IV
A PUZZLED FRIEND

 

OUR dilemma was so puzzling that, despite the lack of confidence Stephen and the professor had expressed in evidential messages, Joan and I welcomed a chance happening that resulted in further tests. One night, as we were deep in the philosophy, the telephone rang; Joan stepped from the room to answer. While she was at the 'phone, the door-bell rang; and I, neglecting first to hide the ouija-board, admitted a caller. Let's call him F. W.

 

Just as F. W. entered, Joan returned. She seized the board and tripod, and rushed toward the closet with its protecting trunk, but too late.

 

"That's a ouija-board," accused F. W. "Ever see one before?" I asked.

 

Yes, F. W. had—once. When he was a youngster, he said, there was a freak (his word) family—neighbors of his family— who had cultivated ouija with great seriousness.

 

His mother had attended one of the meetings and taken him along.

 

"But what in the name of common sense," F. W. asked, "are you two doing with a ouija-board?"

 

We told how, by accident, we ran across the toy at the boarding-house, adding that for the sake of amusement we had bought the outfit he now saw.

 

"If there's any fun to be had out of the contraption," said F. W., "let's have it."

 

And so, with F. W. as spectator and stenographer, Joan and I made ready for the "fun." We should have known better than to have left Stephen out of our calculations. He would have none of our frivolity, but instead insisted on continuing his philosophical discussion. The conversation F. W. recorded follows:

 

DARBY: F. W. is with us, Stephen. STEPHEN: Your friend.

DARBY: Have you a message for F. W.?

 

STEPHEN: Later. I am glad he is here. Joan, Darby, and F. W. have much the same degree of consciousness. Therein is the friendship explained. I would like F. W. to take this affair as seriously as he can. Let's go on with the discussion. Quality of consciousness, I have told you, we have at birth; quantity is developed. Degree of consciousness is made up of the possession of quality and quantity.

 

Suppose you discuss this with me. I want you to understand thoroughly.

 

What did F. W. know about the quality and quantity of consciousness! He did know that his curiosity was piqued. And, of course, be accused Joan and me of being the true operators of the tripod.

 

"Why try to fool me?" he demanded.

"That's what Joan used to say to me," answered, "and what I

said to her. But we have fought that all out. We know now that,

consciously at least, we have nothing more to do with the

movements of the ouija-board's pointer than you have." "Bet you can't do the trick blindfolded," said F. W. "Bet we can't, either," said Joan.

 

So F. W. blindfolded us. I could see nothing, and Joan says she couldn't. We placed our hands upon the tripod. Slowly it moved; whether to a purpose or not we did not know until F. W. began calling out the letters. Here is what the tripod spelled:

 

"This is harder. There is a psychic, a receiving station, here. She will remember having had the experience of feeling that some one was standing behind her and of turning to find nothing."

 

Then came a pause, then more movements. These, F. W. complained, were incoherent. He begged just one more sentence; and finally the ouija-board replied with the following:

 

"Is hate enough?" (Which meant, I suppose, that Stephen disliked the test.)

 

The blindfolds were removed, and F. W. suggested that he and I try to run the board. We tried, but without result, other than that the tripod moved aimlessly back and forth. Then Joan proposed that she and F. W. take the board in hand. They did, with success. The movements were slower than with Joan and me, and the course from letter to letter was not so direct; but the words were spelled with equal distinctness.

 

"I would rather go on with the discussion," Stephen said. "Darby!"

"You want Darby?" asked F. W.

"Yes," answered Stephen. "He understands better."

 

F. W. took his hands from the tripod, leaned back in his chair, and exclaimed," Fair enough!" This phrase he uses frequently, to express either agreement or surprise. In the present instance it expressed both. F. W. did not understand, and he was bewildered.

 

"I think you two were both blindfolded so that you could not see anything," he said, after a bit. "Just the same, let me blindfold you again. And in addition I want you to turn your faces as far away from the board as possible."

 

In the midst of F. W.'s speech Joan and I had again put our fingers on the tripod. It was in motion before F. W. could finish.

 

"The blindfold is undignified," it spelled.

 

Such things are of no importance in the scheme of things. I have given you tests enough."

 

But F. W. insisted—and certainly Joan and I were very much interested in his experiment. With great care he adjusted the handkerchiefs to our eyes. We turned our faces as fax from the board as we could. Neither of us saw anything; it would have been impossible, F. W. agreed when the experiment was over.

 

With everything in readiness, F. W. said: "Now this time I am not going to call out the letters. I shall put them all down, and after the handkerchiefs are removed I'll read you the result, if there is any."

 

It seemed as though Joan and I sat blindfolded for half an hour, though F. W. said later the time was only about five minutes. We could feel the tripod moving over the board. I wondered if it wouldn't run clear off, but it didn't. Every now and then F. W. would speak, as though to Stephen, thus indicating that a result of some sort was being achieved. Finally the blindfolds were removed. I report the ouija-board's spellings together with F. W.'s questions:

 

F. W.: Why are you talking to Joan and Darby?

STEPHEN: To give them the revelation which I first mentioned to them at Jevon's.

F. W.: (to whom the name Jevon was without meaning): Repeat the words following "which."

STEPHEN: I first mentioned to them at Jevon's. F. W.: What does the last word mean? STEPHEN: To Darby, eat.

F. W.: You are ungrammatical. "To Darby eat" is just nonsense.

 

It is understood that ouija-board spellings are in the nature of things unpunctuated. But even punctuation might have failed to make the cryptic phrase plain to F. W. Several times he repeated his opinion that the words "to Darby eat" were incoherent. Joan and I remember the jerkiness, expressive of impatience, with which Stephen at last made the following reply:

 

"Jennie Jevon keeps a boarding-house."

 

Mrs. Jevon did keep the boarding-house at which Joan and I took our dinners and at which we first met Stephen. F. W. knew we dined out, but did not know the name of the woman who to Darby meant "eat"; hence his confusion. Was Mrs. Jevon's first name Jennie? Neither Joan nor I could be sure we had ever heard her given name.

 

It was a mystified F. W. that bade us good night, close to one o'clock in the morning.

 

"I don't get this thing at all," he said, as he pulled on his overcoat. "But give me another chance. It's intensely interesting. What are you two going to do to-morrow evening—Friday?"

We regretted an engagement. "But," said Joan, "we'll be waiting right here for you Saturday evening."

 

Our Friday engagement, it chanced, fell through. And so I telephoned F. W.'s home. When told he was not there, I called several places where I thought he might be. F. W. was not to be found.

 

"Oh, well," said Joan, "let's do some testing on our own hook."

 

We took the ouija-board upon our laps. In an instant Stephen was at hand, announcing his presence as usual by spelling his name.

 

"Stephen," I said, "we are going to test you folks out a trifle to-night. I want you to let me talk to some one I knew in this life."

"I'll do the testing," Stephen replied. "Surely you realize the importance of my revelation. If I make the survival of consciousness after what you call death reasonable in the light of your own knowledge, what greater evidence can there be?"

 

Joan and I were determined, though. So, too, apparently was Stephen. The tripod began what seemed a dance. First it lifted itself up on the two rear legs; then, on one rear leg and the front leg. Then Stephen would come for a second, spell, "Silly," then disappear. After a moment he would spell, "Stupid," and again disappear. Then for a long while the pointer remained motionless. At last it began to move, but with great uncertainty, as though operated by an unpractised hand.

 

"Not Stephen," it spelled, with many false starts and pauses. "Do you remember the time I stole your shirt? You cussed hard enough, because you were going to call on a girl."

 

"At one period of my life," I answered, "there were several persons who made good their linen needs from my drawer."

 

"Yes," said the ouija-board, "but only one of those persons is where I now am. I can be more specific. Do you remember the time I set up a joke on you, took forty dollars from your pocket?"

 

It seemed there could be no doubt that, if the speaker were other than my own subconscious mind, it was one whom I shall call Fred Q. For a few months before my marriage Fred Q. and I roomed together. He, like others living in the same house, had occasionally "borrowed" my clean shirts, just as I, when necessity warranted, had borrowed theirs. And I did remember the time he had taken forty dollars from my pocket. Joan's subconscious mind was absolved. There isn't a chance in the world that she had ever been told the absurd tale of the shirt or that of the forty dollars.

 

To cap the climax, the ouija-board next spelled, "Gunboats."

 

It was laughable. Fred Q. had insisted on wearing shoes of a size even more than comfortably large. "Gunboats!" I used to exclaim, as I would wake up in the morning and see his shoes sprawling beside his bed. Here again Joan, conscious or subconscious, could not be accused. Either it was I, the subconscious me, who had spelled that word "gunboats," or— could it possibly have been Fred Q., dead then something over a year?

 

Granted the shirt, the forty dollars, and the gunboats were really the work of my own subconsciousness, why, if it was necessary for my subconsciousness to spell anything, had it chosen these trivial memories of Fred Q.? For four or five years prior to his death I had seen little of him. In fact, he passed out of my life when Joan came in.

 

Stephen returned finally. "Did the test satisfy you?" he asked. "Or have you now just something more to explain?"