in a Casals recital. If she can't get a hair, she'll pull a thread from her silk
stockings or her dress; if you get people that are really too clever for her, then
'the force is very weak this afternoon,' though she keeps you longer than ever
in the hope of tiring your attention, and perhaps to pay you out for baffling
her!"
Grey said all this with an air of the most hideous boredom. It was evident
that he hated the whole business. He was restless and anxious, too, with
another part of his brain; Lisa could see that, but she dared not question him.
So she went on the old track.
"Doesn't she get messages from the dead?"
"It's not done much now. It's too easy to fake, and the monied fools lost
interest, as a class. This new game tickles the vanity of some of the sham
scientific people, like Lombroso; they think they'll make a reputation like
Newton out of it. They don't know enough science to criticize the business on
sensible lines. Oh, really, I prefer your fat friend with the large building and
the letter about a journey!" [35]
"You mean that the whole thing is absolute fraud?"
"Can't say. Hard to prove a negative, or to affirm a universal proposition.
But the onus of proof is on the spiritualists, and there are only two cases
worth considering, Mrs. Piper, who never did anything very striking, anyhow,
and Eusapia Palladino."
"She was exposed in America some time ago," said the girl, "but I think it
was only in the Hearst newspapers."
"Hearst is the American Northcliffe," explained Cyril for the benefit of the
Pasha. "And so is Northcliffe," he added musingly and unblushingly!
"I'm afraid I don't know who Northeliffe is," said Akbar.
"Northcliffe was Harmsworth." Cyril's voice was caressing, like one
soothing a fractious child.
"But who was Harmsworth?" asked the Turk.
The young magician, in a hollow tone: "Nobody."
"Nobody?" cried Akbar. "I don't understand!"
Cyril shook his head solemnly and sadly." "There ain't no such person."
Akbar Pasha looked at Grey as if he were a ghost. It was a horrible trick of
the boy's. He would invite confidence by a sensible, even possibly a bright,
remark; then, in an explanatory way, he would lead his interlocutor, with
exquisite skill, through quaking sands of various forms of insanity, only to
drop them at the end into the bog of dementia. The dialogue suddenly