Over the meal he told me a good deal about his life abroad, and I realized something of the deadly loneliness of a white man’s life in the dull oil fields of Mexico. Four other whites to speak to and for the rest native peons, Indians and a sprinkling of Chinese coolies. A bottle of good wine is a splendid lubricant for the human tongue, and the Burgundy--a “Clos du Poi,” ’84--soon eased him of all awkwardness. Over the coffee and cigars he came to his point. “You still go on with Spiritualism, don’t you, Grey?” “Yes,” I answered him, “but I thought that you did not believe in it.” His answer almost shocked me with its violence. “God! but I wish that I did not!” He was silent with emotion for a moment, then resumed: “You know I never believed in it at the House. I always thought you fellows were simply running it as a craze, but up at Los Chicharras--that was the third big oil gusher that the Company owned--there was a Cornish mining engineer, Bill Tregarthen. “He was a queer fish, a silent man; squat-shaped, broad as he was long and full of queer fancies. He had a little planchette board that he used to consult about everything, and I have seen him sit there in the patio of the office building with the little jigger dancing about over reams of paper. “I thought he was crazy, but he persuaded me to try the thing, _and I got messages, too_. One day it spelt out a message from Ellen, and Ellen has been dead for four years--she was my old nurse--Ellen---- “Even then I was only half convinced. One’s brain plays one strange tricks down there in the Tierra Caliente, and I have seen an upturned mountain standing on its head in the desert--mirage of course, and I used to think the planchette mental mirage, subconscious stuff of some kind--and I didn’t believe. “Then Tregarthen used to laugh at me for a fool, and one night he blazed up into a strange bit of rage and stood there in the moonlight shaking his fist at me. ‘We Cornish folk have known the unwrit lore for all time,’ said he. ‘Old odd people we are and we know old odd things. I tell you. I will tell you that I am right when I am dead. You will not listen to me now, but you shall listen then, indeed.’ “Lots of the stuff he raved at us that night, but I and another man at last calmed him down and got him off to bed. I thought little enough of it at the time, and a week later I went back from Los Chicharras to the Offices at Tampico. “I suppose it was a month later that I heard the first knock. It was past midday, right in the heart of the siesta hour. Not a soul moving, the very dogs silent in the streets, and the whole place a blinding blaze of sunlight. “I knew at once--that’s the odd thing about it. _I knew instantly in my heart that Tregarthen was dead._ “That was six months ago, and since then I keep on hearing the raps. I know that Tregarthen is keeping his pledge, but I cannot answer him back; I cannot get into touch with him.