“That’s very well,” said Malone, “but so far as I can follow your methods it is some guide or control or higher spirit who regulates the whole matter and brings the sufferer to you. If he can be cognisant, one would think other higher spirits could also be.”
“No, for it is his particular mission,” said Mailey. “To show how marked the divisions are I can remember one occasion when we had a dark soul here. Our own people came through and did not know he was there until we called their attention to it. When we said to the dark soul, ‘Don’t you see our friends beside you?’ he answered, ‘I can see a light but nothing else.’”
At this point the conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Mr. John Terbane from Victoria Station, where his mundane duties lay. He was dressed now in civil garb and appeared as a pale, sad-faced, clean-shaven, plump-featured man with dreamy, thoughtful eyes, but no other indication of the remarkable uses to which he was put.
“Have you my record?” was his first question.
Mrs. Mailey, smiling, handed him an envelope. “We kept it all ready for you but you can read it at home. You see,” she explained, “poor Mr. Terbane is in trance and knows nothing of the wonderful work of which he is the instrument, so after each sitting my husband and I draw up an account for him.”
“Very much astonished I am when I read it,” said Terbane.
“And very proud, I should think,” added Mason.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Terbane answered humbly. “I don’t see that the tool need be proud because the worker happens to use it. Yet it is a privilege, of course.”
“Good old Terbane!” said Mailey, laying his hand affectionately on the railwayman’s shoulder. “The better the medium the more unselfish. That is my experience. The whole conception of a medium is one who gives himself up for the use of others, and that is incompatible with selfishness. Well, I suppose we had better get to work or Mr. Chang will scold us.”
“Who is he?” asked Malone.