The Land of Mist Chapter 6 - In Which the Reader Is Shown the Habits of a Notorious Criminal

**Leslie Langston** (0:01)
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Read by Leslie Langston The Land of Mist by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Chapter 6 In which the reader is shown the habits of a notorious criminal.
We will now leave that little group with whom we have made our first exploration of these gray and ill-defined, but immensely important regions of human thought and experiences.
From the researchers, we will turn to the researched. Come with me and we will visit Mr. Linden at home, and we'll examine the lights and shades which make up the life of a professional medium. To reach him, we will pass down the crowded thoroughfare of Tottenham Court Road, where the huge furniture emporia flank the way. And we will turn into a small street of drab houses, which leads eastwards towards the British Museum. Tullis Street is the name, and 40 is the number.
Here it is, one of a row, flat-faced, dull-colored and commonplace, with railed steps leading up to a discolored door, and one front-room window in which a huge gilt-edge Bible upon a small round table reassures the timid visitor. With a universal pass-key of imagination we open the dingy door, pass down a dark passage and up a narrow stair. It is nearly ten o'clock in the morning, and yet it is in his bedroom that we must seek the famous worker of miracles. The fact is that he has had, as we have seen, an exhausting sitting the night before, and that he has to conserve his strength in the mornings. At the moment of our inopportune but invisible visit, he was sitting up, propped up by the pillows, with a breakfast tray upon his knees. The vision he presented would have amused those who have prayed with him in humble, spiritualist temples, or had sat with awe at the seances, where he had exhibited the modern equivalence of the gifts of the spirit. He looked unhealthily pallid in the dim morning light, and his curly hair rose up in a tangled pyramid above his broad, intellectual brow.
The open collar of his night shirt displayed a broad, bull's neck, and the depth of his chest and spread of his shoulders showed that he was a man of considerable personal strength. He was eating his breakfast with avidity, while he conversed with the little, eager, dark-eyed wife who was seated on the side of the bed.
And you reckon it a good meeting, Mary? Fair to middling, Tom. There was two of them researchers raking around with their feet and upsetting everybody. Do you think these folks in the Bible would have gotten their phenomena if they had chaps of that sort on these premises? Of one accord, that's what they say in the book. Of course, cried Linden heartily. Was the Duchess pleased? Yes, I think she was very pleased. So was Mr. Atkinson, the surgeon.
There was a new man there called Malone of the press. Then Lord and Lady Montois got evidence, and so did Sir James Smith and Mr. Mailey. I wasn't satisfied with the clairvoyance, said the medium. These silly idiots kept putting things into my mind. That's surely my Uncle Sam and so forth. It blurs me so that I can see nothing clear. Yes, and they think they are helping. Helping to muddle you and deceive themselves. I know the kind. But I went under nicely and I am glad there were some fine materializations. It took it out of me, though. I'm a rag this morning.
They work you too hard, dear. I'll take you to Margate and build you up.
Well, maybe at Easter we could do a week. It would be fine. I don't mind readings and clairvoyance, but the physicals do try you. I'm not as bad as Hallow's. They say he just lies white and gasping on the floor after them. Yes, cried the woman bitterly. And then they run to him with whiskey, and so they teach him to rely on the bottle, and you get another case of a drunken medium. I know them. You keep off it, Tom. Yes, one of our trade should stick to soft drinks. If he can stick to vegetables, too, he's all the better, but I can't preach that while I'm wolfing up ham and eggs. By gosh, Mary, it's past ten, and I have a string of them coming this morning. I'm going to make a bit today.
You give it away as quick as you make it, Tom. Well, some hard cases come my way. So long as we can make both ends meet, what more do we want? I expect they will look after us all right. They have let down a lot of other poor mediums who did good work in their day.