The sculptured face scowled at me for an instant, then relaxed with a piercing cackle of mirth. "Good. I waste time no more, then, but I believe you. See," he spread out the telegram. "It is to her I go. Now, if you come with me—"
"Mrs. Tabor has just started home from New York in the motor," said I. "Our train leaves in half an hour. Are you ready?"
Doctor Paulus did not say another word until we were safely aboard the train and out of the tunnel. Then he turned suddenly upon me.
"Have I not seen you at a so-called spiritualistic séance," he chirped.
"Yes," I said, "where we both heard a mysterious voice called familiarly by the name of Mrs. Tabor's elder daughter. What is more, I have just seen Mrs. Tabor herself at another séance, where she talked with this so-called spirit intimately. She has been doing so, unknown to her family, for a long time; and there is your irritating cause. That's why she has hallucinations of her daughter's presence."
Doctor Paulus received my revelation with somewhat humiliating calm. He showed not the least astonishment, nor did he answer for some minutes, but sat frowning in front of him, and drumming with a large white hand upon the window-sill. When he spoke again, it was with a smile.
"Mr. Crosby, I find myself—yes—interested somewhat in you. First I see you at spiritualism; then before a house where another séance is about to be; next I pass you in the subway, and a few minutes thereafter I presently behold you riding a child's bicycle after my brougham to discover me— Now also, I recall to have seen you in the country, when I was with the young medical man who sends this impetuous telegram. Therefore I say, since you are not a reporter, you have a mind either unbalanced or very well balanced. And you now bring me eagerly this information, so that you are with the Tabors much interested, which may prove—you are no relation, is it not so?" He laid his hand upon my knee. "It is not your mind then, but a heart unbalanced, which produces often great mental activity."
I was both embarrassed and impatient. "Am I right, then, about Mrs. Tabor?" I asked. "Isn't there a chance of a permanent cure for her by removing her from this spiritualism business? If we can only—"
He held up his hand. "Let us not leap to the conclusion. That is what I tell always to the Doctor Reid. He is a bright young man, but he leaps too much to the conclusion. So probably he has said to you that Mrs. Tabor is a paranoiac, which may be so; or perhaps with continual irritation of the mind, only hysteria that may be aided by removal of the irritation. I am too old to be quickly sure. Now, I repeat to Reid that a medical man must save his mental or physical jumps for cases of extremity. He must not jump all the time; that is how you are neurasthenic in America. Hysteria, that we can by removing suggestions and introspections palliate, or perhaps cure. And there may be also hallucinations and the fixed idea. Therefore it is so like a shadow of insanity. The daughter's death, we knew of that. And I have said that some continual suggestion was to be sought for, which might produce this illusion of her daughter's continual presence, such as you have perhaps found. So we are ready to consider. Tell me now all that you know, carefully. Not your own deductions I want, but the facts alone."
When I had finished, he sat silent for a long time, frowning on his hand as it drummed idly on the window-ledge.