Charles and I sat on each side of her, also provided with
pencil and paper in order to take down what she said if and when (as
lawyers say) the control took possession of her. In case materialised
spirits appeared, a phenomenon not as yet seen at her séances, our idea
was to jot down as quickly as possible whatever we saw or thought we
saw. Should there be rappings or movements of furniture, we were to
make similar notes of our impressions. The lamp was then turned down,
so that just a ring of flame encircled the wick, but the firelight was
of sufficient brightness, as we tested before the séance began, to
enable us to write and to see what we had written. The red glow of it
illuminated the room, and it was settled that Charles should note by
his watch the time at which anything occurred. Occasionally, throughout
the séance a bubble of coal-gas caught fire, and then the whole room
started into strong light. I had given orders that my servants should
not interrupt the sitting at all, unless somebody rang the bell from
the garden-room. In that case it was to be answered. Finally, before
the séance began, we bolted all the windows on the inside and locked
the door. We took no other precautions against trickery, though, as a
matter of fact, Mrs. Forrest suggested that she should be tied into her
chair. But in the firelight any movement of hers would be so visible
that we did not adopt this precaution. Charles and I had settled to
read to each other the notes we made during the sitting, and cut out
anything that both of us had not recorded. The accounts, therefore, of
this sitting and of that which followed next day are founded on our
joint evidence. The sitting began. Mrs. Forrest was leaning back at ease with her eyes open and her hands
on the arms of her chair. Then her eyes closed and a violent trembling
seized her. That passed, and shortly afterwards her head fell forward
and her breathing became very rapid. Presently that quieted to normal
pace again, and she began to speak at first in a scarcely audible
whisper and then in a high shrill voice, quite unlike her usual tones. I do not think that in all England there was a more disappointed man
than I during the next half-hour. “Starlight,” it appeared, was in
control, and Starlight was a personage of platitudes. She had been a
nun in the time of Henry VII, and her work was to help those who had
lately passed over. She was very busy and very happy, and was in the
third sphere where they had a great deal of beautiful music. We must
all be good, said Starlight, and it didn’t matter much whether we were
clever or not. Love was the great thing; we had to love each other
and help each other, and death was no more than the gate of life, and
everything would be tremendously jolly.... Starlight, in fact, might be
better described as clap-trap, and I began thinking about Parkes....

And then I ceased to think about Parkes, for the shrill moralities
of Starlight ceased, and Mrs. Forrest’s voice changed again. The
stale facility of her utterance stopped and she began to speak, quite
unintelligibly, in a voice of low baritone range. Charles leaned across
the table and whispered to me. “That’s the new control,” he said. The voice that was speaking stumbled and hesitated: it was like that
of a man trying to express himself in some language which he knew very
imperfectly. Sometimes it stopped altogether, and in one of these
pauses I asked:

“Can you tell us your name?”

There was no reply, but presently I saw Mrs. Forrest’s hand reach
out for the pencil. Charles put it into her fingers and placed the
writing-pad more handily for her. I watched the letters, in capitals,
being traced. They were made hesitatingly, but were perfectly legible. “Swallow,” she wrote, and again “Swallow,” and stopped. “The bird?” I asked. The voice spoke in answer; now I could hear the words, uttered in that
low baritone voice. “No, not a bird,” it said. “Not a bird, but it flies.”

I was utterly at sea; my mind could form no conjecture whatever
as to what was meant. And then the pencil began writing again. “Swallow, swallow,” and then with a sudden briskness of movement, as
if the guiding intelligence had got over some difficulty, it wrote
“Swallow-tail.”

This seemed more abstrusely senseless than ever. The only connection
with swallow-tail in my mind was a swallow-tailed coat, but whoever
heard of a swallow-tailed coat flying? “I’ve got it,” said Charles. “Swallow-tail butterfly. Is it that?”

There came three sudden raps on the table, loud and startling. These
raps, I may explain, in the usual code mean “Yes.” As if to confirm
it the pencil began to write again, and spelled out “Swallow-tail
butterfly.”

“Is that your name?” I asked. There was one rap, which signifies “No,” followed by three, which
means “Yes.” I had not the slightest idea of what it all signified
(indeed it seemed to signify nothing at all), but the sitting had
become extraordinarily interesting if only for its very unexpectedness. The control was trying to establish himself by three methods
simultaneously--by the voice, by the automatic writing, and by rapping. But how a swallow-tail butterfly could assist in some situation which
was now existing in my house was utterly beyond me.... Then an idea
struck me: the swallow-tail butterfly no doubt had a scientific name,
and that we could easily ascertain, for I knew that there was on my
shelves a copy of Newman’s _Butterflies and Moths of Great Britain_, a
sumptuous volume bound in morocco, which I had won as an entomological
prize at school. A moment’s search gave me the book, and by the
firelight I turned up the description of this butterfly in the index. Its scientific name was _Papilio Machaon_. “Is Machaon your name?” I asked. The voice came clear now. “Yes, I am Machaon,” it said. With that came the end of the séance, which had lasted not more than
an hour. Whatever the power was that had made Mrs. Forrest speak
in that male voice and struggle, through that roundabout method of
“swallow, swallow-tail, Machaon,” to establish its identity, it now
began to fail. Mrs. Forrest’s pencil made a few illegible scribbles,
she whispered a few inaudible words, and presently with a stretch and a
sigh she came out of trance. We told her that the name of the control
was established, but apparently Machaon meant nothing to her. She was
much exhausted, and very soon I took her across to the house to go to
bed, and presently rejoined Charles. “Who was Machaon, anyhow?” he asked. “He sounds classical: more in your
line than mine.”

I remembered enough Greek mythology to supply elementary facts, while I
hunted for a particular book about Athens. “Machaon was the son of Asclepios,” I said, “and Asclepios was the
Greek god of healing. He had precincts, hydropathic establishments,
where people went to be cured. The Romans called him Aesculapius.”

“What can he do for you then?” asked Charles.