Inscrutable Decrees

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Hutchinson's Magazine, April 1923
Collected in Visible and Invisible (Winter 1923)
5,780 words
(First read 22/06/2012) 

The tale reveals, in a curiously disjointed way, why Lord Archie Rorke didn't marry his cousin's widow Sybil as planned and expected.  It turns out Sybil was Benson Female Type 3a: charming beauty and queen of society ... but one with a psycho lurking in the recesses of her soul ~ the type who gets a kick out of watching little girls drown in sluices.  And do you know how Archie finds this out? ~ Sybil (who just happens to be a medium too ~ did I mention that?) calls up the kiddie's ghost at one of her own séances, the dozy bint.  Unfortunately, Unidentified Narrator has by then thwacked us poor readers in the face with so many richly-painted signposts on his jumbled way to the Big Reveal at the end ... that the revelation comes as no revelation at all.
Something of a dog's breakfast, IMHO.  You can read it online here.

Machaon

Swallowtail butterfly ~ Papilio machaon

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Hutchinson's Magazine, January 1923
Collected in Visible and Invisible (October 1923)
6,055 words
(First read 15/06/2012)

Another ~ frankly ~ idiotic story about a medium and a random message from beyond the grave.  In this one the visitor turns out to be none other than some Very Ancient Greek named Machaon, son of Aesculapius (y'know, the one who invented medicine), who struggles through the ether or ectoplasm or whatever to deliver to our Unnamed Narrator, who just happens to live in a little town named Tilling, in a house with a garden room, the verdict that U.N.'s faithful manservant, currently lying in hospital stricken with cancer, should be treated with X-rays.  [No, I'm not making this up: EFB is.]  The whole thing is so preposterous that I'm not prepared to spend any more time on it.
But maybe you'll have better luck with it: it's available online here. 

'Through'

Fiction ~ short story
First published in The Storyteller, July 1917
Subsequently collected in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories, 1920  
(First read 14/06/1992)

As with various other 'paranormal phenomena', EFB could never quite make up his mind whether or not he believed in mediums, séances, the living contacting the dead, etc.  'Through' is a good example of this dithering in action.  The hero, Richard Waghorn¹, is a self-avowed mediumistic fraud: he and his sister use the full panoply of gadgetry and trickery to ply their trade.  And yet, there are moments when he seems genuinely able to see inside the heads of his sitters.  The story deals with one such occasion, when, in fact, he has his first genuine full-blown trance and his client's dead brother speaks 'through' him.  Not a bad story ~ the pace is good and it doesn't outstay it's welcome.  You can read it online here.



¹ Why EFB didn't go the whole hog and call him Richard Wagner is unclear.  And immaterial.