case of a spirit message giving the contents of
a sealed letter known only to the person who has died--telepathy, eh?
Not a bit of it. Here's a case you must have heard of, Peter. An officer
on the Polar vessel _Jeannette_ sent out by a New York newspaper,
appeared one night at his wife's bedside. She was in Brooklyn. She knew
perfectly well that he was on the Polar Sea. He said to her: 'Count!'
Then she distinctly heard a ship's bell and her husband's voice saying
again, 'Count!' She had counted 'six' when his voice said: 'Six bells!
And the _Jeannette_ is lost!' The ship, it turned out later, was really
lost at the very time the woman had the vision. There! Account for
_that_ by telepathy or trickery if you can!"

"A bad dream!" was Grimm's unshaken verdict. "I have them every now and
then. 'Six bells and'--suet pudding brings me messages from the North
Pole. And I can get messages from Kingdom Come when I've had half a hot
mince pie with melted cheese on it for supper. That disposes of your
_Jeannette_ case."

"Scoff if you like. There have been more than seventeen thousand other
cases which the London Society of Psychical Research has found worth
investigating."

"Well, Andrew," asked Grimm, with a covert wink at Kathrien, "supposing,
for the sake of argument, that I _did_ want to 'come back,' how could I
manage it?"

At the question the doctor's rising irritation at the other's friendly
mockery was swept away by the zeal of prospective proselyting.

"In this way, Peter," he declared. "Let me make it clear as simply as I
can. In hypnotism our thoughts take possession of the person we
hypnotise. When our personalities enter their bodies, something goes out
of them:--a sort of Shadow Self. This 'Self' can be sent out of the
room--out of the house--even to a long distance. This 'Self' is the
force that, I firmly believe, departs from us entirely on the first or
second or third day after death. This is the force you could send back.
The astral envelope. Do I make it plain?"

"Plain? Plain as a flower in the mud on a dark night. But how do you
know _I've_ got an--'envelope'?"

"Every one has. Why, De Roche has actually photographed one, by means of
radio-photography."

Grimm lay back in his chair and shouted aloud with laughter.

"Mind you," went on McPherson, laboriously anxious to make clear his
point, "they could not see it when they were photographing it."

"No, I should imagine not. Nor the picture afte