Page:Weird Tales Volume 09 Issue 02 (1927-02).djvu/78



AUL DUPUY, Frenchman and patriot, more Yankee than the native-born, since he took out naturalization papers, wears the British flag in his buttonhole on Independence Day.

A story hangs upon this, the story of a dead hero to whom the presence of Paul became an outrage and abomination. And it was Brodsky who saved Paul from his post-mortem vengeance.

The psychical investigations of Dr. Ivan Brodsky, and the marvelous results which he had obtained in his warfare against the hosts of evil, some of which I have previously recounted, had by this time made him known to a large circle of those to whom such things as spiritual possession are facts rather than theories. In hospitals, in prisons, wherever we find pain and sin congregated, occult manifestations are a commonplace of existence, though fear of ridicule debars the inmates from making any mention of them. It was in such institutions that Brodsky's reputation spread broadcast. But there are prisons for the dead as well as the living, as I shall show.

Neither Brodsky nor I was greatly surprized when a visitor entered his study one evening and implored his aid in the unraveling of a mystery which had, he was convinced, a supernatural explanation. "At least, I can't help thinking so myself, sir," said the man, speaking fluently, but with a slight foreign accent. "Although I am not a believer in such things myself."

Brodsky's brows clouded; that was the stock phrase that he detested.

"If you do not believe in such things, how dare you make the suggestion that they exist?" he cried. "Be honest with yourself and with me, man, or go elsewhere. Do you believe in them or do you not?"

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