Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 7, 15/16 by Estelle Roberts

It was in 1954 that Sir John came to see me for the first and only time. Even then he was an old man, unable to get about as he could have wished. Ever since it has been his daughter, Margaret, who has come in his stead. Many times she has visited my house and carried back messages from Curzon to her father.

The occasion of Sir John’s solitary visit was a memorable one. The sitting began inauspiciously enough until I mentioned the name, Curzon of Kedleston. Instantly Sir John was agog.
“What does he say?” he demanded.
“He asks whether you remember the two stone elephants.” “Remember them? Of course I do.”

This reference to the elephants convinced Sir John beyond all doubt that he was in communication with his old friend, because nobody but Curzon could have known the allusion. Explaining it, Sir John told me that he and Curzon,

fully fifty years before, had been working together on reassembling the fragments of two black, stone elephants they had uncovered at Delhi Fort. Who but he and Curzon would remember, or even be aware of, an incident which, compared with their many other more important activities, was almost a triviality?

From that time onwards, Lord Curzon often communicated when Margaret Marshall was with me. Once she took a message to her father from Red Cloud. The guide said that he wished her father to know that he visited him from time to time and was familiar with his surroundings.

As proof of his words he spoke of a curious little image in Sir John’s room that carried an inscription on its base. Margaret knew the image well enough but was puzzled about the inscription. To the best of her knowledge it did not have one. On returning home her first action was to examine the image; the inscription was so minute that one had to look closely to see it.