I sat down at my table and wrote: 'Is it really true that Sister Belle's body was sold to three doctors?' I folded it down, carried it to the Medium's table, watched him gum it, and still remained standing at his table, but he immediately and peremptorily waved me to my seat. Again were his hands and my strip of paper, with its freshly gummed fold, completely hidden from sight, behind the row of books. Again the Medium's arms moved. He turned to the window and hastily pulled down the shade. This puzzled me. There was no sunshine to be excluded, it was raining fast outside, the day was unusually dark, and he needed all the light he could get. I turned and looked out of my window, and there in the house just across the narrow street, at a window on a level with ours, and commanding a full view of the Medium's table, sat a woman sewing, with another, I think, standing by her. 'Bravo!' I thought, 'are not the four Cardinal virtues, Temperance, Justice, Prudence and Fortitude?' and then resumed my watch inside. Dr. Mansfield finished writing, and then held up the slip as though for a final revision before handing it to me. A toothpick which he had in his mouth worked energetically from side to side, and he gravely shook his head as in perplexity. 'I don't like this,' he ejaculated at last, 'I don't want to give it to you. There'll be trouble here. It's very serious. Better let me tear it up.' 'Let me see it,' I cried, 'I promise you I'll be calm,' and I took the strip from his fingers and read:
'Dear Brother—I fear such was the case—but—I could not say who—I have consulted Dr. Hare—and the far famed Benja Rush, and they agree that the body is not in the earth—I fear darling Belle's body—is in process of being—wired. Marie St. Clair.'
The last word was not, I thought, quite legible, so I appealed to the Medium, and when he solemnly said 'wired,' the utterance with which I greeted it he probably thought was a groan, and, indeed, from the borderland of laughter, I did try to push it over into the land of tears, as hard as I could.
My third question immediately followed: "Can you give me any information as to where even a portion of the body is?" Again I was waved to my seat, again my strip of paper and the hands were concealed, again the arms were nervously moved. This answer I awaited with not a little anxiety. Surely, surely, Marie St. Clair and Sister Belle would remember that their joint skull was in my library. They had told me so, only a few weeks before, and as that skull was known to be fifty or sixty years old, and their united memory of it had lasted throughout those long years, surely that memory would not desert them now. And Dr. 'Benja' Rush, who had recently greeted me as 'townsman,' he was present and surely he would come to the rescue of Spiritualism, and gladly seize the chance to settle the question which he had once discussed with Combe, and Gall, and Spurzheim by bringing forward the frail Marie and the golden-haired, black-eyed Belle as tenants in common (and uncommon) of the same skull. Moreover, I thought, are there not to be found in Anatomical Museums skeletons of infants with one body and two heads? Why may not this have been an instance of one head and two bodies? To be sure, one of the bodies lived in Ohio and the other in Massachusetts, but then when we have once started on a journey through the marvels of Spiritualism, as portrayed by these four Mediums, what does such a trifle as this amount to? I had, I reflected, in all seriousness, taken no single step in the investigation of these Mediums that was not fully authorized by the explicit statements received from the Mediums themselves. I had accepted as truth what they told me was truth. If Spiritualism is hereby wounded, it is wounded in the house of its own disciples.
At last my answer came: 'I am not allowed to divulge what I think—much less what I know—it would be productive of more harm than good—let them have it—it is but earth at best—they have not got our precious Belle—she is safe in the Haven of Eternal repose—I would not make any noise about it—but let it pass—as a discovery of it would give you pain rather than otherwise—Belle says let it pass—the triune that have it bought it without knowing whose it was, and such care as little as they know.
Marie St. Clair.'
I felt that it was time that a conclusion should be put to this farce, so humiliating in the thought that honest, unsuspicious, gentle men and gentle women are daily deceived by it. Nevertheless, I wished to bring the 'wheel full circle' to this Medium's Spiritual communications of aforetime. I recalled that Cornelia Winnie's spirit had said that she thought the skull was Dina Melish's 'top not.' My fourth, and last, question therefore ran: 'Do you think that by any chance Dina Melish would know?' To which the answer came: 'Well Brother, as to that She may know more than She may be willing to divulge—you see, Brother, it places Dinah in a very unpleasant position, i.e., should it be noised abroad that she was in the secret. I do not by any means censure Dinah for what she may know, if know she does. You could xamine Dinah on that point—carefully, not allowing her to suspect your object in so doing. You might and might not elicit some light on the matter.
Marie St. Clair.'
14 May, '85.
After I had handed this last question to Dr. Mansfield a slight incident enabled me, to my own satisfaction, to note the exact instant when he read my question (he would say, 'clairvoyantly') behind his row of books. He once lifted his eyes to mine, and met them full for an instant in a piercing look. I do not think he suspected that I was his former correspondent (I would have told him willingly who I was if he had ever asked me), but the name 'Dina Melish' seemed to come back to his memory, as one that he had heard but could not localize. Of course I knew that he had just read my question.