ccurred since they left--nothing that might not
have been written before they started. Instead of marking the
envelope, for identification, in the way Eglinton suggested, she made
his cross into an asterisk. But the envelope published in India to
prove the power of Koothoomi was marked, as Eglinton had requested,
with three separate crosses. All efforts to obtain explanation of the
difference between the marks on the letter sent and the letter
received were vain. In reply to my question Mr. Sinnett said, "All I
can tell you now is that Mrs. Broughton acted very badly." I was
present when the Hon. Mrs. Pitt Rivers pressed Colonel Olcott for an
explanation. He replied, "The tone of your question suggests collusion
between the Theosophists of India and Mr. Eglinton. To such a charge I
am, of course, dumb." It was the only prudent answer he could make.

This incident lowered my idea of Madame Blavatsky's powers. It was not
clever to rest so much on the pliability of a "society lady" with whom
she was unacquainted. I presently found that at Bombay she had failed
in several performances, but was shielded by a theosophistical
argument that mere jugglers never fail.[4] There was a pretty general
feeling in Calcutta and Bombay that no glamour or magnetic mystery was
needed for Madame Blavatsky's thaumaturgy, which would soon collapse
in Madras as elsewhere. Nearly the first thing I heard after reaching
London (1884) was of that collapse. Mr. and Mrs. Coulomb, the former a
skilled mechanic, had confessed at Madras that they had all along
been assisting Madame Blavatsky in frauds; elaborate contrivances were
discovered behind the shrine, and compromising letters written by the
high priestess were produced. Madame Blavatsky declared that the
contrivances were put in the shrine to ruin her; but Coulomb could
have done that by a small mechanism, whereas the arrangements were
extensive and expensive, requiring such time as must have assured
detection, and money which he had not. The letters, mainly efforts to
prevent the Coulombs from revealing the frauds, were pronounced
forgeries; but no expert reading them can fail to perceive that to
forge them would require a genius far beyond even that of Madame
Blavatsky. The letters are brilliant, and Mrs. Coulomb is sometimes
worsted in them. Mrs. Coulomb, after her confession, wrote me a long
letter, which shows no trace of the style or ability disclosed in the
Blavatsky letters. However, it