“But could you not try just once for my sake,” she implored.
“Why on earth,” he demanded, “are you, so sane and sensible in appearance, so set on this mummery?”
“Because of the other dream,” she faltered.
“The other dream!” he exclaimed. “You had another dream?”
“Yes,” she said, “I was going to tell you but you interrupted me. The dream about the advertisement did not convince me. I felt it might be coincidence after all. That was more than a month ago and I disregarded it. But night before last I dreamed I was told, 'The message on the slate will be true.' I fought against it all day yesterday, all last night. To-day I gave up and came. I want you to consult your slate for me.”
“Madame,” he said, “this is dreadful. Can nothing make you see the truth. There is not anything supernatural about this trade of mine. It is as simple as a Punch and Judy show. There the puppets do nothing save as the showman controls them; so of my slate and of my trances.”
“But it might surprise you,” she persisted. “It might come true once. Won't you try for me?”
“I know,” he mused, “that there is such a thing as auto-hypnotism. To humor you I might try to put myself into a genuine trance. But there would be nothing about it to help you, just a mere natural sleep, artificially induced. If I babbled in it the words would have no significance, and no writing would appear on the slate unless I put it there.”
“Just try,” she pleaded, “for my sake, to quiet me. If there is nothing, then I shall believe you.”
“There will be nothing on the slate,” he main tained. “But suppose I should mumble some fragments of words. You might take those accidental vocables for a revelation, they might become an obsession upon you, they might warp your judgment and do you great harm. I feel we should be running a foolish risk. Give up this idea of the trance and the slate, I beg of you.”
“And I beg of you to try it. You said you would do anything for me. That is what I want and nothing else.”
He shook his head, his expression crestfallen, baffled, puzzled, even alarmed.
“If you insist — ” he faltered.
“I do insist,” she said.
“You wish,” he inquired, “to proceed exactly as I usually do with my simulated trance and pretended spirit replies?”
“Precisely,” she affirmed.
He opened a drawer below one of the cabinets and took out a hinged double slate. It was made like a child's school-slate, but the rims instead of being wood, were of silver, the edges beaded and the flat of each rim chased in a pattern of pentacles, swastikas and pentagrams; a pentacle, a right-hand swastika, a pentagram, a left-hand swastika and so on all round. In the drawer was a box of fresh slate-pencils. This he held out to her and told her to choose one. At his bidding she broke off a short fragment and put it between the two Leaves of the slate, the four faces of which were entirely blank.
“Settle yourself in your chair,” he instructed her, “hold the slate in your lap. Hold it fast with both hands. First take off your other glove.”
As she did this he settled himself into the armchair opposite her, took a silver paper-knife from the table and held it upright, gazing at its point.
“You are not to move or speak until I tell you,” he directed her.
So they sat, she holding in her lap the slate shut fast upon the pencil within, her fingers enforcing its closure; he gazing intently at the point of the scimitar-shaped paper-knife. She became aware of the slow, pompous tick of a tall clock in the hallway; of faint noises, as of activity in a pantry, proceeding from somewhere in the rear of the house and barely audible through the closed window. She had expected to see him stiffen, his eyes roll up or some such manifestation appear. Nothing of the kind happened. For a long time, a very long time, she watched him staring fixedly at the sharp end of the paper-cutter. Then she saw it waver, saw his eyes close and his head, propped against the back of the armchair, move ever so little sideways, as the neck-muscles relaxed. His hands opened, the knife dropped on his knee and he was to all appearances peacefully asleep. Presently his even, regular breathing was a sound more apparent than the tick of the clock outside.
All of a sudden Mrs. Llewellyn felt herself ridiculous. Here she was, holding a childish toy, facing a strange man with whom she was entirely alone and who was apparently enjoying a needed snooze. She had an impulse to laugh and was on the point of rising, disembarrassing herself of her burden and leaving the house.
At that instant she felt a movement between the fast-shut slates. They lay level upon her lap, firmly set. She had not jarred or tilted them, yet she felt the pencil move. Felt it move and heard it too. Her mood of impatient self-contempt and irritated derision was instantly obliterated under a wave of terrified awe. She controlled a spasm of panic, an impulse to let go her hold upon her frightful charge, to scream, to run away. Rigid, trembling, breathing quick, her heart hammering her ribs, she sat, her fingers gripping the slates, listening for another movement. It came. Faintly at first, she felt and heard it, then more distinctly. Slowly, very slowly, with intervals of silence, the bit of pencil crawled, tapped and scratched about. While listening to it, and still more while listening for it, she was under so terrific a tension that she felt if nothing happened to relieve her, she must faint or shriek. When she continued listening for a long, an interminable, an unbearable time and heard nothing but the clock in the hall and Vargas' breathing in the room, she felt she was about to do both.
Then the clairvoyant uttered a choked sound, the incipience of that feeble wailing groan or groaning wail of a sleeper in a nightmare. His feet moved, his undeformed leg stiffened, his hands clenched, his head rolled from side to side, he writhed, the effort expended at each successive groan was more and more excessive, each sound feebler and more pitiful.
Then Mrs. Llewellyn did scream.
Instantly Vargas struggled into a sitting posture, his face contorted, his eyes bulging, staring at her.
“Did I speak, did I speak?” he gasped.
Mrs. Llewellyn was past articulation, but she shook her head. “I passed into a real trance, a real trance,” he babbled.
She could only cling to the slate and gaze.
“I had a frightful dream,” Vargas panted, “I dreamed there was a message on the plate. It frightened me, but what it was has escaped me.”
“There is a message on the slate,” she managed to utter, “I heard the pencil writing.” Vargas, holding to the back of his chair, assisted himself to his feet. From her fingers, mechanically clenched on it, he gently disengaged the slate and put it on the table. Opening one of the cabinets he took out a decanter and two glasses, half filling one he placed it in her numb grasp.
“Drink that,” he dictated, draining the other full glass as he spoke.
Half dazed she obeyed him. Her face flushed angrily and the glass broke as she set it down. “You have given me brandy!” she cried in indignation.
“You needed it,” he asserted. “It will steady you, but you will not feel it. Compose yourself and we will look at the slate.”
She stood up beside him and he laid the slate open. There was writing on each leaf of it, on one side legible, on the other reversed.
“Oh,” she said and sat down heavily. He brought a small chair, set it beside hers and seated himself upon it, the slates open in his hands, before them both. Fine-lined, legible, plainly made by the point of the pencil, was the writing, on one leaf of the slates; on the other reversed writing with coarse strokes, plainly made by the splintered end, which was worn slightly at one place. All the writing was in the same individual script.
“This is not my handwriting,” said Vargas. “It is my husband's,” she gasped. The words on the slate were: “That which is buried in that coffin is alive. If disinterred it will die.” Vargas opened the other cabinet. The inside of its door was a mirror. Before this he held the slates. On the other leaf the broad-stroked script showed the same words.