"And," laughed the girl, "I wasn't on hand to hear him. Have I missed very much of it?"
"No," answered her uncle. "We're still in the painful early stages of the squabble. I'll tell you what I'll do, Andrew: I'll compromise with you. Instead of making the bargain you proposed, I'll stand aside and let you go ahead of me into the next world. Then you can come back at your leisure and keep the spook compact. It'll be quite interesting. Every time a knock sounds or a chair creaks or a door bangs or Lad growls in his sleep, I'll strike an attitude and say: 'Ssh! There's Doc!'"
"Don't guy me, old friend," urged McPherson. "I'm entirely serious. I'll make the promise and I want you to make it, too. Understand, I'm no so-called Spiritist. I'm just a groping seeker after the Truth."
"That's what they all say," scoffed Grimm. "Seekers after the truth! And madly eager to believe everything they hear or read except the commonsense truth. And you, a level-headed Scotchman, old enough to be your own father, actually gulp down such tomfoolery! Next we'll have you chasing around the streets at night, looking with a dark lantern for the bogey man."
"Laugh at me if you like. I know I'm right. I know the dead are alive. They're here. Right here. They're all about us, watching us, suffering with us, rejoicing with us, trying no doubt to speak the warnings and encouragements that our world-deafened mortal ears cannot hear. I'm not alone in the theory. Some of the greatest scientists—the wisest men of the century—are of the same opinion."
"Dreamers," smiled Grimm indulgently. "Dreamers like yourself."
"Dreamers, eh?" The doctor caught him up vehemently. "Dreamers? You can't call Sir William Crookes, the inventor of the Crookes' Tubes, a dreamer! No, nor Sir Oliver Lodge, the great biologist; or Curie, who discovered radium; or Dr. Lombroso, the founder of the science of criminology. Are Maxwell, Dr. Vesine, Richet, and our own American, Dr. Hyslop, dreamers? Why, even Professor James, the mighty Harvard psychologist, took a peep at ghosts. And, instead of laughing at 'spooks,' the big scientific men are trying to lay hold of them. I tell you, Peter, Science is just beginning to peer through the half-open door that a few years ago was shut tight."
"Trying to lay hold of ghosts, are they?" said Grimm. "I'd like to lay hold of one. I'd lug it to the nearest police station. That's the place for 'em. Just as the asylum's the place for folks who believe in 'em. When you 'pass over,' Andrew, you'd better not come back. You won't enjoy prowling around a world where sane people don't believe you exist."
"Peter," reproved McPherson, "I'm sorry—very, very sorry—that you and others like you think it's smart to make a joke of something you can't understand. Hyslop was right when he said Man will spend millions of dollars to discover the North Pole, but not one cent to throw a ray of light upon his immortal destiny."
"And, after the millions of times they've been exposed, you blame me for not joining in your belief in spook mediums!"