He watched these actions in paralysed astonishment. Then once more
he hurled himself against the impassable barrier, and then with all
that crew of mocking ghosts about him, hurried back in dire confusion
to Vincey to tell him of the outrage that had come upon him.
But the brain of Vincey was now closed against apparitions, and
the disembodied Mr. Bessel pursued him in vain as he hurried out
into Holborn to call a cab. Foiled and terror-stricken, Mr. Bessel
swept back again, to find his desecrated body whooping in a glorious
frenzy down the Burlington Arcade. . . .
And now the attentive reader begins to understand Mr. Bessel's
interpretation of the first part of this strange story. The being
whose frantic rush through London had inflicted so much injury
and disaster had indeed Mr. Bessel's body, but it was not Mr. Bessel.
It was an evil spirit out of that strange world beyond existence,
into which Mr. Bessel had so rashly ventured. For twenty hours it held
possession of him, and for all those twenty hours the dispossessed
spirit-body of Mr. Bessel was going to and fro in that unheard-of
middle world of shadows seeking help in vain.
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