The child had brought some toys--a little train and some building blocks--"to get Granny to play with him as usual," and the fragile old lady knelt down on the floor, and played with him just as any ordinary Granny might have done, only with far more agility. In the very midst of their brick building and train starting, a terrible catastrophe occurred, which spoilt the rest of the evening for the poor child. Granny had evidently forgotten that her time was limited, by conditions of which we are still profoundly ignorant. Quite suddenly, and without a word of warning, she disappeared, not into the cabinet at her back, but right through the carpet under our feet, and well within a yard of the said feet, and this with two or three gas-jets burning over our heads! There was no mistake about it. Dr Covernton and I were sitting next to the father and mother, whilst the child and his grandmother played at our feet. One moment she was there; the next she had disappeared like a flash into a mere cloud of mist, and even this was quickly withdrawn, apparently through the floor. No trap-door theory could account for this, because the _woman_ had disappeared, and only the wisp of ethereal garments remained, before the latter were also dissipated. We must, moreover, note the difficulty of working a trap door immediately under the feet of a sceptical young physician, who at once investigated the carpet, hoping in vain to find in it some solution of the mystery! I have already mentioned that the whole incident took place, in light sufficiently good to read a book without straining the eyes. The poor little boy was terribly upset, and sobbed bitterly. His parents said they had brought him many times before, and such a _fiasco_ had never before taken place. Mrs Stoddart Gray was very indignant about it. "Too bad! She ought to have _known_ she was staying too long, and risking a fright for the child. If she had only gone back into the cabinet he would not have been frightened. But she stayed too long and had not enough strength to get back." The child was too thoroughly frightened and upset to admit of any consolation, and the parents were obliged to take him away, still sobbing, and asking _why_ Granny had gone away like that and given him such a fright. A year later, in London, I took Dr Covernton--by appointment--to see Dr Carl Hansen, who was then giving hypnotic treatment, and also doing some work in demonstrations for the Society for Psychical Research. Dr Hansen tried in vain to put either Dr Theodore Covernton or myself under the influence, so was obliged to have recourse to his wife. Naturally this was considered a "_most suspicious circumstance_" by my companion; but I noticed that he was very much interested in his conversation with her--from the medical point of view--and he was sufficiently honest to admit that he could not explain what happened in his presence, upon any normal hypothesis. CHAPTER V INDIA, 1890-1891