Part 30

“You’re an absent-minded beggar, Horace,” he said.

“You didn’t, by any chance, stop here on your way back from my place the other night, did you?”

“I did. But I didn’t bring that thing.”

“Look here, Horace,” he said, more gently, “you come in and see me some day soon. You’re not as fit as you ought to be.”

I confess to a sort of helpless indignation that was far from the composure the occasion required. But the others, I believe, were fully convinced that no human agency had operated to bring the stick into Mrs. Dane’s house, a belief that prepared them for anything that might occur.

A number of things occurred almost as soon as the lights were out, interrupting a train of thought in which I saw myself in the first stages of mental decay, and carrying about the streets not only fire-tongs and walking-sticks, but other portable property belonging to my friends.

Perhaps my excitement had a bad effect on the medium. She was uneasy and complained that the threads that bound her arms were tight. She was distinctly fretful. But after a time she settled down in her chair. Her figure, a deeper shadow in the semi-darkness of the room, seemed sagged--seemed, in some indefinable way, smaller. But there was none of the stertorous breathing that preceded trance.

Then, suddenly, a bell that Sperry had placed on the stand beyond the black curtain commenced to ring. It rang at first gently, then violently. It made a hideous clamor. I had a curious sense that it was ringing up in the air, near the top of the curtain. It was a relief to have it thrown to the ground, its racket silenced.

Quite without warning, immediately after, my chair twisted under me. “I am being turned around,” I said, in a low tone. “It as if something has taken hold of the back of the chair, and is twisting it. It has stopped now.” I had been turned fully a quarter round.

For five minutes, by the luminous dial of my watch on the table before me, nothing further occurred, except that the black curtain appeared to swell, as in a wind.

“There is something behind it,” Alice Robinson said, in a terrorized tone. “Something behind it, moving.”

“It is not possible,” Herbert assured her. “Nothing, that is--there is only one door, and it is closed. I have examined the walls and floor carefully.”

At the end of five minutes something soft and fragrant fell on to the table near me. I had not noticed Herbert when he placed the flowers from Mrs. Dane’s table on the stand, and I was more startled than the others. Then the glass prisms in the chandelier over our heads clinked together, as if they had been swept by a finger. More of the flowers came. We were pelted with them. And into the quiet that followed there came a light, fine but steady tattoo on the table in our midst. Then at last silence, and the medium in deep trance, and Mrs. Dane rapping on the floor for Clara.

When Clara came in, Mrs. Dane told her to switch on the lights. Miss Jeremy had dropped in her chair until the silk across her chest was held taut. But investigation showed that none of the threads were broken and that her evening slippers still fitted into the outline on the paper beneath them. Without getting up, Sperry reached to the stand behind Miss Jeremy, and brought into view a piece of sculptor’s clay he had placed there. The handle of the bell was now jammed into the mass. He had only time to show it to us when the medium began to speak.

I find, on re-reading the earlier part of this record, that I have omitted mention of Miss Jeremy’s “control.” So suddenly had we jumped, that first evening, into the trail that led us to the Wells case, that beyond the rather raucous “good-evening,” and possibly the extraneous matter referring to Mother Goose and so on, we had been saved the usual preliminary patter of the average control.

On this night, however, we were obliged to sit impatiently through a rambling discourse, given in a half-belligerent manner, on the deterioration of moral standards. Re-reading Clara’s notes, I find that the subject matter is without originality and the diction inferior. But the lecture ceased abruptly, and the time for questions had come.

“Now,” Herbert said, “we want you to go back to the house where you saw the dead man on the floor. You know his name, don’t you?”

There was a pause. “Yes. Of course I do. A. L. Wells.”

Arthur had been known to most of us by his Christian name, but the initials were correct.

“How do you know it is an L.?”

“On letters,” was the laconic answer. Then: “Letters, letters, who has the letters?”

“Do you know whose cane this is?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell us?”

Up to that time the replies had come easily and quickly. But beginning with the cane question, the medium was in difficulties. She moved uneasily, and spoke irritably. The replies were slow and grudging. Foreign subjects were introduced, as now.

“Horace’s wife certainly bullies him,” said the voice. “He’s afraid of her. And the fire-tongs--the fire-tongs--the fire-tongs!”

“Whose cane is this?” Herbert repeated.

“Mr. Ellingham’s.”