“Bones, ye thief of the world!” said Doc. “Pass that bottle! Ye had no more to do with it than the rest of us.”
“That he had not,” said Alec. “Circulate the poison! Mugs up, you fellows. The thing’s proved, so here’s to the Spook that Doc. says feels the nicest.”
“Dorothy,” we said, in chorus.
CHAPTER IV
OF THE EPISODE OF LOUISE, AND HOW IT WAS ALL DONE
Those who still remained sceptical were completely puzzled. Our success was due, of course, to the cause which makes all spooking mysterious—inaccurate and incomplete observation. In the first place, Alec Matthews had been guilty of a bad slip. He was certain that he had kept the board in his possession and that the mediums could not have seen it. He forgot he had come into Gatherer’s room before the séance, to ask some question about a hockey match, and had carried the new board in his hand. I was sitting in the corner. He stayed in the room, standing near the door, for perhaps fifteen seconds—just enough for me to run my eye round the board. After Alec left Gatherer twitted me on being very silent, and asked if I was “homesick.” I was memorizing the new position of the letters.
In the next place, at the séance I was carelessly bandaged. I could see the edge of the board next me, and from that calculated the position of the other letters, so that the fact that the glass could at once write ‘Yes, ask something,’ was not so wonderful after all.
In the third place, Little himself gave away the key to the code when he tried to tell us what B-M-X stood for. Everybody remembered that Alec had stopped him from saying what it was, but nobody seemed to notice he had begun to tell us and had given away the important fact that B stood for V. The knowledge of the position of one letter gave me a clue for reconstructing the whole board. Finally, the recoding by the Spook (by going one letter to the left all the way round) was due to an accident. I had not noticed that V and D had changed places, and that the new board read V-D instead of D-V. V was the key letter given away by Little, and as I saw it in my mind’s eye one place too far to the left, the rest followed automatically.[[4]]
This was the last attempt at an organized test. The investigators were satisfied. The foundations of Belief had been laid. The rest was absurdly easy—merely a matter of consolidating the position. It was extremely interesting from a psychological point of view to notice how the basic idea that they were conversing with some unknown force seemed to throw men off their balance. Time and again the “Spook,” under one name or another, pumped the sitterwithout the latter’s knowledge. It was amazing how many men gave themselves away, and themselves told the story in their questions, which they afterwards thought the Spook had told in his answers. I could quote many instances, but let one suffice. As it concerns a lady, I shall depart from my rule, and call the officer concerned “Antony,” which is neither his true name nor his nickname.
One night we had been spooking for some time. There was the usual little throng of spectators round the board, who came and went as the humour seized them. Our War-news Spook had occupied the stage for the early part of the evening, and had just announced his departure. We asked him to send someone else.[[5]]