"You saw none on the first occasion."
"As clearly as I behold you now I saw the shadow, spirit, or reflection of Samuel Boyd. I was not under the spell of a delusion; my senses did not deceive me. My pulse beats steadily; there is no fever in my blood. I saw it."
"And I refuse to believe it. My friend, you do nothing without design, and if I doubt your protestation I but follow the excellent example you set me. I have no faith in diablerie, nor am I a child to be influenced by a goblin tale. Who thinks me so, mistakes my character--mis-takes my cha-rac-ter; and that might lead to more serious mistakes."
There was no indication that Dr. Pye paid heed to these words, or that they produced any impression upon him; he seemed to be absorbed in a train of thought which he was endeavouring to follow to a logical end.
"I recall a singular case," he said, musingly, "of a man who was brutally murdered in his own apartments while he was engaged in making experiments in photography. It occurred in a foreign country, and the police, investigating the case, had their suspicions directed to a person who had had dealings with the murdered man, and who had been seen entering his apartments within an hour or two of the murder. They followed up the clue, and arrested the suspected man, who energetically proclaimed his innocence. The evidence at the trial was entirely circumstantial, but it was considered conclusive, and the man went to the scaffold, protesting his innocence with his dying breath. Some years afterwards business of a private nature brought me into contact with a man who had but a short time to live, and on his deathbed he confessed to me that he was the murderer. In proof of this he had, by a strange fatuity, carried about with him during all these years a certain piece of evidence which, had it been presented to a jury, would have been fatal to him. The circumstances were these: On the day of the murder he had entered the apartment of his victim at the moment that a prepared plate had been placed in the camera. A quarrel took place between them, which culminated in the murderer suddenly plunging a knife into the heart of the student photographer. Death was instantaneous, and as he fell to the ground his eyes were fixed upon the face of his murderer. There he lay upon the ground, dead, his eyes wide open. The murderer was himself a photographer, and a whimsical fancy seized him to take a picture of those staring eyes, in which a wild horror dwelt. He acted upon it. Focussing the dead face he exposed the plate, and, the picture taken, stole away from the house with the negative in his possession. He subsequently developed the picture and enlarged it, and there, under the lens of a powerful microscope, was the portrait of the murderer upon the pupils of the dead man's eyes. It had been his last living vision, which had fixed itself upon the retina. I have the picture by me now, and since that day have been much interested in the photographic art, in which I have made some curious experiments. Later researches have proved that we can photograph what is invisible to the eye, what is even concealed in a box. The photographs of shadows and the spirits of the dead can be taken. The image of Samuel Boyd being in my mind, found its reflection in a window in a moment of light. Why should we not be able to photograph a vision created by the imagination?"
"Or," said Dr. Vinsen, with a touch of sarcasm, "the thoughts of men."
"Or," said Dr. Pye, with an assenting nod, "the thoughts of men. It will be done; and when it is accomplished it will open the road to greater discoveries."
"Ah," said Dr. Vinsen, shrugging his shoulders, "great discoveries--your great discoveries, ending in visions."
"To you, visions; to me, reality. The age of miracles is not yet past. It is my intention to get out of this country, and return to Italy, where there is light, where the sun shines. This atmosphere, these leaden skies, these black nights, are fatal. I must release myself. My purpose is fixed."
"And mine."