Probably Dick or Tom had been listening to our conversation, and would now chip in with:
“That’s all very well, Bones, but I believe you’re playing the fool all the time. Now aren’t you?”
“Right-o, Dick! If you like to think I’m ass enough to sit there night after night for the mere lark of the thing, you’re welcome.”
“But the whole affair’s absurd, impossible,” Dick would protest.
“You say so, but what about Oliver Lodge? He has studied this business for years, and swears he gets into communication with the next world in this way. And he is a scientist, my boy, while you are a plain soldier man and don’t know your arm from your elbow in these matters. A few years ago I expect you were saying that wireless telegraphy and flying and all the rest of our modern scientific marvels were impossible. You are the conservative type of fellow who doesn’t believe a thing possible until he can do it himself. Why, you old idiot, for all you know you may be a medium yourself. Why don’t you come along and try some night?”
And Dick would come, and try, and get nothing!
I was often grateful in those days for my past experience as a magistrate in Burma. My study of law and lawyers helped me considerably in the gentle art of drawing a red herring across my questioners’ train of thought.
I was beginning to think that the business had gone on long enough, and it was time to confess, when Fate stepped in again. Intrigued by our success, several other groups of experimenters had been formed in the camp, notably in the Hospital House. One fine morning we were electrified by the news that there also “results” had been obtained.
The Doc. came up to me as I was walking in the lane. He was all hunched up with glee.
“Faith,” he said to me, “the sceptics have got it in the neck. Here’s Nightingale and Bishop been an’ held a long conversation with the spooks last night.”