Page:The strange experiences of Tina Malone.djvu/74

74 At last, one day, I vowed I would go right away to the country.

Never for one moment in all these months had I known the "Voice of the Silence." Never for one moment had I been left without the sound of at least one voice in my ears.

All kinds of ideas came to me. This then was the Secret Service of long ago. This then was the way secrets could travel from one end of the world to the other without the help of letter, telephone or cable.

Like Pandora I opened the lid of the box entrusted to my care and let the secrets fly—Right and left I told them—angry at their entrusting them to me. This and that—this and that as the ideas came into my head from the minds of those behind.

And then I vowed to send the Rosary back. Determined to part with everything that might have been the cause of my trouble and, knowing that the Rosary had been given to me not long before I heard the voices, I sent it back. It broke my heart to do it and I held it up and looked at it long before I could bear to place it in its little box and send it back.

But I thought of the story the little nun had told me of the power of the priests to cast out devils—and of how the devil had appeared once at a lodge banquet and the priest having been invited there for the cause, had raised his cross and the devil, who sat at the head of the table, had vanished before the eyes of all the lodge members.

I looked at that little rosary as it lay in my hand, and thought of how, during these months I had tried to gain power from it. How I had held it in my hands when I was made to feel the presence of some terrible evil spirit—how I, terrified, had run for it and finding the inefficiency of its power as I crushed it in my hand for help, and made in the air the sign of the cross, had at last, in terror, called to my mother's spirit for help.

That had helped me.

Terrified and gasping I held up the little cross on my rosary to the thing I imagined in the corner of the room and made with it the sign of the cross. But not till I called to my mother did I feel that the awful thing which seemed to shiver at the knowledge of the rosary, crouched and shivered and vanished through the window.

There was another day when I slipped it inside my blouse and wore it, hoping that it would bring me peace—But no peace came.

And so the Rosary had to go.