Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/341

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A DIFFICULTY WITH HEAVEN
329

condition by golf and moderate eating, and apparently unharmed by somewhat immoderate drinking; he was gray, baldish, and his blue eyes required, when he read, pince-nez which he kept on a black ribbon. If one knew nothing of his record, or of his personal habits, he passed for an ascetic, almost Puritanical individual; he had been, in his younger days, a great "jury lawyer"; but it was a generation since he had personally pleaded in any lower court.

"You see she has just been performing in New York the essential act," Jaccard resumed the subject of the medium. "She's been getting evidential messages. You know what they are?"

"Yes," said Lucas; but he knew that Jaccard would explain anyhow.

"Communications which no one can explain unless they came from people that are dead," Jaccard dutifully persisted. "They say mind reading must be absolutely barred out. Now that's precisely what we want her to do. We don't want to get her here in a séance and ask some spook, 'Is Agnes D. Cullen there?' and have the answer come, 'Yes, sir; present.' That's no good to us; we want some speech or answer or evidence which could have come from Agnes D. Cullen and no one else. Then we've something to go on.

"That's not enough to go to court with, even when we get it," Jaccard added hastily. "But it's for the impression—if properly advertised. Most cases are won before the courts open anyway. Any fool knows that. Half the case is the preparation of the jury before they're picked. Now we're going to use this spirit stuff to prepare every venireman in the County of Cook, State of Illinois, who can read or hear, with the fact that Agnes D. Cullen not only is dead but has