The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(234)

                Here a sob and a choking cry from one of the women in the front seats interrupted the discourse and sent the small boy who acted as verger into the room with a glass of water.

                “That sermon has been preached before,” said Loveday. “Now can you not understand the origin of the ghost in Fountain Lane?”

                “Hysterics are catching, there’s another woman off now,” said Mr. Clampe; “it’s high time this sort of thing was put a stop to. Pearson ought to be here in another minute with his warrant.”

                The words had scarcely passed his lips before heavy steps mounting the stairs announced that Pearson and his warrant were at hand.

                “I don’t think I can be of any further use,” said Loveday, rising to depart. “If you like to come to me to-morrow morning at my hotel at ten o’clock I will tell you, step by step, how I came to connect a stolen cheque with a ‘ridiculous ghost.’”



                             “We had a tussle—he showed fight at first,” said Mr. Clampe, when, precisely at ten o’clock the next morning, he called upon Miss Brooke at the Métropole. “If he had had time to get his wits together and had called some of the men in that room to the rescue, I verily believe we should have been roughly handled and he might have slipped through our fingers after all. It’s wonderful what power these ‘born orators,’ as you call them, have over minds of a certain order.”

                “Ah, yes,” answered Loveday thoughtfully; “we talk glibly enough about ‘magnetic influence,’ but scarcely realize how literally true the phrase is. It is my firm opinion that the ‘leaders of men,’ as they are called, have as absolute and genuine hypnotic power as any modern French expert, although perhaps it may be less consciously exercised. Now tell me about Rogers and Maria Lisle.”

                “Rogers had bolted, as you expected he would have done, with the six hundred pounds he had been good enough to cash for his reverend colleague. Ostensibly he had started for Judea to collect the elect, as he phrased it, under one banner. In reality, he has sailed for New York, where, thanks to the cable, he will be arrested on his arrival and sent back by return packet. Maria Lisle was arrested this morning on a charge of having stolen the cheque from Mrs. Turner. By the way, Miss Brooke, I think it is almost a pity you didn’t take possession of her diary when you had the chance. It would have been invaluable evidence against her and her rascally colleagues.”

                “I did not see the slightest necessity for so doing. Remember, she is not one of the criminal classes, but a religious enthusiast, and when put upon her defence will at once confess and plead religious conviction as an extenuating circumstance—at least, if she is well advised she will do so. I never read anything that laid bare more frankly than did this diary the mischief that the sensational teaching of these millenarians is doing at the present moment. But I must not take up your time with moralizing. I know you are anxious to learn what, in the first instance, led me to identify a millenarian preacher with a receiver of stolen property.”



                             “Yes, that’s it; I want to know about the ghost; that’s the point that interests me.”

                “Very well. As I told you yesterday afternoon, the first thing that struck me as remarkable in this ghost story was the soldierly character of the ghost. One expects emotionally religious people like Freer and his wife to see visions, but one also expects those visions to partake of the nature of those emotions, and to be somewhat shadowy and ecstatic. It seemed to me certain that this Napoleonic ghost must have some sort of religious significance to these people. This conviction it was that set my thoughts running in the direction of the millenarians, who have attached a religious significance (although not a polite one) to the name of Napoleon by embodying the evil Apollyon in the person of a descendant of the great Emperor, and endowing him with all the qualities of his illustrious ancestor. I called upon the Freers, ordered a pair of boots, and while the man was taking my measure, I asked him a few very pointed questions on these millenarian notions. The man prevaricated a good deal at first, but at length was driven to admit that he and his wife were millenarians at heart, that, in fact, the prayer meeting at which the Napoleonic ghost had made its first appearance was a millenarian one, held by a man who had at one time been a Wesleyan preacher in the chapel in Gordon Street, but who had been dismissed from his charge there because his teaching had been held to be unsound. Freer further stated that this man had been so much liked that many members of the congregation seized every opportunity that presented itself of attending his ministrations, some openly, others, like himself and his wife, secretly, lest they might give offence to the elders and ministers of their chapel.”