Visible and InvisibleBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
Science
Visible and Invisible
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
English fiction -- 20th century; Ghost stories, English; Horror tales, English; Short stories, English
“I was lunching, then, the next day with my neighbour Mrs. Stanley:
there was a small party, and when I arrived we waited but for the final
guest. He entered while I was talking to some friend, and presently at
my elbow I heard Mrs. Stanley’s voice--
“‘Let me introduce you to Sir Henry Payle,’ she said.
“I turned and saw my _vis-à-vis_ of the night before. It was quite
unmistakably he, and as we shook hands he looked at me I thought with
vague and puzzled recognition.
“‘Haven’t we met before, Mr. Carling?’ he said. ‘I seem to
recollect----’
“For the moment I forgot the strange manner of his disappearance from
the carriage, and thought that it had been the man himself whom I had
seen last night.
“‘Surely, and not so long ago,’ I said. ‘For we sat opposite each other
in the last tube-train from Piccadilly Circus yesterday night.’
“He still looked at me, frowning, puzzled, and shook his head.
“‘That can hardly be,’ he said. ‘I only came up from the country this
morning.’
“Now this interested me profoundly, for the astral body, we are told,
abides in some half-conscious region of the mind or spirit, and has
recollections of what has happened to it, which it can convey only very
vaguely and dimly to the conscious mind. All lunch-time I could see his
eyes again and again directed to me with the same puzzled and perplexed
air, and as I was taking my departure he came up to me.
“‘I shall recollect some day,’ he said, ‘where we met before, and I
hope we may meet again. Was it not----?’--and he stopped. ‘No: it has
gone from me,’ he added.”
The log that Anthony had thrown on the fire was burning bravely now,
and its high-flickering flame lit up his face.
“Now, I don’t know whether you believe in coincidences as chance
things,” he said, “but if you do, get rid of the notion. Or if you
can’t at once, call it a coincidence that that very night I again
caught the last train on the tube going westwards. This time, so far
from my being a solitary passenger, there was a considerable crowd
waiting at Dover Street, where I entered, and just as the noise of the
approaching train began to reverberate in the tunnel I caught sight of
Sir Henry Payle standing near the opening from which the train would
presently emerge, apart from the rest of the crowd. And I thought to
myself how odd it was that I should have seen the phantom of him at
this very hour last night and the man himself now, and I began walking
towards him with the idea of saying, ‘Anyhow, it is in the tube that we
meet to-night.’... And then a terrible and awful thing happened. Just
as the train emerged from the tunnel he jumped down on to the line in
front of it, and the train swept along over him up the platform.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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