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“No, no, no! A hawker’s opportuneness; that describes it. These fellows would make death itself a vulgarity.”

“You’ve no faith in their–“

“Not a tittle. Heaven forfend! A sheet and a turnip are poetry to their manifestations. It’s as crude and sour soil for us to work on as any I know. We’ll cart it wholesale.”

“I take you–excuse my saying so–for a supremely sceptical man.”

“As to what?”

“The supernatural.”

There was no answer during a considerable interval. Presently it came, with deliberate insistence:–

“It is a principle with me to oppose bullying. We are here for a definite purpose–his duty plain to any man who wills to read it. There may be disembodied spirits who seek to distress or annoy where they can no longer control. If there are, mine, which is not yet divorced from its means to material action, declines to be influenced by any irresponsible whimsey, emanating from a place whose denizens appear to be actuated by a mere frivolous antagonism to all human order and progress.”

“But supposing you, a murderer, to be haunted by the presentment of your victim?”

“I will imagine that to be my case. Well, it makes no difference. My interest is with the great human system, in one of whose veins I am a circulating drop. It is my business to help to keep the system sound, to do my duty without fear or favour. If disease–say a fouled conscience–contaminates me, it is for me to throw off the incubus, not accept it, and transmit the poison. Whatever my lapses of nature, I owe it to the entire system to work for purity in my allotted sphere, and not to allow any microbe bugbear to ride me roughshod, to the detriment of my fellow drops.”

I laughed.

“It should be for you,” I said, “to learn to shiver, like the boy in the fairy tale.”

“I cannot”, he answered, with a peculiar quiet smile; “and yet prisons, above all places, should be haunted.”

* * * * *

Very shortly after his arrival I was called to the cell of the medium, F—-. He suffered, by his own statement, from severe pains in the head.

I found the man to be nervous, anemic; his manner characterized by a sort of hysterical effrontery.

“Send me to the infirmary”, he begged. “This isn’t punishment, but torture.”

“What are your symptoms?”

“I see things; my case has no comparison with others. To a man of my super-sensitiveness close confinement is mere cruelty.”

I made a short examination. He was restless under my hands.

“You’ll stay where you are”, I said.

He broke out into violent abuse, and I left him.

Later in the day I visited him again. He was then white and sullen; but under his mood I could read real excitement of some sort.

“Now, confess to me, my man”, I said, “what do you see?”

He eyed me narrowly, with his lips a little shaky.

“Will you have me moved if I tell you?”

“I can give no promise till I know.”

He made up his mind after an interval of silence.

“There’s something uncanny in my neighbourhood. Who’s confined in the next cell–there, to the left?”

“To my knowledge it’s empty.”

He shook his head incredulously.

“Very well,” I said, “I don’t mean to bandy words with you”; and I turned to go.

At that he came after me with a frightened choke.

“Doctor, your mission’s a merciful one. I’m not trying to sauce you. For God’s sake have me moved! I can see further than most, I tell you!”

The fellow’s manner gave me pause. He was patently and beyond the pride of concealment terrified.

“What do you see?” I repeated stubbornly.

“It isn’t that I see, but I know. The cell’s not empty!”

I stared at him in considerable wonderment.

“I will make inquiries,” I said. “You may take that for a promise. If the cell proves empty, you stop where you are.”