SIGHT UNSEEN

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

I

The rather extraordinary story revealed by the experiments of theNeighborhood Club have been until now a matter only of private record. But it seems to me, as an active participant in the investigations, thatthey should be given to the public; not so much for what they will addto the existing data on psychical research, for from that angle theywere not unusual, but as yet another exploration into that stilluncharted territory, the human mind. 

The psycho-analysts have taught us something about the individual mind. They have their own patter, of complexes and primal instincts, ofthe unconscious, which is a sort of bonded warehouse from which weclandestinely withdraw our stored thoughts and impressions. They layto this unconscious mind of ours all phenomena that cannot otherwisebe labeled, and ascribe such demonstrations of power as cannot thus beexplained to trickery, to black silk threads and folding rods, to slateswith false sides and a medium with chalk on his finger nail. 

In other words, they give us subjective mind but never objective mind. They take the mind and its reactions on itself and on the body. Butwhat about objective mind? Does it make its only outward manifestationsthrough speech and action? Can we ignore the effect of mind on mind, when there are present none of the ordinary media of communication? Ithink not. 

In making the following statement concerning our part in the strangecase of Arthur Wells, a certain allowance must be made for our ignoranceof so-called psychic phenomena, and also for the fact that since thattime, just before the war, great advances have been made in scientificmethods of investigation. For instance, we did not place Miss Jeremy'schair on a scale, to measure for any loss of weight. Also the theoryof rods of invisible matter emanating from the medium's body, to movebodies at a distance from her, had only been evolved; and none of themethods for calculation of leverages and strains had been formulated, sofar as I know. 

To be frank, I am quite convinced that, even had we known of theseso-called explanations, which in reality explain nothing, we wouldhave ignored them as we became involved in the dramatic movement ofthe revelations and the personal experiences which grew out of them. Iconfess that following the night after the first seance any observationsof mine would have been of no scientific value whatever, and I believe Ican speak for the others also. 

Of the medium herself I can only say that we have never questioned herintegrity. The physical phenomena occurred before she went into trance, and during that time her forearms were rigid. During the deep trance, with which this unusual record deals, she spoke in her own voice, but ina querulous tone, and Sperry's examination of her pulse showed that itwent from eighty normal to a hundred and twenty and very feeble. 

With this preface I come to the death of Arthur Wells, our acquaintanceand neighbor, and the investigation into that death by a group of sixearnest people who call themselves the Neighborhood Club. 

*****

The Neighborhood Club was organized in my house. It was too small reallyto be called a club, but women have a way these days of conferring atitular dignity on their activities, and it is not so bad, after all. The Neighborhood Club it really was, composed of four of our neighbors, my wife, and myself. 

We had drifted into the habit of dining together on Monday eveningsat the different houses. There were Herbert Robinson and his sisterAlice--not a young woman, but clever, alert, and very alive; Sperry, thewell-known heart specialist, a bachelor still in spite of much feminineactivity; and there was old Mrs. Dane, hopelessly crippled as to theknees with rheumatism, but one of those glowing and kindly souls thathave a way of being a neighborhood nucleus. It was around her that wefirst gathered, with an idea of forming for her certain contact pointswith the active life from which she was otherwise cut off. But she gaveus, I am sure, more than we brought her, and, as will be seen later, hershrewdness was an important element in solving our mystery. 

In addition to these four there were my wife and myself. 

It had been our policy to take up different subjects for theseneighborhood dinners. Sperry was a reformer in his way, and on hisnights we generally took up civic questions. He was particularlyinterested in the responsibility of the state to the sick poor. My wifeand I had "political" evenings. Not really politics, except in theirrelation to life. I am a lawyer by profession, and dabble a bit in citygovernment. The Robinsons had literature. 

Don't misunderstand me. We had no papers, no set programs. On theRobinson evenings we discussed editorials and current periodicals, aswell as the new books and plays. We were frequently acrimonious, I fear, but our small wrangles ended with the evening. Robinson was the literaryeditor of a paper, and his sister read for a large publishing house. 

Mrs. Dane was a free-lance. "Give me that privilege, " she begged. "Atleast, until you find my evenings dull. It gives me, during all the weekbefore you come, a sort of thrilling feeling that the world is mine tochoose from. " The result was never dull. She led us all the way frommoving-pictures to modern dress. She led us even further, as you willsee. 

On consulting my note-book I find that the first evening which directlyconcerns the Arthur Wells case was Monday, November the second, of lastyear. 

It was a curious day, to begin with. There come days, now and then, that bring with them a strange sort of mental excitement. I have neveranalyzed them. With me on this occasion it took the form of nervousirritability, and something of apprehension. My wife, I remember, complained of headache, and one of the stenographers had a faintingattack. 

I have often wondered for how much of what happened to Arthur Wells theday was responsible. There are days when the world is a place for loveand play and laughter. And then there are sinister days, when the earthis a hideous place, when even the thought of immortality is unbearable, and life itself a burden; when all that is riotous and unlawful comesforth and bares itself to the light. 

This was such a day. 

I am fond of my friends, but I found no pleasure in the thought ofmeeting them that evening. I remembered the odious squeak in the wheelsof Mrs. Dane's chair. I resented the way Sperry would clear his throat. I read in the morning paper Herbert Robinson's review of a book I hadliked, and disagreed with him. Disagreed violently. I wanted to call himon the telephone and tell him that he was a fool. I felt old, although Iam only fifty-three, old and bitter, and tired. 

With the fall of twilight, things changed somewhat. I was more passive. Wretchedness encompassed me, but I was not wretched. There was violencein the air, but I was not violent. And with a bath and my dinner clothesI put away the horrors of the day. 

My wife was better, but the cook had given notice. 

"There has been quarreling among the servants all day, " my wife said. "Iwish I could go and live on a desert island. "

We have no children, and my wife, for lack of other interests, finds herhousekeeping an engrossing and serious matter. She is in the habitof bringing her domestic difficulties to me when I reach home in theevenings, a habit which sometimes renders me unjustly indignant. Mostunjustly, for she has borne with me for thirty years and is knownthroughout the entire neighborhood as a perfect housekeeper. I can closemy eyes and find any desired article in my bedroom at any time. 

We passed the Wellses' house on our way to Mrs. Dane's that night, andmy wife commented on the dark condition of the lower floor. 

"Even if they are going out, " she said, "it would add to the appearanceof the street to leave a light or two burning. But some people have nopublic feeling. "

I made no comment, I believe. The Wellses were a young couple, withchildren, and had been known to observe that they considered theneighborhood "stodgy. " And we had retaliated, I regret to say, in kind, but not with any real unkindness, by regarding them as interlopers. Theydrove too many cars, and drove them too fast; they kept a governess anddidn't see enough of their children; and their English butler made ourneat maids look commonplace. 

There is generally, in every old neighborhood, some one house on whichis fixed, so to speak, the community gaze, and in our case it was onthe Arthur Wellses'. It was a curious, not unfriendly staring, muchI daresay like that of the old robin who sees two young wild canariesbuilding near her. 

We passed the house, and went on to Mrs. Dane's. 

She had given us no inkling of what we were to have that night, and mywife conjectured a conjurer! She gave me rather a triumphant smile whenwe were received in the library and the doors into the drawing-room wereseen to be tightly closed. 

We were early, as my wife is a punctual person, and soon after ourarrival Sperry came. Mrs. Dane was in her chair as usual, with hercompanion in attendance, and when she heard Sperry's voice outside sheexcused herself and was wheeled out to him, and together we heard themgo into the drawing-room. When the Robinsons arrived she and Sperryreappeared, and we waited for her customary announcement of theevening's program. When none came, even during the meal, I confess thatmy curiosity was almost painful. 

I think, looking back, that it was Sperry who turned the talk to thesupernatural, and that, to the accompaniment of considerable gibing bythe men, he told a ghost story that set the women to looking back overtheir shoulders into the dark corners beyond the zone of candle-light. All of us, I remember, except Sperry and Mrs. Dane, were skeptical asto the supernatural, and Herbert Robinson believed that while there wereso-called sensitives who actually went into trance, the controls whichtook possession of them were buried personalities of their own, releasedduring trance from the sub-conscious mind. 

"If not, " he said truculently, "if they are really spirits, why can'tthey tell us what is going on, not in some vague place where they arealways happy, but here and now, in the next house? I don't ask forprophecy, but for some evidence of their knowledge. Are the Germansgetting ready to fight England? Is Horace here the gay dog some of ussuspect?"

As I am the Horace in question, I must explain that Herbert was merelybeing facetious. My life is a most orderly and decorous one. But mywife, unfortunately, lacks a sense of humor, and I felt that the remarkmight have been more fortunate. 

"Physical phenomena!" scoffed the cynic. "I've seen it all--objectsmoving without visible hands, unexplained currents of cold air, voicethrough a trumpet--I know the whole rotten mess, and I've got a bookwhich tells how to do all the tricks. I'll bring it along some night. "

Mrs. Dane smiled, and the discussion was dropped for a time. It wasduring the coffee and cigars that Mrs. Dane made her announcement. AsAlice Robinson takes an after-dinner cigarette, a custom my wife greatlydeplores, the ladies had remained with us at the table. 

"As a matter of fact, Herbert, " she said, "we intend to put yourskepticism to the test tonight. Doctor Sperry has found a medium for us, a non-professional and a patient of his, and she has kindly consented togive us a sitting. "

Herbert wheeled and looked at Sperry. 

"Hold up your right hand and state by your honor as a member in goodstanding that you have not primed her, Sperry. "

Sperry held up his hand. 

"Absolutely not, " he said, gravely. "She is coming in my car. Shedoesn't know to what house or whose. She knows none of you. She is astranger to the city, and she will not even recognize the neighborhood. "

II

The butler wheeled out Mrs. Dane's chair, as her companion did not dinewith her on club nights, and led us to the drawing-room doors. ThereSperry threw them, open, and we saw that the room had been completelymetamorphosed. 

Mrs. Dane's drawing-room is generally rather painful. Kindly soul thatshe is, she has considered it necessary to preserve and exhibit therethe many gifts of a long lifetime. Photographs long outgrown, onyxtables, a clutter of odd chairs and groups of discordant bric-a-bracusually make the progress of her chair through it a precarious andperilous matter. We paused in the doorway, startled. 

The room had been dismantled. It opened before us, walls andchimney-piece bare, rugs gone from the floor, even curtains taken fromthe windows. To emphasize the change, in the center stood a common pinetable, surrounded by seven plain chairs. All the lights were out saveone, a corner bracket, which was screened with a red-paper shade. 

She watched our faces with keen satisfaction. "Such a time I had doingit!" she said. "The servants, of course, think I have gone mad. Allexcept Clara. I told her. She's a sensible girl. "

Herbert chuckled. 

"Very neat, " he said, "although a chair or two for the spooks would havebeen no more than hospitable. All right. Now bring on your ghosts. "

My wife, however, looked slightly displeased. "As a church-woman, " shesaid, "I really feel that it is positively impious to bring back thesouls of the departed, before they are called from on High. "

"Oh, rats, " Herbert broke in rudely. "They'll not come. Don't worry. Andif you hear raps, don't worry. It will probably be the medium crackingthe joint of her big toe. "

There was still a half hour until the medium's arrival. At Mrs. Dane'sdirection we employed it in searching the room. It was the ordinaryrectangular drawing-room, occupying a corner of the house. Two windowsat the end faced on the street, with a patch of railed-in lawn beneaththem. A fire-place with a dying fire and flanked by two other windows, occupied the long side opposite the door into the hall. These windows, opening on a garden, were closed by outside shutters, now bolted. Thethird side was a blank wall, beyond which lay the library. On the fourthside were the double doors into the hall. 

As, although the results we obtained were far beyond any expectations, the purely physical phenomena were relatively insignificant, it is notnecessary to go further into the detail of the room. Robinson has donethat, anyhow, for the Society of Psychical Research, a proceedingto which I was opposed, as will be understood by the close of thenarrative. 

Further to satisfy Mrs. Dane, we examined the walls and floor-boardscarefully, and Herbert, armed with a candle, went down to the cellarand investigated from below, returning to announce in a loud voice whichmade us all jump that it seemed all clear enough down there. After thatwe sat and waited, and I daresay the bareness and darkness of theroom put us into excellent receptive condition. I know that I myself, probably owing to an astigmatism, once or twice felt that I saw waveringshadows in corners, and I felt again some of the strangeness I had feltduring the day. We spoke in whispers, and Alice Robinson recited thehistory of a haunted house where she had visited in England. But Herbertwas still cynical. He said, I remember:

"Here we are, six intelligent persons of above the average grade, and ina few minutes our hair will be rising and our pulses hammering while aChoctaw Indian control, in atrocious English, will tell us she is happyand we are happy and so everybody's happy. Hanky panky!"

"You may be as skeptical as you please, if you will only be fair, Herbert, " Mrs. Dane said. 

"And by that you mean--"

"During the sitting keep an open mind and a closed mouth, " she replied, cheerfully. 

As I said at the beginning, this is not a ghost story. Parts of it wenow understand, other parts we do not. For the physical phenomena wehave no adequate explanation. They occurred. We saw and heard them. Forthe other part of the seance we have come to a conclusion satisfactoryto ourselves, a conclusion not reached, however, until some of us hadgone through some dangerous experiences, and had been brought intocontact with things hitherto outside the orderly progression of ourlives. 

But at no time, although incredible things happened, did any one of usglimpse that strange world of the spirit that seemed so often almostwithin our range of vision. 

Miss Jeremy, the medium, was due at 8:30 and at 8:20 my wife assistedMrs. Dane into one of the straight chairs at the table, and Sperry, sentout by her, returned with a darkish bundle in his arms, and carrying alight bamboo rod. 

"Don't ask me what they are for, " he said to Herbert's grin ofamusement. "Every workman has his tools. "

Herbert examined the rod, but it was what it appeared to be, and nothingelse. 

Some one had started the phonograph in the library, and it was playinggloomily, "Shall we meet beyond the river?" At Sperry's request westopped talking and composed ourselves, and Herbert, I remember, tooka tablet of some sort, to our intense annoyance, and crunched it in histeeth. Then Miss Jeremy came in. 

She was not at all what we had expected. Twenty-six, I should say, andin a black dinner dress. She seemed like a perfectly normal youngwoman, even attractive in a fragile, delicate way. Not much personality, perhaps; the very word "medium" precludes that. A "sensitive, " I thinkshe called herself. We were presented to her, and but for the strippedand bare room, it might have been any evening after any dinner, withbridge waiting. 

When she shook hands with me she looked at me keenly. "What a strangeday it has been!" she said. "I have been very nervous. I only hope I cando what you want this evening. "

"I am not at all sure what we do want, Miss Jeremy, " I replied. 

She smiled a quick smile that was not without humor. Somehow I had neverthought of a medium with a sense of humor. I liked her at once. Weall liked her, and Sperry, Sperry the bachelor, the iconoclast, theantifeminist, was staring at her with curiously intent eyes. 

Following her entrance Herbert had closed and bolted the drawing-roomdoors, and as an added precaution he now drew Mrs. Dane's empty wheeledchair across them. 

"Anything that comes in, " he boasted, "will come through the keyhole ordown the chimney. "

And then, eying the fireplace, he deliberately took a picture from thewall and set it on the fender. 

Miss Jeremy gave the room only the most casual of glances. 

"Where shall I sit?" she asked. 

Mrs. Dane indicated her place, and she asked for a small stand to bebrought in and placed about two feet behind her chair, and two chairsto flank it, and then to take the black cloth from the table and hang itover the bamboo rod, which was laid across the backs of the chairs. Thusarranged, the curtain formed a low screen behind her, with the standbeyond it. On this stand we placed, at her order, various articles fromour pockets--I a fountain pen, Sperry a knife; and my wife contributed agold bracelet. 

We all felt, I fancy, rather absurd. Herbert's smile in the dim lightbecame a grin. "The same old thing!" he whispered to me. "Watch herclosely. They do it with a folding rod. "

We arranged between us that we were to sit one on each side of her, andSperry warned me not to let go of her hand for a moment. "They have away of switching hands, " he explained in a whisper. "If she wants toscratch her nose I'll scratch it. "

We were, we discovered, not to touch the table, but to sit around it ata distance of a few inches, holding hands and thus forming the circle. And for twenty minutes we sat thus, and nothing happened. She wasfully conscious and even spoke once or twice, and at last she movedimpatiently and told us to put our hands on the table. 

I had put my opened watch on the table before me, a night watch with aluminous dial. At five minutes after nine I felt the top of the tablewaver under my fingers, a curious, fluid-like motion. 

"The table is going to move, " I said. 

Herbert laughed, a dry little chuckle. "Sure it is, " he said. "When weall get to acting together, it will probably do considerable moving. Ifeel what you feel. It's flowing under my fingers. "

"Blood, " said Sperry. "You fellows feel the blood moving through theends of your fingers. That's all. Don't be impatient. "

However, curiously enough, the table did not move. Instead, my watch, before my eyes, slid to the edge of the table and dropped to the floor, and almost instantly an object, which we recognized later as Sperry'sknife, was flung over the curtain and struck the wall behind Mrs. Daneviolently. 

One of the women screamed, ending in a hysterical giggle. Then we heardrhythmic beating on the top of the stand behind the medium. Startlingas it was at the beginning, increasing as it did from a slow beat toan incredibly rapid drumming, when the initial shock was over Herbertcommenced to gibe. 

"Your fountain pen, Horace, " he said to me. "Making out a statement forservices rendered, by its eagerness. "

The answer to that was the pen itself, aimed at him with apparentaccuracy, and followed by an outcry from him. 

"Here, stop it!" he said. "I've got ink all over me!"

We laughed consumedly. The sitting had taken on all the attributes ofpractical joking. The table no longer quivered under my hands. 

"Please be sure you are holding my hands tight. Hold them very tight, "said Miss Jeremy. Her voice sounded faint and far away. Her head wasdropped forward on her chest, and she suddenly sagged in her chair. Sperry broke the circle and coming to her, took her pulse. It was, hereported, very rapid. 

"You can move and talk now if you like, " he said. "She's in trance, andthere will be no more physical demonstrations. "

Mrs. Dane was the first to speak. I was looking for my fountain pen, andHerbert was again examining the stand. 

"I believe it now, " Mrs. Dane said. "I saw your watch go, Horace, buttomorrow I won't believe it at all. "

"How about your companion?" I asked. "Can she take shorthand? We oughtto have a record. "

"Probably not in the dark. "

"We can have some light now, " Sperry said. 

There was a sort of restrained movement in the room now. Herbert turnedon a bracket light, and I moved away the roller chair. 

"Go and get Clara, Horace, " Mrs. Dane said to me, "and have her bring anote-book and pencil. " Nothing, I believe, happened during my absence. Miss Jeremy was sunk in her chair and breathing heavily when I came backwith Clara, and Sperry was still watching her pulse. Suddenly my wifesaid:

"Why, look! She's wearing my bracelet!"

This proved to be the case, and was, I regret to say, the cause ofa most unjust suspicion on my wife's part. Even today, with all theknowledge she possesses, I am certain that Mrs. Johnson believes thatsome mysterious power took my watch and dragged it off the table, andthrew the pen, but that I myself under cover of darkness placed herbracelet on Miss Jeremy's arm. I can only reiterate here what I havetold her many times, that I never touched the bracelet after it wasplaced on the stand. 

"Take down everything that happens, Clara, and all we say, " Mrs. Danesaid in a low tone. "Even if it sounds like nonsense, put it down. "

It is because Clara took her orders literally that I am making thismore readable version of her script. There was a certain amount ofnon-pertinent matter which would only cloud the statement if renderedword for word, and also certain scattered, unrelated words with whichmany of the statements terminated. For instance, at the end of thesentence, "Just above the ear, " came a number of rhymes to the finalword, "dear, near, fear, rear, cheer, three cheers. " These I have cut, for the sake of clearness. 

For some five minutes, perhaps, Miss Jeremy breathed stertorously, andit was during that interval that we introduced Clara and took up ourpositions. Sperry sat near the medium now, having changed places withHerbert, and the rest of us were as we had been, save that we no longertouched hands. Suddenly Miss Jeremy began to breathe more quietly, andto move about in her chair. Then she sat upright. 

"Good evening, friends, " she said. "I am glad to see you all again. "

I caught Herbert's eye, and he grinned. 

"Good evening, little Bright Eyes, " he said. "How's everything in thehappy hunting ground tonight?"

"Dark and cold, " she said. "Dark and cold. And the knee hurts. It's verybad. If the key is on the nail--Arnica will take the pain out. "

She lapsed into silence. In transcribing Clara's record I shall make noreference to these pauses, which were frequent, and occasionally filledin with extraneous matter. For instance, once there was what amountedto five minutes of Mother Goose jingles. Our method was simply oneof question, by one of ourselves, and of answer by Miss Jeremy. Thesereplies were usually in a querulous tone, and were often apparentlyunwilling. Also occasionally there was a bit of vernacular, as in thenext reply. Herbert, who was still flippantly amused, said:

"Don't bother about your knee. Give us some local stuff. Gossip. If youcan. "

"Sure I can, and it will make your hair curl. " Then suddenly there was asort of dramatic pause and then an outburst. 

"He's dead. "

"Who is dead?" Sperry asked, with his voice drawn a trifle thin. 

"A bullet just above the ear. That's a bad place. Thank goodness there'snot much blood. Cold water will take it out of the carpet. Not hot. Nothot. Do you want to set the stain?"

"Look here, " Sperry said, looking around the table. "I don't like this. It's darned grisly. "

"Oh, fudge!" Herbert put in irreverently. "Let her rave, or it, orwhatever it is. Do you mean that a man is dead?"--to the medium. 

"Yes. She has the revolver. She needn't cry so. He was cruel to her. Hewas a beast. Sullen. "

"Can you see the woman?" I asked. 

"If it's sent out to be cleaned it will cause trouble. Hang it in thecloset. "

Herbert muttered something about the movies having nothing on us, andwas angrily hushed. There was something quite outside of Miss Jeremy'swords that had impressed itself on all of us with a sense of unexpectedbut very real tragedy. As I look back I believe it was a sort ofdesperation in her voice. But then came one of those interruptions whichwere to annoy us considerably during the series of sittings; she beganto recite Childe Harold. 

When that was over, "Now then, " Sperry said in a businesslike voice, "you see a dead man, and a young woman with him. Can you describe the room?"

"A small room, his dressing-room. He was shaving. There is still latheron his face. "

"And the woman killed him?"

"I don't know. Oh, I don't know. No, she didn't. He did it!"

"He did it himself?"

There was no answer to that, but a sort of sulky silence. 

"Are you getting this, Clara?" Mrs. Dane asked sharply. "Don't miss aword. Who knows what this may develop into?"

I looked at the secretary, and it was clear that she was terrified. Igot up and took my chair to her. Coming back, I picked up my forgottenwatch from the floor. It was still going, and the hands markednine-thirty. 

"Now, " Sperry said in a soothing tone, "you said there was a shot firedand a man was killed. Where was this? What house?"

"Two shots. One is in the ceiling of the dressing-room. "

"And the other killed him?"

But here, instead of a reply we got the words, "library paste. "

Quite without warning the medium groaned, and Sperry believed the trancewas over. 

"She's coming out, " he said. "A glass of wine, somebody. " But she didnot come out. Instead, she twisted in the chair. 

"He's so heavy to lift, " she muttered. Then: "Get the lather off hisface. The lather. The lather. "

She subsided into the chair and began to breathe with difficulty. "Iwant to go out. I want air. If I could only go to sleep and forget it. The drawing-room furniture is scattered over the house. "

This last sentence she repeated over and over. It got on our nerves, ragged already. 

"Can you tell us about the house?"

There was a distinct pause. Then: "Certainly. A brick house. Theservants' entrance is locked, but the key is on a nail, among the vines. All the furniture is scattered through the house. "

"She must mean the furniture of this room, " Mrs. Dane whispered. 

The remainder of the sitting was chaotic. The secretary's notes consistof unrelated words and often childish verses. On going over thenotes the next day, when the stenographic record had been copied on atypewriter, Sperry and I found that one word recurred frequently. The word was "curtain. " Of the extraordinary event that followed thebreaking up of the seance, I have the keenest recollection. Miss Jeremycame out of her trance weak and looking extremely ill, and Sperry'smotor took her home. She knew nothing of what had happened, and hopedwe had been satisfied. By agreement, we did not tell her what hadtranspired, and she was not curious. 

Herbert saw her to the car, and came back, looking grave. We werestanding together in the center of the dismantled room, with the lightsgoing full now. 

"Well, " he said, "it is one of two things. Either we've been gloriouslyfaked, or we've been let in on a very tidy little crime. "

It was Mrs. Dane's custom to serve a Southern eggnog as a sort ofstir-up-cup--nightcap, she calls it--on her evenings, and we found itwaiting for us in the library. In the warmth of its open fire, and thecheer of its lamps, even in the dignity and impassiveness of the butler, there was something sane and wholesome. The women of the party reactedquickly, but I looked over to see Sperry at a corner desk, intentlyworking over a small object in the palm of his hand. 

He started when he heard me, then laughed and held out his hand. 

"Library paste!" he said. "It rolls into a soft, malleable ball. Itcould quite easily be used to fill a small hole in plaster. The paperwould paste down over it, too. "

"Then you think?"

"I'm not thinking at all. The thing she described may have taken placein Timbuctoo. May have happened ten years ago. May be the plot of somebook she has read. "

"On the other hand, " I replied, "it is just possible that it was here, in this neighborhood, while we were sitting in that room. "

"Have you any idea of the time?"

"I know exactly. It was half-past nine. "

III

At midnight, shortly after we reached home, Sperry called me on thephone. "Be careful, Horace, " he said. "Don't let Mrs. Horace thinkanything has happened. I want to see you at once. Suppose you say I havea patient in a bad way, and a will to be drawn. "

I listened to sounds from upstairs. I heard my wife go into her room andclose the door. 

"Tell me something about it, " I urged. 

"Just this. Arthur Wells killed himself tonight, shot himself in thehead. I want you to go there with me. "

"Arthur Wells!"

"Yes. I say, Horace, did you happen to notice the time the seance begantonight?"

"It was five minutes after nine when my watch fell. "

"Then it would have been about half past when the trance began?"

"Yes. "

There was a silence at Sperry's end of the wire. Then:

"He was shot about 9:30, " he said, and rang off. 

I am not ashamed to confess that my hands shook as I hung up thereceiver. A brick house, she had said; the Wells house was brick. And sowere all the other houses on the street. Vines in the back? Well, evenmy own house had vines. It was absurd; it was pure coincidence; itwas--well, I felt it was queer. 

Nevertheless, as I stood there, I wondered for the first time in ahighly material existence, whether there might not be, after all, aspirit-world surrounding us, cognizant of all that we did, touching butintangible, sentient but tuned above our common senses?

I stood by the prosaic telephone instrument and looked into the darkenedrecesses of the passage. It seemed to my disordered nerves that back ofthe coats and wraps that hung on the rack, beyond the heavy curtains, in every corner, there lurked vague and shadowy forms, invisible when Istared, but advancing a trifle from their obscurity when, by turning myhead and looking ahead, they impinged on the extreme right or left of myfield of vision. 

I was shocked by the news, but not greatly grieved. The Wellses had beenamong us but not of us, as I have said. They had come, like gay youngcomets, into our orderly constellation, trailing behind them their carsand servants, their children and governesses and rather riotous friends, and had flashed on us in a sort of bright impermanence. 

Of the two, I myself had preferred Arthur. His faults were on thesurface. He drank hard, gambled, and could not always pay his gamblingdebts. But underneath it all there had always been something boyishlyhonest about him. He had played, it is true, through most of the thirtyyears that now marked his whole life, but he could have been made a manby the right woman. And he had married the wrong one. 

Of Elinor Wells I have only my wife's verdict, and I have found that, asis the way with many good women, her judgments of her own sex are rathermerciless. A tall, handsome girl, very dark, my wife has characterizedher as cold, calculating and ambitious. She has said frequently, too, that Elinor Wells was a disappointed woman, that her marriage, whilegiving her social identity, had disappointed her in a monetary way. Whether that is true or not, there was no doubt, by the time they hadlived in our neighborhood for a year, that a complication had arisen inthe shape of another man. 

My wife, on my return from my office in the evening, had been quitelikely to greet me with:

"Horace, he has been there all afternoon. I really think somethingshould be done about it. "

"Who has been where?" I would ask, I am afraid not too patiently. 

"You know perfectly well. And I think you ought to tell him. "

In spite of her vague pronouns, I understood, and in a more masculineway I shared her sense of outrage. Our street has never had a scandalon it, except the one when the Berringtons' music teacher ran away withtheir coachman, in the days of carriages. And I am glad to say that thatis almost forgotten. 

Nevertheless, we had realized for some time that the dreaded trianglewas threatening the repute of our quiet neighborhood, and as I stoodby the telephone that night I saw that it had come. More than that, it seemed very probable that into this very triangle our peacefulNeighborhood Club had been suddenly thrust. 

My wife accepted my excuse coldly. She dislikes intensely the occasionaloutside calls of my profession. She merely observed, however, that shewould leave all the lights on until my return. "I should think you couldarrange things better, Horace, " she added. "It's perfectly idiotic theway people die at night. And tonight, of all nights!"

I shall have to confess that through all of the thirty years of ourmarried life my wife has clung to the belief that I am a bit of a dog. Thirty years of exemplary living have not affected this conviction, norhad Herbert's foolish remark earlier in the evening helped matters. Butshe watched me put on my overcoat without further comment. When I kissedher good-night, however, she turned her cheek. 

The street, with its open spaces, was a relief after the dark hall. Istarted for Sperry's house, my head bent against the wind, my mind onthe news I had just heard. Was it, I wondered, just possible that we hadfor some reason been allowed behind the veil which covered poor Wells'last moments? And, to admit that for a moment, where would what we hadheard lead us? Sperry had said he had killed himself. But--suppose hehad not?

I realize now, looking back, that my recollection of the other man inthe triangle is largely colored by the fact that he fell in the greatwar. At that time I hardly knew him, except as a wealthy and self-mademan in his late thirties; I saw him now and then, in the club playingbilliards or going in and out of the Wells house, a large, fastidiouslydressed man, strong featured and broad shouldered, with rather too muchmanner. I remember particularly how I hated the light spats he affected, and the glaring yellow gloves. 

A man who would go straight for the thing he wanted, woman or power ormoney. And get it. 

Sperry was waiting on his door-step, and we went on to the Wells house. What with the magnitude of the thing that had happened, and our mutualfeeling that we were somehow involved in it, we were rather silent. Sperry asked one question, however, "Are you certain about the time whenMiss Jeremy saw what looks like this thing?"

"Certainly. My watch fell at five minutes after nine. When it was allover, and I picked it up, it was still going, and it was 9:30. "

He was silent for a moment. Then:

"The Wellses' nursery governess telephoned for me at 9:35. We keep arecord of the time of all calls. "

Sperry is a heart specialist, I think I have said, with offices in hishouse. 

And, a block or so farther on: "I suppose it was bound to come. To tellthe truth, I didn't think the boy had the courage. "

"Then you think he did it?"

"They say so, " he said grimly. And added, --irritably: "Good heavens, Horace, we must keep that other fool thing out of our minds. "

"Yes, " I agreed. "We must. "

Although the Wells house was brilliantly lighted when we reached it, we had difficulty in gaining admission. Whoever were in the house wereup-stairs, and the bell evidently rang in the deserted kitchen or aneighboring pantry. 

"We might try the servants' entrance, " Sperry said. Then he laughedmirthlessly. 

"We might see, " he said, "if there's a key on the nail among the vines. "

I confess to a nervous tightening of my muscles as we made our wayaround the house. If the key was there, we were on the track of arevelation that might revolutionize much that we had held fundamental inscience and in our knowledge of life itself. If, sitting in Mrs. Dane'squiet room, a woman could tell us what was happening in a house a mileor so away, it opened up a new earth. Almost a new heaven. 

I stopped and touched Sperry's arm. "This Miss Jeremy--did she knowArthur Wells or Elinor? If she knew the house, and the situation betweenthem, isn't it barely possible that she anticipated this thing?"

"We knew them, " he said gruffly, "and whatever we anticipated, it wasn'tthis. "

Sperry had a pocket flash, and when we found the door locked weproceeded with our search for the key. The porch had been covered withheavy vines, now dead of the November frosts, and showing, here andthere, dead and dried leaves that crackled as we touched them. In thedarkness something leaped against, me, and I almost cried out. It was, however, only a collie dog, eager for the warmth of his place by thekitchen fire. 

"Here's the key, " Sperry said, and held it out. The flash wavered in hishand, and his voice was strained. 

"So far, so good, " I replied, and was conscious that my own voice rangstrange in my ears. 

We admitted ourselves, and the dog, bounding past us, gave a sharp yelpof gratitude and ran into the kitchen. 

"Look here, Sperry, " I said, as we stood inside the door, "they don'twant me here. They've sent for you, but I'm the most casual sort of anacquaintance. I haven't any business here. "

That struck him, too. We had both been so obsessed with the scene atMrs. Dane's that we had not thought of anything else. 

"Suppose you sit down in the library, " he said. "The chances are againsther coming down, and the servants don't matter. "

As a matter of fact, we learned later that all the servants were outexcept the nursery governess. There were two small children. There was aservants' ball somewhere, and, with the exception of the butler, it wasafter two before they commenced to straggle in. Except two plain-clothesmen from the central office, a physician who was with Elinor in herroom, and the governess, there was no one else in the house but thechildren, asleep in the nursery. 

As I sat alone in the library, the house was perfectly silent. But insome strange fashion it had apparently taken on the attributes of thedeed that had preceded the silence. It was sinister, mysterious, dark. Its immediate effect on my imagination was apprehension--almost terror. Murder or suicide, here among the shadows a soul, an indestructiblething, had been recently violently wrenched from its body. The body layin the room overhead. But what of the spirit? I shivered as I thoughtthat it might even then be watching me with formless eyes from some darkcorner. 

Overwrought as I was, I was forced to bring my common sense to bear onthe situation. Here was a tragedy, a real and terrible one. Suppose wehad, in some queer fashion, touched its outer edges that night? Thenhow was it that there had come, mixed up with so much that might bepertinent, such extraneous and grotesque things as Childe Harold, a hurtknee, and Mother Goose?

I remember moving impatiently, and trying to argue myself into myordinary logical state of mind, but I know now that even then I waswondering whether Sperry had found a hole in the ceiling upstairs. 

I wandered, I recall, into the realm of the clairvoyant and theclairaudient. Under certain conditions, such as trance, I knew that someindividuals claimed a power of vision that was supernormal, and I had atone time lunched at my club with a well-dressed gentleman in a pincenez who said the room was full of people I could not see, but who wereperfectly distinct to him. He claimed, and I certainly could not refutehim, that he saw further into the violet of the spectrum than the restof us, and seemed to consider it nothing unusual when an elderly woman, whose description sounded much like my great-grand-mother, came andstood behind my chair. 

I recall that he said she was stroking my hair, and that following thatI had a distinctly creepy sensation along my scalp. 

Then there were those who claimed that in trance the spirit of themedium, giving place to a control, was free to roam whither it would, and, although I am not sure of this, that it wandered in the fourthdimension. While I am very vague about the fourth dimension, I did knowthat in it doors and walls were not obstacles. But as they would notbe obstacles to a spirit, even in the world as we know it, that got menowhere. 

Suppose Sperry came down and said Arthur Wells had been shot above theear, and that there was a second bullet hole in the ceiling? Added tothe key on the nail, a careless custom and surely not common, we wouldhave conclusive proof that our medium had been correct. There wasanother point, too. Miss Jeremy had said, "Get the lather off his face. "

That brought me up with a turn. Would a man stop shaving to killhimself? If he did, why a revolver? Why not the razor in his hand?

I knew from my law experience that suicide is either a desperate impulseor a cold-blooded and calculated finality. A man who kills himself whiledressing comes under the former classification, and will usually seizethe first method at hand. But there was something else, too. Shavingis an automatic process. It completes itself. My wife has an irritatedconviction that if the house caught fire while I was in the midst of theprocess, I would complete it and rinse the soap from my face before Icaught up the fire-extinguisher. 

Had he killed himself, or had Elinor killed him? Was she the sort tosacrifice herself to a violent impulse? Would she choose the hard way, when there was the easy one of the divorce court? I thought not. And thesame was true of Ellingham. Here were two people, both of them carefulof appearance, if not of fact. There was another possibility, too. That he had learned something while he was dressing, had attacked orthreatened her with a razor, and she had killed him in self-defence. 

I had reached that point when Sperry came down the staircase, usheringout the detectives and the medical man. He came to the library door andstood looking at me, with his face rather paler than usual. 

"I'll take you up now, " he said. "She's in her room, in bed, and she hashad an opiate. "

"Was he shot above the ear?"

"Yes. "

I did not look at him, nor he at me. We climbed the stairs and enteredthe room, where, according to Elinor's story, Arthur Wells had killedhimself. It was a dressing-room, as Miss Jeremy had described. Awardrobe, a table with books and magazines in disorder, two chairs, anda couch, constituted the furnishings. Beyond was a bathroom. On a chairby a window the dead mans's evening clothes were neatly laid out, hisshoes beneath. His top hat and folded gloves were on the table. 

Arthur Wells lay on the couch. A sheet had been drawn over the body, andI did not disturb it. It gave the impression of unusual length that isalways found, I think, in the dead, and a breath of air from an openwindow, by stirring the sheet, gave a false appearance of life beneath. 

The house was absolutely still. 

When I glanced at Sperry he was staring at the ceiling, and I followedhis eyes, but there was no mark on it. Sperry made a little gesture. 

"It's queer, " he muttered. "It's--"

"The detective and I put him there. He was here. " He showed a place onthe floor midway of the room. 

"Where was his head lying?" I asked, cautiously. 

"Here. "

I stooped and examined the carpet. It was a dark Oriental, with much redin it. I touched the place, and then ran my folded handkerchief over it. It came up stained with blood. 

"There would be no object in using cold water there, so as not to setthe stain, " Sperry said thoughtfully. "Whether he fell there or not, that is where she allowed him to be found. "

"You don't think he fell there?"

"She dragged him, didn't she?" he demanded. Then the strangeness of whathe was saying struck him, and he smiled foolishly. "What I mean is, themedium said she did. I don't suppose any jury would pass us tonight asentirely sane, Horace, " he said. 

He walked across to the bathroom and surveyed it from the doorway. Ifollowed him. It was as orderly as the other room. On a glass shelfover the wash-stand were his razors, a safety and, beside it, in a blackcase, an assortment of the long-bladed variety, one for each day of theweek, and so marked. 

Sperry stood thoughtfully in the doorway. 

"The servants are out, " he said. "According to Elinor's statement hewas dressing when he did it. And yet some one has had a wild impulse fortidiness here, since it happened. Not a towel out of place!"

It was in the bathroom that he told me Elinor's story. According to her, it was a simple case of suicide. And she was honest about it, in herown way. She was shocked, but she was not pretending any wild grief. She hadn't wanted him to die, but she had not felt that they could go onmuch longer together. There had been no quarrel other than their usualbickering. They had been going to a dance that night. The servantshad all gone out immediately after dinner to a servants' ball and thegoverness had gone for a walk. She was to return at nine-thirty tofasten Elinor's gown and to be with the children. 

Arthur, she said, had been depressed for several days, and at dinnerhad hardly spoken at all. He had not, however, objected to the dance. Hehad, indeed, seemed strangely determined to go, although she had pleadeda headache. At nine o'clock he went upstairs, apparently to dress. 

She was in her room, with the door shut, when she heard a shot. Sheran in and found him lying on the floor of his dressing-room with hisrevolver behind him. The governess was still out. The shot had rousedthe children, and they had come down from the nursery above. She wasfrantic, but she had to soothe them. The governess, however, came inalmost immediately, and she had sent her to the telephone to summonhelp, calling Sperry first of all, and then the police. 

"Have you seen the revolver?" I asked. 

"Yes. It's all right, apparently. Only one shot had been fired. "

"How soon did they get a doctor?"

"It must have been some time. They gave up telephoning, and thegoverness went out, finally, and found one. "

"Then, while she was out--?"

"Possibly, " Sperry said. "If we start with the hypothesis that she waslying. "

"If she cleaned up here for any reason, " I began, and commenced adesultory examination of the room. Just why I looked behind the bathtubforces me to an explanation I am somewhat loath to make, but which willexplain a rather unusual proceeding. For some time my wife has felt thatI smoked too heavily, and out of her solicitude for me has limited meto one cigar after dinner. But as I have been a heavy smoker for yearsI have found this a great hardship, and have therefore kept a reservestore, by arrangement with the housemaid, behind my tub. In self-defenceI must also state that I seldom have recourse to such stealthy measures. 

Believing then that something might possibly be hidden there, I madean investigation, and could see some small objects lying there. Sperrybrought me a stick from the dressing-room, and with its aid succeeded inbringing out the two articles which were instrumental in starting us onour brief but adventurous careers as private investigators. One was aleather razor strop, old and stiff from disuse, and the other a wet bathsponge, now stained with blood to a yellowish brown. 

"She is lying, Sperry, " I said. "He fell somewhere else, and she draggedhim to where he was found. "

"But--why?"

"I don't know, " I said impatiently. "From some place where a man wouldbe unlikely to kill himself, I daresay. No one ever killed himself, forinstance, in an open hallway. Or stopped shaving to do it. "

"We have only Miss Jeremy's word for that, " he said, sullenly. "Confoundit, Horace, don't let's bring in that stuff if we can help it. "

We stared at each other, with the strop and the sponge between us. Suddenly he turned on his heel and went back into the room, and a momentlater he called me, quietly. 

"You're right, " he said. "The poor devil was shaving. He had it halfdone. Come and look. "

But I did not go. There was a carafe of water in the bathroom, and Itook a drink from it. My hands were shaking. When I turned around Ifound Sperry in the hall, examining the carpet with his flash light, andnow and then stooping to run his hand over the floor. 

"Nothing here, " he said in a low tone, when I had joined him. "At leastI haven't found anything. "

IV

How much of Sperry's proceeding with the carpet the governess had seenI do not know. I glanced up and she was there, on the staircase to thethird floor, watching us. I did not know, then, whether she recognizedme or not, for the Wellses' servants were as oblivious of the familieson the street as their employers. But she knew Sperry, and was readyenough to talk to him. 

"How is she now?" she asked. 

"She is sleeping, Mademoiselle. "

"The children also. "

She came down the stairs, a lean young Frenchwoman in a dark dressinggown, and Sperry suggested that she too should have an opiate. She seized at the idea, but Sperry did not go down at once for hisprofessional bag. 

"You were not here when it occurred, Mademoiselle?" he inquired. 

"No, doctor. I had been out for a walk. " She clasped her hands. "When Icame back--"

"Was he still on the floor of the dressing-room when you came in?"

"But yes. Of course. She was alone. She could not lift him. "

"I see, " Sperry said thoughtfully. "No, I daresay she couldn't. Was therevolver on the floor also?"

"Yes, doctor. I myself picked it up. "

To Sperry she showed, I observed, a slight deference, but when sheglanced at me, as she did after each reply, I thought her expressionslightly altered. At the time this puzzled me, but it was explained whenSperry started down the stairs. 

"Monsieur is of the police?" she asked, with a Frenchwoman's timidrespect for the constabulary. 

I hesitated before I answered. I am a truthful man, and I hateunnecessary lying. But I ask consideration of the circumstances. Neitherthen nor at any time later was the solving of the Wells mystery theprime motive behind the course I laid out and consistently followed. Ifelt that we might be on the verge of some great psychic discovery, onewhich would revolutionize human thought and to a certain extent humanaction. And toward that end I was prepared to go to almost any length. 

"I am making a few investigations, " I told her. "You say Mrs. Wells wasalone in the house, except for her husband?"

"The children. "

"Mr. Wells was shaving, I believe, when the--er--impulse overtook him?"

There was no doubt as to her surprise. "Shaving? I think not. "

"What sort of razor did he ordinarily use?"

"A safety razor always. At least I have never seen any others around. "

"There is a case of old-fashioned razors in the bathroom. "

She glanced toward the room and shrugged her shoulders. "Possibly heused others. I have not seen any. "

"It was you, I suppose, who cleaned up afterwards. "

"Cleaned up?"

"You who washed up the stains. "

"Stains? Oh, no, monsieur. Nothing of the sort has yet been done. "

I felt that she was telling the truth, so far as she knew it, and I thenasked about the revolver. 

"Do you know where Mr. Wells kept his revolver?"

"When I first came it was in the drawer of that table. I suggested thatit be placed beyond the children's reach. I do not know where it wasput. "

"Do you recall how you left the front door when you went out? I mean, was it locked?"

"No. The servants were out, and I knew there would be no one to admitme. I left it unfastened. "

But it was evident that she had broken a rule of the house by doing so, for she added: "I am afraid to use the servants' entrance. It is darkthere. "

"The key is always hung on the nail when they are out?"

"Yes. If any one of them is out it is left there. There is only one key. The family is out a great deal, and it saves bringing some one down fromthe servants' rooms at the top of the house. "

But I think my knowledge of the key bothered her, for some reason. Andas I read over my questions, certainly they indicated a suspicion thatthe situation was less simple than it appeared. She shot a quick glanceat me. 

"Did you examine the revolver when you picked it up?"

"I, monsieur? Non!" Then her fears, whatever they were, got the best ofher. "I know nothing but what I tell you. I was out. I can prove thatthat is so. I went to a pharmacy; the clerk will remember. I will gowith you, monsieur, and he will tell you that I used the telephonethere. "

I daresay my business of cross-examination, of watching evidence helpedme to my next question. 

"You went out to telephone when there is a telephone in the house?"

But here again, as once or twice before, a veil dropped between us. She avoided my eyes. "There are things one does not want the family tohear, " she muttered. Then, having determined on a course of action, shefollowed it. "I am looking for another position. I do not like it here. The children are spoiled. I only came for a month's trial. "

"And the pharmacy?"

"Elliott's, at the corner of State Avenue and McKee Street. "

I told her that it would not be necessary for her to go to the pharmacy, and she muttered something about the children and went up the stairs. When Sperry came back with the opiate she was nowhere in sight, and hewas considerably annoyed. 

"She knows something, " I told him. "She is frightened. "

Sperry eyed me with a half frown. 

"Now see here, Horace, " he said, "suppose we had come in here, withoutthe thought of that seance behind us? We'd have accepted the thing as itappears to be, wouldn't we? There may be a dozen explanations for thatsponge, and for the razor strop. What in heaven's name has a razor stropto do with it anyhow? One bullet was fired, and the revolver has oneempty chamber. It may not be the custom to stop shaving in order tocommit suicide, but that's no argument that it can't be done, and as tothe key--how do I know that my own back door key isn't hung outside on anail sometimes?"

"We might look again for that hole in the ceiling. "

"I won't do it. Miss Jeremy has read of something of that sort, or heardof it, and stored it in her subconscious mind. "

But he glanced up at the ceiling nevertheless, and a moment later haddrawn up a chair and stepped onto it, and I did the same thing. Wepresented, I imagine, rather a strange picture, and I know that thepresence of the rigid figure on the couch gave me a sort of ghoulishfeeling. 

The house was an old one, and in the center of the high ceiling aplaster ornament surrounded the chandelier. Our search graduallycentered on this ornament, but the chairs were low and our long-distanceexamination revealed nothing. It was at that time, too, that we heardsome one in the lower hall, and we had only a moment to put our chairsin place before the butler came in. He showed no surprise, but stoodlooking at the body on the couch, his thin face working. 

"I met the detectives outside, doctor, " he said. "It's a terrible thing, sir, a terrible thing. "

"I'd keep the other servants out of this room, Hawkins. "

"Yes, sir. " He went over to the sheet, lifted the edge slowly, and thenreplaced it, and tip-toed to the door. "The others are not back yet. I'll admit them, and get them up quietly. How is Mrs. Wells?"

"Sleeping, " Sperry said briefly, and Hawkins went out. 

I realize now that Sperry was--I am sure he will forgive this--in astate of nerves that night. For example, he returned only an impatientsilence to my doubt as to whether Hawkins had really only just returnedand he quite missed something downstairs which I later proved to havean important bearing on the case. This was when we were going out, andafter Hawkins had opened the front door for us. It had been freezinghard, and Sperry, who has a bad ankle, looked about for a walking stick. He found one, and I saw Hawkins take a swift step forward, and thenstop, with no expression whatever in his face. 

"This will answer, Hawkins. "

"Yes, sir, " said Hawkins impassively. 

And if I realize that Sperry was nervous that night, I also realize thathe was fighting a battle quite his own, and with its personal problems. 

"She's got to quit this sort of thing, " he said savagely and apropos ofnothing, as we walked along. "It's hard on her, and besides--"

"Yes?"

"She couldn't have learned about it, " he said, following his own trailof thought. "My car brought her from her home to the house-door. Shewas brought in to us at once. But don't you see that if there are otherdevelopments, to prove her statements she--well, she's as innocent as achild, but take Herbert, for instance. Do you suppose he'll believe shehad no outside information?"

"But it was happening while we were shut in the drawing-room. "

"So Elinor claims. But if there was anything to hide, it would havetaken time. An hour or so, perhaps. You can see how Herbert would jumpon that. "

We went back, I remember, to speaking of the seance itself, and to thesafer subject of the physical phenomena. As I have said, we did notthen know of those experimenters who claim that the medium can evokeso-called rods of energy, and that by its means the invisible "controls"can perform their strange feats of levitation and the movement of solidbodies. Sperry touched very lightly on the spirit side. 

"At least it would mean activity, " he said. "The thought of an inerteternity is not bearable. "

He was inclined, however, to believe that there were laws of which wewere still in ignorance, and that we might some day find and use thefourth dimension. He seemed to be able to grasp it quite clearly. "Thecube of the cube, or hypercube, " he explained. "Or get it this way: acone passed apex-downward through a plane. "

"I know, " I said, "that it is perfectly simple. But somehow it justsounds like words to me. "

"It's perfectly clear, Horace, " he insisted. "But remember this whenyou try to work it out; it is necessary to use motion as a translator oftime into space, or of space into time. "

"I don't intend to work it out, " I said irritably. "But I mean to usemotion as a translator of the time, which is 1:30 in the morning, totake me to a certain space, which is where I live. "

But as it happened, I did not go into my house when I reached it. I waswide awake, and I perceived, on looking up at my wife's windows, thatthe lights were out. As it is her custom to wait up for me on those rareoccasions when I spend an evening away from home, I surmised that shewas comfortably asleep, and made my way to the pharmacy to which theWellses' governess had referred. 

The night-clerk was in the prescription-room behind the shop. He hadfixed himself comfortably on two chairs, with an old table-cover overhis knee and a half-empty bottle of sarsaparilla on a wooden box besidehim. He did not waken until I spoke to him. 

"Sorry to rouse you, Jim, " I said. 

He flung off the cover and jumped up, upsetting the bottle, whichtrickled a stale stream to the floor. "Oh, that's all right, Mr. Johnson, I wasn't asleep, anyhow. "

I let that go, and went at once to the object of our visit. Yes, heremembered the governess, knew her, as a matter of fact. The Wellses'bought a good many things there. Asked as to her telephoning, he thoughtit was about nine o'clock, maybe earlier. But questioned as to what shehad telephoned about, he drew himself up. 

"Oh, see here, " he said. "I can't very well tell you that, can I? Thisbusiness has got ethics, all sorts of ethics. "

He enlarged on that. The secrets of the city, he maintained loftily, were in the hands of the pharmacies. It was a trust that they kept. "Every trouble from dope to drink, and then some, " he boasted. 

When I told him that Arthur Wells was dead his jaw dropped, but therewas no more argument in him. He knew very well the number the governesshad called. 

"She's done it several times, " he said. "I'll be frank with you. I gotcurious after the third evening, and called it myself. You know thetrick. I found out it was the Ellingham, house, up State Street. "

"What was the nature of the conversations?"

"Oh, she was very careful. It's an open phone and any one could hearher. Once she said somebody was not to come. Another time she just said, 'This is Suzanne Gautier. 9:30, please. '"

"And tonight?"

"That the family was going out--not to call. "

When I told him it was a case of suicide, his jaw dropped. 

"Can you beat it?" he said. "I ask you, can you beat it? A fellow whohad everything!"

But he was philosophical, too. 

"A lot of people get the bug once in a while, " he said. "They comein here for a dose of sudden death, and it takes watching. You'd besurprised the number of things that will do the trick if you takeenough. I don't know. If things get to breaking wrong--"

His voice trailed off, and he kicked at the old table cover on thefloor. 

"It's a matter of the point of view, " he said more cheerfully. "And mypoint of view just now is that this place is darned cold, and so's thestreet. You'd better have a little something to warm you up before yougo out, Mr. Johnson. "

I was chilled through, to tell the truth, and although I rarely drinkanything I went back with him and took an ounce or two of villainouswhiskey, poured out of a jug into a graduated glass. It is with deephumiliation of spirit I record that a housemaid coming into my libraryat seven o'clock the next morning, found me, in top hat and overcoat, asleep on the library couch. 

I had, however, removed my collar and tie, and my watch, carefullywound, was on the smoking-stand beside me. 

The death of Arthur Wells had taken place on Monday evening. Tuesdaybrought nothing new. The coroner was apparently satisfied, and onWednesday the dead man's body was cremated. 

"Thus obliterating all evidence, " Sperry said, with what I felt was anote of relief. 

But I think the situation was bothering him, and that he hoped todiscount in advance the second sitting by Miss Jeremy, which Mrs. Dane had already arranged for the following Monday, for on Wednesdayafternoon, following a conversation over the telephone, Sperry and I hada private sitting with Miss Jeremy in Sperry's private office. I tookmy wife into our confidence and invited her to be present, but theunfortunate coldness following the housemaid's discovery of me asleepin the library on the morning after the murder, was still noticeable andshe refused. 

The sitting, however, was totally without value. There was difficultyon the medium's part in securing the trance condition, and she broke outonce rather petulantly, with the remark that we were interfering withher in some way. 

I noticed that Sperry had placed Arthur Wells's stick unobtrusively onhis table, but we secured only rambling and non-pertinent replies to ourquestions, and whether it was because I knew that outside it was broadday, or because the Wells matter did not come up at all I found a totallack of that sense of the unknown which made all the evening sittings sogrisly. 

I am sure she knew we had wanted something, and that she had failed togive it to us, for when she came out she was depressed and in a state oflowered vitality. 

"I'm afraid I'm not helping you, " she said. "I'm a little tired, Ithink. "

She was tired. I felt suddenly very sorry for her. She was so pretty andso young--only twenty-six or thereabouts--to be in the grip of forcesso relentless. Sperry sent her home in his car, and took to pacing thefloor of his office. 

"I'm going to give it up, Horace, " he said. "Perhaps you are right. Wemay be on the verge of some real discovery. But while I'm interested, sointerested that it interferes with my work, I'm frankly afraid to go on. There are several reasons. "

I argued with him. There could be no question that if things were leftas they were, a number of people would go through life convinced thatElinor Wells had murdered her husband. Look at the situation. She hadsent out all the servants and the governess, surely an unusual thing inan establishment of that sort. And Miss Jeremy had been vindicated inthree points; some stains had certainly been washed up, we had found thekey where she had stated it to be, and Arthur had certainly been shavinghimself. 

"In other words, " I argued, "we can't stop, Sperry. You can't stop. Butmy idea would be that our investigations be purely scientific and notcriminal. "

"Also, in other words, " he said, "you think we will discover something, so you suggest that we compound a felony and keep it to ourselves!"

"Exactly, " I said drily. 

It is of course possible that my nerves were somewhat unstrung duringthe days that followed. I wakened one night to a terrific thump whichshook my bed, and which seemed to be the result of some one havingstruck the foot-board with a plank. Immediately following this camea sharp knocking on the antique bed-warmer which hangs beside myfireplace. When I had sufficiently recovered my self-control I turned onmy bedside lamp, but the room was empty. 

Again I wakened with a feeling of intense cold. I was frozen with it, and curiously enough it was an inner cold. It seemed to have nothing todo with the surface of my body. I have no explanation to make of thesephenomena. Like the occurrences at the seance, they were, and that wasall. 

But on Thursday night of that week my wife came into my bedroom, andstated flatly that there were burglars in the house. 

Now it has been my contention always that if a burglar gains entrance, he should be allowed to take what he wants. Silver can be replaced, but as I said to my wife then, Horace Johnson could not. But she hadrecently acquired a tea set formerly belonging to her great-grandmother, and apprehension regarding it made her, for the nonce, less solicitousfor me than usual. 

"Either you go or I go, " she said. "Where's your revolver?"

I got out of bed at that, and went down the stairs. But I must confessthat I felt, the moment darkness surrounded me, considerably lesstrepidation concerning the possible burglar than I felt as to thedarkness itself. Mrs. Johnson had locked herself in my bedroom, andthere was something horrible in the black depths of the lower hall. 

We are old-fashioned people, and have not yet adopted electric light. I carried a box of matches, but at the foot of the stairs the one I hadlighted went out. I was terrified. I tried to light another match, butthere was a draft from somewhere, and it too was extinguished before Ihad had time to glance about. I was immediately conscious of a sort ofsoft movement around me, as of shadowy shapes that passed and repassed. Once it seemed to me that a hand was laid on my shoulder and was notlifted, but instead dissolved into the other shadows around. The suddenstriking of the clock on the stair landing completed my demoralization. I turned and fled upstairs, pursued, to my agonized nerves, by ghostlyhands that came toward me from between the spindles of the stair-rail. 

At dawn I went downstairs again, heartily ashamed of myself. I foundthat a door to the basement had been left open, and that the softmovement had probably been my overcoat, swaying in the draft. 

Probably. I was not certain. Indeed, I was certain of nothing duringthose strange days. I had built up for myself a universe upheld bycertain laws, of day and night, of food and sleep and movement, of threedimensions of space. And now, it seemed to me, I had stood all my lifebut on the threshold, and, for an hour or so, the door had opened. 

Sperry had, I believe, told Herbert Robinson of what we had discovered, but nothing had been said to the women. I knew through my wife that theywere wildly curious, and the night of the second seance Mrs. Dane drewme aside and I saw that she suspected, without knowing, that we had beenendeavoring to check up our revelations with the facts. 

"I want you to promise me one thing, " she said. "I'll not bother younow. But I'm an old woman, with not much more of life to be influencedby any disclosures. When this thing is over, and you have come toa conclusion--I'll not put it that way: you may not come to aconclusion--but when it is over, I want you to tell me the whole story. Will you?"

I promised that I would. 

Miss Jeremy did not come to dinner. She never ate before a seance. Andalthough we tried to keep the conversational ball floating airily, therewas not the usual effervescence of the Neighborhood Club dinners. Oneand all, we were waiting, we knew not for what. 

I am sorry to record that there were no physical phenomena of any sortat this second seance. The room was arranged as it had been at the firstsitting, except that a table with a candle and a chair had been placedbehind a screen for Mrs. Dane's secretary. 

There was one other change. Sperry had brought the walking-stick he hadtaken from Arthur Wells's room, and after the medium was in trance heplaced it on the table before her. 

The first questions were disappointing in results. Asked about thestick, there was only silence. When, however, Sperry went back to thesitting of the week before, and referred to questions and answers atthat time, the medium seemed uneasy. Her hand, held under mine, made aneffort to free itself and, released, touched the cane. She lifted it, and struck the table a hard blow with it. 

"Do you know to whom that stick belongs?"

A silence. Then: "Yes. "

"Will you tell us what you know about it?"

"It is writing. "

"Writing?"

"It was writing, but the water washed it away. "

Then, instantly and with great rapidity, followed a wild torrent ofwords and incomplete sentences. It is inarticulate, and the secretarymade no record of it. As I recall, however, it was about water, children, and the words "ten o'clock" repeated several times. 

"Do you mean that something happened at ten o'clock?"

"No. Certainly not. No, indeed. The water washed it away. All of it. Nota trace. "

"Where did all this happen?"

She named, without hesitation, a seaside resort about fifty miles fromour city. There was not one of us, I dare say, who did not know that theWellses had spent the preceding summer there and that Charlie Ellinghamhad been there, also. 

"Do you know that Arthur Wells is dead?"

"Yes. He is dead. "

"Did he kill himself?"

"You can't catch me on that. I don't know. "

Here the medium laughed. It was horrible. And the laughter made thewhole thing absurd. But it died away quickly. 

"If only the pocketbook was not lost, " she said. "There were so manythings in it. Especially car-tickets. Walking is a nuisance. "

Mrs. Dane's secretary suddenly spoke. "Do you want me to take thingslike that?" she asked. 

"Take everything, please, " was the answer. 

"Car-tickets and letters. It will be terrible if the letters are found. "

"Where was the pocketbook lost?" Sperry asked. 

"If that were known, it could be found, " was the reply, rather sharplygiven. "Hawkins may have it. He was always hanging around. The curtainwas much safer. "

"What curtain?"

"Nobody would have thought of the curtain. First ideas are best. "

She repeated this, following it, as once before, with rhymes for thefinal word, best, rest, chest, pest. 

"Pest!" she said. "That's Hawkins!" And again the laughter. 

"Did one of the bullets strike the ceiling?"

"Yes. But you'll never find it. It is holding well. That part's safeenough--unless it made a hole in the floor above. "

"But there was only one empty chamber in the revolver. How could twoshots have been fired?"

There was no answer at all to this. And Sperry, after waiting, went onto his next question: "Who occupied the room overhead?"

But here we received the reply to the previous question: "There was abox of cartridges in the table-drawer. That's easy. "

From that point, however, the interest lapsed. Either there was noanswer to questions, or we got the absurdity that we had encounteredbefore, about the drawing-room furniture. But, unsatisfactory in manyways as the seance had been, the effect on Miss Jeremy was profound--shewas longer in coming out, and greatly exhausted when it was all over. 

She refused to take the supper Mrs. Dane had prepared for her, and ateleven o'clock Sperry took her home in his car. 

I remember that Mrs. Dane inquired, after she had gone. 

"Does any one know the name of the Wellses' butler? Is it Hawkins?"

I said nothing, and as Sperry was the only one likely to know and he hadgone, the inquiry went no further. Looking back, I realize thatHerbert, while less cynical, was still skeptical, that his sister wasnon-committal, but for some reason watching me, and that Mrs. Dane wasin a state of delightful anticipation. 

My wife, however, had taken a dislike to Miss Jeremy, and said that thewhole thing bored her. 

"The men like it, of course, " she said, "Horace fairly simpers withpleasure while he sits and holds her hand. But a woman doesn't impose onother women so easily. It's silly. "

"My dear, " Mrs. Dane said, reaching over and patting my wife's hand, "people talked that way about Columbus and Galileo. And if it isnonsense it is such thrilling nonsense!"

VI

I find that the solution of the Arthur Wells mystery--for we did solveit--takes three divisions in my mind. Each one is a sitting, followed byan investigation made by Sperry and myself. 

But for some reason, after Miss Jeremy's second sitting, I found that myreasoning mind was stronger than my credulity. And as Sperry had at thattime determined to have nothing more to do with the business, I madea resolution to abandon my investigations. Nor have I any reason tobelieve that I would have altered my attitude toward the case, had itnot been that I saw in the morning paper on the Thursday followingthe second seance, that Elinor Wells had closed her house, and gone toFlorida. 

I tried to put the fact out of my mind that morning. After all, whatgood would it do? No discovery of mine could bring Arthur Wells backto his family, to his seat at the bridge table at the club, to his tooexpensive cars and his unpaid bills. Or to his wife who was not grievingfor him. 

On the other hand, I confess to an overwhelming desire to examine againthe ceiling of the dressing room and thus to check up one degree furtherthe accuracy of our revelations. After some debate, therefore, I calledup Sperry, but he flatly refused to go on any further. 

"Miss Jeremy has been ill since Monday, " he said. "Mrs. Dane'srheumatism is worse, her companion is nervously upset, and your own wifecalled me up an hour ago and says you are sleeping with a light, and shethinks you ought to go away. The whole club is shot to pieces. "

But, although I am a small and not a courageous man, the desire toexamine the Wells house clung to me tenaciously. Suppose there werecartridges in his table drawer? Suppose I should find the second bullethole in the ceiling? I no longer deceived myself by any argument thatmy interest was purely scientific. There is a point at which curiositybecomes unbearable, when it becomes an obsession, like hunger. I hadreached that point. 

Nevertheless, I found it hard to plan the necessary deception to mywife. My habits have always been entirely orderly and regular. Mywildest dissipation was the Neighborhood Club. I could not recall anevening away from home in years, except on business. Yet now I must havea free evening, possibly an entire night. 

In planning for this, I forgot my nervousness for a time. I decidedfinally to tell my wife that an out-of-town client wished to talkbusiness with me, and that day, at luncheon--I go home to luncheon--Imentioned that such a client was in town. 

"It is possible, " I said, as easily as I could, "that we may not getthrough this afternoon. If things should run over into the evening, I'lltelephone. "

She took it calmly enough, but later on, as I was taking an electricflash from the drawer of the hall table and putting it in my overcoatpocket, she came on me, and I thought she looked surprised. 

During the afternoon I was beset with doubts and uneasiness. Supposeshe called up my office and found that the client I had named was not intown? It is undoubtedly true that a tangled web we weave when first wepractise to deceive, for on my return to the office I was at once quitecertain that Mrs. Johnson would telephone and make the inquiry. 

After some debate I called my secretary and told her to say, if sucha message came in, that Mr. Forbes was in town and that I had anappointment with him. As a matter of fact, no such inquiry came in, butas Miss Joyce, my secretary, knew that Mr. Forbes was in Europe, I wasconscious for some months afterwards that Miss Joyce's eyes occasionallyrested on me in a speculative and suspicious manner. 

Other things also increased my uneasiness as the day wore on. There was, for instance, the matter of the back door to the Wells house. Nothingwas more unlikely than that the key would still be hanging there. Imust, therefore, get a key. 

At three o'clock I sent the office-boy out for a back-door key. Helooked so surprised that I explained that we had lost our key, and thatI required an assortment of keys of all sizes. 

"What sort of key?" he demanded, eyeing me, with his feet apart. 

"Just an ordinary key, " I said. "Not a Yale key. Nothing fancy. Justa plain back-door key. " At something after four my wife called up, ingreat excitement. A boy and a man had been to the house and had fittedan extra key to the back door, which had two excellent ones already. Shewas quite hysterical, and had sent for the police, but the officer hadarrived after they had gone. 

"They are burglars, of course!" she said. "Burglars often have boys withthem, to go through the pantry windows. I'm so nervous I could scream. "

I tried to tell her that if the door was unlocked there was no need touse the pantry window, but she rang off quickly and, I thought, coldly. Not, however, before she had said that my plan to spend the evening outwas evidently known in the underworld!

By going through my desk I found a number of keys, mostly trunk keysand one the key to a dog-collar. But late in the afternoon I visiteda client of mine who is in the hardware business, and secured quite aselection. One of them was a skeleton key. He persisted in regardingthe matter as a joke, and poked me between the shoulder-blades as I wentout. 

"If you're arrested with all that hardware on you, " he said, "you'll beheld as a first-class burglar. You are equipped to open anything from acan of tomatoes to the missionary box in church. "

But I felt that already, innocent as I was, I was leaving a trail ofsuspicion behind me: Miss Joyce and the office boy, the dealer and mywife. And I had not started yet. 

I dined in a small chop-house where I occasionally lunch, and took alarge cup of strong black coffee. When I went out into the night againI found that a heavy fog had settled down, and I began to feel againsomething of the strange and disturbing quality of the day which hadended in Arthur Wells's death. Already a potential housebreaker, Iavoided policemen, and the very jingling of the keys in my pocketsounded loud and incriminating to my ears. 

The Wells house was dark. Even the arc-lamp in the street was shroudedin fog. But the darkness, which added to my nervousness, added also tomy security. 

I turned and felt my way cautiously to the rear of the house. Suddenly Iremembered the dog. But of course he was gone. As I cautiously ascendedthe steps the dead leaves on the vines rattled, as at the light touch ofa hand, and I was tempted to turn and run. 

I do not like deserted houses. Even in daylight they have a sinistereffect on me. They seem, in their empty spaces, to have held andrecorded all that has happened in the dusty past. The Wells house thatnight, looming before me, silent and mysterious, seemed the embodimentof all the deserted houses I had known. Its empty and unshutteredwindows were like blind eyes, gazing in, not out. 

Nevertheless, now that the time had come a certain amount of couragecame with it. I am not ashamed to confess that a certain part of it camefrom the anticipation of the Neighborhood Club's plaudits. For Herbertto have made such an investigation, or even Sperry, with his height andhis iron muscles, would not have surprised them. But I was aware thatwhile they expected intelligence and even humor, of a sort, from me, they did not anticipate any particular bravery. 

The flash was working, but rather feebly. I found the nail where thedoor-key had formerly hung, but the key, as I had expected, was gone. Iwas less than five minutes, I fancy, in finding a key from my collectionthat would fit. The bolt slid back with a click, and the door opened. 

It was still early in the evening, eight-thirty or thereabouts. I triedto think of that; to remember that, only a few blocks away, some of myfriends were still dining, or making their way into theaters. But thesilence of the house came out to meet me on the threshold, and itsblackness enveloped me like a wave. It was unfortunate, too, that Iremembered just then that it was, or soon would be, the very hour ofyoung Wells's death. 

Nevertheless, once inside the house, the door to the outside closed andfacing two alternatives, to go on with it or to cut and run, I found asort of desperate courage, clenched my teeth, and felt for the nearestlight switch. 

The electric light had been cut off!

I should have expected it, but I had not. I remember standing in theback hall and debating whether to go on or to get out. I was not onlyin a highly nervous state, but I was also badly handicapped. However, as the moments wore on and I stood there, with the quiet unbroken by nomysterious sounds, I gained a certain confidence. After a short periodof readjustment, therefore, I felt my way to the library door, and intothe room. Once there, I used the flash to discover that the windows wereshuttered, and proceeded to take off my hat and coat, which I placed ona chair near the door. It was at this time that I discovered that thebattery of my lamp was very weak, and finding a candle in a tall brassstick on the mantelpiece, I lighted it. 

Then I looked about. The house had evidently been hastily closed. Some of the furniture was covered with sheets, while part of it stoodunprotected. The rug had been folded into the center of the room, andcovered with heavy brown papers, and I was extremely startled to hearthe papers rustling. A mouse, however, proved to be the source of thesound, and I pulled myself together with a jerk. 

It is to be remembered that I had left my hat and overcoat on a chairnear the door. There could be no mistake, as the chair was a light one, and the weight of my overcoat threw it back against the wall. 

Candle in hand, I stepped out into the hail, and was immediately metby a crash which reverberated through the house. In my alarm my teethclosed on the end of my tongue, with agonizing results, but the sounddied away, and I concluded that an upper window had been left open, andthat the rising wind had slammed a door. But my morale, as we say sincethe war, had been shaken, and I recklessly lighted a second candle andplaced it on the table in the hall at the foot of the staircase, tofacilitate my exit in case I desired to make a hurried one. 

Then I climbed slowly. The fog had apparently made its way into thehouse, for when, halfway up, I turned and looked down, the candlelightwas hardly more than a spark, surrounded by a luminous aura. 

I do not know exactly when I began to feel that I was not alone inthe house. It was, I think, when I was on a chair on top of a table inArthur's room, with my candle upheld to the ceiling. It seemed to methat something was moving stealthily in the room overhead. I stoodthere, candle upheld, and every faculty I possessed seemed centered inmy ears. It was not a footstep. It was a soft and dragging movement. HadI not been near the ceiling I should not have heard it. Indeed, a momentlater I was not certain that I had heard it. 

My chair, on top of the table, was none too securely balanced. I hadfound what I was looking for, a part of the plaster ornament brokenaway, and replaced by a whitish substance, not plaster. I got out mypenknife and cut away the foreign matter, showing a small hole beneath, a bullet-hole, if I knew anything about bullet-holes. 

Then I heard the dragging movement above, and what with alarm and myinsecure position, I suddenly overbalanced, chair and all. My headmust have struck on the corner of the table, for I was dazed for afew moments. The candle had gone out, of course. I felt for the chair, righted it, and sat down. I was dizzy and I was frightened. I was afraidto move, lest the dragging thing above come down and creep over me inthe darkness and smother me. 

And sitting there, I remembered the very things I most wished toforget--the black curtain behind Miss Jeremy, the things flung by unseenhands into the room, the way my watch had slid over the table and fallento the floor. 

Since that time I know there is a madness of courage, born of terror. Nothing could be more intolerable than to sit there and wait. It isthe same insanity that drove men out of the trenches to the charge andalmost certain death, rather than to sit and wait for what might come. 

In a way, I daresay I charged the upper floor of the house. Recallingthe situation from this safe lapse of time, I think that I was in acondition close to frenzy. I know that it did not occur to me to leapdown the staircase and escape, and I believe now this was due to aconviction that I was dealing with the supernatural, and that on noaccount did I dare to turn my back on it. All children and some adults, I am sure, have known this feeling. 

Whatever drove me, I know that, candle in hand, and hardly sane, I ranup the staircase, and into the room overhead. It was empty. 

As suddenly as my sanity had gone, it returned to me. The sight of twosmall beds, side by side, a tiny dressing-table, a row of toys on themantelpiece, was calming. Here was the children's night nursery, a whiteand placid room which could house nothing hideous. 

I was humiliated and ashamed. I, Horace Johnson, a man of dignity andreputation, even in a small way, a successful after-dinner speaker, numbering fifty-odd years of logical living to my credit, had beenrunning half-maddened toward a mythical danger from which I had beenafraid to run away!

I sat down and mopped my face with my pocket handkerchief. 

After a time I got up, and going to a window looked down at the quietworld below. The fog was lifting. Automobiles were making cautiousprogress along the slippery street. A woman with a basket had stoppedunder the street light and was rearranging her parcels. The clock of thecity hall, visible over the opposite roofs, marked only twenty minutesto nine. It was still early evening--not even midnight, the magic hourof the night. 

Somehow that fact reassured me, and I was able to take stock of mysurroundings. I realized, for instance, that I stood in the room overArthur's dressing room, and that it was into the ceiling under me thatthe second--or probably the first--bullet had penetrated. I know, asit happens, very little of firearms, but I did realize that a shot froma. 45 Colt automatic would have considerable penetrative power. To beexact, that the bullet had probably either lodged itself in a joist, orhad penetrated through the flooring and might be somewhere over my head. 

But my candle was inadequate for more than the most superficialexamination of the ceiling, which presented so far as I could see anunbroken surface. I turned my attention, therefore, to the floor. It waswhen I was turning the rug back that I recognized the natural and notsupernatural origin of the sound which had so startled me. It had beenthe soft movement of the carpet across the floor boards. 

Some one, then, had been there before me--some one who knew what I knew, had reasoned as I reasoned. Some one who, in all probability, stilllurked on the upper floor. 

Obeying an impulse, I stood erect and called out sharply, "Sperry!" Isaid. "Sperry!"

There was no answer. I tried again, calling Herbert. But only my ownvoice came back to me, and the whistling of the wind through the windowI had opened. 

My fears, never long in abeyance that night, roused again. I hadinstantly a conviction that some human figure, sinister and dangerous, was lurking in the shadows of that empty floor, and I remember backingaway from the door and standing in the center of the room, prepared forsome stealthy, murderous assault. When none came I looked about for aweapon, and finally took the only thing in sight, a coal-tongs from thefireplace. Armed with that, I made a cursory round of the near-by roomsbut there was no one hiding in them. 

I went back to the rug and examined the floor beneath it. I was right. Some one had been there before me. Bits of splintered wood lay about. The second bullet had been fired, had buried itself in the flooring, andhad, some five minutes before, been dug out. 

VII

The extraordinary thing about the Arthur Wells story was not hiskilling. For killing it was. It was the way it was solved. 

Here was a young woman, Miss Jeremy, who had not known young Wells, hadnot known his wife, had, until that first meeting at Mrs. Dane's, nevermet any member of the Neighborhood Club. Yet, but for her, Arthur Wellswould have gone to his grave bearing the stigma of moral cowardice, ofsuicide. 

The solution, when it came, was amazing, but remarkably simple. Likemost mysteries. I have in my own house, for instance, an example of agreat mystery, founded on mere absentmindedness. 

This is what my wife terms the mystery of the fire-tongs. 

I had left the Wells house as soon as I had made the discovery in thenight nursery. I carried the candle and the fire-tongs downstairs. Iwas, apparently, calm but watchful. I would have said that I had neverbeen more calm in my life. I knew quite well that I had the fire-tongsin my hand. Just when I ceased to be cognizant of them was probablywhen, on entering the library, I found that my overcoat had disappeared, and that my stiff hat, badly broken, lay on the floor. However, asI say, I was still extraordinarily composed. I picked up my hat, andmoving to the rear door, went out and closed it. When I reached thestreet, however, I had only gone a few yards when I discovered that Iwas still carrying the lighted candle, and that a man, passing by, hadstopped and was staring after me. 

My composure is shown by the fact that I dropped the candle down thenext sewer opening, but the fact remains that I carried the fire-tongshome. I do not recall doing so. In fact, I knew nothing of the matteruntil morning. On the way to my house I was elaborating a story to theeffect that my overcoat had been stolen from a restaurant where I and myclient had dined. The hat offered more serious difficulties. I fanciedthat, by kissing my wife good-by at the breakfast table, I might beable to get out without her following me to the front door, which is hercustom. 

But, as a matter of fact, I need not have concerned myself aboutthe hat. When I descended to breakfast the next morning I found hersurveying the umbrella-stand in the hall. The fire-tongs were standingthere, gleaming, among my sticks and umbrellas. 

I lied. I lied shamelessly. She is a nervous woman, and, as we have nochildren, her attitude toward me is one of watchful waiting. Throughlong years she has expected me to commit some indiscretion--innocent, of course, such as going out without my overcoat on a cool day--andshe intends to be on hand for every emergency. I dared not confess, therefore, that on the previous evening I had burglariously entered aclosed house, had there surprised another intruder at work, had fallenand bumped my head severely, and had, finally, had my overcoat taken. 

"Horace, " she said coldly, "where did you get those fire-tongs?"

"Fire-tongs?" I repeated. "Why, that's so. They are fire-tongs. "

"Where did you get them?"

"My dear, " I expostulated, "I get them?"

"What I would like to ask, " she said, with an icy calmness that I havelearned to dread, "is whether you carried them home over your head, under the impression that you had your umbrella. "

"Certainly not, " I said with dignity. "I assure you, my dear--"

"I am not a curious woman, " she put in incisively, "but when my husbandspends an evening out, and returns minus his overcoat, with his hatmashed, a lump the size of an egg over his ear, and puts a pair offire-tongs in the umbrella stand under the impression that it is anumbrella, I have a right to ask at least if he intends to continue hislife of debauchery. "

I made a mistake then. I should have told her. Instead, I took my brokenhat and jammed it on my head with a force that made the lump she hadnoticed jump like a toothache, and went out. 

When, at noon and luncheon, I tried to tell her the truth, she listenedto the end: Then: "I should think you could have done better than that, "she said. "You have had all morning to think it out. "

However, if things were in a state of armed neutrality at home, I hada certain compensation for them when I told my story to Sperry thatafternoon. 

"You see how it is, " I finished. "You can stay out of this, or come in, Sperry, but I cannot stop now. He was murdered beyond a doubt, andthere is an intelligent effort being made to eliminate every particle ofevidence. "

He nodded. 

"It looks like it. And this man who was there last night--"

"Why a man?"

"He took your overcoat, instead of his own, didn't he? It may havebeen--it's curious, isn't it, that we've had no suggestion of Ellinghamin all the rest of the material. "

Like the other members of the Neighborhood Club, he had a copy of theproceedings at the two seances, and now he brought them out and fell tostudying them. 

"She was right about the bullet in the ceiling, " he reflected. "Isuppose you didn't look for the box of shells for the revolver?"

"I meant to, but it slipped my mind. "

He shuffled the loose pages of the record. "Cane--washed away bythe water--a knee that is hurt--the curtain would have been safer--Hawkins--the drawing-room furniture is all over the house. That last, Horace, isn't pertinent. It refers clearly to the room we were in. Ofcourse, the point is, how much of the rest is also extraneous matter?"He re-read one of the sheets. "Of course that belongs, about Hawkins. And probably this: 'It will be terrible if the letters are found. ' Theywere in the pocketbook, presumably. "

He folded up the papers and replaced them in a drawer. 

"We'd better go back to the house, " he said. "Whoever took your overcoatby mistake probably left one. The difficulty is, of course, that heprobably discovered his error and went back again last night. Confoundit, man, if you had thought of that at the time, we would have somethingto go on today. "

"If I had thought of a number of things I'd have stayed out of the placealtogether, " I retorted tartly. "I wish you could help me about thefire-tongs, Sperry. I don't seem able to think of any explanation thatMrs. Johnson would be willing to accept. "

"Tell her the truth. "

"I don't think you understand, " I explained. "She simply wouldn'tbelieve it. And if she did I should have to agree to drop theinvestigation. As a matter of fact, Sperry, I had resorted to subterfugein order to remain out last evening, and I am bitterly regretting mymendacity. "

But Sperry has, I am afraid, rather loose ideas. 

"Every man, " he said, "would rather tell the truth, but every womanmakes it necessary to lie to her. Forget the fire-tongs, Horace, andforget Mrs. Johnson to-night. He may not have dared to go back inday-light for his overcoat. "

"Very well, " I agreed. 

But it was not very well, and I knew it. I felt that, in a way, my wholedomestic happiness was at stake. My wife is a difficult person to arguewith, and as tenacious of an opinion once formed as are all very amiablepeople. However, unfortunately for our investigation, but luckily forme, under the circumstances, Sperry was called to another city thatafternoon and did not return for two days. 

It was, it will be recalled, on the Thursday night following the secondsitting that I had gone alone to the Wells house, and my interviewwith Sperry was on Friday. It was on Friday afternoon that I received atelephone message from Mrs. Dane. 

It was actually from her secretary, the Clara who had recorded theseances. It was Mrs. Dane's misfortune to be almost entirely dependenton the various young women who, one after the other, were employed tolook after her. I say "one after the other" advisedly. It had long beena matter of good-natured jesting in the Neighborhood Club that Mrs. Daneconducted a matrimonial bureau, as one young woman after another wasmarried from her house. It was her kindly habit, on such occasions, to give the bride a wedding, and only a month before it had been myprivilege to give away in holy wedlock Miss Clara's predecessor. 

"Mrs. Dane would like you to stop in and have a cup of tea with her thisafternoon, Mr. Johnson, " said the secretary. 

"At what time?"

"At four o'clock. "

I hesitated. I felt that my wife was waiting at home for furtherexplanation of the coal-tongs, and that the sooner we had it out thebetter. But, on the other hand, Mrs. Dane's invitations, by reason ofher infirmity, took on something of the nature of commands. 

"Please say that I will be there at four, " I replied. 

I bought a new hat that afternoon, and told the clerk to destroy the oldone. Then I went to Mrs. Dane's. 

She was in the drawing-room, now restored to its usual clutter offurniture and ornaments. I made my way around two tables, stepped over ahassock and under the leaves of an artificial palm, and shook her hand. 

She was plainly excited. Never have I known a woman who, confined to awheel-chair, lived so hard. She did not allow life to pass her windows, if I may put it that way. She called it in, and set it moving about herchair, herself the nucleus around which were enacted all sorts of smallneighborhood dramas and romances. Her secretaries did not marry. Shemarried them. 

It is curious to look back and remember how Herbert and Sperry andmyself had ignored this quality in her, in the Wells case. She was notto be ignored, as I discovered that afternoon. 

"Sit down, " she said. "You look half sick, Horace. "

Nothing escapes her eyes, so I was careful to place myself with the lumpon my head turned away from her. But I fancy she saw it, for her eyestwinkled. 

"Horace! Horace!" she said. "How I have detested you all week!"

"I? You detested me?"

"Loathed you, " she said with unction. "You are cruel and ungrateful. Herbert has influenza, and does not count. And Sperry is in love--ohyes, I know it. I know a great many things. But you!"

I could only stare at her. 

"The strange thing is, " she went on, "that I have known you for years, and never suspected your sense of humor. You'll forgive me, I know, ifI tell you that your lack of humor was to my mind the only flaw in anotherwise perfect character. "

"I am not aware--" I began stiffly. "I have always believed that Ifurnished to the Neighborhood Club its only leaven of humor. "

"Don't spoil it, " she begged. "Don't. If you could know how I haveenjoyed it. All afternoon I have been chuckling. The fire-tongs, Horace. The fire-tongs!"

Then I knew that my wife had been to Mrs. Dane and I drew a long breath. "I assure you, " I said gravely, "that while doubtless I carried thewretched things home and--er--placed them where they were found, I havenot the slightest recollection of it. And it is hardly amusing, is it?"

"Amusing!" she cried. "It's delicious. It has made me a young womanagain. Horace, if I could have seen your wife's face when she foundthem, I would give cheerfully almost anything I possess. "

But underneath her mirth I knew there was something else. And, afterall, she could convince my wife if she were convinced herself. I toldthe whole story--of the visit Sperry and I had made the night ArthurWells was shot, and of what we discovered; of the clerk at thepharmacy and his statement, and even of the whiskey and its unfortunateeffect--at which, I regret to say, she was vastly amused; and, last ofall, of my experience the previous night in the deserted house. 

She was very serious when I finished. Tea came, but we forgot to drinkit. Her eyes flashed with excitement, her faded face flushed. And, withit all, as I look back, there was an air of suppressed excitementthat seemed to have nothing to do with my narrative. I remembered it, however, when the denouement came the following week. 

She was a remarkable woman. Even then she knew, or strongly suspected, the thing that the rest of us had missed, the x of the equation. But Ithink it only fair to record that she was in possession of facts whichwe did not have, and which she did not divulge until the end. 

"You have been so ungenerous with me, " she said finally, "that I amtempted not to tell you why I sent for you. Of course, I know I am onlya helpless old woman, and you men are people of affairs. But now andthen I have a flash of intelligence. I'm going to tell you, but youdon't deserve it. "

She went down into the black silk bag at her side which was as mucha part of her attire as the false front she wore with such carelessabandon, and which, brown in color and indifferently waved, wasinvariably parting from its mooring. She drew out a newspaper clipping. 

"On going over Clara's notes, " she said, "I came to the conclusion, last Tuesday, that the matter of the missing handbag and the letters wasimportant. More important, probably, than the mere record shows. Doyou recall the note of distress in Miss Jeremy's voice? It was almost awail. "

I had noticed it. 

"I have plenty of time to think, " she added, not without pathos. "There is only one Monday night in the week, and--the days are long. Itoccurred to me to try to trace that bag. "

"In what way?"

"How does any one trace lost articles?" she demanded. "By advertising, of course. Last Wednesday I advertised for the bag. "

I was too astonished to speak. 

"I reasoned like this: If there was no such bag, there was no harm done. As a matter of fact, if there was no such bag, the chances were that wewere all wrong, anyhow. If there was such a bag, I wanted it. Here isthe advertisement as I inserted it. "

She gave me a small newspaper cutting

"Lost, a handbag containing private letters, car-tickets, etc. Liberalreward paid for its return. Please write to A 31, the Daily News. "

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 seesomething 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 alsoappeared. They were in the same column. " She read the second clippingaloud, slowly, that I might gain all its significance:

"Lost on the night of Monday, November the second, between State Avenueand Park Avenue, possibly on an Eastern Line street car, a black handbagcontaining 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 somuch to be feared in any investigation, was not the solution here. Butthere 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 thepocketbook, letters and all, to appear. But she dragged up, among amiscellany of handkerchiefs, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a fewalmonds, of which she was inordinately fond, an envelope. 

"Yesterday, " she said, "I took a taxicab ride. You know my chair getstiresome, occasionally. I stopped at the newspaper office, and found thebag had not been turned in, but that there was a letter for A 31. " Sheheld out the envelope to me. 

"Read it, " she observed. "It is a curious human document. You'llprobably be no wiser for reading it, but it shows one thing: We are onthe track of something. "

I have the letter before me now. It is written on glazed paper, ruledwith blue lines. The writing is of the flowing style we used to callSpencerian, and if it lacks character I am inclined to believe that itsweakness 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 safeplace. If you would treat me like a human being, you could have them. Iknow where the walking-stick is, also. I will tell you this. I have nowish to do her any harm. She will have to pay up in the next world, evenif she gets off in this. The way I reason is this: As long as I have thethings, I've got the whiphand. I've got you, too, although you may thinkI 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 onlike this. 

It is unsigned. 

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

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

But if she had any suspicion then as to the writer, and I think she hadnot, she said nothing, and soon after I started for home. I knew thatone of two things would have happened there: either my wife would haveput away the fire-tongs, which would indicate a truce, or they wouldremain as they had been, which would indicate that she still waitedfor 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 eveninghad a certain value, for it enabled me to leave the house withoutexplanation, and thus to discover that, if an overcoat had been left inplace of my own, it had been taken away. It also gave me an opportunityto return the fire-tongs, a proceeding which I had considered wouldassist in a return of the entente cordiale at home, but which mostunjustly appeared to have exactly the opposite effect. It has beenmy experience that the most innocent action may, under certaincircumstances, assume an appearance of extreme guilt. 

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

In deference to Herbert Robinson's recent attack of influenza, we metat the Robinson house. Sperry himself wheeled Mrs. Dane over, and made aspeech. 

"We have called this meeting, " he said, "because a rather singularsituation has developed. What was commenced purely as an interestingexperiment has gone beyond that stage. We find ourselves in the curiousposition of taking what comes very close to being a part in a domestictragedy. The affair is made more delicate by the fact that this tragedyinvolves people who, if not our friends, at least are very well knownto us. The purpose of this meeting, to be brief, is to determinewhether the Neighborhood Club, as a body, wishes to go on with theinvestigation, or to stop where we are. "

He paused, but, as no one spoke, he went on again. "It is really notas simple as that, " he said. "To stop now, in view of the evidence weintend to place before the Club, is to leave in all our minds certainsuspicions that may be entirely unjust. On the other hand, to go on isvery possible to place us all in a position where to keep silent is tobe an accessory after a crime. "

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

"I shall review briefly the first sitting, and what followed it. " Heread the notes of the sitting first. "You will notice that I have madeno comment on the physical phenomena which occurred early in the seance. This is for two reasons: first, it has no bearing on the question atissue. Second, it has no quality of novelty. Certain people, undercertain conditions, are able to exert powers that we can not explain. I have no belief whatever in their spiritistic quality. They are purelyphysical, the exercise of powers we have either not yet risen highenough in our scale of development to recognize generally, or whichhave survived from some early period when our natural gifts had not beensmothered by civilization. "

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

Sperry's notes were alphabetical. 

(a) At 9:15, or somewhat earlier, on Monday night a week ago ArthurWells killed himself, or was killed. At 9:30 on that same evening by Mr. Johnson's watch, consulted at the time, Miss Jeremy had described such acrime. (Here he elaborated, repeating the medium's account. )

(b) At midnight, Sperry, reaching home, had found a message summoninghim to the Wells house. The message had been left at 9:35. He hadtelephoned me, and we had gone together, arriving at approximately12:30. 

(c) We had been unable to enter, and, recalling the medium's descriptionof a key on a nail among the vines, had searched for and found such akey, and had admitted ourselves. Mrs. Wells, a governess, a doctor, andtwo policemen were in the house. The dead man lay in the room in whichhe had died. (Here he went at length into the condition of the room, the revolver with one chamber empty, and the blood-stained sponge andrazorstrop behind the bathtub. We had made a hasty examination of theceiling, but had found no trace of a second shot. )

(d) The governess had come in at just after the death. Mr. HoraceJohnson had had a talk with her. She had left the front door unfastenedwhen she went out at eight o'clock. She said she had gone out totelephone about another position, as she was dissatisfied. She hadphoned from, Elliott's pharmacy on State Avenue. Later that night Mr. Johnson had gone to Elliott's. She had lied about the message. Shehad really telephoned to a number which the pharmacy clerk had alreadydiscovered was that of the Ellingham house. The message was that Mr. Ellingham was not to come, as Mr. And Mrs. Wells were going out. It wasnot the first time she had telephoned to that number. 

There was a stir in the room. Something which we had tacitly avoided hadcome suddenly into the open. Sperry raised his hand. 

"It is necessary to be explicit, " he said, "that the Club may see whereit stands. It is, of course, not necessary to remind ourselves that thisevening's disclosures are of the most secret nature. I urge thatthe Club jump to no hasty conclusions, and that there shall be nointerruptions until we have finished with our records. "

(e) At a private seance, which Mr. Johnson and I decided was excusableunder the circumstances, the medium was unable to give us anything. Thisin spite of the fact that we had taken with us a walking-stick belongingto the dead man. 

(f) The second sitting of the Club. I need only refresh your minds asto one or two things; the medium spoke of a lost pocketbook, and ofletters. While the point is at least capable of doubt, apparently theletters were in the pocketbook. Also, she said that a curtain would havebeen better, that Hawkins was a nuisance, and that everything was allright unless the bullet had made a hole in the floor above. You willalso recall the mention of a box of cartridges in a table drawer inArthur Wells's room. 

"I will now ask Mr. Horace Johnson to tell what occurred on the nightbefore last, Thursday evening. "

"I do not think Horace has a very clear recollection of last Thursdaynight, " my wife said, coldly. "And I wish to go on record at once thatif he claims that spirits broke his hat, stole his overcoat, bumped hishead and sent him home with a pair of fire-tongs for a walking-stick, Idon't believe him. "

Which attitude Herbert, I regret to say, did not help when he said:

"Don't worry, Horace will soon be too old for the gay life. Rememberyour arteries, Horace. "

I have quoted this interruption to show how little, outside of Sperry, Mrs. Dane and myself, the Neighborhood Club appreciated the seriousnessof the situation. Herbert, for instance, had been greatly amused whenSperry spoke of my finding the razorstrop and had almost chuckled overour investigation of the ceiling. 

But they were very serious when I had finished my statement. 

"Great Scott!" Herbert said. "Then she was right, after all! I say, Iguess I've been no end of an ass. "

I was inclined to agree with him. But the real effect of my brief speechwas on my wife. 

It was a real compensation for that night of terror and for theuncomfortable time since to find her gaze no longer cold, butsympathetic, and--if I may be allowed to say so--admiring. When at lastI sat down beside her, she put her hand on my arm in a way that I hadmissed since the unfortunate affair of the pharmacy whiskey. 

Mrs. Dane then read and explained the two clippings and the letter, andthe situation, so far as it had developed, was before the Club. 

Were we to go on, or to stop?

Put to a vote, the women were for going on. The men were more doubtful, and Herbert voiced what I think we all felt. 

"We're getting in pretty deep, " he said. "We have no right to step inwhere the law has stepped out--no legal right, that is. As to moralright, it depends on what we are holding these sittings for. If weare making what we started out to make, an investigation into psychicmatters, then we can go on. But with this proviso, I think: Whatever maycome of it, the result is of psychic interest only. We are not trailinga criminal. "

"Crime is the affair of every decent-minded citizen, " his sister put inconcisely. 

But the general view was that Herbert was right. I am not defending ourcourse. I am recording it. It is, I admit, open to argument. 

Having decided on what to do, or not to do, we broke into animateddiscussion. The letter to A 31 was the rock on which all our theoriesfoundered, that and the message the governess had sent to CharlieEllingham not to come to the Wells house that night. By no stretch ofrather excited imaginations could we imagine Ellingham writing such aletter. Who had written the letter, then, and for whom was it meant?

As to the telephone message, it seemed to preclude the possibility ofEllingham's having gone to the house that night. But the fact remainedthat a man, as yet unidentified, was undoubtedly concerned in the case, had written the letter, and had probably been in the Wells house thenight I went there alone. 

In the end, we decided to hold one more seance, and then, unless thefurther developments were such that we must go on, to let the affairdrop. 

It is typical of the strained nervous tension which had developed inall of us during the past twelve days, that that night when, havingforgotten to let the dog in, my wife and I were roused from a soundsleep by his howling, she would not allow me to go down and admit him. 

VIII

On Sunday I went to church. I felt, after the strange phenomena in Mrs. Dane's drawing-room, and after the contact with tragedy to which theyhad led, that I must hold with a sort of desperation to the traditionsand beliefs by which I had hitherto regulated my conduct. And thechurch did me good. Between the immortality it taught and the theory ofspiritualism as we had seen it in action there was a great gulf, andI concluded that this gulf was the soul. The conclusion that mind andcertain properties of mind survived was not enough. The thought of adisembodied intelligence was pathetic, depressing. But the thought of aglorified soul was the hope of the world. 

My wife, too, was in a penitent and rather exalted mood. During thesermon she sat with her hand in mine, and I was conscious of peace and adeep thankfulness. We had been married for many years, and we had grownvery close. Of what importance was the Wells case, or what mattered itthat there were strange new-old laws in the universe, so long as we kepttogether?

That my wife had felt a certain bitterness toward Miss Jeremy, ajealousy of her powers, even of her youth, had not dawned on me. Butwhen, in her new humility, she suggested that we call on the medium thatafternoon. I realized that, in her own way, she was making a sort ofatonement. 

Miss Jeremy lived with an elderly spinster cousin, a short distance outof town. It was a grim house, coldly and rigidly Calvinistic. It gave anunpleasant impression at the start, and our comfort was not increasedby the discovery, made early in the call, that the cousin regarded theNeighborhood Club and its members with suspicion. 

The cousin--her name was Connell--was small and sharp, and she enteredthe room followed by a train of cats. All the time she was frigidlygreeting us, cats were coming in at the door, one after the other. Itfascinated me. I do not like cats. I am, as a matter of confession, afraid of cats. They affect me as do snakes. They trailed in in aseemingly endless procession, and one of them took a fancy to me, andleaped from behind on to my shoulder. The shock set me stammering. 

"My cousin is out, " said Miss Connell. "Doctor Sperry has taken her fora ride. She will be back very soon. "

I shook a cat from my trouser leg, and my wife made an unimportantremark. 

"I may as well tell you, I disapprove of what Alice is doing, " said MissConnell. "She doesn't have to. I've offered her a good home. She wasbrought up a Presbyterian. I call this sort of thing playing with thepowers of darkness. Only the eternally damned are doomed to walk theearth. The blessed are at rest. "

"But you believe in her powers, don't you?" my wife asked. 

"I believe she can do extraordinary things. She saw my father's spiritin this very room last night, and described him, although she had neverseen him. "

As she had said that only the eternally damned were doomed to walkthe earth, I was tempted to comment on this stricture on her departedparent, but a large cat, much scarred with fighting and named Violet, insisted at that moment on crawling into my lap, and my attention wasdistracted. 

"But the whole thing is un-Christian and undignified, " Miss Connellproceeded, in her cold voice. "Come, Violet, don't annoy the gentleman. I have other visions of the next life than of rapping on tables andchairs, and throwing small articles about. "

It was an extraordinary visit. Even the arrival of Miss Jeremy herself, flushed with the air and looking singularly normal, was hardly a relief. Sperry, who followed, was clearly pleased to see us, however. 

It was not hard to see how things were with him. He helped the girl outof her wraps with a manner that was almost proprietary, and drew a chairfor her close to the small fire which hardly affected the chill of theroom. 

With their entrance a spark of hospitality seemed to kindle in the catlady's breast. It was evident that she liked Sperry. Perhaps she sawin him a method of weaning her cousin from traffic with the powers ofdarkness. She said something about tea, and went out. 

Sperry looked across at the girl and smiled. 

"Shall I tell them?" he said. 

"I want very much to have them know. "

He stood up, and with that unconscious drama which actuates a man at acrisis in his affairs, he put a hand on her shoulder. "This young ladyis going to marry me, " he said. "We are very happy today. "

But I thought he eyed us anxiously. We were very close friends, and hewanted our approval. I am not sure if we were wise. I do not yet know. But something of the new understanding between my wife and myself musthave found its way to our voices, for he was evidently satisfied. 

"Then that's all right, " he said heartily. And my wife, to my surprise, kissed the girl. 

Except for the cats, sitting around, the whole thing was strangelynormal. And yet, even there, something happened that set me to thinkingafterward. Not that it was strange in itself, but that it seemed neverpossible to get very far away from the Wells mystery. 

Tea was brought in by Hawkins!

I knew him immediately, but he did not at once see me. He was evidentlyaccustomed to seeing Sperry there, and he did not recognize my wife. Butwhen he had put down the tray and turned to pick up Sperry's overcoatto carry it into the hall, he saw me. The man actually started. Icannot say that he changed color. He was always a pale, anemic-lookingindividual. But it was a perceptible instant before he stooped andgathered up the coat. 

Sperry turned to me when he had gone out. "That was Hawkins, Horace, " hesaid. "You remember, don't you? The Wellses' butler. "

"I knew him at once. "

"He wrote to me asking for a position, and I got him this. Looks sick, poor devil. I intend to have a go at his chest. "

"How long has he been here?"

"More than a week, I think. "

As I drank my tea, I pondered. After all, the Neighborhood Club mustguard against the possibility of fraud, and I felt that Sperry had beenindiscreet, to say the least. From the time of Hawkins' service in MissJeremy's home there would always be the suspicion of collusion betweenthem. I did not believe it was so, but Herbert, for instance, would beinclined to suspect her. Suppose that Hawkins knew about the crime? Orknew something and surmised the rest?

When we rose to go Sperry drew me aside. 

"You think I've made a mistake?"

"I do. "

He flung away with an impatient gesture, then came back to me. 

"Now look here, " he said, "I know what you mean, and the whole ideais absurd. Of course I never thought about it, but even allowing forconnivance--which I don't for a moment--the fellow was not in the houseat the time of the murder. "

"I know he says he was not. "

"Even then, " he said, "how about the first sitting? I'll swear she hadnever even heard of him then. "

"The fact remains that his presence here makes us all absurd. "

"Do you want me to throw him out?"

"I don't see what possible good that will do now. "

I was uneasy all the way home. The element of doubt, always so imminentin our dealings with psychic phenomena, had me by the throat. How muchdid Hawkins know? Was there any way, without going to the police, tofind if he had really been out of the Wellses' house that night, nowalmost two weeks ago, when Arthur Wells had been killed?

That evening I went to Sperry's house, after telephoning that I wascoming. On the way I stopped in at Mrs. Dane's and secured somethingfrom her. She was wildly curious, and made me promise to go in on my wayback, and explain. I made a compromise. 

"I will come in if I have anything to tell you, " I said. 

But I knew, by her grim smile, that she would station herself by herwindow, and that I would stop, unless I made a detour of three blocks toavoid her. She is a very determined woman. 

Sperry was waiting for me in his library, a pleasant room which I haveoften envied him. Even the most happily married man wishes, now andthen, for some quiet, dull room which is essentially his own. My ownlibrary is really the family sitting-room, and a Christmas or so agomy wife presented me with a very handsome phonograph instrument. Myreading, therefore, is done to music, and the necessity for puttingmy book down to change the record at times interferes somewhat with mytrain of thought. 

So I entered Sperry's library with appreciation. He was standing by thefire, with the grave face and slightly bent head of his professionalmanner. We say, in the neighborhood, that Sperry uses his professionalmanner as armor, so I was rather prepared to do battle; but heforestalled me. 

"Horace, " he said, "I have been a fool, a driveling idiot. We weregetting something at those sittings. Something real. She's wonderful. She's going to give it up, but the fact remains that she has some powerwe haven't, and now I've discredited her! I see it plainly enough. " Hewas rather bitter about it, but not hostile. His fury was at himself. "Of course, " he went on, "I am sure that she got nothing from Hawkins. But the fact remains--" He was hurt in his pride of her. 

"I wonder, " I said, "if you kept the letter Hawkins wrote you when heasked for a position. "

He was not sure. He went into his consulting room and was gone for sometime. I took the opportunity to glance over his books and over the room. 

Arthur Wells's stick was standing in a corner, and I took it up andexamined it. It was an English malacca, light and strong, and had seenservice. It was long, too long for me; it occurred to me that Wells hadbeen about my height, and that it was odd that he should have carried solong a stick. There was no ease in swinging it. 

From that to the memory of Hawkins's face when Sperry took it, the nightof the murder, in the hall of the Wells house, was only a step. I seemedthat day to be thinking considerably about Hawkins. 

When Sperry returned I laid the stick on the table. There can be nodoubt that I did so, for I had to move a book-rack to place it. Oneend, the handle, was near the ink-well, and the ferrule lay on a copyof Gibson's "Life Beyond the Grave, " which Sperry had evidently beenreading. 

Sperry had found the letter. As I glanced at it I recognized the writingat once, thin and rather sexless, Spencerian. 

Dear Sir: Since Mr. Wells's death I am out of employment. Before I tookthe position of butler with Mr. Wells I was valet to Mr. Ellingham, andbefore that, in England, to Lord Condray. I have a very good letter ofrecommendation from Lord Condray. If you need a servant at this time Iwould do my best to give satisfaction. 

(Signed) ARTHUR HAWKINS. 

I put down the application, and took the anonymous letter about the bagfrom my pocketbook. "Read this, Sperry, " I said. "You know the letter. Mrs. Dane read it to us Saturday night. But compare the writing. "

He compared the two, with a slight lifting of his eyebrows. Then he putthem down. "Hawkins!" he said. "Hawkins has the letters! And the bag!"

"Exactly, " I commented dryly. "In other words, Hawkins was in MissJeremy's house when, at the second sitting, she told of the letters. "

I felt rather sorry for Sperry. He paced the room wretchedly, the twoletters in his hand. 

"But why should he tell her, if he did?" he demanded. "The writer ofthat anonymous letter was writing for only one person. Every effort ismade to conceal his identity. "

I felt that he was right. The point was well taken. 

"The question now is, to whom was it written?" We pondered that, tono effect. That Hawkins had certain letters which touched on the Wellsaffair, that they were probably in his possession in the Connell house, was clear enough. But we had no possible authority for trying to get theletters, although Sperry was anxious to make the attempt. 

"Although I feel, " he said, "that it is too late to help her very much. She is innocent; I know that. I think you know that, too, deep inthat legal mind of yours. It is wrong to discredit her because I did afoolish thing. " He warmed to his argument. "Why, think, man, " he said. "The whole first sitting was practically coincident with the crimeitself. "

It was true enough. Whatever suspicion might be cast on the secondseance, the first at least remained inexplicable, by any laws werecognized. In a way, I felt sorry for Sperry. Here he was, on the firstday of his engagement, protesting her honesty, her complete ignorance ofthe revelations she had made and his intention to keep her in ignorance, and yet betraying his own anxiety and possible doubt in the same breath. 

"She did not even know there was a family named Wells. When I said thatHawkins had been employed by the Wells, it meant nothing to her. I waswatching. "

So even Sperry was watching. He was in love with her, but his scientificmind, like my legal one, was slow to accept what during the past twoweeks it had been asked to accept. 

I left him at ten o'clock. Mrs. Dane was still at her window, and herfar-sighted old eyes caught me as I tried to steal past. She rapped onthe window, and I was obliged to go in. Obliged, too, to tell her of thediscovery and, at last, of Hawkins being in the Connell house. 

"I want those letters, Horace, " she said at last. 

"So do I. I'm not going to steal them. "

"The question is, where has he got them?"

"The question is, dear lady, that they are not ours to take. "

"They are not his, either. "

Well, that was true enough. But I had done all the private investigatingI cared to. And I told her so. She only smiled cryptically. 

So far as I know, Mrs. Dane was the only one among us who had entirelyescaped certain strange phenomena during that period, and as I haveonly so far recorded my own experiences, I shall here place in orderthe various manifestations made to the other members of the NeighborhoodClub during that trying period and in their own words. As none of themhave suffered since, a certain allowance must be made for our nervousstrain. As before, I shall offer no explanation. 

Alice Robinson: On night following second seance saw a light in room, not referable to any outside influence. Was an amorphous body whichglowed pallidly and moved about wall over fireplace, gradually coming tostop in a corner, where it faded and disappeared. 

Clara, Mrs. Dane's secretary: Had not slept much since first seance. Wasfrequently conscious that she was not alone in room, but on turning onlight room was always empty. Wakened twice with sense of extreme cold. (I have recorded my own similar experience. )

Sperry has consistently maintained that he had no experiences whateverduring that period, but admits that he heard various knockings in hisbedroom at night, which he attributed to the lighting of his furnace, and the resulting expansion of the furniture due to heat. 

Herbert Robinson: Herbert was the most difficult member of the Club fromwhom to secure data, but he has recently confessed that he was wakenedone night by the light falling on to his bed from a picture which hungon the wall over his mantelpiece, and which stood behind a clock, twoglass vases and a pair of candlesticks. The door of his room was lockedat the time. 

Mrs. Johnson: Had a great many minor disturbances, so that on rousingone night to find me closing a window against a storm she thought I wasa spectre, and to this day insists that I only entered her room when Iheard her scream. For this reason I have made no record of her variousexperiences, as I felt that her nervous condition precluded accurateobservation. 

As in all records of psychic phenomena, the human element must beconsidered, and I do not attempt either to analyze these variousphenomena or to explain them. Herbert, for instance, has been known towalk in his sleep. But I respectfully offer, as opposed to this, thatmy watch has never been known to walk at all, and that Mrs. Johnson'sbracelet could hardly be accused of an attack of nerves. 

IX

The following day was Monday. When I came downstairs I found a neatbundle lying in the hall, and addressed to me. My wife had followed medown, and we surveyed it together. 

I had a curious feeling about the parcel, and was for cutting the cordwith my knife. But my wife is careful about string. She has alwaysfancied that the time would come when we would need some badly, and itwould not be around. I have an entire drawer of my chiffonier, which Ireally need for other uses, filled with bundles of twine, pink, whiteand brown. I recall, on one occasion, packing a suit-case in the dusk, in great hasty, and emptying the drawer containing my undergarments intoit, to discover, when I opened it on the train for my pajamas, nothingbut rolls of cord and several packages of Christmas ribbons. So I wasobliged to wait until she had untied the knots by means of a hairpin. 

It was my overcoat! My overcoat, apparently uninjured, but with thecollection of keys I had made missing. 

The address was printed, not written, in a large, strong hand, witha stub pen. I did not, at the time, notice the loss of certain paperswhich had been in the breast pocket. I am rather absent-minded, and itwas not until the night after the third sitting that they were recalledto my mind. 

At something after eleven Herbert Robinson called me up at my office. He was at Sperry's house, Sperry having been his physician during hisrecent illness. 

"I say, Horace, this is Herbert. "

"Yes. How are you?"

"Doing well, Sperry says. I'm at his place now. I'm speaking for him. He's got a patient. "

"Yes. "

"You were here last night, he says. " Herbert has a circumlocutory mannerover the phone which irritates me. He begins slowly and does not knowhow to stop. Talk with him drags on endlessly. 

"Well, I admit it, " I snapped. "It's not a secret. "

He lowered his voice. "Do you happen to have noticed a walking-stick inthe library when you were here?"

"Which walking-stick?"

"You know. The one we--"

"Yes. I saw it. "

"You didn't, by any chance, take it home with you?"

"No. "

"Are you sure?"

"Certainly I'm sure. "

"You are an absent-minded beggar, you know, " he explained. "You rememberabout the fire-tongs. And a stick is like an umbrella. One is likely topick it up and--"

"One is not likely to do anything of the sort. At least, I didn't. "

"Oh, all right. Every one well?"

"Very well, thanks. "

"Suppose we'll see you tonight?"

"Not unless you ring off and let me do some work, " I said irritably. 

He rang off. I was ruffled, I admit; but I was uneasy, also. To tell thetruth, the affair of the fire-tongs had cost me my self-confidence. Icalled up my wife, and she said Herbert was a fool and Sperry also. Butshe made an exhaustive search of the premises, without result. Whoeverhad taken the stick, I was cleared. Cleared, at least, for a time. Therewere strange developments coming that threatened my peace of mind. 

It was that day that I discovered that I was being watched. Shadowed, I believe is the technical word. I daresay I had been followed from myhouse, but I had not noticed. When I went out to lunch a youngish man ina dark overcoat was waiting for the elevator, and I saw him again when Icame out of my house. We went downtown again on the same car. 

Perhaps I would have thought nothing of it, had I not been summoned tothe suburbs on a piece of business concerning a mortgage. He was at thefar end of the platform as I took the train to return to the city, withhis back to me. I lost him in the crowd at the downtown station, but heevidently had not lost me, for, stopping to buy a newspaper, I turned, and, as my pause had evidently been unexpected, he almost ran into me. 

With that tendency of any man who finds himself under suspicion tosearch his past for some dereliction, possibly forgotten, I puzzled overthe situation for some time that afternoon. I did not connect it withthe Wells case, for in that matter I was indisputably the hunter, notthe hunted. 

Although I found no explanation for the matter, I did not tell my wifethat evening. Women are strange and she would, I feared, immediatelyjump to the conclusion that there was something in my private life thatI was keeping from her. 

Almost all women, I have found, although not over-conscious themselvesof the charm and attraction of their husbands, are of the convictionthat these husbands exert a dangerous fascination over other women, andthat this charm, which does not reveal itself in the home circle, isused abroad with occasionally disastrous effect. 

My preoccupation, however, did not escape my wife, and she commented onit at dinner. 

"You are generally dull, Horace, " she said, "but tonight you aredeadly. "

After dinner I went into our reception room, which is not lighted unlesswe are expecting guests, and peered out of the window. The detective, orwhoever he might be, was walking negligently up the street. 

As that was the night of the third seance, I find that my record coversthe fact that Mrs. Dane was housecleaning, for which reason we had notbeen asked to dinner, that my wife and I dined early, at six-thirty, andthat it was seven o'clock when Sperry called me by telephone. 

"Can you come to my office at once?" he asked. "I dare say Mrs. Johnsonwon't mind going to the Dane house alone. "

"Is there anything new?"

"No. But I want to get into the Wells house again. Bring the keys. "

"They were in the overcoat. It came back today, but the keys aremissing. "

"Did you lock the back door?"

"I don't remember. No, of course not. I didn't have the keys. "

"Then there's a chance, " he observed, after a moment's pause. "Anyhow, it's worth trying. Herbert told you about the stick?"

"Yes. I never had it, Sperry. "

Fortunately, during this conversation my wife was upstairs dressing. I knew quite well that she would violently oppose a second visit on mypart to the deserted house down the street. I therefore left a messagefor her that I had gone on, and, finding the street clear, met Sperry athis door-step. 

"This is the last sitting, Horace, " he explained, "and I feel we oughtto have the most complete possible knowledge, beforehand. We will bein a better position to understand what comes. There are two or threethings we haven't checked up on. "

He slipped an arm through mine, and we started down the street. "I'mgoing to get to the bottom of this, Horace, old dear, " he said. 

"Remember, we're pledged to a psychic investigation only. "

"Rats!" he said rudely. "We are going to find out who killed ArthurWells, and if he deserves hanging we'll hang him. "

"Or her?"

"It wasn't Elinor Wells, " he said positively. "Here's the point: if he'sbeen afraid to go back for his overcoat it's still there. I don't expectthat, however. But the thing about the curtain interests me. I've beenreading over my copy of the notes on the sittings. It was said, youremember, that curtains--some curtains--would have been better placesto hide the letters than the bag. "

I stopped suddenly. "By Jove, Sperry, " I said. "I remember now. My notesof the sittings were in my overcoat. "

"And they are gone?"

"They are gone. "

He whistled softly. "That's unfortunate, " he said. "Then the otherperson, whoever he is, knows what we know!"

He was considerably startled when I told him I had been shadowed, andinsisted that it referred directly to the case in hand. "He's got yournotes, " he said, "and he's got to know what your next move is going tobe. "

His intention, I found, was to examine the carpet outside of thedressing-room door, and the floor beneath it, to discover if possiblewhether Arthur Wells had fallen there and been moved. 

"Because I think you are right, " he said. "He wouldn't have been likelyto shoot himself in a hall, and because the very moving of the bodywould be in itself suspicious. Then I want to look at the curtains. 'Thecurtains would have been safer. ' Safer for what? For the bag with theletters, probably, for she followed that with the talk about Hawkins. He'd got them, and somebody was afraid he had. "

"Just where does Hawkins come in, Sperry?" I asked. 

"I'm damned if I know, " he reflected. "We may learn tonight. "

The Wells house was dark and forbidding. We walked past it once, asan officer was making his rounds in leisurely fashion, swinging hisnight-stick in circles. But on our return the street was empty, and weturned in at the side entry. 

I led the way with comparative familiarity. It was, you will remember, my third similar excursion. With Sperry behind me I felt confident. 

"In case the door is locked, I have a few skeleton keys, " said Sperry. 

We had reached the end of the narrow passage, and emerged into thesquare of brick and grass that lay behind the house. While the nightwas clear, the place lay in comparative darkness. Sperry stumbled oversomething, and muttered to himself. 

The rear porch lay in deep shadow. We went up the steps together. ThenSperry stopped, and I advanced to the doorway. It was locked. 

With my hand on the door-knob, I turned to Sperry. He was strugglingviolently with a dark figure, and even as I turned they went over with acrash and rolled together down the steps. Only one of them rose. 

I was terrified. I confess it. It was impossible to see whether itwas Sperry or his assailant. If it was Sperry who lay in a heap on theground, I felt that I was lost. I could not escape. The way was blocked, and behind me the door, to which I now turned frantically, was a barrierI could not move. 

Then, out of the darkness behind me, came Sperry's familiar, boomingbass. "I've knocked him out, I'm afraid. Got a match, Horace?"

Much shaken, I went down the steps and gave Sperry a wooden toothpick, under the impression that it was a match. That rectified, we bent overthe figure on the bricks. 

"Knocked out, for sure, " said Sperry, "but I think it's not serious. Awatchman, I suppose. Poor devil, we'll have to get him into the house. "

The lock gave way to manipulation at last, and the door swung open. There came to us the heavy odor of all closed houses, a combinationof carpets, cooked food, and floor wax. My nerves, now taxed to theirutmost, fairly shrank from it, but Sperry was cool. 

He bore the brunt of the weight as we carried the watchman in, holdinghim with his arms dangling, helpless and rather pathetic. Sperry glancedaround. 

"Into the kitchen, " he said. "We can lock him in. "

We had hardly laid him on the floor when I heard the slow stride of theofficer of the beat. He had turned into the paved alley-way, and wasadvancing with measured, ponderous steps. Fortunately I am an agile man, and thus I was able to get to the outer door, reverse the key and turnit from the inside, before I heard him hailing the watchman. 

"Hello there!" he called. "George, I say! George!"

He listened for a moment, then came up and tried the door. I crouchedinside, as guilty as the veriest house-breaker in the business. But hehad no suspicion, clearly, for he turned and went away, whistling as hewent. 

Not until we heard him going down the street again, absently running hisnight-stick along the fence palings, did Sperry or I move. 

"A narrow squeak, that, " I said, mopping my face. 

"A miss is as good as a mile, " he observed, and there was a sort ofexultation in his voice. He is a born adventurer. 

He came out into the passage and quickly locked the door behind him. 

"Now, friend Horace, " he said, "if you have anything but toothpicks formatches, we will look for the overcoat, and then we will go upstairs. "

"Suppose he wakens and raises an alarm?"

"We'll be out of luck. That's all. "

As we had anticipated, there was no overcoat in the library, and afterlistening a moment at the kitchen door, we ascended a rear staircase tothe upper floor. I had, it will be remembered, fallen from a chair ona table in the dressing room, and had left them thus overturned when Icharged the third floor. The room, however, was now in perfect order, and when I held my candle to the ceiling, I perceived that the bullethole had again been repaired, and this time with such skill that I couldnot even locate it. 

"We are up against some one cleverer than we are, Sperry, " Iacknowledged. 

"And who has more to lose than we have to gain, " he added cheerfully. "Don't worry about that, Horace. You're a married man and I'm not. If awoman wanted to hide some letters from her husband, and chose acurtain for a receptacle, what room would hide them in. Not in hisdressing-room, eh?"

He took the candle and led the way to Elinor Wells's bedroom. Here, however, the draperies were down, and we would have been at a loss, hadI not remembered my wife's custom of folding draperies when we close thehouse, and placing them under the dusting sheets which cover the variousbeds. 

Our inspection of the curtains was hurried, and broken by variousexcursions on my part to listen for the watchman. But he remained quietbelow, and finally we found what we were looking for. In the lining ofone of the curtains, near the bottom, a long, ragged cut had been made. 

"Cut in a hurry, with curved scissors, " was Sperry's comment. "Probablymanicure scissors. "

The result was a sort of pocket in the curtain, concealed on the chintzside, which was the side which would hang toward the room. 

"Probably, " he said, "the curtain would have been better. It would havestayed anyhow. Whereas the bag--" He was flushed with triumph. "How inthe world would Hawkins know that?" he demanded. "You can talk all youlike. She's told us things that no one ever told her. "

Before examining the floor in the hall I went downstairs and listenedoutside the kitchen door. The watchman was stirring inside the room, andgroaning occasionally. Sperry, however, when I told him, remained cooland in his exultant mood, and I saw that he meant to vindicate MissJeremy if he flung me into jail and the newspapers while doing it. 

"We'll have a go at the floors under the carpets now, " he said. "If hegets noisy, you can go down with the fire-tongs. I understand you are anexpert with them. "

The dressing-room had a large rug, like the nursery above it, andturning back the carpet was a simple matter. There had been a stainbeneath where the dead man's head had lain, but it had been scrubbed andscraped away. The boards were white for an area of a square foot or so. 

Sperry eyed the spot with indifference. "Not essential, " he said. "Showsgood housekeeping. That's all. The point is, are there other spots?"

And, after a time, we found what we were after. The upper hall wascarpeted, and my penknife came into requisition to lift the tacks. Theycame up rather easily, as if but recently put in. That, indeed, provedto be the case. 

Just outside the dressing-room door the boards for an area of two squarefeet or more beneath the carpet had been scraped and scrubbed. With thelifting of the carpet came, too, a strong odor, as of ammonia. But thestain of blood had absolutely disappeared. 

Sperry, kneeling on the floor with the candle held close, examined thewood. "Not only scrubbed, " he said, "but scraped down, probably witha floor-scraper. It's pretty clear, Horace. The poor devil fell here. There was a struggle, and he went down. He lay there for a while, too, until some plan was thought out. A man does not usually kill himself ina hallway. It's a sort of solitary deed. He fell here, and was draggedinto the room. The angle of the bullet in the ceiling would probablyshow it came from here, too, and went through the doorway. "

We were startled at that moment by a loud banging below. Sperry leapedto his feet and caught up his hat. 

"The watchman, " he said. "We'd better get out. He'll have all theneighbors in at that rate. "

He was still hammering on the door as we went down the rear stairs, andSperry stood outside the door and to one side. 

"Keep out of range, Horace, " he cautioned me. And to the watchman:

"Now, George, we will put the key under the door, and in ten minutes youmay come out. Don't come sooner. I've warned you. "

By the faint light from outside I could see him stooping, not in frontof the door, but behind it. And it was well he did, for the momentthe key was on the other side, a shot zipped through one of the lowerpanels. I had not expected it and it set me to shivering. 

"No more of that, George, " said Sperry calmly and cheerfully. "This is aquiet neighborhood, and we don't like shooting. What is more, my friendhere is very expert with his own particular weapon, and at any moment hemay go to the fire-place in the library and--"

I have no idea why Sperry chose to be facetious at that time, and myresentment rises as I record it. For when we reached the yard we heardthe officer running along the alley-way, calling as he ran. 

"The fence, quick, " Sperry said. 

I am not very good at fences, as a rule, but I leaped that one like acat, and came down in a barrel of waste-paper on the other side. Gettingme out was a breathless matter, finally accomplished by turning thebarrel over so that I could crawl out. We could hear the excited voicesof the two men beyond the fence, and we ran. I was better than Sperry atthat. I ran like a rabbit. I never even felt my legs. And Sperry poundedon behind me. 

We heard, behind us, one of the men climbing the fence. But in jumpingdown he seemed to have struck the side of the overturned barrel. Probably it rolled and threw him, for that part of my mind which was notintent on flight heard him fall, and curse loudly. 

"Go to it, " Sperry panted behind me. "Roll over and break your neck. "

This, I need hardly explain, was meant for our pursuer. 

We turned a corner and were out on one of the main thoroughfares. Instantly, so innate is cunning to the human brain, we fell to walkingsedately. 

It was as well that we did, for we had not gone a half block before wesaw our policeman again, lumbering toward us and blowing a whistle as heran. 

"Stop and get this street-car, " Sperry directed me. "And don't breatheso hard. "

The policeman stared at us fixedly, stopping to do so, but all he sawwas two well-dressed and professional-looking men, one of them ratherelderly who was hailing a street-car. I had the presence of mind to drawmy watch and consult it. 

"Just in good time, " I said distinctly, and we mounted the car step. Sperry remained on the platform and lighted a cigar. This gave him achance to look back. 

"Rather narrow squeak, that, " he observed, as he came in and sat downbeside me. "Your gray hairs probably saved us. "

I was quite numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I could breathe quietly. Suddenly Sperryfell to laughing. 

"I wish you could have seen yourself in that barrel, and crawling out, "he said. 

We reached Mrs. Dane's, to find that Miss Jeremy had already arrived, looking rather pale, as I had noticed she always did before a seance. Her color had faded, and her eyes seemed sunken in her head. 

"Not ill, are you?" Sperry asked her, as he took her hand. 

"Not at all. But I am anxious. I always am. These things do not come forthe calling. "

"This is the last time. You have promised. "

"Yes. The last time. "

X

It appeared that Herbert Robinson had been reading, during hisconvalescence, a considerable amount of psychic literature, and thatwe were to hold this third and final sitting under test conditions. Asbefore, the room had been stripped of furniture, and the cloth and rodwhich formed the low screen behind Miss Jeremy's chair were not of herown providing, but Herbert's. 

He had also provided, for some reason or other, eight small glass cups, into which he placed the legs of the two tables, and in a business-likemanner he set out on the large stand a piece of white paper, a pencil, and a spool of black thread. It is characteristic of Miss Jeremy, and ofher own ignorance of the methods employed in professional seances, thatshe was as much interested and puzzled as we were. 

When he had completed his preparations, Herbert made a brief speech. 

"Members of the Neighborhood Club, " he said impressively, "we haveagreed among ourselves that this is to be our last meeting for thepurpose that is before us. I have felt, therefore, that in justice tothe medium this final seance should leave us with every conviction ofits genuineness. Whatever phenomena occur, the medium must be, asshe has been, above suspicion. For the replies of her 'control, ' noparticular precaution seems necessary, or possible. But the first seancedivided itself into two parts: an early period when, so far as we couldobserve, the medium was at least partly conscious, possibly fully so, when physical demonstrations occurred. And a second, or trance period, during which we received replies to questions. It is for the physicalphenomena that I am about to take certain precautions. "

"Are you going to tie me?" Miss Jeremy asked. 

"Do you object?"

"Not at all. But with what?"

"With silk thread, " Herbert said, smilingly. 

She held out her wrists at once, but Herbert placed her in her chair, and proceeded to wrap her, chair and all, in a strong network of finethreads, drawn sufficiently taut to snap with any movement. 

He finished by placing her feet on the sheet of paper, and outliningtheir position there with a pencil line. 

The proceedings were saved from absurdity by what we all felt was theextreme gravity of the situation. There were present in the room Mrs. Dane, the Robinsons, Sperry, my wife and myself. Clara, Mrs. Dane'ssecretary, had begged off on the plea of nervousness from the earlierand physical portion of the seance, and was to remain outside in thehall until the trance commenced. 

Sperry objected to this, as movement in the circle during the trancehad, in the first seance, induced fretful uneasiness in the medium. ButClara, appealed to, begged to be allowed to remain outside until shewas required, and showed such unmistakable nervousness that we finallyagreed. 

"Would a slight noise disturb her?" Mrs. Dane asked. 

Miss Jeremy thought not, if the circle remained unbroken, and Mrs. Daneconsidered. 

"Bring me my stick from the hall, Horace, " she said. "And tell ClaraI'll rap on the floor with it when I want her. "

I found a stick in the rack outside and brought it in. The lights werestill on in the chandelier overhead, and as I gave the stick to Mrs. Dane I heard Sperry speaking sharply behind me. 

"Where did you get that stick?" he demanded. 

"In the hall. I--"

"I never saw it before, " said Mrs. Dane. "Perhaps it is Herbert's. "

But I caught Sperry's eye. We had both recognized it. It was ArthurWells's, the one which Sperry had taken from his room, and which, inturn, had been taken from Sperry's library. 

Sperry was watching me with a sort of cynical amusement. 

"You're an absent-minded beggar, Horace, " he said. 

"You didn't, by any chance, stop here on your way back from my place theother 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 someday soon. You're not as fit as you ought to be. "

I confess to a sort of helpless indignation that was far from thecomposure the occasion required. But the others, I believe, were fullyconvinced 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 firststages of mental decay, and carrying about the streets not onlyfire-tongs and walking-sticks, but other portable property belonging tomy friends. 

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

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

Quite without warning, immediately after, my chair twisted under me. "Iam being turned around, " I said, in a low tone. "It as if something hastaken hold of the back of the chair, and is twisting it. It has stoppednow. " I had been turned fully a quarter round. 

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

"There is something behind it, " Alice Robinson said, in a terrorizedtone. "Something behind it, moving. "

"It is not possible, " Herbert assured her. "Nothing, that is--there isonly one door, and it is closed. I have examined the walls and floorcarefully. "

At the end of five minutes something soft and fragrant fell on to thetable near me. I had not noticed Herbert when he placed the flowers fromMrs. 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 werepelted 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 forClara. 

When Clara came in, Mrs. Dane told her to switch on the lights. MissJeremy had dropped in her chair until the silk across her chest was heldtaut. But investigation showed that none of the threads were broken andthat her evening slippers still fitted into the outline on the paperbeneath them. Without getting up, Sperry reached to the stand behindMiss Jeremy, and brought into view a piece of sculptor's clay he hadplaced there. The handle of the bell was now jammed into the mass. Hehad 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 haveomitted mention of Miss Jeremy's "control. " So suddenly had we jumped, that first evening, into the trail that led us to the Wells case, thatbeyond the rather raucous "good-evening, " and possibly the extraneousmatter referring to Mother Goose and so on, we had been saved the usualpreliminary patter of the average control. 

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

"Now, " Herbert said, "we want you to go back to the house where you sawthe 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 theinitials were correct. 

"How do you know it is an L. ?"

"On letters, " was the laconic answer. Then: "Letters, letters, who hasthe 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 beginningwith the cane question, the medium was in difficulties. She moveduneasily, 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 ofher. And the fire-tongs--the fire-tongs--the fire-tongs!"

"Whose cane is this?" Herbert repeated. 

"Mr. Ellingham's. "

This created a profound sensation. 

"How do you know that?"

"He carried it at the seashore. He wrote in the sand with it. "

"What did he write?"

"Ten o'clock. "

"He wrote 'ten o'clock' in the sand, and the waves came and washed itaway?"

"Yes. "

"Horace, " said my wife, leaning forward, "why not ask her about thatstock of mine? If it is going down, I ought to sell, oughtn't I?"

Herbert eyed her with some exasperation. 

"We are here to make a serious investigation, " he said. "If the membersof the club will keep their attention on what we are doing, we may getsomewhere. Now, " to the medium, "the man is dead, and the revolver isbeside him. Did he kill himself?"

"No. He attacked her when he found the letters. "

"And she shot him?"

"I can't tell you that. "

"Try very hard. It is important. "

"I don't know, " was the fretful reply. "She may have. She hated him. Idon't know. She says she did. "

"She says she killed him?"

But there was no reply to this, although Herbert repeated it severaltimes. 

Instead, the voice of the "control" began to recite a verse ofpoetry--a cheap, sentimental bit of trash. It was maddening, under thecircumstances. 

"Do you know where the letters are?"

"Hawkins has them. "

"They were not hidden in the curtain?" This was Sperry. 

"No. The police might have searched the room. "

"Where were these letters?"

There was no direct reply to this, but instead:

"He found them when he was looking for his razorstrop. They were in thetop of a closet. His revolver was there, too. He went back and got it. It was terrible. "

There was a profound silence, followed by a slight exclamation fromSperry as he leaped to his feet. The screen at the end of the room, which cut off the light from Clara's candle, was toppling. The nextinstant it fell, and we saw Clara sprawled over her table, in a deadfaint. 

XI

In this, the final chapter of the record of these seances, I shallgive, as briefly as possible, the events of the day following the thirdsitting. I shall explain the mystery of Arthur Wells's death, and Ishall give the solution arrived at by the Neighborhood Club as to thestrange communications from the medium, Miss Jeremy, now Sperry's wife. 

But there are some things I cannot explain. Do our spirits live on, on this earth plane, now and then obedient to the wills of those yetliving? Is death, then, only a gateway into higher space, from which, through the open door of a "sensitive" mind, we may be brought back onoccasion to commit the inadequate absurdities of the physical seance?

Or is Sperry right, and do certain individuals manifest powers of apurely physical nature, but powers which Sperry characterizes as thesurvival of some long-lost development by which at one time we knew howto liberate a forgotten form of energy?

Who can say? We do not know. We have had to accept these things as theyhave been accepted through the ages, and give them either a spiritual ora purely natural explanation, as our minds happen to be adventurous oranalytic in type. 

But outside of the purely physical phenomena of those seances, we areprovided with an explanation which satisfies the Neighborhood Club, evenif it fails to satisfy the convinced spiritist. We have been accusedmerely of substituting one mystery for another, but I reply by sayingthat the mystery we substitute is not a mystery, but an acknowledgedfact. 

On Tuesday morning I wakened after an uneasy night. I knew certainthings, knew them definitely in the clear light of morning. Hawkins hadthe letters that Arthur Wells had found; that was one thing. I had nottaken Ellingham's stick to Mrs. Dane's house; that was another. I hadnot done it. I had placed it on the table and had not touched it again. 

But those were immaterial, compared with one outstanding fact. Anysupernatural solution would imply full knowledge by whatever power hadcontrolled the medium. And there was not full knowledge. There was, onthe contrary, a definite place beyond which the medium could not go. 

She did not know who had killed Arthur Wells. 

To my surprise, Sperry and Herbert Robinson came together to see methat morning at my office. Sperry, like myself, was pale and tired, butHerbert was restless and talkative, for all the world like a terrier onthe scent of a rat. 

They had brought a newspaper account of an attempt by burglars to robthe Wells house, and the usual police formula that arrests were expectedto be made that day. There was a diagram of the house, and a picture ofthe kitchen door, with an arrow indicating the bullet-hole. 

"Hawkins will be here soon, " Sperry said, rather casually, after I hadread the clipping. 

"Here?"

"Yes. He is bringing a letter from Miss Jeremy. The letter is merely ablind. We want to see him. "

Herbert was examining the door of my office. He set the spring lock. "Hemay try to bolt, " he explained. "We're in this pretty deep, you know. "

"How about a record of what he says?" Sperry asked. 

I pressed a button, and Miss Joyce came in. "Take the testimony of theman who is coming in, Miss Joyce, " I directed. "Take everything we say, any of us. Can you tell the different voices?"

She thought she could, and took up her position in the next room, withthe door partly open. 

I can still see Hawkins as Sperry let him in--a tall, cadaverous man ofgood manners and an English accent, a superior servant. He was cool butrather resentful. I judged that he considered carrying letters as in noway a part of his work, and that he was careful of his dignity. "MissJeremy sent this, sir, " he said. 

Then his eyes took in Sperry and Herbert, and he drew himself up. 

"I see, " he said. "It wasn't the letter, then?"

"Not entirely. We want to have a talk with you, Hawkins. "

"Very well, sir. " But his eyes went from one to the other of us. 

"You were in the employ of Mr. Wells. We know that. Also we saw youthere the night he died, but some time after his death. What time didyou get in that night?"

"About midnight. I am not certain. "

"Who told you of what had happened?"

"I told you that before. I met the detectives going out. "

"Exactly. Now, Hawkins, you had come in, locked the door, and placed thekey outside for the other servants?"

"Yes, sir. "

"How do you expect us to believe that?" Sperry demanded irritably. "There was only one key. Could you lock yourself in and then place thekey outside?"

"Yes, sir, " he replied impassively. "By opening the kitchen window, Icould reach out and hang it on the nail. "

"You were out of the house, then, at the time Mr. Wells died?"

"I can prove it by as many witnesses as you wish to call. "

"Now, about these letters, Hawkins, " Sperry said. "The letters in thebag. Have you still got them?"

He half rose--we had given him a chair facing the light--and then satdown again. "What letters?"

"Don't beat about the bush. We know you have the letters. And we wantthem. "

"I don't intend to give them up, sir. "

"Will you tell us how you got them?" He hesitated. "If you do not knowalready, I do not care to say. "

I placed the letter to A 31 before him. "You wrote this, I think?" Isaid. 

He was genuinely startled. More than that, indeed, for his facetwitched. "Suppose I did?" he said, "I'm not admitting it. "

"Will you tell us for whom it was meant?"

"You know a great deal already, gentlemen. Why not find that out fromwhere you learned the rest?"

"You know, then, where we learned what we know?"

"That's easy, " he said bitterly. "She's told you enough, I daresay. Shedoesn't know it all, of course. Any more than I do, " he added. 

"Will you give us the letters?"

"I haven't said I have them. I haven't admitted I wrote that one on thedesk. Suppose I have them, I'll not give them up except to the DistrictAttorney. "

"By 'she' do you refer to Miss Jeremy?" I asked. 

He stared at me, and then smiled faintly. 

"You know who I mean. "

We tried to assure him that we were not, in a sense, seeking to involvehim in the situation, and I even went so far as to state our position, briefly:

"I'd better explain, Hawkins. We are not doing police work. But, owingto a chain of circumstances, we have learned that Mr. Wells did not killhimself. He was murdered, or at least shot, by some one else. It may nothave been deliberate. Owing to what we have learned, certain people areunder suspicion. We want to clear things up for our own satisfaction. "

"Then why is some one taking down what I say in the next room?"

He could only have guessed it, but he saw that he was right, by ourfaces. He smiled bitterly. "Go on, " he said. "Take it down. It can'thurt anybody. I don't know who did it, and that's God's truth. "

And, after long wrangling, that was as far as we got. 

He suspected who had done it, but he did not know. He absolutely refusedto surrender the letters in his possession, and a sense of delicacy, Ithink, kept us all from pressing the question of the A 31 matter. 

"That's a personal affair, " he said. "I've had a good bit of trouble. I'm thinking now of going back to England. "

And, as I say, we did not insist. 

When he had gone, there seemed to be nothing to say. He had left thesame impression on all of us, I think--of trouble, but not of crime. Ofa man fairly driven; of wretchedness that was almost despair. He stillhad the letters. He had, after all, as much right to them as we had, which was, actually, no right at all. And, whatever it was, he still hadhis secret. 

Herbert was almost childishly crestfallen. Sperry's attitude was morephilosophical. 

"A woman, of course, " he said. "The A 31 letter shows it. He tried toget her back, perhaps, by holding the letters over her head. And ithasn't worked out. Poor devil! Only--who is the woman?"

It was that night, the fifteenth day after the crime, that the solutioncame. Came as a matter of fact, to my door. 

I was in the library, reading, or trying to read, a rather abstruse bookon psychic phenomena. My wife, I recall, had just asked me to change abanjo record for "The End of a Pleasant Day, " when the bell rang. 

In our modest establishment the maids retire early, and it is my custom, on those rare occasions when the bell rings after nine o'clock, toanswer the door myself. 

To my surprise, it was Sperry, accompanied by two ladies, one of themheavily veiled. It was not until I had ushered them into the receptionroom and lighted the gas that I saw who they were. It was Elinor Wells, in deep mourning, and Clara, Mrs. Dane's companion and secretary. 

I am afraid I was rather excited, for I took Sperry's hat from him, andplaced it on the head of a marble bust which I had given my wife on ourlast anniversary, and Sperry says that I drew a smoking-stand up besideElinor Wells with great care. I do not know. It has, however, passedinto history in the Club, where every now and then for some time Herbertoffered one of the ladies a cigar, with my compliments. 

My wife, I believe, was advancing along the corridor when Sperry closedthe door. As she had only had time to see that a woman was in the room, she was naturally resentful, and retired to the upper floor, where Ifound her considerably upset, some time later. 

While I am quite sure that I was not thinking clearly at the opening ofthe interview, I know that I was puzzled at the presence of Mrs. Dane'ssecretary, but I doubtless accepted it as having some connection withClara's notes. And Sperry, at the beginning, made no comment on her atall. 

"Mrs. Wells suggested that we come here, Horace, " he began. "We may needa legal mind on this. I'm not sure, or rather I think it unlikely. Butjust in case--suppose you tell him, Elinor. "

I have no record of the story Elinor Wells told that night in our littlereception-room, with Clara sitting in a corner, grave and white. It wasfragmentary, inco-ordinate. But I got it all at last. 

Charlie Ellingham had killed Arthur Wells, but in a struggle. In partsthe story was sordid enough. She did not spare herself, or her motives. She had wanted luxury, and Arthur had not succeeded as he had promised. They were in debt, and living beyond their means. But even that, shehastened to add, would not have mattered, had he not been brutal withher. He had made her life very wretched. 

But on the subject of Charlie Ellingham she was emphatic. She knew thatthere had been talk, but there had been no real basis for it. She hadturned to him for comfort, and he gave her love. She didn't know wherehe was now, and didn't greatly care, but she would like to recover anddestroy some letters he had written her. 

She was looking crushed and ill, and she told her story incoordinatelyand nervously. Reduced to its elements, it was as follows:

On the night of Arthur Wells's death they were dressing for a ball. Shehad made a private arrangement with Ellingham to plead a headache at thelast moment and let Arthur go alone. But he had been so insistentthat she had been forced to go, after all. She had sent the governess, Suzanne Gautier, out to telephone Ellingham not to come, but he was notat his house, and the message was left with his valet. As it turned out, he had already started. 

Elinor was dressed, all but her ball-gown, and had put on a negligee, to wait for the governess to return and help her. Arthur was in hisdressing-room, and she heard him grumbling about having no blades forhis safety razor. 

He got out a case of razors and searched for the strop. When sheremembered where the strop was, it was too late. The letters had beenbeside it, and he was coming toward her, with them in his hand. 

She was terrified. He had read only one, but that was enough. Hemuttered something and turned away. She saw his face as he went towardwhere the revolver had been hidden from the children, and she screamed. 

Charlie Ellingham heard her. The door had been left unlocked by thegoverness, and he was in the lower hall. He ran up and the two mengrappled. The first shot was fired by Arthur. It struck the ceiling. The second she was doubtful about. She thought the revolver was stillin Arthur's hand. It was all horrible. He went down like a stone, in thehallway outside the door. 

They were nearly mad, the two of them. They had dragged the body in, andthen faced each other. Ellingham was for calling the police at onceand surrendering, but she had kept him away from the telephone. Shemaintained, and I think it very possible, that her whole thought wasfor the children, and the effect on their after lives of such a scandal. And, after all, nothing could help the man on the floor. 

It was while they were trying to formulate some concerted plan that theyheard footsteps below, and, thinking it was Mademoiselle Gautier, shedrove Ellingham into the rear of the house, from which later he managedto escape. But it was Clara who was coming up the stairs. 

"She had been our first governess for the children, " Elinor said, "andshe often came in. She had made a birthday smock for Buddy, and she hadit in her hand. She almost fainted. I couldn't tell her about CharlieEllingham. I couldn't. I told her we had been struggling, and that I wasafraid I had shot him. She is quick. She knew just what to do. We workedfast. She said a suicide would not have fired one shot into the ceiling, and she fixed that. It was terrible. And all the time he lay there, withhis eyes half open--"

The letters, it seems, were all over the place. Elinor thought of thecurtain, cut a receptacle for them, but she was afraid of the police. Finally she gave them to Clara, who was to take them away and burn them. 

They did everything they could think of, all the time listening forSuzanne Gautier's return; filled the second empty chamber of therevolver, dragged the body out of the hall and washed the carpet, andcalled Doctor Sperry, knowing that he was at Mrs. Dane's and could notcome. 

Clara had only a little time, and with the letters in her handbag shestarted down the stairs. There she heard some one, possibly Ellingham, on the back stairs, and in her haste, she fell, hurting her knee, andshe must have dropped the handbag at that time. They knew now thatHawkins had found it later on. But for a few days they didn't know, andhence the advertisement. 

"I think we would better explain Hawkins, " Sperry said. "Hawkins wasmarried to Miss Clara here, some years ago, while she was with Mrs. Wells. They had kept it a secret, and recently she has broken with him. "

"He was infatuated with another woman, " Clara said briefly. "That's apersonal matter. It has nothing to do with this case. "

"It explains Hawkins's letter. "

"It doesn't explain how that medium knew everything that happened, "Clara put in, excitedly. "She knew it all, even the library paste! I cantell you, Mr. Johnson, I was close to fainting a dozen times before Ifinally did it. "

"Did you know of our seances?" I asked Mrs. Wells. 

"Yes. I may as well tell you that I haven't been in Florida. How couldI? The children are there, but I--"

"Did you tell Charlie Ellingham about them?"

"After the second one I warned him, and I think he went to the house. One bullet was somewhere in the ceiling, or in the floor of the nursery. I thought it ought to be found. I don't know whether he found it or not. I've been afraid to see him. "

She sat, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. She was a proudwoman, and surrender had come hard. The struggle was marked in her face. She looked as though she had not slept for days. 

"You think I am frightened, " she said slowly. "And I am, terriblyfrightened. But not about discovery. That has come, and cannot behelped. "

"Then why?"

"How does this woman, this medium, know these things?" Her voice rose, with an unexpected hysterical catch. "It is superhuman. I am almostmad. "

"We're going to get to the bottom of this, " Sperry said soothingly. "Be sure that it is not what you think it is, Elinor. There's a simpleexplanation, and I think I've got it. What about the stick that wastaken from my library?"

"Will you tell me how you came to have it, doctor?"

"Yes. I took it from the lower hall the night--the night it happened. "

"It was Charlie Ellingham's. He had left it there. We had to have it, doctor. Alone it might not mean much, but with the other things youknew--tell them, Clara. "

"I stole it from your office, " Clara said, looking straight ahead. "Wehad to have it. I knew at the second sitting that it was his. "

"When did you take it?"

"On Monday morning, I went for Mrs. Dane's medicine, and you hadpromised her a book. Do you remember? I told your man, and he allowed meto go up to the library. It was there, on the table. I had expected tohave to search for it, but it was lying out. I fastened it to my belt, under my long coat. "

"And placed it in the rack at Mrs. Dane's?" Sperry was watching herintently, with the same sort of grim intentness he wears when examininga chest. 

"I put it in the closet in my room. I meant to get rid of it, when I hada little time. I don't know how it got downstairs, but I think--"

"Yes?"

"We are house-cleaning. A housemaid was washing closets. I suppose shefound it and, thinking it was one of Mrs. Dane's, took it downstairs. That is, unless--" It was clear that, like Elinor, she had asupernatural explanation in her mind. She looked gaunt and haggard. 

"Mr. Ellingham was anxious to get it, " she finished. "He had taken Mr. Johnson's overcoat by mistake one night when you were both in the house, and the notes were in it. He saw that the stick was important. "

"Clara, " Sperry asked, "did you see, the day you advertised for yourbag, another similar advertisement?"

"I saw it. It frightened me. "

"You have no idea who inserted it?"

"None whatever. "

"Did you ever see Miss Jeremy before the first sitting? Or hear of her?"

"Never. "

"Or between the seances?"

Elinor rose and drew her veil down. "We must go, " she said. "Surely nowyou will cease these terrible investigations. I cannot stand much more. I am going mad. "

"There will be no more seances, " Sperry said gravely. 

"What are you going to do?" She turned to me, I daresay because Irepresented what to her was her supreme dread, the law. 

"My dear girl, " I said, "we are not going to do anything. TheNeighborhood Club has been doing a little amateur research work, whichis now over. That is all. "

Sperry took them away in his car, but he turned on the door-step, "Waitdownstairs for me, " he said, "I am coming back. "

I remained in the library until he returned, uneasily pacing the floor. 

For where were we, after all? We had had the medium's story elaboratedand confirmed, but the fact remained that, step by step, through herunknown "control" the Neighborhood Club had followed a tragedy from itsbeginning, or almost its beginning, to its end. 

Was everything on which I had built my life to go? Its philosophy, itsscience, even its theology, before the revelations of a young woman whoknew hardly the rudiments of the very things she was destroying?

Was death, then, not peace and an awakening to new things, but awretched and dissociated clutching after the old? A wrench which onlyloosened but did not break our earthly ties?

It was well that Sperry came back when he did, bringing with him abreath of fresh night air and stalwart sanity. He found me still pacingthe room. 

"The thing I want to know, " I said fretfully, "is where this leaves us?Where are we? For God's sake, where are we?"

"First of all, " he said, "have you anything to drink? Not for me. Foryourself. You look sick. "

"We do not keep intoxicants in the house. "

"Oh, piffle, " he said. "Where is it, Horace?"

"I have a little gin. "

"Where?"

I drew a chair before the book-shelves, which in our old-fashioned housereach almost to the ceiling, and, withdrawing a volume of Josephus, Ibrought down the bottle. 

"Now and then, when I have had a bad day, " I explained, "I find that itmakes me sleep. "

He poured out some and I drank it, being careful to rinse the glassafterward. 

"Well, " said Sperry, when he had lighted a cigar. "So you want to knowwhere we are. "

"I would like to save something out of the wreck. "

"That's easy. Horace, you should be a heart specialist, and I shouldhave taken the law. It's as plain as the alphabet. " He took his notes ofthe sittings from his pocket. "I'm going to read a few things. Keep whatis left of your mind on them. This is the first sitting. 

"'The knee hurts. It is very bad. Arnica will take the pain out. '

"I want to go out. I want air. If I could only go to sleep and forgetit. The drawing-room furniture is scattered all over the house. "

"Now the second sitting:

"'It is writing. ' (The stick. ) 'It is writing, but the water washed itaway. All of it, not a trace. ' 'If only the pocketbook were not lost. Car-tickets and letters. It will be terrible if the letters are found. ''Hawkins may have it. The curtain was much safer. ' 'That part's safeenough, unless it made a hole in the floor above. '"

"Oh, if you're going to read a lot of irrelevant material--"

"Irrelevant nothing! Wake up, Horace! But remember this. I'm notexplaining the physical phenomena. We'll never do that. It wasn'textraordinary, as such things go. Our little medium in a trancecondition has read poor Clara's mind. It's all here, all that Claraknew and nothing that she didn't know. A mind-reader, friend Horace. AndHeaven help me when I marry her!"

********

As I have said, the Neighborhood Club ended its investigations withthis conclusion, which I believe is properly reached. It is only fair tostate that there are those among us who have accepted that theory in theWells case, but who have preferred to consider that behind both it andthe physical phenomena of the seances there was an intelligence whichdirected both, an intelligence not of this world as we know it. BothHerbert and Alice Robinson are now pronounced spiritualists, althoughMiss Jeremy, now Mrs. Sperry, has definitely abandoned all investigativework. 

Personally, I have evolved no theory. It seems beyond dispute thatcertain individuals can read minds, and that these same, or otherso-called "sensitives, " are capable of liberating a form of invisibleenergy which, however, they turn to no further account than the uselessringing of bells, moving of small tables, and flinging about of diversobjects. 

To me, I admit, the solution of the Wells case as one of mind-reading ismore satisfactory than explanatory. For mental waves remain a mystery, acknowledged, as is electricity, but of a nature yet unrevealed. Thoughts are things. That is all we know. 

Mrs. Dane, I believe, had suspected the solution from the start. 

The Neighborhood Club has recently disbanded. We tried other things, butwe had been spoiled. Our Kipling winter was a failure. We read a play ortwo, with Sperry's wife reading the heroine, and the rest of us takingother parts. She has a lovely voice, has Mrs. Sperry. But it was allstale and unprofitable, after the Wells affair. With Herbert on alecture tour on spirit realism, and Mrs. Dane at a sanatorium for thewinter, we have now given it up, and my wife and I spend our Mondayevenings at home. 

After dinner I read, or, as lately, I have been making this record ofthe Wells case from our notes. My wife is still fond of the phonograph, and even now, as I make this last entry and complete my narrative, sheis waiting for me to change the record. I will be frank. I hate thephonograph. I hope it will be destroyed, or stolen. I am thinking veryseriously of having it stolen. 

"Horace, " says my wife, "whatever would we do without the phonograph?I wish you would put it in the burglar-insurance policy. I am alwaysafraid it will be stolen. "

Even here, you see! Truly thoughts are things.