The Shadow World | Page 7

women shivered with horror. A few seconds later and
her face changed; the hideous mask became white, expressing rigid,
exalted terror. Her arms were drawn back as if tied at the elbow behind
her back. Her head was uplifted, and in a low, monotonous, hushed
voice she prayed: "Lord Jesus, receive--"
A gasping, gurgling cry cut short her prayer, and, with tongue
protruding from her mouth, she presented such a picture of a strangling
woman that a sudden clear conception of what it all meant came to me.
"She's impersonating a woman on the scaffold," I explained. "She has
shown us a murder, and now she is depicting an execution. Is it Mrs. R.,
of Vermont?" I asked.
She nodded slowly. "Save me!" she whispered.
"Waken her, please. Don't let her do that any more," pleaded Mrs.
Cameron, in poignant distress.
Thereupon I called out, sharply: "That is enough! Wake! Wake!"
In answer to my command she ceased to groan; her face smoothed out,
and with a bewildered smile she opened her eyes. "What are you saying?
Have I been asleep?"
"You have, indeed," I replied, "and you've disclosed a deal of dubious
family history. How do you feel?"
"I feel very funny around my neck," she answered, wonderingly. "What
have you been doing to me?" She rubbed her throat. "My neck feels as
if it had a band round it, and my tongue seems swollen. What have you
been about?"
I held up a warning hand to the others. "You went off into a quiet little
trance, that's all. I was mistaken. Either you are a psychic or you should
have been an actress."

As we stood thus confronting one another, Mrs. Cameron came
between us, saying, "Do you know, Pauline came and talked with me--"
At the word Pauline the spell seemed to fall again over the bright spirit
of Mrs. Harris. Her eyelids drooped, her limbs lost their power, and she
sank into her chair as before, a helpless victim, apparently, to the
hidden forces. For a moment I was at a loss. I could not believe that she
was deceiving us, but it was possible that she was deceiving herself. "In
either case, she must be brought out of this," I decided, and, putting my
hands on her shoulders, I said: "If there is any 'control' here, let them
stop this. We want no more of it. Stop it!"
My command was again obeyed, and the psychic slowly came back to
herself, and as she did so I said, warningly, to Mrs. Cameron: "Do not
utter another word of this in Mrs. Harris's presence. She seems to be
extremely sensitive to hypnotic influence, and I think she had better go
out into the air at once."
In rather subdued mood we went below to rejoin the frankly
contemptuous members of the party.
"Well, what luck?" cried Howard.
"You all look rather solemn," said Harris. "What about it? Dolly, what
have you been doing?"
Mrs. Cameron described the sitting as wonderful, but Mrs. Harris only
smiled vaguely, and I said: "Your wife seemed to go into a trance and
impersonate a number of individuals. She shows all the signs of a real
sensitive."
Harris, who had been studying his wife with half-humorous intentness,
now took command. "If you've been shamming, you need discipline;
and if you haven't, you need a doctor. I think we'll go home and have it
out," he added, and shortly after led her away. "Some nice cool air is
what we need," he said at the door.
No sooner were the Harrises out of the door than the women of the

party fell upon me.
"What do you think of it, Mr. Garland?" asked Mrs. Cameron.
"If Mrs. Harris were not your friend, and if I had not seen other
performances of the same sort, I should instantly say that she was
having her joke with us. But I have seen too much of this sort of thing
to take it altogether lightly. That's the way this investigating goes. One
thing corroborates another. 'Impersonation' in the case of a public
medium may mean nothing--on the part of a psychic like your friend
Mrs. Harris it means a very great deal. In support of this, let me tell you
of a similar case. I have a friend, a perfectly trustworthy woman, and of
keen intelligence, whose 'stunt,' as she laughingly calls it, is to
impersonate nameless and suffering spirits who have been hurled into
outer darkness by reason of their own misdeeds or by some singular
chance of their taking off. My friend seems to be able in some way to
free these poor 'earth-bound souls' and send them flying upward to
some heaven. It's all very creepy," I added, warningly.
"Oh, delightful! Let it be