of the shadow
spirits of that shadowland, were all striving and thrusting to touch
the lighted regions of her brain. As one gained her brain or another
was thrust away, her voice and the writing of her hand changed. So
that what she said was disorderly and confused for the most part; now a
fragment of one soul's message, and now a fragment of another's, and
now she babbled the insane fancies of the spirits of vain desire. Then
Mr. Bessel understood that she spoke for the spirit that had touch of
her, and he began to struggle very furiously towards her. But he was
on the outside of the crowd and at that time he could not reach her,
and at last, growing anxious, he went away to find what had happened
meanwhile to his body.

For a long time he went to and fro seeking it in vain and fearing that
it must have been killed, and then he found it at the bottom of the
shaft in Baker Street, writhing furiously and cursing with pain. Its
leg and an arm and two ribs had been broken by its fall. Moreover, the
evil spirit was angry because his time had been so short and because of
the pain--making violent movements and casting his body about.

And at that Mr. Bessel returned with redoubled earnestness to the room
where the seance was going on, and so soon as he had thrust himself
within sight of the place he saw one of the men who stood about the
medium looking at his watch as if he meant that the seance should
presently end. At that a great number of the shadows who had been
striving turned away with gestures of despair. But the thought that
the seance was almost over only made Mr. Bessel the more earnest, and
he struggled so stoutly with his will against the others that presently
he gained the woman's brain. It chanced that just at that moment it
glowed very brightly, and in that instant she wrote the message that
Doctor Wilson Paget preserved. And then the other shadows and the
cloud of evil spirits about him had thrust Mr. Bessel away from her,
and for all the rest of the seance he could regain her no more.

So he went back and watched through the long hours at the bottom of the
shaft where the evil spirit lay in the stolen body it had maimed,
writhing and cursing, and weeping and groaning, and learning the lesson
of pain. And towards dawn the thing he had waited for happened, the
brain glowed brightly and the evil spirit came out, and Mr. Bessel
entered the body he had feared he should never enter again. As he did