Page:Isis very much unveiled - being the story of the great Mahatma hoax (IA b24884273).pdf/35

Rh members of the Council. At any rate, the Mahatma evidently deemed the occasion to be a dignas vindice nodus. For what happened?

As Mrs. Besant, who took the chair and expounded the new scheme, was turning over her papers on the table, there fluttered out a little slip of paper, at which she just glanced, and was about to put it by, when William Q. Judge pointedly asked her what it was?

The slip of paper bore the words in red pencil—

Signature and seal as before.

Round it went from hand to hand. None questioned that paper and script alike had just been “precipitated” into their midst by “the Master.” Thanks to Mr. Judge’s foresight, as we have just seen, all were in a position to recognise the seal.

Under these circumstances discussion was obviously out of place. William Q. Judge at once went and took his seat at Mrs. Besant’s side, and “Judge’s plan” was unanimously adopted!

It will hardly be believed, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, which I challenge Mrs. Besant to contradict, that when that lady, on a public platform, pledged the evidence of her senses, her sanity, and her reasoning faculties, &c., &c., to having received messages from the Mahatmas—messages which, as she assured the subsequent interviewer, came “not through the post” but by “precipitation” “in away which some people would call miraculous”—these two documents, produced as has been described, and only these, were all the pièces justificatives that she had to go upon.

But the vice-president’s Mahatma had only made a beginning. There was more, much more, to come. It will be my privilege to present the reader, in succeeding Chapters, with fac-similes of several of his more interesting compositions.