cked the
furniture about, chucked my boots through him, and called him a damned
elemental. And although it had no more effect upon him than if I had
been in another world--as I suppose in a sense I actually was--that
outbreak did help to restore my sanity.

Perhaps you may have noticed that if a man is worsted in an argument
he invariably loses his temper? It is the only means he has left to
convince himself that he is right. Well, my temper did that for me on
this occasion. I could not prove my existence to that confounded spirit
by any logic or demonstration, but I could prove it to myself by getting
angry. And I did.

The Researcher glared round the circle as if challenging anyone there to
deny the validity of his existence, then slapped his note-book together
and sat upon it.

I do not expect you to believe my story (he concluded, with a touch of
vehemence). Indeed, I would much sooner that you did not believe it.
I have been trying to doubt it myself for the past eleven years, and I
still hope to succeed in that endeavour, aided by my intensive study of
the comforting theories of the later Victorian scientists. But I must
warn you that there was just one touch of what one might call evidence,
beyond my own impressions of that night--which may have been, and
probably were, a mixture of telepathy, hallucination, expectancy, and
auto-suggestion, that found expression in automatic writing.

This rather flimsy piece of evidence rests upon a conclusion drawn from
the end of my conversation with the spirit. I was still banging about
the room, then, and I said that I had finished with psychical research,
that never again would I make the least inquiry with regard to a
possible future life, or any kind of spiritualistic phenomenon. And,
curiously enough, the poltergeist precisely echoed my resolve. He said
that that night's experience had clearly shown him that the research was
useless, that it could never prove anything, and that, even if it did,
no one would believe it. _For if_, as he pointed out, _we who were in a
manner of speaking face to face, were unable to prove our own existence
to each other, how could we expect to prove the other's existence to
anyone else?_

It was getting light then, and he faded out almost immediately
afterwards.

But it is a fact that there were no more poltergeist phenomena in that
house, although the Slippertons went back to it a month or two later and
still have the same cook.