II
“You Can Almost Hear the Ghosts.”
I have sat down with the purpose of writing out, plainly and even flatly, all that happened to me and to Doctor Otto Zoberg in our impromptu adventure at psychic investigation; yet, almost at the start, I find it necessary to be vague about the tiny town where that adventure ran its course. Zoberg began by refusing to tell me its name, and now my friends of various psychical research committees have asked me to hold my peace until they have finished certain examinations without benefit of yellow journals or prying politicians.
It is located, as Zoberg told me, within five hours by fast automobile of Washington. On the following morning, after a quick and early breakfast, we departed at seven o’clock in my sturdy coupé. I drove and Zoberg guided. In the turtle-back we had stowed bags, for the November sky had begun to boil up with dark, heavy clouds, and a storm might delay us.
On the way Zoberg talked a great deal, with his usual charm and animation. He scoffed at my skepticism and prophesied my conversion before another midnight.
“A hundred years ago, realists like yourself were ridiculing hypnotism,” he chuckled. “They thought that it was a fantastic fake, like one of Edgar Poe’s amusing tales, ja? And now it is a great science, for healing and comforting the world. A few years ago, the world scorned mental telepathy—”
“Hold on,” I interrupted. “I’m none too convinced of it now.”
“I said just that, last night. However, you think that there is some grain of truth to it. You would be a fool to laugh at the many experiments in clairvoyance carried on at Duke University.”
“Yes, they are impressive,” I admitted.
“They are tremendous, and by no means unique,” he insisted. “Think of a number between one and ten,” he said suddenly.
I gazed at my hands on the wheel, thought of a joking reply, then fell in with his mood.
“All right,” I replied. “I’m thinking of a number. What is it?”
“It is seven,” he cried out at once, then laughed heartily at the blank look on my face.
“Look here, that’s a logical number for an average man to think of,” I protested. “You relied on human nature, not telepathy.”
He grinned and tweaked the end of his beard between manicured fingers. “Very good, Wills, try again. A color this time.”
I paused a moment before replying, “All right, guess what it is.”
He, too, hesitated, staring at me sidewise. “I think it is blue,” he offered at length.
“Go to the head of the class,” I grumbled. “I rather expected you to guess red—that’s most obvious.”
“But I was not guessing,” he assured me. “A flash of blue came before my mind’s eye. Come, let us try another time.”
We continued the experiment for a while. Zoberg was not always correct, but he was surprisingly close in nearly every case. The most interesting results were with the names of persons, and Zoberg achieved some rather mystifying approximations. Thus, when I was thinking of the actor Boris Karloff, he gave me the name of the actor Bela Lugosi. Upon my thinking of Gilbert K. Chesterton, he named Chesterton’s close friend Hilaire Belloc, and my concentration on George Bernard Shaw brought forth a shout of “Santa Claus.” When I reiterated my charge of psychological trickery and besought him to teach me his method, he grew actually angry and did not speak for more than half an hour. Then he began to discuss our destination.
“A most amazing community,” he pronounced. “It is old—one of the oldest inland towns of all America. Wait until you see the houses, my friend. You can almost hear the ghosts within them, in broad daylight. And their Devil’s Croft, that is worth seeing, too.”
“Their what?”
He shook his head, as though in despair. “And you set yourself up as an authority on occultism!” he sniffed. “Next you will admit that you have never heard of the Druids. A Devil’s Croft, my dull young friend, used to be part of every English or Scots village. The good people would set aside a field for Satan, so that he would not take their own lands.”
“And this settlement has such a place?”
“Ja wohl, a grove of the thickest timber ever seen in this over-civilized country, and hedged in to boot. I do not say that they believe, but it is civic property and protected by special order from trespassers.”
“I’d like to visit that grove,” I said.
“I pray you!” he cried, waving in protest. “Do not make us unwelcome.”
We arrived shortly before noon. The little town rests in a circular hollow among high wooded hills, and there is not a really good road into it, for two or three miles around. After listening to Zoberg, I had expected something grotesque or forbidding, but I was disappointed. The houses were sturdy and modest, in some cases poor. The greater part of them made a close-huddled mass, like a herd of cattle threatened by wolves, with here and there an isolated dwelling like an adventuresome young fighting-bull. The streets were narrow, crooked and unpaved, and for once in this age I saw buggies and wagons outnumbering automobiles. The central square, with a two-story town hall of red brick and a hideous cast-iron war memorial, still boasted numerous hitching-rails, brown with age and smooth with use. There were few real signs of modern progress. For instance, the drug store was a shabby clapboard affair with “Pharmacy” painted upon its windows, and it sold only drugs, soda and tobacco; while the one hotel was low and rambling and bore the title “Luther Inn.” I heard that the population was three hundred and fifty, but I am inclined to think it was closer to three hundred.
We drew up in front of the Luther Inn, and a group of roughly dressed men gazed at us with the somewhat hostile interrogation that often marks a rural American community at the approach of strangers. These men wore mail-order coats of corduroy or suede—the air was growing nippier by the minute—and plow shoes or high laced boots under dungaree pants. All of them were of Celtic or Anglo-Saxon type.
“Hello!” cried Zoberg jovially. “I see you there, my friend Mr. Gird. How is your charming daughter?”
The man addressed took a step forward from the group on the porch. He was a rawboned, grizzled native with pale, pouched eyes, and was a trifle better dressed than the others, in a rather ministerial coat of dark cloth and a wide black hat. He cleared his throat before replying.
“Hello, Doctor. Susan’s well, thanks. What do you want of us?”
It was a definite challenge, that would repel or anger most men, but Zoberg was not to be denied. He scrambled out of the car and cordially shook the hand of the man he had called Mr. Gird. Meanwhile he spoke in friendly fashion to one or two of the others.
“And here,” he wound up, “is a very good friend of mine, Mr. Talbot Wills.”
All eyes—and very unfriendly eyes they were, as a whole—turned upon me. I got out slowly, and at Zoberg’s insistence shook hands with Gird. Finally the grizzled man came with us to the car.
“I promised you once,” he said glumly to Zoberg, “that I would let you and Susan dig as deeply as you wanted to into this matter of spirits. I’ve often wished since that I hadn’t, but my word was never broken yet. Come along with me; Susan is cooking dinner, and there’ll be enough for all of us.”
He got into the car with us, and as we drove out of the square and toward his house he conversed quietly with Zoberg and me.
“Yes,” he answered one of my questions, “the houses are old, as you can see. Some of them have stood since the Revolutionary War with England, and our town’s ordinances have stood longer than that. You aren’t the first to be impressed, Mr. Wills. Ten years ago a certain millionaire came and said he wanted to endow us, so that we would stay as we are. He had a lot to say about native color and historical value. We told him that we would stay as we are without having to take money from him, or from anybody else for that matter.”
Gird’s home was large but low, all one story, and of darkly painted clapboards over heavy timbers. The front door was hung on the most massive hand-wrought hinges. Gird knocked at it, and a slender, smallish girl opened to us.
She wore a woolen dress, as dark as her father’s coat, with white at the neck and wrists. Her face, under masses of thunder-black hair, looked Oriental at first glance, what with high cheekbones and eyes set aslant; then I saw that her eyes were a bright gray like worn silver, and her skin rosy, with a firm chin and a generous mouth. The features were representatively Celtic, after all, and I wondered for perhaps the fiftieth time in my life if there was some sort of blood link between Scot and Mongol. Her hand, on the brass knob of the door, showed as slender and white as some evening flower.
“Susan,” said Gird, “here’s Doctor Zoberg. And this is his friend, Mr. Wills.”
She smiled at Zoberg, then nodded to me, respectfully and rather shyly.
“My daughter,” Gird finished the introduction. “Well, dinner must be ready.”
She led us inside. The parlor was rather plainer than in most old-fashioned provincial houses, but it was comfortable enough. Much of its furniture would have delighted antique dealers, and one or two pieces would have impressed museum directors. The dining-room beyond had plate-racks on the walls and a long table of dark wood, with high-backed chairs. We had some fried ham, biscuits, coffee and stewed fruit that must have been home-canned. Doctor Zoberg and Gird ate heartily, talking of local trifles, but Susan Gird hardly touched her food. I, watching her with stealthy admiration, forgot to take more than a few mouthfuls.
After the repast she carried out the dishes and we men returned to the parlor. Gird faced us.
“You’re here for some more hocus-pocus?” he hazarded gruffly.
“For another séance,” amended Zoberg, suave as ever.
“Doctor,” said Gird, “I think this had better be the last time.”
Zoberg held out a hand in pleading protest, but Gird thrust his own hands behind him and looked sternly stubborn. “It’s not good for the girl,” he announced definitely.
“But she is a great medium—greater than Eusapia Paladino, or Daniel Home,” Zoberg argued earnestly. “She is an important figure in the psychic world, lost and wasted here in this backwater—”
“Please don’t miscall our town,” interrupted Gird. “Well, Doctor, I agree to a final séance, as you call it. But I’m going to be present.”
Zoberg made a gesture as of refusal, but I sided with Gird.
“If this is to be my test, I want another witness,” I told Zoberg.
“Ach! If it is a success, you will say that he helped to deceive.”
“Not I. I’ll arrange things so there will be no deception.”
Both Zoberg and Gird stared at me. I wondered which of them was the more disdainful of my confidence.
Then Susan Gird joined us, and for once I wanted to speak of other subjects than the occult.