No fresh evidence, however, rewarded his investigation.
3
He was, nevertheless, in very good spirits at dinner that night. The discussion had been postponed by common consent until the evening, but he once or twice referred to it in the course of the meal.
Greatorex, noting his host’s almost gleeful manner, asked him if he had got new and conclusive evidence in the process of his investigations, but Harrison refused to answer that.
“No, no,” he said. “We’ll have it out after dinner. Vernon has got his case, and I have mine. We’ll argue, and then put it to the vote. Do you agree, Vernon?”
Vernon, no less confident than his antagonist, agreed willingly enough, and later, when they were all gathered together in the drawing-room, he agreed also to open the discussion.
“It’s all so clear to me,” he said. “I cannot see how there can be two opinions.”
“Well, fire away,” Harrison encouraged him.
Vernon leaned back in his chair, and clasped his hands behind his head.
“I postulate to begin with,” he said, “that we were all in precisely the right, expectant, slightly inert condition necessary to the production of phenomena. We were sitting in a circle, and our conscious minds were completely occupied with the subject of spiritualism. We were, in fact, according to the common agreement about such things, in the state that best enables us to assist any possible manifestations by—by giving out power.