped a glass.—Poppa!” Her voice suddenly became very earnest. “I saw that man—the man who had grown out of the girl—standing behind you. His eyes were fixed on you as though trying to read into you—so evilly that I went cold all over.”

The Professor gave her a sharp glance.

“No vision of the room in Berlin—or wherever it was?” he queried.

She shook her head.

“No. Just the man. But even that’s not all. Just now—when I was playing and looking across to you—I distinctly saw him again, close behind Poppa! He moved this time—moved with a funny little limp—just like a real man with a bad leg. I jumped up—and—and he was gone!” She looked around apprehensively as though expecting to see him still.

“Your liver’s out of order, my dear,” said her father. “Take a pill when you go to bed to-night.”

“No,” said the girl, “it’s not that. I know you would say I was ill—that is why I asked the Professor to examine me. I am sure it means something!”

Captain Sergeantson threw the end of his cigar into the fireplace and took a wallet out of his pocket. The wallet contained photographs. He handed them to the girl.

“Miss Forsdyke,” he said, gravely, “would you mind telling me if you have ever seen any of these people?”

The girl examined them. Suddenly she uttered a cry and held up one of the prints.

“This!” she said. Her eyes were wide with astonishment. “This is the man I saw!—There’s the scar, too—exactly!—Who is he? Do you know him?”

“That man,” replied Captain Sergeantson, sententiously, “is Karl Wertheimer. About the cutest spy the German Secret Service ever had.—I was going to tell Jimmy a story about him and brought his picture along with me,” he added in explanation. “I sort of recognized him from your description.”

The girl stared at the photograph.

“Of course,” continued Sergeantson, “he made up over that scar. He was an extraordinarily clever actor, by the way. They cleaned off the make-up when they took the photograph.”

“And he is a German spy!” mused the girl, still staring at the picture.

“He was!” replied Sergeantson, grimly. “The British shot him in the Tower when I was in London six months ago.”

The girl looked up sharply.

“I’m sure I’ve never seen his photograph before!” she said, as though answering an allegation she felt in the silence of the others. “How could I?”

“I can’t imagine, Miss Forsdyke. The extraordinary thing is that you should have got his limp. That’s what gave him away to the British. He broke his leg dropping over a wall in an exceedingly daring escape at the beginning of the war. But how you should know about it beats me all to pieces.”

“I didn’t know—I saw——”

“You saw his ghost, I guess, Miss Forsdyke—and that’s all there is to it.” Captain Sergeantson lit himself another cigar by way of showing how cold-blooded he could be in the possible presence of a spectre.

Jimmy shuddered. “It’s uncanny,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

“But why?” puzzled Hetty, wrinkling her brows. She turned to her father. “Poppa——!”

Forsdyke shook his head smilingly.

“I’m out of this deal. Ask the Professor. He’s the authority on spooks. What does it all mean, Lomax? Can you give an explanation that doesn’t outrage commonsense?”

The Professor smiled. The eyes in that clean-cut face twinkled.

“Commonsense?” He shrugged his shoulders. “We want to start by defining that—by defining all our senses—and we should never finish.” He looked with his challenging smile round the group. “I see you are inviting me to throw away my last little shred of reputation as a sane,” he said, humorously. “Well, I will not venture on any explanation of my own. The evidence, with all respect to Hetty here, is insufficient. We only know that she had a dream and a hallucination twice repeated. We know that the hallucination corresponds to a photograph in Captain Sergeantson’s pocket. We do not know what basis there is—if any—for her dream. But I will give you two alternative explanations that might be suggested by other people.—Will that satisfy you?”

“Go ahead, Professor,” said Forsdyke. “Don’t ask me to believe in ghosts, that’s all!”

“I don’t ask you to believe in anything,” replied the Professor. “I don’t ask you to believe in the reality of your presence and ours in this room. If you have ever read old Bishop Berkeley you will know that you would find it exceedingly difficult to evade the thesis that it may all be an illusion. Your consciousness—whatever that is—builds up a picture from impressions on your senses. You can’t test the reality of the origin of those impressions—you can only collate the subjective results. Everything—Time and Space—may be an illusion for all you or I know!”

“I heard that in my dream!” Hetty broke in. “Someone said it: ‘Time and Space are an illusion!’ I remember it so clearly now!” Her eyes glistened with excitement.

“All right, Hetty,” said her father. “Let the Professor have his say. It’s his turn. And don’t take us out of our depth, Lomax. You know as well as I do what I mean by commonsense.”

The Professor laughed.

“Well, I’m not going to guarantee either of the explanations, Forsdyke. I merely put them before you. The first is the out-and-out spiritualist explanation. Let us see what we can make of that. You must assume, with the spiritualists, that man has a soul which survives with its attributes of memory, volition, and a certain potentiality for action upon what we know as matter. Captain Sergeantson here vouches for the fact that a certain German spy, Karl Wertheimer, was shot in London six months ago. The spiritualist would allege that it is possible—under certain conditions which are very imperfectly under human command—for the soul (we’ll call it that) of Karl Wertheimer to put itself into communication with his old associates who still remain in the world of the living. There is an enormous mass of human testimony—which you may reject as worthless if you like—to the possibility of such a thing. Assume it is possible. Karl Wertheimer was a spy so successful, according to Captain Sergeantson, that it is reasonable to suppose that spying was his natural vocation, his life-passion, as much as painting pictures is the life-passion of an artist. It may be assumed that, if anything survives, one’s life-passion survives. Now suppose that Karl Wertheimer’s late employers believe in the possibility of communication with their late agent—that they find a medium—in this case, the young girl that Hetty saw in her dream—who can be controlled by the defunct Karl Wertheimer—through whom they can speak to him and receive communications from him—what is more natural than that they should do so? Admitting the premises, difficult as they are, it appears to me that the discarnate soul of Karl Wertheimer would be an extremely valuable secret agent——”

“Yes, suppose—suppose——” said Forsdyke. “It is all supposition. And it doesn’t explain Hetty’s dream.”

“I am coming to that,” pursued the Professor. “Grant me, for the sake of argument, all my suppositions. Karl Wertheimer’s employers are communicating with him and setting him tasks. One of those tasks, we will assume, concerns you. Now it may be, Forsdyke, that in the unseen world of discarnate spirits there is one who watches over you, guards you from danger. Someone, perhaps, who loved you in this life——”

Forsdyke glanced up to the portrait of his wife upon the wall.

“I leave the suggestion to you,” said the Professor, delicately. “We will merely pursue it as a hypothesis. Such a spirit would seek to warn you. It is obviously futile to discuss the means it might or might not employ. We know nothing of the conditions of discarnate life—nothing, at any rate, with scientific certainty. But we will assume that such a spirit, desirous of communicating, finds that Hetty here is temporarily in a mediumistic condition—and by ‘mediumistic’ I mean merely that she is in the abnormal state which, in all ages and in all countries, induces persons to declare that they see and hear things imperceptible to others. She certainly had an abnormal headache. She goes to sleep and dreams. We won’t analyze dream-consciousness now. I will only point out that, in a clearly remembered dream, the events of that dream are as real to consciousness as the events of waking life, and that the perception of Time is enormously modified—you dream through hours of experience while the hand marks minutes on the clock. You are subject to a different illusion of Time—and, as Time and Space are but two faces of the same phenomenon, it may be said that you are subject to a different illusion of Space as well. The spiritualist uses this undoubted fact to support his assertion that in dream-sleep the spirit of the living person is freed from the conditions of matter and is in a condition at least approximating to that of a person who is dead—that it can and does accompany the spirits of those who in this life were linked to it.

“The spiritualist, then, endeavouring to explain our present problem, would allege that a spiritual agency concerned with your welfare led Hetty’s spirit into a room in Berlin where Karl Wertheimer’s employers were indicating him to you for some special purpose—that Hetty, being then pure spirit, could actually perceive Karl Wertheimer as a living being when perhaps those in the room (if there was such a room) could only perceive the girl through whom he was speaking—that she could actually hear the significant phrase of their conversation. Further, the spiritualist would assert as a possibility that Karl Wertheimer, ordered to obtain information in your possession, is actually here—shadowing you more effectively than any mortal spy could do—and that Hetty, still retaining her mediumistic power, has actually seen him. That is a spiritualistic explanation—I apologize for its length, Forsdyke. Give me another of your very excellent and material cigars!”

“It is a fantastic explanation. I don’t believe a word of it,” said Forsdyke, passing him the box. “Let us have the other one.”

“The other one,” replied the Professor, cutting the tip of his cigar and lighting it carefully, with a critical glance at its even burning, “is shorter. It is the explanation of those who are determined to explain a great mass of well-attested and apparently abnormal facts by normal agency. Their explanation in one word is—telepathy. You know the idea—the common phenomenon of two people who utter a remark, unconnected with previous conversation, at the same moment. Living minds unconsciously act upon each other—that is experimentally proved. Why, therefore, drag in dead ones? That is their argument. Let us apply their theory. Hetty is in an abnormal condition. Captain Sergeantson is coming to dinner. In his pocket he has a photograph of the notorious German spy, Karl Wertheimer. In his mind he has a story about him which he intends to relate. Now there are well-documented cases of hallucinations of persons actually on their way to a house where they were not expected appearing to their destined hostesses. I could quote you dozens of examples. The telepathist says this is because the guest forms in his mind a vivid picture of himself in that house, which is projected forward to the hostess’s mind and causes her to think she sees him. Now, Captain Sergeantson’s mind is not full of himself—it is full of the story about Karl Wertheimer that he is going to tell. Hetty’s mind—somehow—picks this up. She goes to sleep and as in sleep, notoriously, the human mind has a faculty for building up pictures and a story. Hetty dreams this story about Karl Wertheimer. It is true that she has never seen Karl Wertheimer. But Captain Sergeantson presumably has a visualization of him, including the limp, in his mind. The subsequent hallucinations are explained by the tendency to automatic repetition of any vivid impression upon the nervous centres which excite a picture in consciousness. It is a more or less tenable theory, but it would be gravely shaken if it happened that, unknown to Hetty or Captain Sergeantson—you actually had something to do with a secret schedule which would interest our friends the enemy.”

There was a silence. Forsdyke’s brow wrinkled as he stared into the fire. Suddenly he switched round to the Professor.

“That’s the devil of it, Lomax!” he exclaimed. “I have! A most secret schedule. Thank God, it will be out of my possession to-morrow morning, when I——”

“Don’t, Poppa!” cried Hetty, clapping her hand over his mouth. She stared wildly around her. “I feel sure that someone is listening!”

Forsdyke freed himself with a gesture which expressed his impatience of this absurdity.

“What do you make of that, Lomax?” he asked.

“Of course,” murmured the Professor, “Hetty’s mind may be influenced by a dominant anxiety in yours.—I should not like to say, Forsdyke!” His tone was emphatic. “Personally, I have never heard of a spectral spy—but—well, you are, on your showing worth spying on. And there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—you know! If it is possible—then there are things more improbable than that this means of acquiring information should be used. Your schedule would, I take it, be priceless?”

“The fate of the world may be involved in it,” replied Forsdyke. “But I can’t believe——”

“I am certain!” exclaimed Hetty. “I feel there’s something uncanny around us now!” She shuddered. “Oh, do take care, Poppa!”

“But what can he do?” asked Jimmy, who had been listening anxiously to the Professor’s explanation. “What do you suggest, Sergeantson? You’re the authentic spycatcher. How can you defeat the ghost of one?”

“I pass!” replied Sergeantson, laconically. “Professor, the word’s to you!”

Forsdyke looked genuinely worried.

“Of course, I don’t believe it, Lomax,” he said. “But supposing—supposing there was something like you suggest—what could I do?”

The Professor’s eyes twinkled.

“Assuming the objective reality of our supposition, my dear Forsdyke,” he replied, “I can think of only one effective counterstroke.”

He held their interest for a moment in suspense.

“And that is——?”

“To drop a bomb on the girl!”

“A bomb—on the girl——” puzzled Jimmy slowly. “Why?”

“Because when you break the telephone receiver it doesn’t matter what the fellow at the other end says—you can’t hear!”

“But we can’t get at her,” said Sergeantson. “We don’t even know who she is, or where. We should never find out—in time.”

“That’s just it,” agreed the Professor. “You would have no time. Assuming that a ghostly spy is haunting our friend Forsdyke—the moment he reads that schedule, or even indicates where it is, the spy reads it too——”

“Reads it?” echoed Jimmy, incredulously. “But surely ghosts can’t read!”

“It is alleged they can,” replied the Professor. “There is, for example, a very curious case reported of the Rev. Stainton Moses, a teacher at the University College in London during the ’seventies. A spirit, purporting to be writing through his hand, quoted to him a paragraph from a closed book in a friend’s library. Moses merely indicated a book and a page at random, without knowing even to what book he referred. The quotation was correct. One of the foremost scientists of the present day has lent the weight of his authority to this story by incorporating it in his book as evidence of supernormal powers——”[2]

“That is sure incredible, Professor!” cried Sergeantson.

“We are dealing with what normally are incredibilities,” said the Professor, with a smile. “We agreed to assume an objective reality to our supposition—and, assuming it, the spy would read that schedule at the same moment as Forsdyke, and possibly communicate it instantaneously. As Forsdyke is going to do something with that schedule to-morrow morning, well,” he shrugged his shoulders, “my money would be on the ghost!”

“My God!” said Forsdyke, thoroughly alarmed, “if it’s true—it’s maddening! One can do nothing!”

“Nothing,” agreed the Professor. “There would be no time.”

The men stared at each other, exasperated at the hopelessness of the problem. If—they scarcely dared admit it to their sanity—it really were the case?

Hetty startled them by a sudden cry.

“Didn’t you hear? Didn’t you hear?” she exclaimed. “Someone laughing at us—close behind!—Oh, look! Look!” She pointed to empty space. “There he is again! Don’t you see?”

She fainted in Jimmy’s ready arms.

* * * * *

The next morning Hetty found her father already at breakfast.

“Well,” he asked, his dry smile mildly sarcastic, “any more dreams?”

“Horrid!” she replied with a little shudder as she poured herself out some coffee. “But I don’t remember them.”

“You will see the doctor to-day, young woman,” observed her father in a tone which indicated his verdict on the happenings of the previous night.

Hetty was docility itself, a phenomenon not altogether lost on her experienced parent.

“Very well, Poppa,” she agreed, demurely. “What are you going to do this morning?”

“I am going to the office to get some papers——”

“The papers——?” She checked herself with a little frightened glance round the room.

Her father laughed—a good, healthy, commonsense laugh.

“The papers!” he said. “No more nonsense about ghosts, Hetty. I’m going to get the papers from my office and take them round to the Conference. So now you know. And there’s a Colt automatic in the pocket of the automobile if any one tries tricks on the way.”

Hetty nodded her head sagely.

“Guess you’ve a place for me in that automobile, Poppa,” she said. “I’ll come with you to the office, wait while you get the papers, and go on with you to the Conference building—and while you’re there I’ll go on to see that doctor. I shall be back in time to pick you up before you are finished with your old Conference.”

Her father saw no objection to this, was in fact secretly glad to have her under his eye as long as possible.

“Mind, no tricks about the doctor!” he said, with an assumption of severity.

“Sure, Poppa!” was her equable reply.

A few minutes later saw them speeding through the keen air of a frosty morning toward Forsdyke’s office. But the interior of the limousine was warm, and Hetty, snug in her furs, looked a picture of young, healthy beauty, looked—— A memory came to Henry Forsdyke in a pang that brought a sigh. He thought of the Professor’s suggestion of last night. Of course, the whole thing was absurd!—but he wondered——

The car swung into the sidewalk in front of the Government building, stopped before the big doorway with the marble steps. Forsdyke got out.

“I shall be back in a few minutes,” he said.

Hetty watched him go across the pavement, ascend the marble steps. He looked neither to right nor left. Then who was that with him? Hetty felt her heart stop. Who was that who passed into the doorway with him? No one had been on the steps—she was suddenly sure of it. Yet—her heart began to pump again—certainly two figures had passed through the swing-doors! She sat chilled and paralyzed for the moment in which she visualized the memory of those two figures passing into the shadow of the interior—tried to think when she had first perceived the second. A certitude shot through her, a wild alarm.

She jumped to her feet, and with a blind, instinctive desire for a weapon, pulled the Colt out of the pocket of the limousine and thrust it into her muff. A moment later she was running across the pavement and up the marble steps. The janitor pulled open the swing-door for her. She fixed him with excited eyes.

“Who was that who came in with Mr. Forsdyke just now?” she asked breathlessly.

The janitor stared.

“No one, miss. Mr. Forsdyke was alone.”

Alone! She repressed an impulse to scream out, dashed to the elevator which had just come to rest after its descent. The attendant opened the gate at her approach.

“Did you take Mr. Forsdyke up just now?” she asked.

“Yes, miss.”

“Was he alone?”

“Sure!—He came in alone.”

“Take me up!” She trembled so that she could scarcely stand. Her eyes closed in a sickening anxiety as she swayed back against the wall of the elevator.

She shot upward. Another moment and she found herself racing along the corridor to her father’s rooms, twisting at the handle of the door.

She almost fell into the ante-room occupied by Jimmy Lomax. He jumped to his feet.

“Hetty!”

“Father!” She had scarcely breath enough for utterance. “Father!—I must see Father——!”

“Hetty, you can’t! He’s busy in his private room—no one dare——”

“I must!” she gasped. “Quick!—the ghost——!”

He stared in astonishment. She dodged past him, flung open the door into the next room.

Henry Forsdyke was standing, checking over a sheaf of papers in his hand, in front of the swung-open wall of the room, now revealed as a safe divided into many compartments. Hetty perceived him at the first glance; perceived, standing at his side, a man with a sardonic mocking face and a scar over the right eye who peered over his shoulder.

In a blind whirl of impulse she whipped out the automatic, rushed up close, and fired—into thin air!

Her father swung round on her in a burst of anger.

“Good God, Hetty!—Are you mad?”

She looked wildly at him.

“The ghost!—the ghost!”

He laughed despite his genuine wrath.

“Great heavens, what nonsense it all is!—What are you thinking of?—You can’t shoot a ghost!”

But Hetty had sunk on to a chair and was sobbing hysterically.

* * * * *

In the luxuriously furnished room in Berlin Kranz was speaking excitedly into the telephone.

“Excellenz!” he called. “Excellenz!—Are you there?—Quickly!—Karl says he will be with us in ten minutes!” He glanced toward the girl sleeping in the big chair. “Quickly!”

He listened for a moment and then put down the receiver with a satisfied air. He rose from his seat and began to pace nervously up and down the room. From time to time he threw a glance at the still figure stretched back among the cushions. She slept with a regular deep breathing. He listened, anxiously alert for any change.

The minutes passed, slowly enough to his impatience. He looked at his watch. It marked ten minutes to four. A thought occurred to him—he amplified it deliberately, to occupy his mind. Ten minutes to four!—What time would it be in Washington? Six hours—ten minutes to ten in the morning. What would be happening at ten minutes to ten? What was Karl looking at——?

The raucous hoot of a Klaxon horn startled him out of these meditations. He ran to the window, looked out. A familiar motor-car was drawing up by the pavement. His Excellency had lost no time!

A few moments later and the dreaded Chief stood in the room, formidable still despite his dwarfed appearance in the great fur coat turned up to his ears. The clipped white moustache bristled more than ever, it seemed, as he glared at Kranz through the pince-nez with a ferocity which was but the expression of his excitement.

“Yes?” he cried, ere the door had closed after him. “What has happened? Speak, man!”

“Nothing yet, Excellenz!” Kranz hastened to assure him. “The girl swooned off suddenly at about a quarter to four—I have not let her out of my sight since last night—and then Karl spoke. He said—and it sounded as though he meant it—that he would give us the information in ten minutes. I telephoned you at once.”

“Right! Quite right!” snapped His Excellency. “Ten minutes! The time must be up——”

“Good afternoon, Excellenz!” The old man jumped. The familiar mocking voice came from the lifeless mask of the sleeping girl. “Your suggestion was correct—Forsdyke! He is taking me to it now!” The derisive laugh rang out, uncanny in the silent room. “Patience for a few minutes!”

The old man made an effort of his will.

“Where are you now, Karl?” he asked.

“In a motor-car—funny story—tell you later—patience.” The voice sounded far away and faint. “Look to the girl, Kranz—not breathing properly—can’t speak—if—power—fails.”

Kranz went to the sleeping girl. Her head had fallen forward and she was breathing stertorously. He rearranged the cushions, posed her head so that she once more breathed deeply and evenly.

They waited in a tense silence. Then her lips moved again.

“Listen—now! Take it down as I read it!” Karl’s voice rang with an unholy triumph.

“Quick, Kranz!—Write!” commanded the old man.

His subordinate leaped to the table, settled himself pen in hand.

The girl’s lips trembled in the commencement of speech, opened.

“Schedule of Sailings of American Army to Europe!” began the triumphant voice.

There was a pause.

“Yes—yes!” cried the old man impatiently. “Go on!”

“Numbers for March”—Karl Wertheimer’s voice came with a curious deliberation as though he were memorizing figures. “—Ahh!” The voice broke in a wild, unearthly cry that froze the blood.

They waited. There was no sound. They heard their hearts beat in a growing terror.

Suddenly the old man spoke.

“The girl!—Look, Kranz!—She does not breathe!”

Kranz sprang to her, lifted her hand, bent suddenly down to her face. He looked up with the eyes of a baulked demon.

“She is dead!” he said hoarsely.

He turned to her again and, with a frenzied rage, tore away the clothes from her throat and chest. Just over her heart was a small round dark spot staining the unbroken skin.

“Look!” he cried.

The old man peered down at the mark, and then stared round the room.

“What has happened?” The wild cry quavered with the terror of the Unseen.

No answer came from the silence.

NOTE

The belief that an injury done to the “astral” body of a spirit is reproduced in the physical body of the medium en rapport with that spirit is found in all countries and in all times, from the most ancient to the present. The old-time witch or wizard is, of course, the same psychologically abnormal type as the “medium” of to-day. The genuineness or otherwise of their powers is beside the point. Phenomena of the same nature as that described above are reported again and again in the witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century and in a comparatively recent legal case in France in 1853. Andrew Lang, analyzing this last case, says: “In the events at Cideville, and the depositions of witnesses, we have all the characteristics.... The phantom is wounded, a parallel wound is found on the suspected warlock.” Reporting the evidence in the trial, Lang continues: “Nails were driven into points on the floor where Lemonier saw the spectral figure standing. One nail became red-hot and the wood around it smoked: Lemonier said that this nail had hit ‘the man in the blouse’ on the cheek. Now, when Thorel was made to ask the boy’s pardon and was recognized by him as the phantom, Thorel bore on his cheek the mark of the wound!” The alleged wizard lost his case. (“A Modern Trial for Witchcraft,” in Cock Lane and Common-sense, 1894, p. 278.)

In this case it was the medium’s own spectre which appeared. But the modern spiritualist holds that there exists the same connection between the living body of the medium and the materialized spirit of the dead. “... The clutching of a [materialized] form hits the medium with a force like that of an electric shock, and many sensitives have been grievously injured by foolish triflers in this way.” (Spirit Intercourse, J. Hewat Mackenzie, 1916, p. 53.) Sir Wm. Crookes sounds the same warning note in his description of the famous “Katie King” case (Researches in Spiritualism, 1874, p. 108 et seq.).