All of this stands as proof that Professor Crookes, even after he was knighted, was of a vacillating mind and for some reason seemed to be deficient in rational methods of discovering the truth, or at least disinclined to put them in force outside of his particular line of science. Possibly, one of the convincing proofs to him may have been the “tricks” played on him by Annie Eva Fay, for if I am not in error his failure to detect her trickery was the turning point which brought him to a belief in Spiritualism. She told me that when Maskelyne, the magician, came out with an exposé of her work she was forced to resort to strategy. Going to the home of Professor Crookes she threw herself on his mercy and gave a series of special tests. With flashing eyes she told of taking advantage of him. It appears that she had but one chance in the world to get by the galvanometer[110] but by some stroke of luck for her and an evil chance for Professor Crookes, the electric light went out for a second at the theatre at which she was performing, and she availed herself of the opportunity to fool him. One of the tests was duplicated by Professor Harry Cooke, a magician. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that this brainy man was hoodwinked, and that his confidence was betrayed by the so-called mediums that he tested. His powers of observation were blinded and his reasoning faculties so blunted by his prejudice in favor of anything psychic or occult that he could not, or would not, resist the influence.[111] This seems more difficult to comprehend when one remembers that he did not accept Spiritualism in full until he was nearing the end of his earthly career. The weakness and unreliability of Sir William’s judgment as an investigator is further proved by the fact that he admitted that many of the tests he proposed were rejected by the mediums he was investigating. Such conditions made the test impossible and he did not seem to realize it, but notwithstanding all this he is one of the most quoted authorities in Spiritualistic realms, particularly by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Another who was misled by the chicanery of mediums which he investigated during many years of research is Sir Oliver Lodge. He failed to find sufficient evidence to prompt him to spread the teachings of Spiritualism until 1904, after which he occasionally sent a “glow through the Spiritualistic world by some bold profession of belief.” In 1905 he was not quite ready to endorse but strongly commended mediums. But by 1916 he had become “the great scientist of the movement, the link between the popular belief and scientific theory.” It is extremely difficult, however, to understand how a leading scientist can permit his pen to lay before a thinking world such inconsistent impossibilities as the following: