"Don't you agree with me, Mr. Hunt?" Conlon was asking.
"No," I said bluntly. "No madwoman would have summoned a doctor. Miss Blake called it a terrible accident. It was. Her present state is due to the horror of it. When she wakes, it will all be explained. Now take me to her."
Conlon's gray-blue glance fixed me once more. "All right," he grunted, "I've no objections. But I'd 'a' thought your first wish would 'a' been to see your wife."
"No," I replied. "Mrs. Hunt separated from me years ago, for reasons of her own. I bore her no ill will; in a sense, I respected her, admired her. Understand me, Sergeant Conlon. There was nothing vulgar in her life, and her death in this stupid way--oh, it's indecent, damnable! A cheap outrage! I could do nothing for her living, and can do nothing now. But I prefer to remember her as she was. _She_ would prefer it, too."
"Come on, then," said Conlon; pretty gruffly, I thought.
It was a singular thing, but so convincing had my vision been to me that I felt no immediate desire to verify the details of its setting by an examination of Gertrude's boudoir. It had come to me bearing its own credentials, its own satisfying accent of truth. One question did, however, fasten upon me, as I followed Conlon's bulky form, down the hall to Lucette's bedroom. Whence had this vision, this psychic reel come to me? What was its source? How could the mere fact of it--clearing, as it did, at least, all perplexities from my own mind--have occurred? For the moment I could find no answer; the mystery had happened, had worked, but remained a mystery.
Like most men in this modern world I had taken a vague, mild interest in psychical research, reading more or less casually, and with customary suspension of judgment, anything of the sort that came in my way. I had a bowing acquaintance with its rapidly growing literature; little more; and until now I had had no striking psychical experiences of my own, and had never, as it happened, attended a séance of any kind, either popular or scientific. Nevertheless, I could--to put it so--speak that language. I was familiar with the described phenomena, in a general way, and with the conflicting theories of its leading investigators; but I had--honestly speaking--no pet theories of my own, though always impatient of spiritistic explanations, and rather inclined to doubt, too, the persistent claim that thought transference had been incontrovertibly established. On the whole, I suppose I was inclined to favor common-sense mechanistic explanations of such phenomena, and to regard all others with alert suspicion or wearily amused contempt.