There followed a silence of some few seconds, then we heard the sailor's voice raised in a blood-curdling scream.
"Don't come near me, don't come near me!" he shrieked. "Let me out, Delamort! Let me out, for God's sake, monsieur!" There was a rustle as of someone moving. Then a long-drawn wail of "Jesu!" That was followed by the sound of a heavy fall, and then silence.
The landlord was the first to recover the use of his wits; the fear of a tragedy in his house rousing him to action. He pushed roughly through to the door.
"Here, someone," he begged. "Help me to break in."
There was a groaning and cracking of woodwork and the report of the bursting door. Simultaneously a maid appeared with a lamp. I took it from her and hastened into the room in the wake of Delamort and the landlord.
Stretched on the floor, his eyes closed, his face ghastly pale, and distorted by a fearful grin, lay the sailor. That and a smell of something that had burned was all that we noticed at first.
The rustics remained on the threshold, their faces pale and scared, asking whether the sailor were dead. Delamort, who had been on his knees beside him, reassured us. It was only a swoon. And presently, when he loosened his neckwear and sponged his head and pulses, the man opened his eyes and groaned, but was clearly no worse for whatever he had undergone. The villagers now crowded fearlessly into the room, and some were already plying the sailor with questions as he sat on the floor with Delamort supporting him. Suddenly a diversion was created by Pascal, who uttered a cry that was almost a shriek. Turning quickly to seek the cause of this, I beheld him pointing to something on the table at which he was staring in an awe-struck manner. I approached and beheld a sheet of paper on which had been burnt, as if with a red-hot iron, the name "Gravine."
Such in brief was my first introduction to spiritualism. M. Delamort left Aubepine an hour later, and pursued his journey to St. Hilaire. But the sailor was not himself until the following morning, and even when he had recovered from the shock occasioned him by his unearthly visitant, he sustained a fresh one when he realised that he lost his wager and his six louis.
I was at Angeville a fortnight later, staying with a cousin of mine who resides there. On the evening of my arrival my cousin took me round the old-world town, and in the course of things led me into the Peacock Inn. As we entered the general room, a familiar voice assailed my ears with familiar words.
"Fools," it cried. "Crass, ignorant fools! You live out your lives in this wretched corner of the world much as a rat lives in its burrow, and as your minds are closed to intelligence, so, too, do you close your ears to knowledge. Derision is the ever-ready weapon of the ignorant, and because the things that I tell you are things of which you never dreamt in your unenlightened lives you laugh and call me charlatan."
It was, of course, M. Delamort. As I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of his lean, cadaverous face, I heard a sudden and contemptuous laugh, with which I also seemed familiar. I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, surely enough, I beheld my friend the sailor, baiting the spiritualist as he had done at Aubepine.
I was on the point of denouncing them as a couple of impostors and swindlers, when for some reason or other I held my peace. I had a sort of feeling that would be like taking vengeance upon them for having fooled me in common with those others at Aubepine. I am rather ashamed to confess it, but I turned and quitted the Peacock Inn, leaving those ingenious tricksters to continue to exploit their spiritualistic mummery.
THE END