"I confess I do not follow you at all," said Courtney bewildered.
"No," and Dr. Dean smiled curiously. "I have perhaps expressed myself obscurely. Yet I am generally considered a clear exponent. First of all, let me ask you, do you believe in the existence of Matter?"
"Why, of course!"
"You do. Then you will no doubt admit that there is Something--an Intelligent Principle or Spiritual Force--which creates and controls this Matter?"
Courtney hesitated.
"Well, I suppose there must be," he said at last. "I'm not a church-goer, and I'm rather a free-thinker, but I certainly believe there is a Mind at work behind the Matter."
"That being the case," proceeded the Doctor, "I suppose you will not deny to this Invisible Mind the same exactitude of proportion and precise method of action already granted to Visible Matter?".
"Of course, I could not deny such a reasonable proposition," said Courtney.
"Very good! Pursuing the argument logically, and allowing for an exactly-moving Mind behind exactly-working Matter, it follows that there can be no such thing as injustice anywhere in the universe? "
"My dear Socrates redivivus," laughed Courtney, "I fail to see what all this has to do with ghosts."
"It has everything to do with them," declared the Doctor emphatically, "I repeat that if we grant these already stated premises concerning the composition of Mind and Matter, there can be no such thing as injustice. Yet seemingly unjust things are done every day, and seemingly go unpunished. I say 'seemingly' advisedly, because the punishment is always administered. And here the 'scientific ghosts' come in. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord,--and the ghosts I speak of are the Lord's way of doing it."
"You mean ..." began Courtney.
"I mean," continued the Doctor with some excitement, "that the sinner who imagines his sins are undiscovered is a fool who deceives himself. I mean that the murderer who has secretly torn the life out of his shrieking victim in some unfrequented spot, and has succeeded in hiding his crime from what we call 'justice,' cannot escape the Spiritual law of vengeance. What would you say," and Dr. Dean laid his thin fingers on Courtney's coat-sleeve with a light pressure,--"if I told you that the soul of a murdered creature is often sent back to earth in human shape to dog its murderer down? And that many a criminal undiscovered by the police is haunted by a seeming Person,--a man or a woman,--who is on terms of intimacy with him,--who eats at his table, drinks his wine, clasps his hand, smiles in his face, and yet is truly nothing but the ghost of his victim in human disguise, sent to drag him gradually to his well-deserved, miserable end; what would you say to such a thing?"