The indiscriminate zig-zagging stopped and the glass went round the circle slowly.
“Gee! Snakes!” said Alec. “That’s the stuff, Gatherer; give It some more!”
“No sense in being afraid of the blighter,” said Gatherer. “Here! Stop going round now! Tell us who you are!”
“Go—to—hell!” came the answer.
Gatherer was not abashed. “Is that where you are?” he asked, and the Spook began to swear most horribly. My mind was no longer blank; it teemed with memories of my court in Burma, and the glass said to Gatherer what the old bazaar women of the East say to one another before they get “run in.”
“All right, old chap,” said Gatherer. “That’s enough. I’m sorry. I apologise.”
“Go away,” said the Spook, and until Gatherer obeyed the glass would do nothing but repeat, “Go away,” “Go away,” to every question that was asked.
Looking back, I can see this was an important episode. Of course the glass wrote “go away” because I could think of nothing better to say at the moment (practice was to make my imagination much more fertile), and it kept on repeating the request because I had begun to wonder if I really could make Gatherer leave the room.
“Shall I go?” Gatherer asked.
“Faith! You’d better,” said the Doc., “or who knows what It will be saying next?”