"If only I were. If only I had money!" "Why, what would you do?" Gladys asked curiously. "Give it to you! Give you every halfpenny of it!--But as I haven't
any, I mean to give you all the energy I possess instead." "Why me? My father you mean!" "No, you!" Shiel said impulsively, "both of you if you prefer it, but
you first." "Me first! That doesn't seem very lucid--but I can't stay to hear an
explanation now, for if I miss the four-thirty train I shall miss my
dinner, which would indeed be a calamity!" And slipping on her gloves,
she hurried off, forbidding Shiel to escort her further. Left to himself, Shiel strolled along the Strand into the Victoria
Gardens, where he bought an evening paper, and sat down to read it. The first thing that caught his eye was--

    "MAGIC IN LONDON"

    "This morning the West End received a shock. About twelve o'clock,
    a gentleman, fashionably dressed, turned into Bond Street from
    Piccadilly, and when opposite Messrs. Truefitt's prepared to cross
    over. The street happened just then to be blocked by a long line
    of taxis. The gentleman, however, had no intention of waiting till
    they had passed. Measuring the distance from one pavement to the
    other with his eyes, he jumped about fifteen feet into the air and
    cleared the intervening space without the slightest apparent
    effort--a feat that literally paralysed with astonishment all who
    beheld it. On being remonstrated with by a policeman, who was
    highly perplexed as to whether such extraordinary conduct
    constituted a breach of the peace or not, the gentleman calmly
    leaped over the policeman's head, and striking out with arms and
    legs swam through the air. "Continuing in this fashion, the cynosure of all eyes--even the
    traffic being suspended to watch him--he passed along Bond Street
    into Oxford Street, where he once more alighted on his feet. On
    being questioned by a representative of the Press, it transpired
    he was Mr. Kelson, one of the partners in the Modern Sorcery
    Company Ltd., whose wonderful performances at their Hall, in
    Cockspur Street, have already been reported in these columns." "I should well like to know how that flying trick is done," Shiel said
to himself. "According to Kelson it is entirely a question of will
power. I'll see if I can't develop my concentrative faculty and
introduce a few of the same performances in our show. I'll go to the
Hall and try them now." But his preliminary efforts were certainly far from successful. He
jumped off chairs saying to himself, "I'll fly! I will fly," and he
struck out heroically each time, but the result was always the
same--gravity conquered--he fell. Had he not been so much in love with Gladys, he would have desisted;
as it was, the more he bumped and bruised himself, the more determined
he was to go on trying. In fact, flying with him became a mania; and
according to the daily journals, his was by no means the only case. All over England people were trying to fly. An old lady, in Gipsy
Hill, appeared in the Police Court to answer a charge of causing
annoyance to her neighbours by practising flying, from off her bed, at
night. Her bulk being large and her will power apparently small, she
yielded to gravity and landed on the ground with prodigious bumps,
which set everything in the room vibrating, and which could be plainly
heard in the adjoining houses, through the thin brick walls on either
side of her room. An old gentleman in Guilsborough had an extremely narrow escape. Being
warned on no account to practise flying in the house or garden, lest
his grandchildren should see him and want to do the same, he retired
to the seclusion of an old, disused and dilapidated coach house. Here,
in the upper storey, he practised by the hour together. He climbed on
to a stool which he had taken there for the purpose, and when he
fancied he had acquired the right amount of concentration, he sprang
into the air, arriving, presumably through want of will power, on the
floor. For two whole days he practised--bump--bump--bump--and the more
he bumped, the more he persevered. At last, however, the floor gave
way, and with loud cries of "I will! I will!" he fell on the ground
floor, ten feet below! He was unable to go on experimenting, owing to
a broken leg and a fractured collar-bone. In Aylsham, Norfolk, there had been a perfect epidemic among the
children for trying aeronic gravity. Rudolph Crabbe, aged five, after
listening to an account of the performances at the Modern Sorcery
Company's Hall, which his father had read aloud, sprang off the
dining-room table crying out "I will fly! I will stay in the air." Fortunately, he fell on the tabby cat, which somewhat broke the shock
of concussion, and he escaped unhurt. In College Road, Clifton, Bristol, an octogenarian thinking he would
add novelty to the Jubilee celebrations at the College, leaped off the
roof of his house, crying, "I'll fly over the Close! I will fly over
the Close!" --and broke his neck. In St. Ives, Cornwall, where the treatment of animals is none too
humane, a fisher-boy threw a visitor's Pomeranian over the Malakoff
saying, "You shall fly! You shall remain in the air;" whilst at Bath a
girl of ten, snatching her baby brother from the perambulator, leaped
over Beechen Cliff, calling out, "We will fly together! We will fly
together!" These are only a few of the many similar cases Shiel read in the
paper, and which he narrated afterwards to Gladys Martin. "I am quite convinced," Gladys said, "that Kelson does his flying
through supernatural agency. His assertion that it can be done through
mere will power, is sheer humbug. It wouldn't be a bad idea to consult
a clairvoyant. What do you think?" Shiel thought it was an excellent suggestion. He saw in it an
opportunity of spending yet another afternoon in Gladys's company, and
asked her to go with him to an occultist the very next day. When she
assented, the pleasure of it tingled through every pore of his skin. Of course, Gladys assured herself there was no harm in her acceptance
of Shiel's escort--that neither he nor she meant anything by it--that
it was on her part merely a sort of an acknowledgment that he had been
awfully good to her in her present predicament. Besides, if she needed
further excuse, she had no reason for supposing Shiel to be in love
with her--and had her father not spoken to her about it, she would not
have remarked anything different in his glances, from the glances--for
the time being, perhaps, earnest enough--bestowed upon her by other
young men; which excuse, was, certainly, in Gladys's case, a more or
less honest one. They had some difficulty in selecting a psychometrist--so numerous
were those who advertised, in an equally alluring manner--but they at
length decided in favour of Madame Elvita, whose consulting rooms were
in New Bond Street. When they arrived there, Madame Elvita was, of
course, engaged.