The old doctor frowned in perplexity.
“I don't know, Chris. You'll have to put this up to Dr. Leroy. He's a wonderful fellow. I've had my eyes opened tonight or my soul—something.”
The two men smoked solemnly.
“I believe we're going to save Penelope, my boy—somehow. It's a mighty queer world. I don't know but we are all more or less possessed by evil spirits, Chris. What are these brainstorms that overwhelm the best of us? Why do good men and women, on some sudden, devilish impulse, do abominable things, criminal things, that they never meant to do? We doctors pretend to be skeptical, but we all come up against creepy stuff, inside confession stuff that we don't talk about.”
He was silent again.
“There was a patient of mine in Chicago, a tough old rounder,” Owen resumed, “who changed overnight into the straightest chap you ever heard of—because he went down to the edge of the Great Shadow—he was one of the passengers saved from the Titanic. He told me that when he was struggling there in the icy ocean, after the ship sank, he saw white shapes hovering over the waters, holding up the drowning! I never mentioned that until tonight.”
They smoked without speaking.
“I—I had an experience like that myself, sir,” ventured Christopher. “I've never spoken of it either—people would call me crazy, but—that night when I lay out there in front of Montidier, among the dead and dying, I saw a white shape moving over the battlefields.”
“You did?”
“Yes, sir. It was the figure of a woman—coming towards me—she seemed to be leading Penelope. I saw her distinctly—she had a beautiful face.”