It was in the old Tombs prison and in the old days which are past, when they hung men in its courtyard, and it was a very hot night in summer. Of all the human beings within its walls—keepers and kept—one man alone was there because he wanted to be. Not another beneath its old roof but would gladly have changed his position—on either side of the bars—for the free hot night without. It was blistering, and there was no breeze or beer to be obtained in the Tombs, and very little rest or sleep.
Does it seem incongruous that a man of wealth, culture, and position should be there of his own volition? Not at all; he was trying an experiment. And that was why, after a liberal expenditure of money and the use of some little influence, this young man was the occupant of that particular narrow cell for the night. What he saw there was very little, for the apartments were constructed from a point of view not scenic but secure. What he heard might perhaps better be left unsaid. And what he smelt was indescribable. For this story is of the Tombs in the old days, and really to describe it at night and in summer would be to drive realism insane. The home of misery, revelry, and some repentance—tears and jests six inches apart—romance and death, young sin and old crime; folly, vice, and worse, all mixed together and seasoned with a very little humor.
The Tombs is like a sieve, separating the unjust within from—well, the more or less just without. It is like some great iron net through which the tide of criminal life surges, and many are the strange fish caught therein. If fish, one of my senses assures me that many of them have been out of their natural element for a long while. Some of them were not caught yesterday or even the day before. They are old, and you know it even as you approach.
But it is with this young man’s feelings we have to do. In spite of the investigator’s unpleasant surroundings, his thoughts were those of happy anticipation, and his mood that of extreme satisfaction. All unmindful of the misery on every side, he paced up and down the little cell, in which the faint light from the corridor chased shadows on the stone floor and dim walls. His face bore a look of triumph. He congratulated himself. What to him were the disturbances that assaulted his senses, the noises of those who amused themselves according to their possibilities, or the snoring of some who dully slept, luxuriating in the comforts of the best home they had ever known, the vomiting of a drunken sailor across the tier, an obscene song from a young negro with a falsetto voice heard along the corridor, or the clog dancing of an “artist” directly over his head, who whistled his own accompaniment. These things were nothing. He scarcely heard the shriek of the delirium tremens case in the hospital ward below, nor the curses of the person constrained in the straight-jacket. The remarks of the poor devil occupying the “cooler” were naught. The smell of iodoform was lost to him, for all this had nothing to do with his experiment.
Had you seen the books on theosophy, occult science, reports of psychological societies, etc., in his beautiful apartments uptown, you would perhaps have guessed his object. But only he could have told you properly of his enthusiastic devotion, his absorbing interest in these studies, and, most of all, of his disappointing attempts at personal research. For in spite of closest study, deepest investigations, and widest experimenting, his longing and anxiety to see an apparition had never been satisfied. Such things as ghosts existed, he was sure of that—he knew it. Others had seen them. But his ardent longing to have personal demonstration of their presence remained unsatisfied, despite the many séances attended, desperate colds contracted in churchyards, and heroic pilgrimages to alleged mahatmas. Oh, the bitterness of hearing and rehearing the success of others whose accounts he even found himself jealous enough to doubt!
But at last it had come—this inspiration. Did the doctrine of environment mean anything at all? Assuredly! Here was the key to the situation, and that is why arrangements had been effected by him to sleep alone in the cell, the very bed, and bedclothes of a man hanged that afternoon. That is why he awaited midnight in the Tombs—midnight in “Murderers’ Row.”
He had been careful to attend the execution and to view the remains so as to recognize the astral body when it should appear later, for was it not absolutely certain that the spirit, consciousness—call it what you will—of the departed man would return searching for its body? And where to if not this little space the earthly part had occupied so long and where every emotion had been known? Surely this cell would be the first place to attract the released spirit. Here for the deceased had been the dreamings of past days, the horror of the realized present, the torture of the anticipated future. Long days and longer nights in which the inmate had burned with the fever of hope or shivered with the chill of despair. In this room his mind had been the home of every emotion. What hate, revenge, fear had these walls seen glower from his eyes! What prayers had been heard in weaker moments, confessions perhaps solitude had wrung from his lips! Here had been all passions. Here he had heard the cold voice of the sheriff reading the death warrant. Success was assured. There could be no doubt about it; and it had remained for this adventurer to discover the untrodden path. He was there to note and describe everything. Sublime discovery, method extraordinary, most perfect system of wresting the unknowable from the superhuman! He felt a veritable Columbus of daring. And the envy of his fellow-investigators in turn when he should give his contribution to science and should read his paper! Why, this very experience would be quoted in books! It nerved him to attempt anything.
He took out a note-book and began to prepare the opening of his prospective address. The night keeper on the last round accepted his cigars and said good night. It grew quieter. The singers were hoarse, the hospital patient quiet or drugged into quietness, and the inhabitant of the “cooler” had expressed all his opinions of every one and subsided. The time had come to prepare for the reception of the released spirit. It was his own body the experimenter proposed to submit as the material part to which the murderer’s consciousness might find access. He must undress. He did so, and contemplated the soiled sheets; but it was in the interests of science, and he did not hesitate. And now to compose his mind, to cultivate an abstracted calm, to wait and observe. Such was the success of this attempt that he slept.
Twelve solemn strokes.... He awoke. A dim light filtered in from the corridors. There were low murmurings in the air. The stairway creaked. A chain rattled. And somewhere far off a gate closed with a clang. The proverbial cold perspiration streamed from him. The orthodox goose-flesh appeared. His hair rose as it ought to. His flesh literally crept. Everything was as it should be. All the proper symptoms in their proper order. Something was in the room with him.