Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 70).djvu/644

610 world, that people may see with their own eyes. Will that not at last convince them of the reality of our studies?

"Do not hope for too much, my poor friend," said Richet, with his hand upon the shoulder of the enthusiast. *"You have not yet realized the enormous vis inertiæ of the world. But as you have said, 'Vous marchez—vous marchez toujours.

"And our march is regulated," said Mailey. "There is a gradual release to accommodate it to the receptivity of mankind."

Richet smiled and shook his head.

"Always transcendental, Monsieur Mailey! Always seeing more than meets the eye and changing science into philosophy! I fear you are incorrigible. Is your position reasonable?"

"Professor Richet," said Mailey, very earnestly, "I would beg you to answer the same question. I have a deep respect for your talents and complete sympathy with your caution, but have you not come to the dividing of the ways? You are now in the position that you admit—you must admit—that our intelligent apparition in human form, built up from the substance which you have yourself named ectoplasm, can walk the room and carry out instructions while the medium lay senseless under our eyes, and yet you hesitate to assert that Spirit has an independent existence. Is that reasonable?"

Richet smiled and shook his head. Without answering, he turned to bid farewell to Dr. Maupuis, and to offer him his congratulations. A few minutes later the company had broken up and our friends were in a taxi speeding towards their hotel.

Malone was deeply impressed with what he had seen, and he sat up half the night drawing up a full account of it for the Central News, with the names of those who had endorsed the results—honourable names which no one in the world could associate with folly or deception.

"Surely, surely, this will be a turning point and an epoch." So ran his dream. Two days later he opened the great London dailies one after the other. Columns about football. Columns about golf. A full page as to the value of shares. A long and earnest correspondence in The Times about the habits of the lapwing. Not one word in any of them as to the wonders which he had seen and reported. Mailey laughed at his dejected face.

"A mad world, my masters," said he. "A crazy world! But the end is not yet!"

The actual photograph, taken at the Institut Métapsychique, of the bird of prey perched upon the medium.