Possessed

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Possessed, by Cleveland Moffett

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Title: Possessed
Author: Cleveland Moffett
Release Date: July 26, 2007 [EBook #22152]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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POSSESSED
by
CLEVELAND MOFFETT
Author of "Through the Wall", etc.
NEW YORK
THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
1920

Copyright 1920 by
THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
All Rights Reserved
Printed in U. S. A.

DEDICATION
Whatever the defects or limitations of this story, I can assure my readers that it is largely based on truth. Many of the incidents, including the dual personality phenomena, were suggested by actual happenings known to me. The doctor who accomplishes cures by occult methods is a friend of mine, who lives and practises in New York City. Seraphine, the medium, is also a real person. The episode that is explained by waves of terror passing from one apartment to another and separately affecting three unsuspecting persons is not imaginary, but drawn from an almost identical happening that I, myself, witnessed in Paris, France. And the truth about women that I have tried to tell has been largely obtained from women themselves, women in various walks of life, who have been kind enough to give me most of the opinions and experiences that are contained in Penelope's diary. To them I now gratefully dedicate this book.
C. M.

CONTENTS
PAGE
PROLOGUE 1
CHAPTER
I.
VOICES 6
II. WHAT PENELOPE COULD NOT TELL THE DOCTOR 18
III. A BOWL OF GOLD FISH 42
IV. FIVE PURPLE MARKS 46
V. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT THE STUDIO 53
VI. EARTH-BOUND 62
VII. JEWELS 70
VIII. WHITE SHAPES 80
IX. THE CONFESSIONAL CLUB 90
X. FAUVETTE 103
XI. THE EVIL SPIRIT 111
XII. X K C 115
XIII. TERROR 128
XIV. POSSESSED 142
XV. DR. LEROY 149
XVI. IRRESPONSIBLE HANDS 161
XVII. THE HOUR OF THE DREAM 169
XVIII. PLAYING WITH FIRE 179
XIX. PRIDE 192
XX. THE MIRACLE 199
XXI. THE TRUTH ABOUT WOMEN THAT NOBODY TELLS 210
EPILOGUE 252

"Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."
PROVERBS, Chapter IV, Verse 23.

POSSESSED

(June, 1914)
SCARLET LIGHTS
This story presents the fulfillment of an extraordinary prophecy made one night, suddenly and dramatically, at a gathering of New Yorkers, brought together for hilarious purposes, including a little supper, in the Washington Square apartment of Bobby Vallis--her full name was Roberta. There were soft lights and low divans and the strumming of a painted ukulele that sang its little twisted soul out under the caress of Penelope's white fingers. I can still see the big black opal in its quaint setting that had replaced her wedding ring and the yellow serpent of pliant gold coiled on her thumb with two bright rubies for its eyes. Penelope Wells! How little we realized what sinister forces were playing about her that pleasant evening as we smoked and jested and sipped our glasses, gazing from time to time up the broad vista of Fifth Avenue with its lines of receding lights.
There had been an impromptu session of the Confessional Club during which several men, notably a poet in velveteen jacket, had vouchsafed sentimental or matrimonial revelations in the most approved Greenwich Village style. And the ladies, unabashed, had discussed these things.
But not a word did Penelope Wells speak of her own matrimonial troubles, which were known vaguely to most of us, although we had never met the drunken brute of a husband who had made her life a torment. I can see her now in profile against the open window, her eyes dark with their slumberous fires. I remember the green earrings she wore that night, and how they reached down under her heavy black braids--reached down caressingly over her white neck. She was a strangely, fiercely beautiful creature, made to love and to be loved, fated for tragic happenings. She was twenty-nine.
The discussion waxed warm over the eternal question--how shall a woman satisfy her emotional nature when she has no chance or almost no chance to marry the man she longs to marry?
Roberta Vallis put forth views that would have frozen old-fashioned moralists into speechless disapproval--entire freedom of choice and action for women as well as men, freedom to unite with a mate or separate from a mate--both sexes to have exactly the same responsibilities or lack of responsibilities in these sentimental arrangements.
"No, no! I call that loathsome, abominable," declared Penelope, and the poet adoringly agreed with her, although his practice had been notoriously at variance with these professions.
"Suppose a woman finds herself married to some beast of a man," flashed Roberta, "some worthless drunkard, do you mean to tell me it is her duty to stick to such a husband,