Meantime Captain Herrick had reached the sanitarium and, finding Dr. Owen in the study, had laid before him a plan to save Penelope, if it was true, as Christopher believed, that her trouble was simply in the imagination. He proposed to divert his sweetheart's attention so that she would not know when the deadly Fauvette hour was at hand. And to this end he had arranged to have the clocks set back half an hour. "It can't do any harm, can it, sir?" he urged with a lover's ardor, "and it may succeed. Dr. Leroy says it's fear that's killing her. Well, we'll drive away her fear. I've fixed it at the church down the street, the one that chimes the quarter-hours, to have that clock put back. And the clocks in the house are easy. What do you think of it, sir?" he asked eagerly. The old doctor frowned in perplexity. "I don't know, Chris. You'll have to put this up to Dr. Leroy. He's a wonderful fellow. I've had my eyes opened tonight or my soul--something." The two men smoked solemnly. "I believe we're going to save Penelope, my boy--somehow. It's a mighty queer world. I don't know but we are all more or less possessed by evil spirits, Chris. What are these brainstorms that overwhelm the best of us? Why do good men and women, on some sudden, devilish impulse, do abominable things, criminal things, that they never meant to do? We doctors pretend to be skeptical, but we all come up against creepy stuff, inside confession stuff that we don't talk about." He was silent again. "There was a patient of mine in Chicago, a tough old rounder," Owen resumed, "who changed overnight into the straightest chap you ever heard of--because he went down to the edge of the Great Shadow--he was one of the passengers saved from the Titanic. He told me that when he was struggling there in the icy ocean, after the ship sank, _he saw white shapes hovering over the waters, holding up the drowning_! I never mentioned that until tonight." They smoked without speaking. "I--I had an experience like that myself, sir," ventured Christopher. "I've never spoken of it either--people would call me crazy, but--that night when I lay out there in front of Montidier, among the dead and dying, I saw a white shape moving over the battlefields." "You did?" "Yes, sir. It was the figure of a woman--coming towards me--she seemed to be leading Penelope. I saw her distinctly--she had a beautiful face." Silence again. Dr. Leroy joined them presently and, on learning of Captain Herrick's plan, he made no objections to it, but said it would fail. "We are dealing with an evil power, gentlemen, that is far too clever to be deceived by such a trick," he assured them; but Christopher was resolved to try. Leroy then described Seraphine's narrow escape and showed them the automatic writing, the message from Penelope's mother, not the evil message; whereupon Christopher, in amazement, gave the corroborative testimony of his battlefield experience. The psychologist nodded gravely.