“It happens sometimes. I cannot command it.”
“I should like to test you. I have a letter here which I received this morning. Would you try your powers upon that?”
The medium took the folded letter, and, leaning back in his chair, he pressed it upon his forehead. He sat with his eyes closed for a minute or more. Then he returned the paper.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “I get a feeling of evil. I see a man dressed all in white. He has a dark face. He writes at a bamboo table. I get a sensation of heat. The letter is from the tropics.”
“Yes, from Central America.”
“I can tell you no more.”
“Are the spirits so limited? I thought they knew everything.”
“They do not know everything. Their power and knowledge are as closely limited as ours. But this is not a matter for the spirit people. What I did then was psychometry, which, so far as we know, is a power of the human soul.”
“Well, you are right as far as you have gone. This man, my correspondent, wants me to put up the money for the half-share in an oil boring. Shall I do it?”
Tom Linden shook his head.