Part 3 (1/2)

”Quel beau chien!” cried the French people.

”Ach! was ein Dog!” cried the Spanish.

The Great Detective took the first prize!

The fortune of the Countess was saved.

Unfortunately as the Great Detective had neglected to pay the dog tax, he was caught and destroyed by the dog-catchers. But that is, of course, quite outside of the present narrative, and is only mentioned as an odd fact in conclusion.

II. - ”Q.” A Psychic Pstory of the Psupernatural

I CANNOT expect that any of my readers will believe the story which I am about to narrate. Looking back upon it, I scarcely believe it myself. Yet my narrative is so extraordinary and throws such light upon the nature of our communications with beings of another world, that I feel I am not ent.i.tled to withhold it from the public.

I had gone over to visit Annerly at his rooms. It was Sat.u.r.day, October 31. I remember the date so precisely because it was my pay day, and I had received six sovereigns and ten s.h.i.+llings. I remembered the sum so exactly because I had put the money into my pocket, and I remember into which pocket I had put it because I had no money in any other pocket. My mind is perfectly clear on all these points.

Annerly and I sat smoking for some time.

Then quite suddenly-

”Do you believe in the supernatural?” he asked.

I started as if I had been struck.

At the moment when Annerly spoke of the supernatural I had been thinking of something entirely different. The fact that he should speak of it at the very instant when I was thinking of something else, struck me as at least a very singular coincidence.

For a moment I could only stare.

”What I mean is,” said Annerly, ”do you believe in phantasms of the dead?”

”Phantasms?” I repeated.

”Yes, phantasms, or if you prefer the word, phanograms, or say if you will phanogrammatical manifestations, or more simply psychophantasmal phenomena?”

I looked at Annerly with a keener sense of interest than I had ever felt in him before. I felt that he was about to deal with events and experiences of which in the two or three months that I had known him he had never seen fit to speak.

I wondered now that it had never occurred to me that a man whose hair at fifty-five was already streaked with grey, must have pa.s.sed through some terrible ordeal.

Presently Annerly spoke again.

”Last night I saw Q,” he said.

”Good heavens!” I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. I did not in the least know who Q was, but it struck me with a thrill of indescribable terror that Annerly had seen Q. In my own quiet and measured existence such a thing had never happened.

”Yes,” said Annerly, ”I saw Q as plainly as if he were standing here. But perhaps I had better tell you something of my past relations.h.i.+p with Q, and you will understand exactly what the present situation is.”

Annerly seated himself in a chair on the other side of the fire from me, lighted a pipe and continued.

”When first I knew Q he lived not very far from a small town in the south of England, which I will call X, and was betrothed to a beautiful and accomplished girl whom I will name M.”

Annerly had hardly begun to speak before I found myself listening with riveted attention. I realised that it was no ordinary experience that he was about to narrate. I more than suspected that Q and M were not the real names of his unfortunate acquaintances, but were in reality two letters of the alphabet selected almost at random to disguise the names of his friends. I was still pondering over the ingenuity of the thing when Annerly went on: