“Assuming the objective reality of our supposition, my dear Forsdyke,” he replied, “I can think of only one effective counterstroke.”
He held their interest for a moment in suspense.
“And that is——?”
“To drop a bomb on the girl!”
“A bomb—on the girl——” puzzled Jimmy slowly. “Why?”
“Because when you break the telephone receiver it doesn’t matter what the fellow at the other end says—you can’t hear!”
“But we can’t get at her,” said Sergeantson. “We don’t even know who she is, or where. We should never find out—in time.”
“That’s just it,” agreed the Professor. “You would have no time. Assuming that a ghostly spy is haunting our friend Forsdyke—the moment he reads that schedule, or even indicates where it is, the spy reads it too——”
“Reads it?” echoed Jimmy, incredulously. “But surely ghosts can’t read!”
“It is alleged they can,” replied the Professor. “There is, for example, a very curious case reported of the Rev. Stainton Moses, a teacher at the University College in London during the ’seventies. A spirit, purporting to be writing through his hand, quoted to him a paragraph from a closed book in a friend’s library. Moses merely indicated a book and a page at random, without knowing even to what book he referred. The quotation was correct. One of the foremost scientists of the present day has lent the weight of his authority to this story by incorporating it in his book as evidence of supernormal powers——”[2]