professor s black mane was bristling and his eyes glaring from one member of the
company to another. "Well we want every view expressed," said atkinson "you seem
very qualified, sir, to express the negative one. at the same time i would repeat
in my own person the words of thackeray. he said tosome objector
what you say is natural, but if you had seen what i have seen you might alter your
opinion . perhaps sometime you will be able to look
into the matter. for your high position in the scientific world would give your
opinion great weight," "if i have a high place in the scintific world as
you say, it is because i have concentrated upon what is useful and discarded what
is nebulous or absurd. my brain sir, does not pare the edges, it
cuts right through it has cut right through this and has found fraud and folly."
"both are there at times," said atkinson and yet ...and
yet! ah well malone, i m some way from home and it is late you will excuse me
professor. i am honoured to have met you, " malone was
leaving also and the two friends had a few minutes chat before they went their
seperate ways, atkinson to wimpole street and malone to south norwood where he
was now living. "grand old fellow!" said malone, chuckling. "you must ever get
offended with him he means no harm he is splendid" "of course he is but
if anything could make me a real out-and-out spiritualist it is that sort of
intolerance. it is very common through it is generally cast rather in the tone
of the quiet sneer then of the noisy roar. i like the latter best by the way,
malone if you care to go deeper into this subject i
may be able to help you you ve heart of linden?" "linden, the professional medium
yes, i ve been told he is the greatest blackguard unhang." "ah, well,
they usually talk of them like that you must judge for yourself. he put his knee-
cap out last winter and i put it in again and that has
make a friendly bond between us it s not always easy to get him and of course a
small fee a guinea i think is usual but if
you wanted a sitiing i could work it." "you think him genuine?" atkinson shrugged
his shoulders "i daresay they all take the line of least resistance. i can
only say that i have never detected him in fraud you must judge for yourself." "i
will," said malone i am getting hot on this trail and there
is copy in it too. when things are more easy i ll write to you atkinson and we can
go more deeply into the matter." the article by
the joint commissioners (such was their glorious title) aroused interest and
contention it had been accompanied by a depreciating leaderette from the sub-editor
which was meant to calm
the susceptibilities of his orthodox readers, as who should say. "these things have
to be noticed and seem to be true, but of course you and i recognize
how pestilential it all is " malone found himself at once plunged into a huge
correspondence, for and against which in itself was enough to show how vitally the
question was in the minds of men all the previous articles had only elicited a grow
here or there from a hide-band catholic or from an iron-clad evangelical
but now his post-bag was full most of them were ridiculing the idea that psychic
forces existed and many were whatever they might know of
psychic forces had obivously not yet learned to spell the spiritualists were in
many cases not more pleased than the others for malone had -- even while his
account was true -- exercised a journalist s privilege of laying an accent on the
more humorous sides of it one mmorning in the succeeding week mr.malone
was aware of a large presence in the small room wherein he did his work at the
office a page-boy who preceded the stout visitor, had laid a
card on the corner of the table which boren the legend james bolsover, provision
merchant, high street, hammersmith it was none other than the genial president of
last
sunday s congregation he wagged accusingly at malone, but his good-humoured face
was wreathed in smiles. "well well" said he "i told you that the funny
side would get you," "don't you think it a fair account?" "well yes, mr. malone, i
think you and the young woman have done your best
for us but, of cours,e you know noyhing and it all seems queer to you come to think
of it, it would be a deal queerer if all
the clever men who leave this earth could not among them find some way of getting a
word back back to us." "but it s such a stupid word
sometimes" "well, there are a lot of stupid people leave the world, they dont
change and then you know's one never knows what sort of message
