Part 37 (1/2)

”How can you tell?” asked Kate, her voice faint and shrill with awe.

”The fall of the horn to the floor is a sure sign of the end. You may turn up the gas, but very slowly.”

Stunned by the significance, the far-reaching implications of his experiment, Morton remained standing while Weissmann turned on the light.

Pale, in deep, placid sleep, Viola sat precisely as they had left her, bound, helpless, and exonerated. She recalled to Morton's mind a picture (in his school-books) of a martyr-maiden, who was depicted chained to the altar of some hideous, heathen deity, a monster who devoured the flesh of virgins and demanded with pitiless l.u.s.t the fairest of the race.

Of her innocence he was at that moment profoundly convinced.

XIV

PUZZLED PHILOSOPHERS

While he still stood looking down upon her Viola began to moan and toss her head from side to side.

”She is waking,” cried Mrs. Lambert. ”Let me go to her.”

”No!” commanded Weissmann, ”disturb nothing till we have examined all things.”

”Make your studies quickly,” said Morton, his heart tender to the girl's sufferings. ”We must release her as soon as possible.”

Weissmann was not to be hastened. ”If we do not now go slowly we lose much of what we are trying to attain. We must take her pulse and temperature, and observe the position of every object.”

”Quite right,” agreed Clarke, ”Do not be troubled--the psychic is being cared for.”

Thus rea.s.sured the two investigators scrutinized, measured, made notes, while Kate and Mrs. Lambert stood waiting, watching with anxious eyes the changes which came to Viola's face. Weissmann talked on in a disjointed mutter. ”You see? She has no pulse. The threads are unbroken. The table is thirty inches from her finger-tips. Observe this pad, forty-eight inches from her hand--and which contains a message.”

”Read it!” demanded Kate.

He complied. ”'_You ask for a particle of matter to be moved from A to B without the use of any force known to science. Here in this winegla.s.s is the test. Oh, men of science, how long will you close your eyes to the grander truths._'”

”That is from father,” remarked Mrs. Lambert.

”It is signed 'McLeod,' and under it are two words, 'Loggy' and 'Mother,' each in different handwriting.”

”Give it to me!” cried Kate, deeply moved.

”And here is the winegla.s.s,” replied Weissmann, extracting from among the books a beautiful piece of antique crystal.

Kate took it reverentially, as if receiving it from the hand of her dead mother. ”How came that here?”

”You recognize it? It was not left here by mistake?”

”Oh no. There are only four of them left and I keep them locked away.

I have not had them out in months.”

Clarke smiled in benign triumph. ”That is why they brought it--to show you that matter is an illusion and to prove that dematerialization and transubstantiation are facts. That was the bell we heard.”

”Morton, what do _you_ think? How could--”