The following is another case which I quote from the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xi. p. 395. Lady Vane writes:-

Hutton-in-the-Forest, April 8th, 1894.

About a month ago I lost a book, a manuscript one, relating to this house. I thought I had left it in my writing-table in my sitting-room, and intended to add a note about some alterations just completed - but next day the book had vanished. I looked through every drawer and cupboard in my room and then asked Sir Henry to do the same, which he did twice. I also made the head housemaid turn everything out of them and helped her to do so - so that four thorough searches were made; but in vain. We also looked in the gallery and library (the only other rooms to which the book had been taken) and could not find it. On March 28th I asked Lady Mabel Howard to write about it. She wrote, "It is in the locked cupboard in the bookcase - hidden behind the books".

I said, "Then it must be in the library, because the bookcases are locked," and Lady Mabel wrote, "Not in the library." I said, "Then it must be in the ante-room in the cupboard," and asked if I should find it. Lady Mabel wrote, "No, send Sir Henry." I asked, "Will he find it?" and she wrote, "Of course".

Still thinking it could only be the ante-room or the library - on account of the locked cupboard and bookcase, I asked, "Which end of the room?"

Lady Mabel wrote, "The tapestry end." I asked, "Is it on the window side of the room or on the other?" and she wrote, "The other." A friend staying in the house looked in the bookcases in the library at the tapestry end, and in the cupboard in the ante-room (I had met with an accident and could not go myself) and could not find the book, so we gave it up.

On April 5th Sir Henry was in my sitting-room and suddenly said, "I have an idea! Lady Mabel meant this room. There is the bookcase and the locked cupboard in it - and the wall outside the door is covered with tapestry." I said, "You have looked in that cupboard twice, and so have I and the housemaid, and the book is not there - but look again if you like." Sir Henry unlocked 'the door of the cupboard and took out all the books (there were not more than half-a-dozen) and put them on the floor. The last he put back into the cupboard was a scrap-book for newspaper cuttings, and as it was rather dark at 6.30 p.m. he could not see the name on the back and therefore opened it to see what it was, and the lost manuscript book fell out.

Having searched this very small cupboard four times previously, either of us would have been ready to swear that this book was not in it.

(Signed) Margaret Vane.

Henry Vane.

Writing to me about this case on April 10th, from Greystoke Castle, Penrith, Lady Mabel Howard says:-

The day I got your letter I got a special letter sent over from Hutton to say my pencil had found a valuable book that Lady Vane had lost. We therefore walked over there on Sunday and I asked her to write it out. It is so very curious, quite the best thing I think the pencil ever has done - as it said, "in the cupboard in the bookcase," and they couldn't think where it meant - a cupboard in a. bookcase - and this little cupboard is a cupboard in the middle let into glass bookcases on either side. I had no idea of the cupboards or tapestries there, and the pencil wrote all this in the sandwich paper at luncheon on the Point-to-Point racecourse.

So curious, too, the pencil said, "Send Sir Henry," twice. It was the merest chance finding it, as it fell out of this scrap-book, and was hidden behind the other books.

In another letter, dated April 14th, Lady Mabel Howard writes:-

I saw Lady Vane on February 24th, when the book had not been lost. I did not see her again till Easter Monday. The moment I got upstairs she exclaimed, "I want you to find a book for me that is lost." No pencil nor paper was forthcoming, so she said, "Never mind, write when you get home," but I forgot, and it was two days after at the Point-to-Point race that she asked me again, and we wrote it in the paper the sandwiches had been in.

I was abroad all this March and it was then that there were repairs being done in the house, and Lady Vane took the book down from where she kept it (I don't know where) and having entered the repairs into it, put it down, and from that moment it was never seen again. I must have been at Florence when the book was lost. Mabel Howard.

Are we to describe this as a knowledge of past, of present, or of future? Or may we say that a telaesthetic perception of this kind is not strictly conditioned by time, but includes some retrogressive knowledge as to how things reached their present condition, and also some pre-gressive inference as to their coming development? The element of forecast in the present case, - the indication that it would be Sir Henry Vane who would find the book, - is in itself very slight; but it cannot be ignored when we compare other messages of Lady Mabel Howard's. See, for instance, the messages to Mr. Huth, where the element of precognition was strongly marked. In this present case, the whereabouts of the book can hardly have been supraliminally known to any human being; since the workman or servant whose hands may have slipped it into the larger book was probably unaware of what it was, or even of his own unthinking action itself. If, however, it were Sir Henry or Lady Vane who unthinkingly placed the small book in the larger one - and this does not seem quite impossible - Lady Mabel's knowledge might have been drawn telepathically from their subliminal memory.