"I am," said Wish, with real or admirably feigned intensity. "I
believe that if he goes through these motions right he'll GO."

"He'll not do anything of the sort," I cried. "There's only one way
out of this world for men, and Clayton is thirty years from that.
Besides . . . And such a ghost! Do you think--?"

Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among our chairs
and stopped beside the tole and stood there. "Clayton," he said,
"you're a fool."

Clayton, with a humorous light in his eyes, smiled back at him.
"Wish," he said, "is right and all you others are wrong. I shall go.
I shall get to the end of these passes, and as the last swish whistles
through the air, Presto!--this hearthrug will be vacant, the room
will be blank amazement, and a respectably dressed gentleman of
fifteen stone will plump into the world of shades. I'm certain.
So will you be. I decline to argue further. Let the thing be tried."

"NO," said Wish, and made a step and ceased, and Clayton raised
his hands once more to repeat the spirit's passing.

By that time, you know, we were all in a state of tension--largely
because of the behaviour of Wish. We sat all of us with our eyes on
Clayton--I, at least, with a sort of tight, stiff feeling about me
as though from the back of my skull to the middle of my thighs my
body had been changed to steel. And there, with a gravity that was
imperturbably serene, Clayton bowed and swayed and waved his hands
and arms before us. As he drew towards the end one piled up, one
tingled in one's teeth. The last gesture, I have said, was to swing