Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 4 (1927-10).djvu/100

were Rumanian by birth and partly by ancestry. Very good. She had gone to school with her cousin, Mademoiselle Julie. Again good. She had lived in the same house here, she had loved the same man, and she had committed suicide; best of all. I need now only a little reassuring as to the reason why—the result I already know.

"You know what Mademoiselle Julie told us; it all fitted in well with the theory I had formed. But there was work to be done that night.

"The demon which made Julie do all kinds of things she knew not of had promised to take her life. How to circumvent her? That were the question.

"I think. 'This young woman goes off into trances, and does all manner of queer things without knowing of them,' I inform me. 'Would she not do much the same in a state of hypnosis?' Assuredly. Very well, then.

"I procure me a set of whirling mirrors, not because there is any magic in them but because they are the easiest thing to focus the subject's attention. Last night I use them, and hypnotize Mademoiselle Julie before the poltergeist has a chance to conquer her consciousness. Hypnotism, when all is said and done, is the rendering of a subject's objective mind passive while the mind of the operator is substituted for that of the subject. The poltergeist, which was really the revenant of Anna, had substituted her mind for Julie's on former occasions; now I get there first, and place my mind in her brain. There is no room for the other, and Mademoiselle Julie can not take suggestions or brain-hints from the ghost and destroy herself. No, Jules de Grandin is already in possession of her brain-house, and he says 'No Admission' to all others who try to come in. Mademoiselle Julie slept peacefully through the night, as you did observe."

"But what was all that monkey business with the mistletoe?" I demanded.

"Tiens, my friend, the monkey's business had nothing to do with that," he assured me. "Do you, perhaps, remember what the mistletoe stands for at Noël?"

"You mean a kiss?"

"What else? It is the plant held sacred to lovers in this day, but in the elder times it was the holy bush of the Druids. With it they cast many spells, and with it they cast out many evil-workers. Not by mistake is it the lover's tree today, for it is a powerful charm against evil and will assuredly lay the unhappy ghost of one who dies because of unfortunate love. Voilà—you do catch the connection?"

"I never heard that before——" I began, but he cut me short with a chuckle.

"Much you have never heard, Trowbridge, my friend," he accused, "yet all of it is true, none the less."

"And that hideous shadow?"

He sobered instantly. "Who can say? In life Mademoiselle Anna was beautiful, but she went forth from the world uncalled and in an evil way, my friend. Who knows what evil shape she is doomed to wear in the next life? The less we think on that subject the better for our sleep hereafter.

"Come, we are at your house once more. Let us drink one glass of brandy for luck's sake, then to sleep. Mordieu, me, I feel as though I had been stranger to my bed since my fifth birthday!"