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The Maniac – A Realistic Study of Madness from the Maniac’s Point of View – E Thelmar

I forthwith explained the situation to Miss E, I told her Ray Hall and I were engaged, and were so closely en rapport with each other that we could communicate uninterruptedly, no matter how far apart our physical bodies might be. I explained to her that she needn't be in the least alarmed at such a thing, that it was merely simple science-the Marconi system of wireless telegraphy applied to thoughts instead of sounds.

All the time I was talking, Ray Hall kept on interrupting me repeatedly, giving me further messages and instructions to give her. Sometimes, when she was speaking to me, he would begin, and then I would say to her- "Hush! He is speaking to me again, till I have heard what he has to say." And I would tell her what the voice had said.

At last she managed to get me down to breakfast. But no sooner were we inside the room than Ray Hall said to me-

“A fiend followed you downstairs, and will try to get into this room immediately the door is opened. Lock the door, and on no account allow it to be opened at all for the next quarter of an hour, I am coming to your rescue as fast as I can, in a hansom. Don't quit that room until I arrive. Keep close together, all you three, and pray until I arrive."

I immediately locked the door, and told my two friends that we must on no account open it to any one until Ray Hall arrived, which he would be doing in a quarter of an hour's time, in a hansom. I said that unless we kept the door shut and sat close together and prayed, a fiend would certainly attack us.

They endeavoured to reassure me, but I felt their confidence was due merely to their ignorance of the danger; and when the younger sister went and opened the door to admit the servant who was bringing up the breakfast, I knew that the fiend had got in and was prowling about the room.

However, I expected Ray Hall every moment, and he was talking to me and reassuring me all the way as he was driving along in his hansom. I ate some breakfast, still in great fear of the fiend, which I knew to be in the room, but before I had got half through the meal, a voice (not Ray Hall's) began saying to me that some fiends had attacked Ray Hall, and would be killing him if I did not at once drive to his rooms to his rescue.