The Titanic Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,66

invited here—all of you—because I sensed in you a certain receptivity to psychic energies. While I know, from experience, that I am not a physical medium… one of you may hold that power.”

“My word,” Ismay said. “Wouldn’t we know?”

Stead shrugged. “This ability may lay sleeping; tonight it could awaken… I have seen it happen—not often. But I have seen it. Further, you should be warned that nothing may happen—we see, we hear, on any given night, only what the spirits may be pleased to share with us.”

Guggenheim asked, “Are these spirits ‘ghosts,’ sir?”

“If that word pleases you. Are you a Christian, sir?”

“No. But I believe in the same God as the Christians.”

Astor said, “I am a Christian, sir.”

“And I,” Ismay said.

Stead said, somberly, “ ‘If a man dies shall he live again?’ Does not Christ promise us immortality? I have witnessed immortality, or at least the persistence of the personality of man after the dissolution of the vessel.”

Maggie frowned. “What, the Titanic?”

“No! This vessel, this corporeal vesture. We no more die when we lay our bodies aside at ‘death’ than when we take off an overcoat.”

“Who are these spirits?” Miss Gibson asked. “Why aren’t they in heaven?”

Stead smiled patiently. “Perhaps they are, my child, returning to us from the other side, with wisdom to impart, or perhaps offering consolation for mourning loved ones. Others may be in a limbo world….”

“Purgatory,” Maggie said.

“That is one religion’s word for it. This is a science in its early stages; we are taking tentative steps into the unknown… but I assure all of you, none of these spirits means us harm.”

Maggie squinted at him. “The bad ones went straight to hell, you mean.”

Despite his solemn demeanor, Stead chuckled softly. “Perhaps so—I know of no instance when a sitting like this one has been visited by a demon. A tormented soul, possibly… an inhabitant of that limbo world to which you refer, perhaps some recently deceased party who has not come to terms with his new, noncorporeal state. Now—if there are no further questions…”

And there were none.

“Mrs. Futrelle, if you would, the lights?”

The room fell dark but for the glowing oil lamp, the orb of its canary shade casting its flickery jaundiced reflection upon the nine faces, eerily highlighting bone structure while other features lurked in pools of shadow. Those seated there might have been spirits themselves, albeit well-dressed ones, phantasms in fancy evening dress. Stead especially looked unearthly with his clear blue eyes and prominent nose and bushy whiskers washed in yellow.

His sonorous voice intoned, “My friends, I beg you to clasp hands…”

And, as May took her seat next to Stead, the group joined hands, forming a human circle, each one eager for the comfort of mortal flesh. Alice Cleaver’s palm was cold and clammy against Futrelle’s.

“… and we will wait, and allow the spirits to come to us, and to speak through me… I may release your hand, Miss Gibson, should I feel the stimulus to write.”

“Yes, sir,” she said meekly.

Silence fell like a cloak over the room, not really silence, but the ordinary sounds of a steamer at night, suddenly heightened: the creak of woodwork, the remote thrum of engines, the muffled movement of stewards and passengers, the shimmer of the nearby glass dome over the stairwell as the ship created its own wind carving through the night at twenty-some knots. Somewhere a clock was ticking, a mechanical heartbeat, deafeningly soft…

“William,” a voice sweetly said.

Stead’s own voice!

But this was higher-pitched than his normal tone, and feminine, coming from lips in a ghostly yellow face that had gone slack, eyes closed as if in sleep, or death.

The sweet female voice from the rough male form continued: “Why have you not saved my usual seat at your table? Am I not wanted here?”

Then the old man’s bulk shuddered, and—his eyes remaining closed—he said in his own voice, “I apologize, dear Julia. I felt our purpose tonight was beneath you.”

Futrelle—whose left hand was being gripped firmly, to the point of discomfort, by Alice Cleaver—was afraid the old boy, in the grip of his conscience and delusions, would spoil everything.

But Stead suddenly fell silent, releasing Miss Gibson’s hand, and he grasped a pencil and, with eyes still closed, head raised, he began to write, quickly, fluidly. He seemed to have written about a paragraph’s worth, when he reached for Miss Gibson’s hand again and looked down at what he’d just written.

“My great and good friend, my spirit guide, Miss Julia Ames, has imparted a message for