Woe to the typist who had the temerity to change even a comma in Mr. Saltus' work. It was enough to incite him to murder.
"I would go mad,—seize the elemental and my vibrations alone would tear him to atoms."
"But suppose he was an all-powerful elemental,—a black magician, and he said that he was going to edit everything you wrote in the future?"
"Then," Mr. Saltus always said, "I would rush to the window, open it and jump out into the fourth dimension in the akasha."
The episode of the elemental ended there till the next telling. So much of Mr. Saltus' life had been sad and unsatisfying that the desire to dip for a time into make-believe was soothing and diverting to him. It was a region in which we spent many an hour.
CHAPTER XIII
During his stay in London, a year before, Mr. Saltus had made the acquaintance of a friend of mine,—a very remarkable woman, Mrs. M——, a lady of foreign birth and high social position, married to a Britisher. Unique as a mother, untiring in the service of humanity, and possessing extraordinary supernormal powers, she gave him, firsthand and from personal investigation, information and understanding of so unusual a character, that Mr. Saltus regarded the privilege of knowing her as an unmerited blessing. She gave him also a curious old talisman—a tiny Rosicrucian cross that had once belonged to a world-renowned occultist. So frail and worn had it become by centuries of use, that twice it had been backed with gold to hold it together. It was the last earthly possession his hand relinquished in death.
Figuratively and literally, Mr. Saltus sat at Mrs. M——'s feet and absorbed what she gave him. Her influence on his life was more vital and far-reaching than that of any other human he ever met.