Sir ---- learned through underworld channels of a rich eccentric who would have nothing to do with banks and safe deposit vaults but kept all his money and valuables in his home where he boasted so many burglar alarms and other protective devices as to practically dare thieves to rob him. After making sure that this man had very strong Spiritualistic tendencies Madame ---- wrote him a letter in which she told him that she had been requested by the spirit of his dead brother to get into communication with him. An interview followed and then a seance at which the brother’s spirit was claimed to have been materialized. The man was so convinced that he had received a message from his brother that the instructions to safeguard his money and valuables by placing them in a certain bank were followed implicitly even to the extent of taking them to the president (?) of the bank at his home instead of going to the bank with them. It is needless to say that the “bank president” was none other than Sir ----. This exploit netted them about four hundred thousand dollars. Not long after they appeared in Paris. Madame ---- proceeded to dupe a jeweler out of a quantity of valuable jewels and with Sir ---- succeeded in escaping to Germany where they tried to repeat the performance but were arrested. The majority of the people who are fleeced do not blame the medium but really believe that the Spirit of their departed one prescribed the loss and that the medium simply acted as an agent. It is only when the mediums fall out; when there ceases to be “honor among thieves” that the cases are brought to the attention of the police. Although I realize that it would be difficult to enforce, there should be a law to prevent these frauds, for as the result of investigation I know that this particular line has netted many millions of dollars from unwary, trusting, and believing people. An end ought to be put to it. CHAPTER XIV WHAT YOU MUST BELIEVE TO BE A SPIRITUALIST There is an old adage that “truth is stranger than fiction” but some of the miraculous things attributed to the Spirits would not be told, could not be told, even by such a famous writer of wild fiction as Baron Munchausen, but under the protecting mantle of Spiritualism these vivid tales are believed by millions. The conglomerated things you are asked to accept in good faith are almost inconceivable. If you do not then you are not a real Spiritualist. There must not be the shadow of a doubt in your mind as to the truth of the extravagant feats claimed to be performed by the Spirits through their earthly messengers the mediums.