"How about the child who spoke German?" asked Kate. "Was she--"
Weissmann replied slowly, with a little effort, "I had a little girl of the name Mina who died at eight years of age."
Kate's voice expressed sympathy. "I didn't know that. She must have been a dear. The voice was very sweet. I could almost touch the little thing."
"I do not see how Clarke or any one here knew of my daughter or her name. Clarke may be a mind-reader. The voice did not prove itself."
"Neither was 'Loggy' quite convincing," said Morton. "And yet I cannot understand how those voices were produced. Our imaginations must have been made enormously active by the dark. As scientists we cannot admit the slightest of those movements without the fall of some of our most deeply grounded dogmas. What becomes of Haeckel's dictum--that matter and spirit are inseparable?"
"There is matter and matter," replied Weissmann. "To say that spirit and flesh is inseparable is to claim too much. We can say that we have no proof of such separation, but Crookes and others claim the contrary. It is curious to observe that we to-night have trenched on the very ground Crookes trod. I am very eager now to sit with this girl--the mother and Clarke being excluded."
"Of one thing I am more than half persuaded, and that is that Clarke is a mind-reader; for how else could he know the things which the supposed ghost of my uncle recounted?"
"It is very puzzling," repeated Weissmann, deep-sunk in speculation; and in this abstraction he took himself silently away.
Kate, with an air of saying, "Now that we are alone, let's know your real mind," faced her brother with eyes of wonder. "Morton, what do you honestly think of it? Viola had nothing to do with it, did she?"
"No; but are you absolutely sure Clarke did not get loose and do things?"
"Mort, I was never more alert in my life, and I know he didn't move out of his chair."
"But think what it involves!"
"I don't care what it involves. So far as the senses of touch and hearing go, Clarke remained seated every minute of the time, and I certainly held both his and Mrs. Lambert's hands the whole time while the books were being thrown."
"Well, there you are. Somebody did it." He shrugged his shoulders in an unwonted irritation.
"Why not say the spirits did it all?"
"Because that is unthinkable."
"Sir William Crookes and Dr. Zöllner, you say, believed in these disembodied intelligences--"
"Yes, but they belong to what Haeckel calls the imaginative scientists."