'Wouldn't it be nice if they could remember what happened in, say, the months from December, nineteen twenty-nine, to June, nineteen thirty — next year?' His voice was suddenly whining. 'They could get their money back then!'

I humoured him. 'If they could remember.'

They can!' he blazed. 'They can!'

'How?'

His voice dropped to a confidential softness. 'Hypnotism! You studied Morbid Psychology under me, didn't you, Jack? Yes — I remember.'

'But, hypnotism!' I objected. 'Every psychiatrist uses that in his treatments and no one has remembered a previous incarnation or anything like it.'

'No. They're fools, these doctors and psychiatrists. Listen — do you remember the three stages of the hypnotic state as you learned them?'

'Yes. Somnambulism, lethargy, catalepsy.'

'Right. In the first the subject speaks, answers questions. In the second he sleeps deeply. In the third, catalepsy, he is rigid, stiff, so that he can be laid across two chairs, sat on — all that nonsense.'

'I remember. What of it?'

He grinned bleakly. 'In the first stage the subject remembers everything that ever happened during his life. His subconscious mind is dominant and that never forgets. Correct?'

'So we were taught.'

He leaned tensely forward. 'In the second stage, lethargy, my theory is that he remembers everything that happened in his other lives! He remembers the future!'

'Huh? Why doesn't someone do it, then?'

'He remembers while he sleeps. He forgets when he wakes. That's why. But I believe that with proper training he can learn to remember.'

'And you're going to try?'