Part 6 (1/2)
The bulk and weight of the bottle sagging down his pocket and threatening to injure the set of his coat, Mr. Middleton held his acquisition on his knee. A tall, serious-looking individual was his seat mate, who after regarding the bottle intently for some time, addressed him in a low, but earnest voice.
”Pray pardon my curiosity, but I am going to ask you what that queer receptacle is.”
”It is the prison-house of a wicked genii, who was shut therein by King Solomon, the magic influence of whose seal on the plug in the mouth retains him within, for what resistance could the physical force of those copper walls oppose to the strength of that mighty demon?”
Of these words did Mr. Middleton deliver himself, though he knew they must sound pa.s.sing strange, but on the spur of the moment he could not think what else to say and he hoped that the belief he would create that his mind was affected would relieve him of further questioning, for if put to it and pinned down, what could he say, what plausible account could he give of the bottle? To his surprise, the stranger gave no evidence of other than a complete acceptance of his statement and continuing to make inquiries in a most respectful and courteous way, Mr. Middleton felt he could not be less mannerly himself, and so he related all he knew of the bottle, avowing his belief that it contained some dangerous chemical, such as that devilish corroding stuff known as Greek fire, or some deadly gas.
”Your theory sounds reasonable,” said the stranger; ”and yet who knows? That inscription certainly is Hebrew. At least, it is neither English nor German. When one has studied psychic phenomena as long as I have, he comes to a point where he is very chary of saying what is not credible. Do I not, time and again, materialize the dead, calling from the winds, the waters, and the earth the dispersed particles of the corporeal frame to reclothe for a little time the spiritual essence? Could not the great Solomon do as much? Is it not possible that that great moral ensamplar, guide, saint, and prophet has imprisoned in that bottle some one of the Pre-Adamite demons? I am not afraid to open the bottle, on the contrary, would be glad to do so. I am a clairvoyant and trance-medium, with materialization as a specialty. My name is Jefferson P. Smitz. Here is my card. I have a seance to-morrow night. Bring your bottle then, and I will open it.
The price of admission is,” he said, with a glance of tentative scrutiny, ”one dollar,” at which information Mr. Middleton, looking unresponsive, uninterested, not to say sulky, he continued: ”but as you will bring such an important and interesting contribution to the subject of inquiry for the evening, we will make the admission for you only fifty cents, fifty cents.”
On the following evening, Mr. Middleton and his bottle sat among a circle of some thirty persons who were gathered in the gloomy, lofty-ceiled parlor of Mr. Smitz. Before forming the circle, Mr. Smitz had addressed the company in a few well-chosen words, saying that a like purpose had brought all there that night, that as votaries of science and devotees of truth and persons of culture and refinement, mutual acquaintance could not but be pleasant as well as helpful, enabling those who sat together while witnessing the astounding and edifying phenomena they were soon to behold, to discuss these phenomena with reciprocal benefit--in view of all this, he hoped everybody would consider themselves introduced to everybody else.
Mr. Middleton, quickly inspecting the a.s.semblage, whom he doubtless with great injustice denominated a crowd of sober dubs and solemn stiffs, so maneuvered that when all had drawn their chairs into a circle, a man deaf in the right ear sat at his left, while at his right sat a tall young lady, who though slightly pale was of an interesting appearance, notwithstanding. The somewhat tragic cast of her large and cla.s.sic features was intensified by a pair of great mournful eyes and a wistful mouth, the whole framed in luxuriant ma.s.ses of black hair, and altogether she was a girl whom one would give a second and third glance anywhere.
It developing in their very first exchange of remarks that she had never been present at a seance and that she could not look forward to what they were about to witness without great trepidation, Mr.
Middleton offered to afford her every moral support and such physical protection as one mortal can a.s.sure another when facing the unknown powers of another world. At the extinguishment of the gas, he took her left hand, and finding it give a faint tremor, he took the other and was pleased to note that, so far as her hands gave evidence, thereupon her fears were quite allayed.
A breeze, chill and dank as the breath of a tomb, blew upon the company, and from the deep darkness into which they all stared with straining, unseeing eyes, came the solemn sound of Mr. Smitz, speaking hurriedly in somber tones in some sonorous unknown tongue, and low rustlings and whirrs and soft footfalls and faint rattlings that grew stronger, louder, each moment, swelling up into the stamp of a mailed heel and the clangor of arms as Mr. Smitz scratched a match and the light of a gas jet glanced upon helmet, corslet, s.h.i.+eld, and greaves of a brazen-armored Greek warrior, standing in the middle of the circle, alive, in full corporeal presence!
”Leonidas, hero of Thermopylae!” shouted Mr. Smitz, and then continued at a conversational pitch, ”if any of you wish to speak to him in his own language, you have full permission to do so.”
Those present lacking either the desire to accost the dread presence, or a command of the ancient Greek, after a bit Mr. Smitz turned off the gas and the noises that had heralded the visitant's appearance began in reverse order, and at their cease, the gas being turned on again, there was the circle quite bare of any evidence that a Greek warrior in full panoply had but now stood there.
At these prodigies, the young lady trembled, but you could have applied all sorts of surgical devices for measuring nerve reaction to Mr. Middleton from the crown of his head to where his parallel feet held between them the copper bottle, and not have detected a tremor.
Mr. Smitz was reaching up to extinguish the gas once more, when a big, athletic blonde man, whose appearance and garb proclaimed him an Englishman, interrupted him.
”I am going to request you to materialize the spirit with whom I wish to converse, the next time. I have to catch a train at eleven and there are a number of things I would like to do before that.
Yesterday, you promised me that you would materialize him first thing.”
”Yesterday,” said Mr. Smitz with a slight hauteur, ”I could not look forward and see that I was to have such a large and cultivated gathering. You cannot, sir, ask to have your own mere personal business, for business it is with you, take precedence of the scientific quests of all these other ladies and gentlemen. I have planned to materialize men of many nations, with whom all may converse if they please; Confucius, the great Chinese; Caesar, the great Roman; Mohammed, the great Turk; Powhattan, the great Indian, and others.
Your business must wait.”
”My friends,” said the Englishman, appealing to the a.s.semblage, ”I throw myself upon your good nature. My grandfather was the owner of a small estate in Ireland. In a rebellion, the Irish burned every building on the place and it has since been deserted. He had buried a sum of money before he fled during the rebellion and we have a chart telling where it was buried. But the chart referred to buildings and trees that were subsequently utterly destroyed. We have no marks to guide us. I am sadly in need of money. My grandfather's ghost could tell me where the treasure is. I shall suffer financial detriment if I do not catch the train at eleven and must attend to several matters before that. You have heard my case. May I not ask you all to grant me the indulgence of having my affair disposed of now?”
Mr. Middleton and several others were about to endorse the justice of the Englishman's request, when Mr. Smitz hastily forestalled them by saying that all should be heard from and turning to four personages who sat together at a point where the line of chairs of the circle pa.s.sed before a large and mysterious cabinet set in the corner of the wall, and asking their opinion, they all four in one voice began to object to any alteration of the program of the evening, adverting somewhat to the Boer War, the oppressions in Ireland, and to the Revolution and the War of 1812. When they had done, there was no one who cared to say a word for the Englishman or an Englishman, and Mr.
Smitz announced that Confucius would be the next materialization and that all might address him in his native tongue. Of this permission, a small red-head gentleman, whose demeanor advertised him to be in a somewhat advanced state of intoxication, availed himself and remarked slowly:
”h.e.l.lo, John. Washee, washee? Sabe how washee? Wlanter be Melican man?”
To this the great sage vouchsafed no reply save a contemptuous stare, and the red-headed gentleman observed that doubtless the Chinese language had changed a good deal in two thousand years. All languages did.
From out the darkness under whose cover the Chinaman was modestly divesting himself of his body, came the voice of Mr. Smitz, rich, unctuous, saying:
”The next visitant will be from that great race we all admire so much, the n.o.ble race which has done so much to build up this country, which in every field of American endeavor has been a guiding star to us all.
It gives me great pleasure to tell you that our next visitant from the world beyond is that great soldier, statesman, and patriot, King Brian Boru.”