been dimmed to a peep so that a pale sickly light caught the occasional white shirt front or brightly pleated dress collar of the latest fashion, but the rest was subdued garmentation, gloomy and overcast as the sky had been all day.
Lieutenant Roach sat bleakly beside his rapt, attentive wife and regretted for the hundredth time that he had partaken so heartily of onions at supper. He had a weakness for fried liver, bacon and the pungent bulb of the lily family; Mrs Roach had instructed the cook accordingly because she wished to flatter his stomach into accepting what his mind would most certainly reject.
A visit to an otherworld where unseen influence held sway and ethereal spirits did not indulge themselves in offshoots of the Allium cepa .
Now he was reaping a digestive whirlwind in the form of repetitive gaseous eruptions that insisted on bursting from whichever conduit might yield to pressure.
The audience, of which he was an unwilling and uncomfortable participant, was seated in rows with a centre aisle facing onto a small stage where a single figure sat in a chair, illuminated from each side by a large honey-coloured candle on a simple holder.
The silence stretched.
The figure did not move.
The lieutenant smothered an inconvenient upsurge and blinked his eyes.
Surely the woman would have some kind of visitation shortly? Not that Roach would believe it for a moment but at least it would get the ball rolling towards the hole.
Three places to the rear, in fact the back row, where his massive frame would incommode no watcher behind, Conan Doyle sat between his mother Mary and Muriel Grierson. The young man was conscious of a certain emanation from Muriel’s direction that seemed somewhat odorously provocative.
A perfume most certainly but not a clean sharp cologne to bring a chap to his senses, more of a musky offering like a delicate crooked finger from a shadowed doorway.
He took a deep breath but kept his eyes fixed on Sophia Adler, whose ash-blonde hair shone behind the white veil in the candlelight like a signal to the spirits.
Magnus Bannerman had spoken first and spoken well of the gravitatio universalis , the universal fluid that linked all creatures of the cosmos and flowed through the human body, an unseen magnetic force that might connect us to these unknown worlds.
He painted a picture of a parallel existence where the departed spirits floated in suspension, desperately waiting to be conjoined with those left behind. Waiting for a call, a hand to be stretched across the great divide.
The American even found a modicum of humour. He, Magnus, was not that hand. He held his own up in the air and waggled the fingers. There was a sharp burst of laughter but Sophia, who at that moment was sitting at the side, bowed her head and Magnus quickly returned to serious mode.
Only belief could sustain contact. The credence of those watching and the intense divination of the sensitive.
From us to them. The natural. A sublime interpreter.
Doyle was impressed, but not overly so, by the spiel. He had read deeply of the spiritual world with its phenomenal possibilities and this man reminded a little of a fairground huckster. Yet he could not dismiss the fellow because he sensed that under the delivery, and it did not escape his notice that Magnus’s magnetic power might have part source in his handsome features and flashing eyes – for the women, of course, men are not so easily swayed – under the smooth hypnotic flow of words, there seemed a core of true belief.
Almost in spite of the man himself, as if Magnus was being called to witness a more powerful force than his own being; he a mere mouthpiece who might only express itself in this somewhat florid fashion.
Or was the fellow merely a skilful actor hinting at a reality that did not exist, as actors are wont to do?
Make-believe.
Or indeed was Doyle, jealous of the man’s ability, projecting all this ambivalence upon a screen of shadows?
Because there
Lieutenant Roach sat bleakly beside his rapt, attentive wife and regretted for the hundredth time that he had partaken so heartily of onions at supper. He had a weakness for fried liver, bacon and the pungent bulb of the lily family; Mrs Roach had instructed the cook accordingly because she wished to flatter his stomach into accepting what his mind would most certainly reject.
A visit to an otherworld where unseen influence held sway and ethereal spirits did not indulge themselves in offshoots of the Allium cepa .
Now he was reaping a digestive whirlwind in the form of repetitive gaseous eruptions that insisted on bursting from whichever conduit might yield to pressure.
The audience, of which he was an unwilling and uncomfortable participant, was seated in rows with a centre aisle facing onto a small stage where a single figure sat in a chair, illuminated from each side by a large honey-coloured candle on a simple holder.
The silence stretched.
The figure did not move.
The lieutenant smothered an inconvenient upsurge and blinked his eyes.
Surely the woman would have some kind of visitation shortly? Not that Roach would believe it for a moment but at least it would get the ball rolling towards the hole.
Three places to the rear, in fact the back row, where his massive frame would incommode no watcher behind, Conan Doyle sat between his mother Mary and Muriel Grierson. The young man was conscious of a certain emanation from Muriel’s direction that seemed somewhat odorously provocative.
A perfume most certainly but not a clean sharp cologne to bring a chap to his senses, more of a musky offering like a delicate crooked finger from a shadowed doorway.
He took a deep breath but kept his eyes fixed on Sophia Adler, whose ash-blonde hair shone behind the white veil in the candlelight like a signal to the spirits.
Magnus Bannerman had spoken first and spoken well of the gravitatio universalis , the universal fluid that linked all creatures of the cosmos and flowed through the human body, an unseen magnetic force that might connect us to these unknown worlds.
He painted a picture of a parallel existence where the departed spirits floated in suspension, desperately waiting to be conjoined with those left behind. Waiting for a call, a hand to be stretched across the great divide.
The American even found a modicum of humour. He, Magnus, was not that hand. He held his own up in the air and waggled the fingers. There was a sharp burst of laughter but Sophia, who at that moment was sitting at the side, bowed her head and Magnus quickly returned to serious mode.
Only belief could sustain contact. The credence of those watching and the intense divination of the sensitive.
From us to them. The natural. A sublime interpreter.
Doyle was impressed, but not overly so, by the spiel. He had read deeply of the spiritual world with its phenomenal possibilities and this man reminded a little of a fairground huckster. Yet he could not dismiss the fellow because he sensed that under the delivery, and it did not escape his notice that Magnus’s magnetic power might have part source in his handsome features and flashing eyes – for the women, of course, men are not so easily swayed – under the smooth hypnotic flow of words, there seemed a core of true belief.
Almost in spite of the man himself, as if Magnus was being called to witness a more powerful force than his own being; he a mere mouthpiece who might only express itself in this somewhat florid fashion.
Or was the fellow merely a skilful actor hinting at a reality that did not exist, as actors are wont to do?
Make-believe.
Or indeed was Doyle, jealous of the man’s ability, projecting all this ambivalence upon a screen of shadows?
Because there
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