Lupescus brightened just a trifle. This was something. Very dutifully and carefully, he wrote in his notebook, Subject Milord Smiht said to be associated with Novotny in Prague . . .
With his best official bow, he withdrew. Withdrawn, he allowed himself a sigh. Now he would have to go and check out Novotny with the people at the Austro-Hungarian Legation. He hoped that this would be more productive than this other enquiry had been. One would have thought that people named Smiht grew on trees in England.
Eszterhazy’s growing association with the white-haired Englishman took, if not a leap, then a sort of lurch, forward one evening about a month after his first visit. He had sent up his card with the hall-porter, who had returned with word that he was to go up directly. He found Smith with a woman in black, a nondescript woman of the type who hold up churches all around the world.
“Ah, come in, my dear sir. Look here. This good woman doesn’t speak either French or German, and my command of Gothic is not . . . well, ask her what she wants, do, please.”
Frow Widow Apterhots wished to be placed in communication with her late husband. “That is to say,” she said, anxious that there be no confusion nor mistake, “that is to say, he is dead, you know. His name is Emyil.”
Smiht shook his head tolerantly at this. “Death does not exist,” he said, “nor does life exist, save as states of flux to one side or other of the sidereal line, or astral plane, as some call it. From this point of view it may seem that anyone who is not alive must be dead, but that is not so. The absent one, the one absent from here, may now be fluctuating in the area called ‘death,’ or he or she may be proceeding in a calm vibration along the level of the sidereal line or so-called astral plane. We mourn because the ‘dead’ are not ‘alive.’ But in the world which we call ‘death’ the so-called ‘dead’ may be mourning a departure into what we call ‘life.’”
From Widow Apterhots sighed. “Emyil was always so healthy, so strong,” she said. “I still can’t understand it. He always did say that there wasn’t no Hell, just Heaven and Purgatory, and I used to say, ‘Oh, Emyil, people will think that you’re a Freemason or something.’ Well, our priest, Father Ugerow, he just won’t listen when I talk like this, he says, ‘If you won’t say your prayers, at least perform some work of corporal mercy, and take your mind off such things.’ But what I say—” She leaned forward, her simple sallow face very serious and confiding, “I say that all I want to know is: Is he happy there? That’s all.”
Pemberton Smith said that he could guarantee nothing, but in any event he would have to have at least one object permeated with the odyllic force of the so-called deceased. The Frow Widow nodded and delved into her reticule. “That’s what I was told, so I come prepared. I always made him wear this, let them say what they like, he always did. But I wouldn’t let them bury him with it because I wanted it for a keepsake. Here you are, Professor.” She held out a small silver crucifix.
Smith took the article with the utmost calm and walked over and set it down upon a heavy piece of furniture in the dimness of the back of the room. There were quite a number of things already on the table. Smith beckoned, and the others came toward him, Frow Widow Apterhots because she was sure that she was meant to, and Eszterhazy because he was sure he wanted to. “These,” said Smith, “are the equipment for the odyllic forces. Pray take a seat, my good woman.” He struck a match and lit a small gas jet; it was not provided with a mantle, and it either lacked a regulatory tap or something was wrong with the one it did have – or perhaps Smith merely liked to see the gas flame shooting up to its fullest extent; at least two feet long the flame was, wavering wildly and a reddish gold in color.
Certainly, he was not trying to conceal anything.
But these were interesting, certainly whatever else they were, and Eszterhazy took advantage of the English wizard’s at the moment administering to himself two strong doses of Rappee – one in each nostril – to scrutinize the equipment for the odyllic forces. What he saw was a series of bell jars . . . that is, at least some of them were bell jars . . . some of the others resembled, rather, Leyden jars . . . and what was all that, under the bell jars? In one there seemed to be a vast quantity of metal filings; in another, quicksilver; in the most of them, organic matter, vegetive in origin. Every jar, bell or Leyden, appeared to be connected to every other jar by a system of glass tubing: and all the tubes seemed fitted up to a sort of master-tube, which coiled around and down and finally upward, culminating in what appeared to be an enormous gramophone horn.
“Pray, touch nothing,” warned Milord Sir Smiht. “The equipment is exceedingly fragile.” He took up a small, light table, the surface of which consisted of some open lattice-work material – Eszterhazy was not sure what – and, moving it easily, set it up over the born. On it he placed the crucifix. “Now, my dear sir, if you will be kind enough to ask this good lady, first, to take these in her hands . . .? And, to concentrate, if she will, entirely upon the memory of her husband, now on another plane of existence.” The Widow Apterhots, sitting down, took hold of the these – in this case, a pair of metal grips of the sort which are connected, often, to magnetic batteries, but in this case were not – they seemed connected in some intricate way with the glass tubings. She closed her eyes. “And,” the wizard continued, “please to cooperate in sending on my request. Which, after all, is her request, translated into my own methodology.”
He began an intricate series of turnings of taps, of twistings of connections at joints and at junctions, of connectings; at length he was finished. “Emyil Apterhots. Emyil Apterhots. Emyil Apterhots. If you are happy, wherever you are, kindly signify by moving the crucifix which you wore when on this plane of existence. Now!”
The entire massive piece of furniture upon which the equipment for the odyllic force (or forces) was placed began to move forward.
“No, no, you Gothic oaf!” shouted the milord, his face crimson with fury and concern. “Not the sideboard! The crucifix! Just the cru-ci-fix—” He set himself against the sideboard and pressed it back. In vain. In vain. In vain. In a moment, Eszterhazy, concerned lest the glass tubings should snap, reached forward to adjust them, so that the intricate workings should not be shattered and sundered – the wizard, panting and straining against the laboratory furniture as the heavy mass continued to slide forward . . . forward . . . forward . . .
—and suddenly slid rapidly backward, Milord Sir Smiht stumbling and clutching at empty air, Eszterhazy darting forward, and the two of them executing a sort of slow, insane schottische, arm in arm, before coming to a slow halt—
And then, oh so grumpy, wiping his brow with a red bandana handkerchief, of the sort in which navvies wrap their pork pies, hear Milord Sir Smiht say, “I must regard this session as questionable in its results. And I must say that I am not used to such contumacy from the habitants of the sidereal line!”