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 hand began to write in a swift and irritated manner. "Of course I have," it scribbled. "Otherwise I should know where it was."
"Used you to live here?" asked Ludovic. "And when did you pass over?"
"Yes, I lived here," came the answer. "I passed over a week ago. Very suddenly. There was a thunderstorm that night, and I had just finished it all, and was in the garden cooling down, when lightning struck me, and when I came to—on this side, you understand—I couldn't remember where it was."
"Where what was?" asked Ludovic. "Do you mean the thing you had finished? What was it you had finished?"
The pencil seemed to give a loud squeak, as if it was a slate pencil.
"Oh, here it is again," it wrote in trembling characters. "I can't go on now. It's terrible. I'm so frightened. Please, please find it."
Just as on the previous evening, there came an appalling rap somewhere on the wall close to him, and, seriously startled, Ludovic sprang up, and shook Sylvia into consciousness. Whoever this spirit was, it was not a good, kind, mild one like Asteria, who, whenever she rapped, did so very softly and pleasantly.
Sylvia yawned and stretched herself.
"Spinach?" she said, drowsily. "Any Spinach?"
"Yes, dear, quantities," said Ludovic.
"And what did he say? Oh, I went off deep then, Ludovic. I don't know what's been happening. Violetta isn't nearly so powerful. Such an odd feeling! Did I write all that?"
"Yes, in answer to some pretty good questions of mine," he said. "It's really wonderful. We're on the track of young Spinach, or, rather, he's on ours."
Sylvia was reading her manuscript.
"'I passed over a week ago,'" she said. "'Very suddenly—there was a thunderstorm that night——' Why, Ludovic, there was! That's quite true. You slept through it, but I didn't, and I remember reading in the paper that it had been very violent in the Rye district. How strange!"
Ludovic
