It is merely the brain that has to be fed and
rested and exercised properly to make the body absolutely healthy, and
immune from all disease. But when the brain is affected, it is as useful
to pour medicines down the sink, as make your patient swallow them,
unless--and this is a paramount limitation--unless he believes in them. I said something of the kind to Louis one night, when, at the end of a
busy day, I had dined with him. We were sitting over coffee in the hall,
or so it is called, where he takes his meals. Outside, his house is just
like mine, and ten thousand other small houses in London, but on
entering, instead of finding a narrow passage with a door on one side,
leading into the dining-room, which again communicates with a small back
room called ‘the study,’ he has had the sense to eliminate all
unnecessary walls, and consequently the whole ground floor of his house
is one room, with stairs leading up to the first floor. Study,
dining-room and passage have been knocked into one; you enter a big room
from the front door. The only drawback is that the postman makes loud
noises close to you, as you dine, and just as I made these commonplace
observations to him about the effect of the brain on the body and the
senses, there came a loud rap, somewhere close to me, that was
startling. ‘You ought to muffle your knocker,’ I said, ‘anyhow during the time of
meals.’

Louis leaned back and laughed. ‘There isn’t a knocker,’ he said. ‘You were startled a week ago, and
said the same thing. So I took the knocker off. The letters slide in
now. But you heard a knock, did you?’

‘Didn’t you?’ said I. ‘Why, certainly. But it wasn’t the postman. It was the Thing. I don’t
know what it is. That makes it so interesting.’

Now if there is one thing that the hypnotist, the believer in
unexplained influences, detests and despises, it is the whole
root-notion of spiritualism. Drugs are not more opposed to his belief
than the exploded, discredited idea of the influence of spirits on our
lives. And both are discredited for the same reason; it is easy to
understand how brain can act on brain, just as it is easy to understand
how body can act on body, so that there is no more difficulty in the
reception of the idea that the strong mind can direct the weak one, than
there is in the fact of a wrestler of greater strength overcoming one of
less. But that spirits should rap at furniture and divert the course of
events is as absurd as administering phosphorus to strengthen the brain. That was what I thought then. However, I felt sure it was the postman, and instantly rose and went to
the door. There were no letters in the box, and I opened the door. The
postman was just ascending the steps. He gave the letters into my hand. Louis was sipping his coffee when I came back to the table. ‘Have you ever tried table-turning?’ he asked. ‘It’s rather odd.’

‘No, and I have not tried violet-leaves as a cure for cancer,’ I said. ‘Oh, try everything,’ he said. ‘I know that that is your plan, just as
it is mine. All these years that you have been away, you have tried all
sorts of things, first with no faith, then with just a little faith, and
finally with mountain-moving faith. Why, you didn’t believe in hypnotism
at all when you went to Paris.’

He rang the bell as he spoke, and his servant came up and cleared the
table. While this was being done we strolled about the room, looking at
prints, with applause for a Bartolozzi that Louis had bought in the New
Cut, and dead silence over a ‘Perdita’ which he had acquired at
considerable cost. Then he sat down again at the table on which we had
dined. It was round, and mahogany-heavy, with a central foot divided
into claws. ‘Try its weight,’ he said; ‘see if you can push it about.’

So I held the edge of it in my hands, and found that I could just move
it. But that was all; it required the exercise of a good deal of
strength to stir it. ‘Now put your hands on the top of it,’ he said, ‘and see what you can
do.’

I could not do anything, my fingers merely slipped about on it. But I
protested at the idea of spending the evening thus. ‘I would much sooner play chess or noughts and crosses with you,’ I
said, ‘or even talk about politics, than turn tables. You won’t mean to
push, nor shall I, but we shall push without meaning to.’

Louis nodded. ‘Just a minute,’ he said, ‘let us both put our fingers only on the top
of the table and push for all we are worth, from right to left.’

We pushed. At least I pushed, and I observed his finger-nails. From pink
they grew to white, because of the pressure he exercised. So I must
assume that he pushed too. Once, as we tried this, the table creaked. But it did not move. Then there came a quick peremptory rap, not I thought on the front door,
but somewhere in the room. ‘It’s the Thing,’ said he. To-day, as I speak to you, I suppose it was. But on that evening it
seemed only like a challenge. I wanted to demonstrate its absurdity. ‘For five years, on and off, I’ve been studying rank spiritualism,’ he
said. ‘I haven’t told you before, because I wanted to lay before you
certain phenomena, which I can’t explain, but which now seem to me to be
at my command. You shall see and hear, and then decide if you will help
me.’

‘And in order to let me see better, you are proposing to put out the
lights,’ I said. ‘Yes; you will see why.’

‘I am here as a sceptic,’ said I. ‘Scep away,’ said he. Next moment the room was in darkness, except for a very faint glow of
firelight. The window-curtains were thick, and no street-illumination
penetrated them, and the familiar, cheerful sounds of pedestrians and
wheeled traffic came in muffled. I was at the side of the table towards
the door; Louis was opposite me, for I could see his figure dimly
silhouetted against the glow from the smouldering fire. ‘Put your hands on the table,’ he said, ‘quite lightly, and--how shall I
say it--expect.’

Still protesting in spirit, I expected. I could hear his breathing
rather quickened, and it seemed to me odd that anybody could find
excitement in standing in the dark over a large mahogany table,
expecting. Then--through my finger-tips, laid lightly on the table,
there began to come a faint vibration, like nothing so much as the
vibration through the handle of a kettle when water is beginning to boil
inside it. This got gradually more pronounced and violent till it was
like the throbbing of a motor-car. It seemed to give off a low humming
note. Then quite suddenly the table seemed to slip from under my fingers
and began very slowly to revolve. ‘Keep your hands on it and move with it,’ said Louis, and as he spoke I
saw his silhouette pass away from in front of the fire, moving as the
table moved. For some moments there was silence, and we continued, rather absurdly,
to circle round keeping step, so to speak, with the table. Then Louis
spoke again, and his voice was trembling with excitement. ‘Are you there?’ he said. There was no reply, of course, and he asked it again.