Dr Nikola Returns | Page 8

a rather simpler form. If I may put it so bluntly, where should you be inclined to say this world begins and ends?"
"I should say," I replied--this time without hesitation--"that it begins with birth and ends with death."
"And after death?"
"Well, what happens then is a question of theology, and one for the parsons to decide."
"You have no individual opinion?"
"I have the remnants of what I learned as a boy."
"I see; in that case you believe that as soon as the breath has forsaken this mortal body a certain indescribable part of us, which for the sake of argument we will denominate soul, leaves this mundane sphere and enters upon a new existence in one or other of two places?"
"That is certainly what I was taught," I answered.
"Quite so; that was the teaching you received in the parish of High Walcombe, Somersetshire, and might be taken as a very good type of what your class thinks throughout the world, from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to the farm labourer's child who walks three miles every seventh day to attend Sunday school. But in that self-same village, if I remember rightly, there was a little man of portly build whose adherents numbered precisely forty-five souls; he was called Father O'Rorke, and I have not the slightest doubt, if you had asked him, he would have given you quite a different account of what becomes of that soul, or essence, if we may so call it, after it has left this mortal body. Tobias Smallcombe, who preaches in a spasmodic, windy way on the green to a congregation made up of a few enthusiasts, a dozen small boys, and a handful of donkeys and goats, will give you yet another, and so on through numberless varieties of creeds to the end of the chapter. Each will claim the privilege of being right, and each will want you to believe exactly as he does. But at the same time we must remember, provided we would be quite fair, that there are not wanting scientists, admittedly the cleverest men of the day, who assert that, while all our friends are agreed that there is a life after death--a spirit world, in fact--they are all wrong. If you will allow me to give you my own idea of what you think, I should say that your opinion is, that when you've done with the solid flesh that makes up Wilfred Bruce it doesn't much matter what happens. But let us suppose that Wilfred Bruce, or his mind, shall we say?--that part of him at any rate which is anxious, which thinks and which suffers--is destined to exist afterwards through endless aeons, a prey to continual remorse for all misdeeds: how would he regard death then?"
"But before you can expect an answer to that question it is necessary that you should prove that he does so continue to exist," I said.
"That's exactly what I desire and intend to do," said Nikola, "and it is to that end I have sought you out, and we are arguing in this fashion now. Is your time very fully occupied at present?"
I smiled.
"I quite understand," he said. "Well, I have got a proposition to make to you, if you will listen to me. Years ago and quite by chance, when the subject we are now discussing, and in which I am more interested than you can imagine, was first brought properly under my notice, I fell into the company of a most extraordinary man. He was originally an Oxford don, but for some reason he went wrong, and was afterwards shot by Balmaceda at Santiago during the Chilian war. Among other places, he had lived for many years in North-Western China. He possessed one of the queerest personalities, but he told me some wonderful things, and what was more to the point, he backed them with proofs. You would probably have called them clever conjuring tricks. So did I then, but I don't now. Nor do I think will you when I have done with you. It was from that man and an old Buddhist priest, with whom I spent some time in Ceylon, that I learnt the tiny fact which put me on the trail of what I am now following up. I have tracked it clue by clue, carefully and laboriously, with varying success for eight long years, and at last I am in the position to say that I believe I have my thumb upon the key-note. If I can press it down and obtain the result I want, I can put myself in possession of information the magnitude of which the world--I mean the European world, of course--has not the slightest conception. I am a courageous man, but I will confess that the prospect of what I