Round the Fire Stories Chapter 7 - Playing With Fire

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STORY 7 of Round the Fire Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. STORY 7 PLAYING WITH FIRE.
I cannot pretend to say what occurred on the fourteenth of April last, at number seventeen Batterley Gardens. Put down in black and white, my surmise might seem too crude, too grotesque, for serious consideration, and yet that something did occur, and that it was of a nature which will leave its mark upon every one of us for the rest of our lives, is as certain as the unanimous testimony of five witnesses can make it. I will not enter into any argument or speculation. I will only give a plain statement, which will be submitted to John Moyer, Harvey Deacon, and Mrs. Delamere, and withheld from publication unless they are prepared to corroborate every detail. I cannot obtain the sanction of Paul the Duke, for he appears to have left the country.
It was John Moyer, the well-known senior partner of More and More and Sanderson, who had originally turned our attention to occult subjects. He had, like many very hard and practical men of business, a mystic side to his nature, which had led him to the examination and eventually to the acceptance of those elusive phenomena which are grouped together with much that is foolish and much that is fraudulent under the common heading of spiritualism. His researches, which had begun with an open mind, ended unhappily in dogma, and he became as positive and fanatical as any other bigot. He represented in our little group the body of men who have turned these singular phenomena into a new religion.
Mrs. Delamere, our medium, was his sister, the wife of Delamere, the rising sculptor. Our experience had shown us that to work on these subjects without a medium was as futile as for an astronomer to make observations without a telescope. On the other hand, the introduction of a paid medium was hateful to all of us. Was it not obvious that he or she would feel bound to return some result, or money received, and that the temptation to fraud would be an overpowering one? No phenomena could be relied upon which were produced at a Guinean hour. But fortunately, Moir had discovered that his sister was mediumistic, in other words, that she was a battery of that animal magnetic force which is the only form of energy which is subtle enough to be acted upon from the spiritual plane as well as from our own material one. Of course, when I say this, I do not mean to beg the question, but I am simply indicating the theories upon which we were ourselves, rightly or wrongly, explaining what we saw.
The lady came, not altogether with the approval of her husband, and though she never gave indications of any very great psychic force, we were able, at least, to obtain those usual phenomena of message-tilting which are at the same time so puerile and so inexplicable. Every Sunday evening we met at Harvey Deacon's studio at Batterley Gardens, the next house to the corner of Merton Park Road. Harvey Deacon's imaginative work in art would prepare anyone to find that he was an ardent lover of everything which was outre and sensational. A certain picturesqueness in the study of the occult had been the quality which had originally attracted him to it, but his attention was speedily arrested by some of those phenomena to which I have referred, and he was coming rapidly to the conclusion that what he had looked upon as an amusing romance and an after-dinner entertainment was really a very formidable reality. He is a man with a remarkably clear and logical brain, a true descendant of his ancestor, the well-known Scotch Professor, and he represented in our small circle the critical element. The man who has no prejudices is prepared to follow facts as far as he can see them, and refuses to theorize in advance of his data.
His caution annoyed Moyer as much as the latter's robust faith amused Deacon, but each in his own way was equally keen upon the matter. And I, what am I to say that I represented? I was not the devotee, I was not the scientific critic. Perhaps the best that I can claim for myself is that I was the dilettante man about town, anxious to be in the swim of every fresh movement, thankful for any new sensation which would take me out of myself and open up fresh possibilities of existence. I am not an enthusiast myself, but I like the company of those who are. Morris Talk, which made me feel as if we had a private passkey through the door of death, filled me with a vague contentment. The soothing atmosphere of the séance with the darkened lights was delightful to me. In a word, the thing amused me, and so I was there. It was, as I have said, upon the fourteenth of April last, that the very singular event which I am about to put upon record took place. I was the first of the men to arrive at the studio, but Mrs. Dallamere was already there, having had afternoon tea with Mrs. Harvey Deacon. The two ladies and Deacon himself were standing in front of an unfinished picture of his upon the easel. I am not an expert in art, and I have never professed to understand what Harvey Deacon meant by his pictures, but I could see in this instance that it was all very clever and imaginative. Fairies and animals and allegorical figures of all sorts. The ladies were loud in their praises, and indeed the color effect was a remarkable one. What do you think of it, Markham? he asked. Well, it's above me, said I. These beasts, what are they?