The Greatest Uncanny Stories of E. F. Benson - 25 Titles in One Edition. E.F. Benson
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view of the sea beyond; it was impossible to conceive a more tranquil haven for an overworked medium.
They had a hasty cup of tea, and hurried out to enjoy the last hours of daylight in exploration among the sand-dunes and along the beach, and came back soon after sunset. Though the day had been warm, the evening air had a nip in it, and Sylvia gave a little shiver as they stepped in from the verandah to the sitting-room.
"It's rather cold," she said. "I think I'll light the fire."
Ludovic shared her sensations.
"An excellent idea," he said. "And we'll draw the curtains and be cosy. What a charming room! I shall take some interiors to-morrow. Time exposure, I think they told me, for an interior."
Their supper was soon ready, and presently they came back to the sitting-room and laid out a hectic Patience. But they were both strangely absent-minded, neglecting the most glaring opportunities for getting spaces and putting up kings.
"I can't concentrate on it to-night," said Ludovic. "I feel as if someone was trying to attract my attention…. I wonder if Asteria wants to communicate."
Sylvia looked up at him.
"Now it's very odd that you should say that," she observed. "I feel exactly as if Violetta was wanting to come through, and yet it doesn't seem quite like Violetta."
He gave an uneasy glance round the room.
"A curious sensation," he said. "I have the consciousness of some presence here, which isn't quite Asteria. But it may be she. Tiresome of her, if it is, for she ought to know I came down here for a holiday, considering that she recommended it herself. I think I'll get a pencil and paper, and see if she wants to say anything."
He composed himself in a chair, with the stationery for Asteria on his knee.
"Ask her a question or two, Sylvia," he said, "when I go off."
Sylvia waited till her brother's eyelids fluttered and fell.
"Is that you, Asteria?" she asked.
His hand twitched and quivered. Then the pencil scribbled "Certainly not" in large, firm letters, quite unlike Asteria's pretty writing.
Sylvia asked if it was Violetta, but got an emphatic denial.
"Who is it, then?" she said.
And then a very absurd thing happened. The pencil spelt out "Thomas Spinach."
Sylvia was puzzled for a moment. Then the explanation occurred to her, and she laughed.
"Wake up, dear," she said to Ludovic. "It says it is Thomas Spinach. Of course, that's your sub-conscious self trying to remember Carrot."
But Ludovic did not stir, and to her surprise the pencil began writing again.
"I don't know who you are," wrote the unknown control. "But I'm Spinach, young Spinach. And"—there was a long pause—"I want you to help me. I can't remember … I'm very unhappy."
As she followed the words, there suddenly came a very loud rap on the wall just above her, which considerably startled her, for why, if "Spinach" was an attempt on the part of Ludovic's sub-consciousness to write "Carrot," should he announce his presence? She sprang up, and shook Ludovic by the shoulder.
"Wake up," she said. "There's a strange spirit here, and I don't like it. Wake up, Ludovic."
He came drowsily to himself.
"Hullo!" he said. "Anything been happening? was it Asteria?"
His eye fell on the paper.
"What's all this?" he said. "Thomas Spinach? That's only me. My sub-consciousness said it was Asparagus once."
"But look what it has been writing," said Sylvia.
He read it.
"That's queer," he said. "That can't be me. I'm not very unhappy. I don't want my own help. I know who I am."
He jumped up.
"Most interesting," he said. "It looks like a new control. Young Spinach must be powerful, too; he came through the first time he tried. We'll investigate this, Sylvia. It would be fine to get a new control for our séances."
"But not to-night, Ludovic," said she. "I really shouldn't sleep if you went on now. And he's violent. He made the loudest rap I ever heard."
"Did he, indeed?" said Ludovic. "I must have been in deep trance then, for I never heard it. We'll certainly try to snap him with the camera to-morrow."
The morning was bright and sunny, and directly after breakfast Ludovic set to work with his photography. The first three or four films showed nothing but impenetrable blackness, and a consultation of his handbook convinced him that they must have been over-exposed. He corrected this, and after a few errors on the other side, produced a negative which quite clearly showed Sylvia sitting by the long window into the verandah. This, though it revealed no "extra," was an encouraging achievement, and he took half a dozen more exposures with which he hurried away into the small dark cupboard under the stairs, where he had installed his developing and fixing baths. Shortly afterwards Sylvia heard her name called in crowing, exultant tones, and ran to see what had happened.
"Don't open the door," he called, "or you'll spoil it. But I've got a picture of you with a magnificent extra—a face hanging in the air by your shoulder."
"How lovely!" shouted Sylvia. "Do be quick and fix it."
There was no sort of doubt about it. There she sat by the window, and close by her was a strange, inexplicable face. So much could be seen from the negative, and when a print was taken of it, the details were wonderfully clear. It was the face of a young man; his handsome features wore an expression of agonized entreaty.
"Poor boy!" said Sylvia, sympathetically. "So good looking, too, but somehow I don't like him."
Then a brilliant idea struck her.
"Oh, Ludovic!" she said. "Is it young Spinach?"
He snatched the print from her.
"I must fix it," he said, "or it will be ruined. Of course it's young Spinach. Who else could it be, I should like to know? We'll find out more about him this evening. Fancy obtaining that the very first morning!"
They spent the afternoon on the beach, in order to get in an elevated frame of mind by contemplating the beauties of nature, and after a light supper, prepared for a double séance. Two hooks, so to speak, were baited for Spinach, for in one chair sat Sylvia, with pencil and paper, ready to take down his slightest word, and in another Ludovic, similarly equipped. They both let themselves sink into that drowsy and vacant condition which they knew to be favourable to communications from the unseen, but for a long time they neither of them got a bite. Then Ludovic heard the dash and clatter of his sister's pencil, suddenly beginning to write very rapidly, and this aroused in him disturbing feelings of envy and jealousy, for something was coming through to Sylvia and not to him.
This inharmonious emotion quite dissipated the tranquillity which was a _sine qua non_ of the receptive state, and he got up to see what was coming through to her. Probably some mawkish rubbish from Violetta about Savonarola's sermons. But the moment he saw her paper he was thrilled to the marrow.
"Yes, I'm Thomas Spinach," he read, "and I'm very unhappy. I came and stood by you this morning when the man was photographing. I want you to help me. Oh, do help me! It's something I've forgotten, though it is so important. I want you to look everywhere and see if you can't find something very unusual, and tell them. It is somewhere here. It must be, because I put it there, and I hardly like to tell you what it is, because it's terrible…."
The pencil stopped. Ludovic was wildly excited, and his jealousy of Sylvia was almost forgotten. After all, it was he who had taken Spinach's photograph….
Sylvia's hand continued idle so long that Ludovic, in order to stir it into activity again, began to ask questions.
"Have you passed over, Spinach?" he said.
Her