“It was agreed that my name should be presented to the council as suggested, and two days later I received a letter notifying me of my election as honorary member of the center, congratulating me thereupon and inviting me to be present at the next meeting. I was given the privilege of bringing a friend with me. I informed Mr. Evans, and we agreed to attend the next séance, and make careful mental notes of the events of the evening.”
IV.
Mr. Watkins and I went together on the appointed evening to the house of the Mage, located in quaint little Corcoran street. It was a stormy night, late in November; just the sort of evening for a gathering of modern witches and wizards, in an up-to-date Walpurgis Nacht. We were admitted by the interpreter and secretary, whom I afterwards learned was Miss Agnes E. Marsland, graduate of the University of Cambridge, England.
In the back parlor upstairs we were greeted by the Doctor, who wore a sort of Masonic collar of gold braid, upon which was embroidered a triangle. He presented us to his wife and child, who were conspicuously foreign in appearance, the latter about five years old. We were then introduced to an elderly woman, stout and with gray hair, who, we were told, was the president of the center. She wore a cordon similar to Dr. Sarak’s, and soon after our arrival she rapped with a small gavel upon a table, located in the bay window of the front drawing-room.
When she called the meeting to order the Doctor seated himself upon her right, and at her left—all behind the table—were {265} placed two other women, wearing large gold badges. The interpreter seated herself against the wall beside the Count. Shortly a fifth woman appeared. The Count’s wife and child sat quietly upon a sofa in the corner behind him. In the seats arranged along the walls for the audience sat only myself, Mr. Watkins, and a reporter for the Washington Times.
The mise en scène was well calculated to impress the spectators with a sense of the occult and the mysterious. The table was draped with a yellow cloth, upon which were embroidered various cabalistic symbols. Upon it stood an antique brazier for burning incense, and a bronze candelabra with wax lights arranged to form a triangle. Against the wall, just back of the presiding Mistress of Ceremonies and the little French Mage, was a niche containing a large gilt image of the Buddha, who smiled placidly and benignly at the strange gathering. The walls of the drawing-room were draped with rich Oriental rugs and hung with allegorical paintings. The faint aroma of incense soon permeated the atmosphere; there was a moment of profound silence while the thaumaturgist meditatively consulted a big volume in front of him—a work on mysticism by either Papus or Baraduc, I forget which. I closed my eyes drowsily. In imagination I was transported back into that dead past of the Eighteenth century. I was in Paris, at a certain gloomy mansion in the Rue St. Claude. I saw before me a table covered with a black cloth, embroidered with Masonic and Rosicrucian symbols; upon it stood a vase of water; lights burned in silver sconces; incense rose from an antique brazier. And behold—Cagliostro, necromancer and Egyptian Freemason, at his incantations. The phantasmagoria fades away. I am back again in Washington, and Sarak is speaking rapidly in French. I shall quote as follows from Mr. Watkins’ note-book:
“The Doctor spoke of a membership of forty-two persons and his disappointment that only six were present. He then commenced in French a long discourse, citing the alleged experiments of Baraduc on the soul’s light, and mentioning the psychic researches of Flammarion. He stated that Marconi had made partial progress in the science of transmitting intelligence without wires, but that his masters had long known of a {266} more simple method. He described the failures of foreigners to penetrate into Thibet, stating that his masters there were able to place a fluidic wall before any man or beast.[29] The women watched their hierophant with intense fascination, save the interpreter, who maintained her saintly gaze up into space, and the wife, who sat by in sublime nonchalance.
“The Doctor then passed into a rear room, donned a long robe of light blue material and returned with the piece of colored glass which I had seen during my previous visit. It was still flitted to the metal support, and with it he brought a bar magnet. He placed the glass upon the table before him, making many passes over it with his fingers, sometimes rubbing them upon his gown as if they were burned. He explained that he had sensitized the glass with a secret fluid which remained thereon as a film. He drew a sort of tripod upon paper and placed the glass and magnet alongside.
“ ‘I demonstrated at the last meeting how this power—which I called ‘yud’—could be exerted against human beings. You remember that I caused the man to fall from his bicycle. Tonight I will exert the power against an animal,’ said the fantaisiste.
“He stated that the lights would all be extinguished; that those present would be stationed at the front windows; that at a given signal he would cause a horse passing the street to halt and remain motionless, to the amazement of the driver. Turning to me, he asked, ‘Would Monsieur prefer that the horse be passing eastward or westward?’ ‘Eastward,’ I said.