Part 20

I sat with it on my palm. It was so simple, so direct. And I, a lawyer, and presumably reasonably acute, had not thought of it!

“You are wasted on us, Mrs. Dane,” I acknowledged. “Well? I see something has come of it.”

“Yes, but I’m not ready for it.”

She dived again into the bag, and brought up another clipping.

“On the day that I had that inserted,” she said impressively, “this also appeared. They were in the same column.” She read the second clipping aloud, slowly, that I might gain all its significance:

“Lost on the night of Monday, November the second, between State Avenue and Park Avenue, possibly on an Eastern Line street car, a black handbag containing keys, car-tickets, private letters, and a small sum of money. Reward and no questions asked if returned to Daily News office.”

She passed the clipping to me and I compared the two. It looked strange, and I confess to a tingling feeling that coincidence, that element so much to be feared in any investigation, was not the solution here. But there was such a chance, and I spoke of it.

“Coincidence rubbish!” she retorted. “I am not through, my friend.”

She went down into the bag again, and I expected nothing less than the pocketbook, letters and all, to appear. But she dragged up, among a miscellany of handkerchiefs, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a few almonds, of which she was inordinately fond, an envelope.

“Yesterday,” she said, “I took a taxicab ride. You know my chair gets tiresome, occasionally. I stopped at the newspaper office, and found the bag had not been turned in, but that there was a letter for A 31.” She held out the envelope to me.

“Read it,” she observed. “It is a curious human document. You’ll probably be no wiser for reading it, but it shows one thing: We are on the track of something.”

I have the letter before me now. It is written on glazed paper, ruled with blue lines. The writing is of the flowing style we used to call Spencerian, and if it lacks character I am inclined to believe that its weakness is merely the result of infrequent use of a pen.

You know who this is from. I have the bag and the letters. In a safe place. If you would treat me like a human being, you could have them. I know where the walking-stick is, also. I will tell you this. I have no wish to do her any harm. She will have to pay up in the next world, even if she gets off in this. The way I reason is this: As long as I have the things, I’ve got the whiphand. I’ve got you, too, although you may think I haven’t.

About the other matter I was innocent. I swear it again. I never did it. You are the only one in all the world. I would rather be dead than go on like this.

It is unsigned.

I stared from the letter to Mrs. Dane. She was watching me, her face grave and rather sad.

“You and I, Horace,” she said, “live our orderly lives. We eat, and sleep, and talk, and even labor. We think we are living. But for the last day or two I have been seeing visions--you and I and the rest of us, living on the surface, and underneath, carefully kept down so it will not make us uncomfortable, a world of passion and crime and violence and suffering. That letter is a tragedy.”

But if she had any suspicion then as to the writer, and I think she had not, she said nothing, and soon after I started for home. I knew that one of two things would have happened there: either my wife would have put away the fire-tongs, which would indicate a truce, or they would remain as they had been, which would indicate that she still waited for the explanation I could not give. It was with a certain tension, therefore, that I opened my front door.

The fire-tongs still stood in the stand.

In one way, however, Mrs. Johnson’s refusal to speak to me that evening had a certain value, for it enabled me to leave the house without explanation, and thus to discover that, if an overcoat had been left in place of my own, it had been taken away. It also gave me an opportunity to return the fire-tongs, a proceeding which I had considered would assist in a return of the entente cordiale at home, but which most unjustly appeared to have exactly the opposite effect. It has been my experience that the most innocent action may, under certain circumstances, assume an appearance of extreme guilt.

By Saturday the condition of affairs between my wife and myself remained in statu quo, and I had decided on a bold step. This was to call a special meeting of the Neighborhood Club, without Miss Jeremy, and put before them the situation as it stood at that time, with a view to formulating a future course of action, and also of publicly vindicating myself before my wife.

In deference to Herbert Robinson’s recent attack of influenza, we met at the Robinson house. Sperry himself wheeled Mrs. Dane over, and made a speech.

“We have called this meeting,” he said, “because a rather singular situation has developed. What was commenced purely as an interesting experiment has gone beyond that stage. We find ourselves in the curious position of taking what comes very close to being a part in a domestic tragedy. The affair is made more delicate by the fact that this tragedy involves people who, if not our friends, at least are very well known to us. The purpose of this meeting, to be brief, is to determine whether the Neighborhood Club, as a body, wishes to go on with the investigation, or to stop where we are.”

He paused, but, as no one spoke, he went on again. “It is really not as simple as that,” he said. “To stop now, in view of the evidence we intend to place before the Club, is to leave in all our minds certain suspicions that may be entirely unjust. On the other hand, to go on is very possible to place us all in a position where to keep silent is to be an accessory after a crime.”

He then proceeded, in orderly fashion, to review the first sitting and its results. He read from notes, elaborating them as he went along, for the benefit of the women, who had not been fully informed. As all the data of the Club is now in my possession, I copy these notes.

“I shall review briefly the first sitting, and what followed it.” He read the notes of the sitting first. “You will notice that I have made no comment on the physical phenomena which occurred early in the seance. This is for two reasons: first, it has no bearing on the question at issue. Second, it has no quality of novelty. Certain people, under certain conditions, are able to exert powers that we can not explain. I have no belief whatever in their spiritistic quality. They are purely physical, the exercise of powers we have either not yet risen high enough in our scale of development to recognize generally, or which have survived from some early period when our natural gifts had not been smothered by civilization.”

And, to make our position clear, that is today the attitude of the Neighborhood Club. The supernormal, as I said at the beginning, not the supernatural, is our explanation.

Sperry’s notes were alphabetical.