“I’ll tell you everything!” said Alibaba Singh in a sudden burst of confidence. “Mr. Gubb, I am an impostor. I am a fraud. I am not a Hindoo. My name is Guffins, James Guffins. I did sleight-of-hand stuff in a Bowery show. I took up this mystic, yogi, Hindoo stuff because I thought it would pay and it was easy to fool the dames. They fell for it fast enough, and I made good money. But I’m no yogi. I’m no miracle man. I couldn’t bring a man back to life in his own form or any other form, could I?”
“Undoubtedly hardly so,” said Mr. Gubb.
“Glad to hear you say it,” said Mr. Guffins with relief. “A man gets so interested in his work—and there is a lot you can learn in books about this Hindoo mumbo-jumbo business—but of course I couldn’t bring Mr. Lippett back. I’m no spiritualistic medium. I couldn’t materialize the spirit of a pig.”
As he said the word, Mr. Guffins shuddered. It had come out unintentionally, but it seemed to jar him to the depth of his being. He had evidently not meant to say pig.
“Mr. Gubb, I will be frank with you. I need your help,” he continued. “Mrs. Lippett attended my lecture, and she became interested. She formed a class to study yogi philosophy. We went deep into it. I had to read up one week what I taught them the next. The lights turned low and my Hindoo costume helped, of course. Air of mystery, strange perfumes, and all that. You said you never knew Henry K. Lippett?”
“Never at all,” said Mr. Gubb.
“Fat man,” said Mr. Guffins. “He must have been a very fat man. And a hearty eater. Rather—rather an over-hearty eater. He must have lived to eat.”
Mr. Guffins sighed again.
“Of course there was remuneration,” Mr. Guffins went on. “For me, I mean. To pay for my time. Mrs. Lippett was most generous. I told her,” he said angrily, “I couldn’t guarantee to materialize her dead husband. I said to her: ‘Mrs. Lippett, we had better not try it. My power may be too weak. And think of the risk. He may be pure spirit, floating in Nirvana, and come to us as a pure spirit, but what if his life was not all it should have been on earth? What if his spirit has passed into a lower form as a punishment for misdeeds? You will pardon me for speaking so of him, but men are weak,’ I said, ‘and he may now be a—a bird of the air. It would be a shock,’ I said, ‘to see him changed into a bird of the air.’”