C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
“Q.” A Psychic Pstory of the Psupernatural
By Stephen Leacock (1869–1944)
I
I had gone over to visit Annerly at his rooms. It was Saturday, October 31st. I remember the date so precisely because it was my pay day, and I had received six sovereigns and ten shillings. I remember the sum so exactly because I had put the money into my pocket, and I remember into which pocket I had put it because I had no money in any other pocket. My mind is perfectly clear on all these points.
Annerly and I sat smoking for some time.
Then quite suddenly—
“Do you believe in the supernatural?” he asked.
I started as if I had been struck.
At the moment when Annerly spoke of the supernatural I had been thinking of something entirely different. The fact that he should speak of it at the very instant when I was thinking of something else, struck me as at least a very singular coincidence.
For a moment I could only stare.
“What I mean is,” said Annerly, “do you believe in phantasms of the dead?”
“Phantasms?” I repeated.
“Yes, phantasms, or if you prefer the word, phanograms, or say if you will phanogrammatical manifestations, or more simply psychophantasmal phenomena?”
I looked at Annerly with a keener sense of interest than I had ever felt in him before. I felt that he was about to deal with events and experiences of which in the two or three months that I had known him he had never seen fit to speak.
I wondered now that it had never occurred to me that a man whose hair at fifty-five was already streaked with gray must have passed through some terrible ordeal.
Presently Annerley spoke again.
“Last night I saw Q,” he said.
“Good heavens!” I ejaculated. I did not in the least know who Q was, but it struck me with a thrill of indescribable terror that Annerly had seen Q. In my own quiet and measured existence such a thing had never happened.
“Yes,” said Annerly, “I saw Q as plainly as if he were standing here. But perhaps I had better tell you something of my past relationship with Q, and you will understand exactly what the present situation is.”
Annerly seated himself in a chair on the other side of the fire from me, lighted a pipe, and continued.
“When first I knew Q he lived not very far from a small town in the south of England, which I will call X, and was betrothed to a beautiful and accomplished girl whom I will name M.”
Annerly had hardly begun to speak before I found myself listening with riveted attention. I realized that it was no ordinary experience that he was about to narrate. I more than suspected that Q and M were not the real names of his unfortunate acquaintances, but were in reality two letters of the alphabet selected almost at random to disguise the names of his friends. I was still pondering over the ingenuity of the thing when Annerly went on:
“When Q and I first became friends, he had a favorite dog, which, if necessary, I might name Z, and which followed him in and out of X on his daily walk.”
“In and out of X,” I repeated in astonishment.
“Yes,” said Annerly, “in and out.”
My senses were now fully alert. That Z should have followed Q out of X, I could readily understand, but that he should first have followed him in seemed to pass the bounds of comprehension.
“Well,” said Annerly, “Q and Miss M were to be married. Everything was arranged. The wedding was to take place on the last day of the year. Exactly six months and four days before the appointed day (I remember the date because the coincidence struck me as peculiar at the time) Q came to me late in the evening in great distress. He had just had, he said, a premonition of his own death. That evening, while sitting with Miss M on the verandah of her house, he had distinctly seen a projection of the dog R pass along the road.”
“Stop a moment,” I said. “Did you not say that the dog’s name was Z?”
Annerly frowned slightly.
“Quite so,” he replied. “Z, or more correctly Z R, since Q was in the habit, perhaps from motives of affection, of calling him R as well as Z. Well, then, the projection, or phanogram, of the dog passed in front of them so plainly that Miss M swore that she could have believed that it was the dog himself. Opposite the house the phantasm stopped for a moment and wagged its tail. Then it passed on, and quite suddenly disappeared around the corner of a stone wall, as if hidden by the bricks. What made the thing still more mysterious was that Miss M’s mother, who is partially blind, had only partially seen the dog.”
Annerly paused a moment. Then he went on:
“This singular occurrence was interpreted by Q, no doubt correctly, to indicate his own approaching death. I did what I could to remove this feeling, but it was impossible to do so, and he presently wrung my hand and left me, firmly convinced that he would not live till morning.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, “and he died that night?”
“No, he did not,” said Annerly quietly, “that is the inexplicable part of it.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“He rose that morning as usual, dressed himself with his customary care, omitting none of his clothes, and walked down to his office at the usual hour. He told me afterwards that he remembered the circumstances so clearly from the fact that he had gone to the office by the usual route instead of taking any other direction.”
“Stop a moment,” I said. “Did anything unusual happen to mark that particular day?”
“I anticipated that you would ask that question,” said Annerly, “but as far as I can gather, absolutely nothing happened. Q returned from his work, and ate his dinner apparently much as usual, and presently went to bed complaining of a slight feeling of drowsiness, but nothing more. His stepmother, with whom he lived, said afterwards that she could hear the sound of his breathing quite distinctly during the night.”
“And did he die that night?” I asked, breathless with excitement.
“No,” said Annerly, “he did not. He rose next morning feeling about as before except that the sense of drowsiness had apparently passed, and that the sound of his breathing was no longer audible.”
Annerly again fell into silence. Anxious as I was to hear the rest of his astounding narrative, I did not like to press him with questions. The fact that our relations had hitherto been only of a formal character, and that this was the first occasion on which he had invited me to visit him at his rooms, prevented me from assuming too great an intimacy.
“Well,” he continued, “Q went to his office each day after that with absolute regularity. As far as I can gather there was nothing either in his surroundings or his conduct to indicate that any peculiar fate was impending over him. He saw Miss M regularly, and the time fixed for their marriage drew nearer each day.”
“Each day?” I repeated in astonishment.
“Yes,” said Annerly, “every day. For some time before his marriage I saw but little of him. But two weeks before that event was due to happen, I passed Q one day in the street. He seemed for a moment about to stop, then he raised his hat, smiled, and passed on.”
“One moment,” I said, “if you will allow me a question that seems of importance—did he pass on and then smile and raise his hat, or did he smile into his hat, raise it, and then pass on afterwards?”
“Your question is quite justified,” said Annerly, “though I think I can answer with perfect accuracy that he first smiled, then stopped smiling and raised his hat, and then stopped raising his hat and passed on.”
“However,” he continued, “the essential fact is this: on the day appointed for the wedding, Q and Miss M were duly married.”
“Impossible!” I gasped; “duly married, both of them?”
“Yes,” said Annerly, “both at the same time. After the wedding Mr. and Mrs. Q——”
“Mr. and Mrs. Q,” I repeated in perplexity.
“Yes,” he answered, “Mr. and Mrs. Q—for after the wedding Miss M took the name of Q—left England and went out to Australia, where they were to reside.”
“Stop one moment,” I said, “and let me be quite clear—in going out to settle in Australia it was their intention to reside there?”
“Yes,” said Annerly, “that at any rate was generally understood. I myself saw them off on the steamer, and shook hands with Q, standing at the same time quite close to him.”
“Well,” I said, “and since the two Q’s, as I suppose one might almost call them, went to Australia, have you heard anything from them?”
“That,” replied Annerly, “is a matter that has shown the same singularity as the rest of my experience. It is now four years since Q and his wife went to Australia. At first I heard from him quite regularly, and received two letters each month. Presently I only received one letter every two months, and later two letters every six months, and then only one letter every twelve months. Then until last night I heard nothing whatever of Q for a year and a half.”
I was now on the tiptoe of expectancy.
“Last night,” said Annerly very quietly, “Q appeared in this room, or rather, a phantasm or psychic manifestation of him. He seemed in great distress, made gestures which I could not understand, and kept turning his trouser pockets inside out. I was too spellbound to question him, and tried in vain to divine his meaning. Presently the phantasm seized a pencil from the table, and wrote the words, ‘Two sovereigns, to-morrow night, urgent.’”
Annerly was again silent. I sat in deep thought. “How do you interpret the meaning which Q’s phanogram meant to convey?”
“I think,” he announced, “it means this. Q, who is evidently dead, meant to visualize that fact, meant, so to speak, to de-atomize the idea that he was demonetized, and that he wanted two sovereigns to-night.”
“And how,” I asked, amazed at Annerly’s instinctive penetration into the mysteries of the psychic world, “how do you intend to get it to him?”
“I intend,” he announced, “to try a bold, a daring experiment, which, if it succeeds, will bring us into immediate connection with the world of spirits. My plan is to leave two sovereigns here upon the edge of the table during the night. If they are gone in the morning, I shall know that Q has contrived to de-astralize himself, and has taken the sovereigns. The only question is, do you happen to have two sovereigns? I myself, unfortunately, have nothing but small change about me.”
Here was a piece of rare good fortune, the coincidence of which seemed to add another link to the chain of circumstance. As it happened I had with me the six sovereigns which I had just drawn as my week’s pay.
“Luckily,” I said, “I am able to arrange that. I happen to have money with me.” And I took two sovereigns from my pocket.
Annerly was delighted at our good luck. Our preparations for the experiment were soon made.
We placed the table in the middle of the room in such a way that there could be no fear of contact or collision with any of the furniture. The chairs were carefully set against the wall, and so placed that no two of them occupied the same place as any other two, while the pictures and ornaments about the room were left entirely undisturbed. We were careful not to remove any of the wallpaper from the wall, nor to detach any of the window-panes from the window. When all was ready the two sovereigns were laid side by side upon the table, with their heads up in such a way that the lower sides or tails were supported by only the table itself. We then extinguished the light. I said “Good-night” to Annerly, and groped my way out into the dark, feverish with excitement.
My readers may well imagine my state of eagerness to know the result of the experiment. I could scarcely sleep for anxiety to know the issue. I had, of course, every faith in the completeness of our preparations, but was not without misgivings that the experiment might fail, as my own mental temperament and disposition might not be of the precise kind needed for the success of these experiments.
On this score, however, I need have had no alarm. The event showed that my mind was a media, or if the word is better, a transparency, of the very first order for psychic work of this character.
In the morning Annerly came rushing over to my lodgings, his face beaming with excitement.
“Glorious, glorious,” he almost shouted, “we have succeeded! The sovereigns are gone. We are in direct monetary communication with Q.”
I need not dwell on the exquisite thrill of happiness which went through me. All that day and all the following day, the sense that I was in communication with Q was ever present with me.
My only hope was that an opportunity might offer for the renewal of our intercommunication with the spirit world.
The following night my wishes were gratified. Late in the evening Annerly called me up on the telephone.
“Come over at once to my lodgings,” he said. “Q’s phanogram is communicating with us.”
I hastened over, and arrived almost breathless. “Q has been here again,” said Annerly, “and appeared in the same distress as before. A projection of him stood in the room, and kept writing with its finger on the table. I could distinguish the word ‘sovereigns,’ but nothing more.”
“Do you not suppose,” I said, “that Q for some reason which we cannot fathom, wishes us to again leave two sovereigns for him?”
“By Jove!” said Annerly enthusiastically, “I believe you’ve hit it. At any rate, let us try; we can but fail.”
That night we placed again two of my sovereigns on the table, and arranged the furniture with the same scrupulous care as before.
Still somewhat doubtful of my own psychic fitness for the work in which I was engaged, I endeavored to keep my mind so poised as to readily offer a mark for any astral disturbance that might be about. The result showed that it had offered just such a mark. Our experiment succeeded completely. The two coins had vanished in the morning.
For nearly two months we continued our experiments on these lines. At times Annerly himself, so he told me, would leave money, often considerable sums, within reach of the phantasm, which never failed to remove them during the night. But Annerly, being a man of strict honor, never carried on these experiments alone except when it proved impossible to communicate with me in time for me to come.
At other times he would call me up with the simple message, “Q is here,” or would send me a telegram, or a written note saying “Q needs money; bring any that you have, but no more.”
On my own part, I was extremely anxious to bring our experiments prominently before the public, or to interest the Society for Psychic Research, and similar bodies, in the daring transit which we had effected between the world of sentience and the psycho-astric, or pseudo-ethereal existence. It seemed to me that we alone had succeeded in thus conveying money directly and without mediation, from one world to another. Others, indeed, had done so by the interposition of a medium, or by subscription to an occult magazine, but we had performed the feat with such simplicity that I was anxious to make our experience public, for the benefit of others like myself.
Annerly, however, was averse from this course, being fearful that it might break off our relations with Q.
It was some three months after our first inter-astral psycho-monetary experiment, that there came the culmination of my experiences—so mysterious as to leave me still lost in perplexity.
Annerly had come in to see me one afternoon. He looked nervous and depressed.
“I have just had a psychic communication from Q,” he said in answer to my inquiries, “which I can hardly fathom. As far as I can judge, Q has formed some plan for interesting other phantasms in the kind of work that we are doing. He proposes to form, on his side of the gulf, an association that is to work in harmony with us, for monetary dealings on a large scale, between the two worlds.”
My reader may well imagine that my eyes almost blazed with excitement at the magnitude of the prospect opened up.
“Q wishes us to gather together all the capital that we can, and to send it across to him, in order that he may be able to organize with him a corporate association of phanograms, or perhaps in this case, one would more correctly call them phantoids.”
I had no sooner grasped Annerly’s meaning than I became enthusiastic over it.
We decided to try the great experiment that night.
My own worldly capital was, unfortunately, no great amount. I had, however, some £500 in bank stock left to me at my father’s decease, which I could, of course, realize within a few hours. I was fearful, however, lest it might prove too small to enable Q to organize his fellow phantoids with it.
I carried the money in notes and sovereigns to Annerly’s room, where it was laid on the table. Annerly was fortunately able to contribute a larger sum, which, however, he was not to place beside mine until after I had withdrawn, in order that conjunction of our monetary personalities might not dematerialize the astral phenomenon.
We made our preparations this time with exceptional care, Annerly quietly confident, I, it must be confessed, extremely nervous and fearful of failure. We removed our boots, and walked about on our stockinged feet, and at Annerly’s suggestion, not only placed the furniture as before, but turned the coal-scuttle upside down, and laid a wet towel over the top of the wastepaper basket.
All complete, I wrung Annerly’s hand, and went out into the darkness.
I waited next morning in vain. Nine o’clock came, ten o’clock, and finally eleven, and still no word of him. Then feverish with anxiety, I sought his lodgings.
Judge of my utter consternation to find that Annerly had disappeared. He had vanished as if off the face of the earth. By what awful error in our preparations, by what neglect of some necessary psychic precautions, he had met his fate, I cannot tell. But the evidence was only too clear, that Annerly had been engulfed into the astral world, carrying with him the money for the transfer of which he had risked his mundane existence.
The proof of his disappearance was easy to find. As soon as I dared do so with discretion I ventured upon a few inquiries. The fact that he had been engulfed while still owing four months’ rent for his rooms, and that he had vanished without even having time to pay such bills as he had outstanding with local tradesmen, showed that he must have been devisualized at a moment’s notice.
The awful fear that I might be held accountable for his death prevented me from making the affair public.
Till that moment I had not realized the risks that he had incurred in our reckless dealing with the world of spirits. Annerly fell a victim to the great cause of psychic science, and the record of our experiments remain in the face of prejudice as a witness to its truth.