"How would you begin now?" he inquired, with an anxious politeness
that reduced the colonel to a congestion of rage.
"It is all a question of a force; of establishing communications for
a force," replied that adept, affably, ignoring some military
mutterings about the police force. "It is what you in the West used
to call animal magnetism, but it is much more than that. I had
better not say how much more. As to setting about it, the usual
method is to throw some susceptible person into a trance, which
serves as a sort of bridge or cord of communication, by which the
force beyond can give him, as it were, an electric shock, and awaken
his higher senses. It opens the sleeping eye of the mind."
"I'm suspectible," said Fisher, either with simplicity or with a
baffling irony. "Why not open my mind's eye for me? My friend Harold
March here will tell you I sometimes see things, even in the dark."
"Nobody sees anything except in the dark," said the magician.
Heavy clouds of sunset were closing round the wooden hut, enormous
clouds, of which only the corners could be seen in the little
window, like purple horns and tails, almost as if some huge monsters
were prowling round the place. But the purple was already deepening
to dark gray; it would soon be night.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89