Sight Unseen........................................................................................................................................................1

Mary Roberts Rhinehart ...........................................................................................................................1

The rather extraordinary story revealed by the experiments of the Neighborhood Club have been until now a

matter only of private record. But it seems to me, as an active participant in the investigations, that they

should be given to the public; not so much for what they will add to the existing data on psychical research,

for from that angle they were not unusual, but as yet another exploration into that still uncharted territory, the

The psychoanalysts have taught us something about the individual mind. They have their own patter, of

complexes and primal instincts, of the unconscious, which is a sort of bonded warehouse from which we

clandestinely withdraw our stored thoughts and impressions. They lay to this unconscious mind of ours all

phenomena that cannot otherwise be labeled, and ascribe such demonstrations of power as cannot thus be

explained to trickery, to black silk threads and folding rods, to slates with false sides and a medium with

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. But what about objective mind? Does it make its only outward manifestations

through speech and action? Can we ignore the effect of mind on mind, when there are present none of the

In making the following statement concerning our part in the strange case of Arthur Wells, a certain

allowance must be made for our ignorance of socalled psychic phenomena, and also for the fact that since

that time, just before the war, great advances have been made in scientific methods of investigation. For

instance, we did not place Miss Jeremy's chair on a scale, to measure for any loss of weight. Also the theory

of rods of invisible matter emanating from the medium's body, to move bodies at a distance from her, had

only been evolved; and none of the methods for calculation of leverages and strains had been formulated, so

To be frank, I am quite convinced that, even had we known of these socalled explanations, which in reality

explain nothing, we would have ignored them as we became involved in the dramatic movement of the

revelations and the personal experiences which grew out of them. I confess that following the night after the

first seance any observations of mine would have been of no scientific value whatever, and I believe I can

Of the medium herself I can only say that we have never questioned her integrity. 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 in a querulous tone, and Sperry's

examination of her pulse showed that it went from eighty normal to a hundred and twenty and very feeble.

With this preface I come to the death of Arthur Wells, our acquaintance and neighbor, and the investigation

into that death by a group of six earnest people who call themselves the Neighborhood Club.

The Neighborhood Club was organized in my house. It was too small really to be called a club, but women

have a way these days of conferring a titular 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 evenings at the different houses. There were

Herbert Robinson and his sister Alice not a young woman, but clever, alert, and very alive; Sperry, the

wellknown heart specialist, a bachelor still in spite of much feminine activity; and there was old Mrs. Dane,

hopelessly crippled as to the knees with rheumatism, but one of those glowing and kindly souls that have a

way of being a neighborhood nucleus. It was around her that we first gathered, with an idea of forming for

her certain contact points with the active life from which she was otherwise cut off. But she gave us, I am

sure, more than we brought her, and, as will be seen later, her shrewdness was an important element in

It had been our policy to take up different subjects for these neighborhood dinners. Sperry was a reformer in

his way, and on his nights we generally took up civic questions. He was particularly interested in the

responsibility of the state to the sick poor. My wife and I had "political" evenings. Not really politics, except

in their relation to life. I am a lawyer by profession, and dabble a bit in city government. The Robinsons had

Don't misunderstand me. We had no papers, no set programs. On the Robinson evenings we discussed

editorials and current periodicals, as well as the new books and plays. We were frequently acrimonious, I

fear, but our small wrangles ended with the evening. Robinson was the literary editor of a paper, and his

Mrs. Dane was a freelance. "Give me that privilege," she begged. "At least, until you find my evenings dull.

It gives me, during all the week before you come, a sort of thrilling feeling that the world is mine to choose

from." The result was never dull. She led us all the way from movingpictures to modern dress. She led us

On consulting my notebook I find that the first evening which directly concerns the Arthur Wells case was

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 never analyzed them. With me on this occasion it took the form of nervous

irritability, and something of apprehension. My wife, I remember, complained of headache, and one of the

I have often wondered for how much of what happened to Arthur Wells the day was responsible. There are

days when the world is a place for love and play and laughter. And then there are sinister days, when the

earth is a hideous place, when even the thought of immortality is unbearable, and life itself a burden; when all

I am fond of my friends, but I found no pleasure in the thought of meeting them that evening. I remembered

the odious squeak in the wheels of 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 had liked, and disagreed with him. Disagreed

violently. I wanted to call him on the telephone and tell him that he was a fool. I felt old, although I am only

With the fall of twilight, things changed somewhat. I was more passive. Wretchedness encompassed me, but I

was not wretched. There was violence in the air, but I was not violent. And with a bath and my dinner clothes

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

We have no children, and my wife, for lack of other interests, finds her housekeeping an engrossing and

serious matter. She is in the habit of bringing her domestic difficulties to me when I reach home in the

evenings, a habit which sometimes renders me unjustly indignant. Most unjustly, for she has borne with me

for thirty years and is known throughout the entire neighborhood as a perfect housekeeper. I can close my

We passed the Wellses' house on our way to Mrs. Dane's that night, and my wife commented on the dark

"Even if they are going out," she said, "it would add to the appearance of the street to leave a light or two

I made no comment, I believe. The Wellses were a young couple, with children, and had been known to

observe that they considered the neighborhood "stodgy." And we had retaliated, I regret to say, in kind, but

not with any real unkindness, by regarding them as interlopers. They drove too many cars, and drove them

too fast; they kept a governess and didn't see enough of their children; and their English butler made our neat

There is generally, in every old neighborhood, some one house on which is fixed, so to speak, the community

gaze, and in our case it was on the Arthur Wellses'. It was a curious, not unfriendly staring, much I daresay

She had given us no inkling of what we were to have that night, and my wife conjectured a conjurer! She

gave me rather a triumphant smile when we were received in the library and the doors into the drawingroom

We were early, as my wife is a punctual person, and soon after our arrival Sperry came. Mrs. Dane was in her

chair as usual, with her companion in attendance, and when she heard Sperry's voice outside she excused

herself and was wheeled out to him, and together we heard them go into the drawingroom. When the

Robinsons arrived she and Sperry reappeared, and we waited for her customary announcement of the

evening's program. When none came, even during the meal, I confess that my curiosity was almost painful.

I think, looking back, that it was Sperry who turned the talk to the supernatural, and that, to the

accompaniment of considerable gibing by the men, he told a ghost story that set the women to looking back

over their shoulders into the dark corners beyond the zone of candlelight. All of us, I remember, except

Sperry and Mrs. Dane, were skeptical as to the supernatural, and Herbert Robinson believed that while there

were socalled sensitives who actually went into trance, the controls which took possession of them were

buried personalities of their own, released during trance from the subconscious mind.

"If not," he said truculently, "if they are really spirits, why can't they tell us what is going on, not in some

vague place where they are always happy, but here and now, in the next house? I don't ask for prophecy, but

for some evidence of their knowledge. Are the Germans getting ready to fight England? Is Horace here the

As I am the Horace in question, I must explain that Herbert was merely being facetious. My life is a most

orderly and decorous one. But my wife, unfortunately, lacks a sense of humor, and I felt that the remark

"Physical phenomena!" scoffed the cynic. "I've seen it all objects moving without visible hands,

unexplained currents of cold air, voice through a trumpet I know the whole rotten mess, and I've got a book

Mrs. Dane smiled, and the discussion was dropped for a time. It was during the coffee and cigars that Mrs.

Dane made her announcement. As Alice Robinson takes an afterdinner cigarette, a custom my wife greatly

"As a matter of fact, Herbert," she said, "we intend to put your skepticism to the test tonight. Doctor Sperry

has found a medium for us, a nonprofessional and a patient of his, and she has kindly consented to give us a

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

"Absolutely not," he said, gravely. "She is coming in my car. She doesn't know to what house or whose. She

knows none of you. She is a stranger to the city, and she will not even recognize the neighborhood."

The butler wheeled out Mrs. Dane's chair, as her companion did not dine with her on club nights, and led us

to the drawingroom doors. There Sperry threw them, open, and we saw that the room had been completely

Mrs. Dane's drawingroom is generally rather painful. Kindly soul that she is, she has considered it necessary

to preserve and exhibit there the many gifts of a long lifetime. Photographs long outgrown, onyx tables, a

clutter of odd chairs and groups of discordant bricabrac usually make the progress of her chair through it a

The room had been dismantled. It opened before us, walls and chimneypiece bare, rugs gone from the floor,

even curtains taken from the windows. To emphasize the change, in the center stood a common pine table,

surrounded by seven plain chairs. All the lights were out save one, a corner bracket, which was screened with

She watched our faces with keen satisfaction. "Such a time I had doing it!" she said. "The servants, of course,

"Very neat," he said, "although a chair or two for the spooks would have been no more than hospitable. All

My wife, however, looked slightly displeased. "As a churchwoman," she said, "I really feel that it is

positively impious to bring back the souls of the departed, before they are called from on High."

"Oh, rats," Herbert broke in rudely. "They'll not come. Don't worry. And if you hear raps, don't worry. It will

There was still a half hour until the medium's arrival. At Mrs. Dane's direction we employed it in searching

the room. It was the ordinary rectangular drawingroom, occupying a corner of the house. Two windows at

the end faced on the street, with a patch of railedin lawn beneath them. A fireplace 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. The third side was a blank wall, beyond

As, although the results we obtained were far beyond any expectations, the purely physical phenomena were

relatively insignificant, it is not necessary to go further into the detail of the room. Robinson has done that,

anyhow, for the Society of Psychical Research, a proceeding to which I was opposed, as will be understood

Further to satisfy Mrs. Dane, we examined the walls and floorboards carefully, and Herbert, armed with a

candle, went down to the cellar and investigated from below, returning to announce in a loud voice which

made us all jump that it seemed all clear enough down there. After that we sat and waited, and I daresay the

bareness and darkness of the room put us into excellent receptive condition. I know that I myself, probably

owing to an astigmatism, once or twice felt that I saw wavering shadows in corners, and I felt again some of

the strangeness I had felt during the day. We spoke in whispers, and Alice Robinson recited the history of a

haunted house where she had visited in England. But Herbert was still cynical. He said, I remember:

"Here we are, six intelligent persons of above the average grade, and in a few minutes our hair will be rising

and our pulses hammering while a Choctaw Indian control, in atrocious English, will tell us she is happy and

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

"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 we now understand, other parts we do not. For

the physical phenomena we have no adequate explanation. They occurred. We saw and heard them. For the

other part of the seance we have come to a conclusion satisfactory to ourselves, a conclusion not reached,

however, until some of us had gone through some dangerous experiences, and had been brought into contact

But at no time, although incredible things happened, did any one of us glimpse that strange world of the spirit

Miss Jeremy, the medium, was due at 8:30 and at 8:20 my wife assisted Mrs. Dane into one of the straight

chairs at the table, and Sperry, sent out by her, returned with a darkish bundle in his arms, and carrying a light

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

Some one had started the phonograph in the library, and it was playing gloomily, "Shall we meet beyond the

river?" At Sperry's request we stopped talking and composed ourselves, and Herbert, I remember, took a

tablet of some sort, to our intense annoyance, and crunched it in his teeth. Then Miss Jeremy came in.

She was not at all what we had expected. Twentysix, I should say, and in a black dinner dress. She seemed

like a perfectly normal young woman, even attractive in a fragile, delicate way. Not much personality,

perhaps; the very word "medium" precludes that. A "sensitive," I think she called herself. We were presented

to her, and but for the stripped and bare room, it might have been any evening after any dinner, with bridge

When she shook hands with me she looked at me keenly. "What a strange day it has been!" she said. "I have

She smiled a quick smile that was not without humor. Somehow I had never thought of a medium with a

sense of humor. I liked her at once. We all liked her, and Sperry, Sperry the bachelor, the iconoclast, the

Following her entrance Herbert had closed and bolted the drawingroom doors, and as an added precaution

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

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

Mrs. Dane indicated her place, and she asked for a small stand to be brought in and placed about two feet

behind her chair, and two chairs to flank it, and then to take the black cloth from the table and hang it over the

bamboo rod, which was laid across the backs of the chairs. Thus arranged, the curtain formed a low screen

behind her, with the stand beyond it. On this stand we placed, at her order, various articles from our pockets

We all felt, I fancy, rather absurd. Herbert's smile in the dim light became a grin. "The same old thing!" he

We arranged between us that we were to sit one on each side of her, and Sperry warned me not to let go of

her hand for a moment. "They have a way of switching hands," he explained in a whisper. "If she wants to

We were, we discovered, not to touch the table, but to sit around it at a distance of a few inches, holding

hands and thus forming the circle. And for twenty minutes we sat thus, and nothing happened. She was fully

conscious and even spoke once or twice, and at last she moved impatiently and told us to put our hands on the

I had put my opened watch on the table before me, a night watch with a luminous dial. At five minutes after

nine I felt the top of the table waver under my fingers, a curious, fluidlike motion.

Herbert laughed, a dry little chuckle. "Sure it is," he said. "When we all get to acting together, it will probably

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

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's knife,

One of the women screamed, ending in a hysterical giggle. Then we heard rhythmic beating on the top of the

stand behind the medium. Startling as it was at the beginning, increasing as it did from a slow beat to an

incredibly rapid drumming, when the initial shock was over Herbert commenced to gibe.

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

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

We laughed consumedly. The sitting had taken on all the attributes of practical joking. The table no longer

"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 was dropped forward on her chest, and she suddenly sagged in her chair. Sperry

broke the circle and coming to her, took her pulse. It was, he reported, very rapid.

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

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

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

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

There was a sort of restrained movement in the room now. Herbert turned on a bracket light, and I moved

"Go and get Clara, Horace," Mrs. Dane said to me, "and have her bring a notebook and pencil." Nothing, I

believe, happened during my absence. Miss Jeremy was sunk in her chair and breathing heavily when I came

back with Clara, and Sperry was still watching her pulse. Suddenly my wife said:

This proved to be the case, and was, I regret to say, the cause of a most unjust suspicion on my wife's part.

Even today, with all the knowledge she possesses, I am certain that Mrs. Johnson believes that some

mysterious power took my watch and dragged it off the table, and threw the pen, but that I myself under

cover of darkness placed her bracelet on Miss Jeremy's arm. I can only reiterate here what I have told her

"Take down everything that happens, Clara, and all we say," Mrs. Dane said in a low tone. "Even if it sounds

It is because Clara took her orders literally that I am making this more readable version of her script. There

was a certain amount of nonpertinent matter which would only cloud the statement if rendered word for

word, and also certain scattered, unrelated words with which many of the statements terminated. For instance,

at the end of the sentence, "Just above the ear," came a number of rhymes to the final word, "dear, near, fear,

For some five minutes, perhaps, Miss Jeremy breathed stertorously, and it was during that interval that we

introduced Clara and took up our positions. Sperry sat near the medium now, having changed places with

Herbert, and the rest of us were as we had been, save that we no longer touched hands. Suddenly Miss Jeremy

began to breathe more quietly, and to move about in her chair. Then she sat upright.

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

"Dark and cold," she said, "Dark and cold. And the knee hurts. It's very bad. If the key is on the nail Arnica

She lapsed into silence. In transcribing Clara's record I shall make no reference to these pauses, which were

frequent, and occasionally filled in with extraneous matter. For instance, once there was what amounted to

five minutes of Mother Goose jingles. Our method was simply one of question, by one of ourselves, and of

answer by Miss Jeremy. These replies were usually in a querulous tone, and were often apparently unwilling.

Also occasionally there was a bit of vernacular, as in the next reply. Herbert, who was still flippantly amused,

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

"A bullet just above the ear. That's a bad place. Thank goodness there's not much blood. Cold water will take

"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, or whatever it is. Do you mean that a man is

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

Herbert muttered something about the movies having nothing on us, and was angrily hushed. There was

something quite outside of Miss Jeremy's words that had impressed itself on all of us with a sense of

unexpected but very real tragedy. As I look back I believe it was a sort of desperation in her voice. But then

came one of those interruptions which were to annoy us considerably during the series of sittings; she began

"Now then," Sperry said in a businesslike voice, "you see a dead man, and a young woman with him. Can

"A small room, his dressingroom. He was shaving. There is still lather on his face."

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

I looked at the secretary, and it was clear that she was terrified. I got up and took my chair to her. Coming

back, I picked up my forgotten watch from the floor. It was still going, and the hands marked ninethirty.

"Now," Sperry said in a soothing tone, "you said there was a shot fired and a man was killed. Where was

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

"She's coming out," he said. "A glass of wine, somebody." But she did not come out. Instead, she twisted in

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

She subsided into the chair and began to breathe with difficulty. "I want to go out. I want air. If I could only

go to sleep and forget it. The drawingroom furniture is scattered over the house."

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

There was a distinct pause. Then: "Certainly. A brick house. The servants' entrance is locked, but the key is

The remainder of the sitting was chaotic. The secretary's notes consist of unrelated words and often childish

verses. On going over the notes the next day, when the stenographic record had been copied on a typewriter,

Sperry and I found that one word recurred frequently. The word was "curtain." Of the extraordinary event

that followed the breaking up of the seance, I have the keenest recollection. Miss Jeremy came out of her

trance weak and looking extremely ill, and Sperry's motor took her home. She knew nothing of what had

happened, and hoped we had been satisfied. By agreement, we did not tell her what had transpired, and she

Herbert saw her to the car, and came back, looking grave. We were standing together in the center of the

"Well," he said, "it is one of two things. Either we've been gloriously faked, or we've been let in on a very

It was Mrs. Dane's custom to serve a Southern eggnog as a sort of stirupcup nightcap, she calls it on

her evenings, and we found it waiting for us in the library. In the warmth of its open fire, and the cheer of its

lamps, even in the dignity and impassiveness of the butler, there was something sane and wholesome. The

women of the party reacted quickly, but I looked over to see Sperry at a corner desk, intently working over a

"Library paste!" he said. "It rolls into a soft, malleable ball. It could quite easily be used to fill a small hole in

"I'm not thinking at all. The thing she described may have taken place in Timbuctoo. May have happened ten

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

At midnight, shortly after we reached home, Sperry called me on the phone. "Be careful, Horace," he said.

"Don't let Mrs. Horace think anything has happened. I want to see you at once. Suppose you say I have a

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

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

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

I am not ashamed to confess that my hands shook as I hung up the receiver. A brick house, she had said; the

Wells house was brick. And so were all the other houses on the street. Vines in the back? Well, even my own

house had vines. It was absurd; it was pure coincidence; it was well, I felt it was queer.

Nevertheless, as I stood there, I wondered for the first time in a highly material existence, whether there

might not be, after all, a spiritworld surrounding us, cognizant of all that we did, touching but intangible,

I stood by the prosaic telephone instrument and looked into the darkened recesses of the passage. It seemed to

my disordered nerves that back of the coats and wraps that hung on the rack, beyond the heavy curtains, in

every corner, there lurked vague and shadowy forms, invisible when I stared, but advancing a trifle from their

obscurity when, by turning my head and looking ahead, they impinged on the extreme right or left of my field

I was shocked by the news, but not greatly grieved. The Wellses had been among us but not of us, as I have

said. They had come, like gay young comets, into our orderly constellation, trailing behind them their cars

and servants, their children and governesses and rather riotous friends, and had flashed on us in a sort of

Of the two, I myself had preferred Arthur. His faults were on the surface. He drank hard, gambled, and could

not always pay his gambling debts. But underneath it all there had always been something boyishly honest

about him. He had played, it is true, through most of the thirty years that now marked his whole life, but he

could have been made a man by 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, as is the way with many good women,

her judgments of her own sex are rather merciless. A tall, handsome girl, very dark, my wife has

characterized her as cold, calculating and ambitious. She has said frequently, too, that Elinor Wells was a

disappointed woman, that her marriage, while giving her social identity, had disappointed her in a monetary

way. Whether that is true or not, there was no doubt, by the time they had lived in our neighborhood for a

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

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

In spite of her vague pronouns, I understood, and in a more masculine way I shared her sense of outrage. Our

street has never had a scandal on it, except the one when the Berringtons' music teacher ran away with their

coachman, in the days of carriages. And I am glad to say that that is almost forgotten.

Nevertheless, we had realized for some time that the dreaded triangle was threatening the repute of our quiet

neighborhood, and as I stood by the telephone that night I saw that it had come. More than that, it seemed

very probable that into this very triangle our peaceful Neighborhood Club had been suddenly thrust.

My wife accepted my excuse coldly. She dislikes intensely the occasional outside calls of my profession. She

merely observed, however, that she would leave all the lights on until my return. "I should think you could

arrange things better, Horace," she added. "It's perfectly idiotic the way people die at night. And tonight, of

I shall have to confess that through all of the thirty years of our married 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, nor had Herbert's

foolish remark earlier in the evening helped matters. But she watched me put on my overcoat without further

The street, with its open spaces, was a relief after the dark hall. I started for Sperry's house, my head bent

against the wind, my mind on the news I had just heard. Was it, I wondered, just possible that we had for

some reason been allowed behind the veil which covered poor Wells' last moments? And, to admit that for a

moment, where would what we had heard lead us? Sperry had said he had killed himself. But suppose he

I realize now, looking back, that my recollection of the other man in the triangle is largely colored by the fact

that he fell in the great war. At that time I hardly knew him, except as a wealthy and selfmade man in his

late thirties; I saw him now and then, in the club playing billiards or going in and out of the Wells house, a

large, fastidiously dressed man, strong featured and broad shouldered, with rather too much manner. 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 or money. And get it.

Sperry was waiting on his doorstep, and we went on to the Wells house. What with the magnitude of the

thing that had happened, and our mutual feeling that we were somehow involved in it, we were rather silent.

Sperry asked one question. however, "Are you certain about the time when Miss Jeremy saw what looks like

"Certainly. My watch fell at five minutes after nine. When it was all over, and I picked it up, it was still

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

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

"They say so, he said grimly. And added, irritably: "Good heavens, Horace, we must keep that other fool

Although the Wells house was brilliantly lighted when we reached it, we had difficulty in gaining admission.

Whoever were in the house were upstairs, and the bell evidently rang in the deserted kitchen or a

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

I confess to a nervous tightening of my muscles as we made our way around the house. If the key was there,

we were on the track of a revelation that might revolutionize much that we had held fundamental in science

and in our knowledge of life itself. If, sitting in Mrs. Dane's quiet room, a woman could tell us what was

happening in a house a mile or so away, it opened up a new earth. Almost a new heaven.

I stopped and touched Sperry's arm. "This Miss Jeremy did she know Arthur Wells or Elinor? If she knew

the house, and the situation between them, isn't it barely possible that she anticipated this thing?"

Sperry had a pocket flash, and when we found the door locked we proceeded with our search for the key. The

porch had been covered with heavy vines, now dead of the November frosts, and showing, here and there,

dead and dried leaves that crackled as we touched them. In the darkness something leaped against, me, and I

almost cried out. It was, however, only a collie dog, eager for the warmth of his place by the kitchen fire.

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

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

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

"Look here, Sperry," I said, as we stood inside the door, "they don't want me here. They've sent for you, but

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

"Suppose you sit down in the library," he said. "The chances are against her coming down, and the servants

As a matter of fact, we learned later that all the servants were out except the nursery governess. There were

two small children. There was a servants' ball somewhere, and, with the exception of the butler, it was after

two before they commenced to straggle in. Except two plainclothes men from the central office, a physician

who was with Elinor in her room, and the governess, there was no one else in the house but the children,

As I sat alone in the library, the house was perfectly silent. But in some strange fashion it had apparently

taken on the attributes of the deed 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 indestructible thing, had been recently violently wrenched from its body. The body lay in

the room overhead. But what of the spirit? I shivered as I thought that it might even then be watching me with

Overwrought as I was, I was forced to bring my common sense to bear on the situation. Here was a tragedy, a

real and terrible one. Suppose we had, in some queer fashion, touched its outer edges that night? Then how

was it that there had come, mixed up with so much that might be pertinent, such extraneous and grotesque

I remember moving impatiently, and trying to argue myself into my ordinary logical state of mind, but I

know now that even then I was wondering whether Sperry had found a hole in the ceiling upstairs.

I wandered, I recall, into the realm of the clairvoyant and the clairaudient. Under certain conditions, such as

trance, I knew that some individuals claimed a power of vision that was supernormal, and I had at one time

lunched at my club with a welldressed gentleman in a pince nez who said the room was full of people I

could not see, but who were perfectly distinct to him. He claimed, and I certainly could not refute him, that he

saw further into the violet of the spectrum than the rest of us, and seemed to consider it nothing unusual when

an elderly woman, whose description sounded much like my greatgrandmother, came and stood behind my

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

Then there were those who claimed that in trance the spirit of the medium, 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 fourth dimension. While

I am very vague about the fourth dimension, I did know that in it doors and walls were not obstacles. But as

they would not be obstacles to a spirit, even in the world as we know it, that got me nowhere.

Suppose Sperry came down and said Arthur Wells had been shot above the ear, and that there was a second

bullet hole in the ceiling? Added to the key on the nail, a careless custom and surely not common, we would

have conclusive proof that our medium had been correct. There was another point, too. Miss Jeremy had said,

That brought me up with a turn. Would a man stop shaving to kill himself? If he did, why a revolver? Why

I knew from my law experience that suicide is either a desperate impulse or a coldblooded and calculated

finality. A man who kills himself while dressing comes under the former classification, and will usually seize

the first method at hand. But there was something else, too. Shaving is an automatic process. It completes

itself. My wife has an irritated conviction that if the house caught fire while I was in the midst of the process,

I would complete it and rinse the soap from my face before I caught up the fireextinguisher.

Had he killed himself, or had Elinor killed him? Was she the sort to sacrifice 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 the

same was true of Ellingham. Here were two people, both of them careful of appearance, if not of fact. There

was another possibility, too. That he had learned something while he was dressing, had attacked or threatened

I had reached that point when Sperry came down the staircase, ushering out the detectives and the medical

man. He came to the library door and stood 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 has had an opiate."

I did not look at him, nor he at me. We climbed the stairs and entered the room, where, according to Elinor's

story, Arthur Wells had killed himself. It was a dressingroom, as Miss Jeremy had described. A wardrobe, a

table with books and magazines in disorder, two chairs, and a couch, constituted the furnishings. Beyond was

a bathroom. On a chair by a window the dead mans's evening clothes were neatly laid out, his shoes beneath.

Arthur Wells lay on the couch. A sheet had been drawn over the body, and I did not disturb it. It gave the

impression of unusual length that is always found, I think, in the dead, and a breath of air from an open

When I glanced at Sperry he was staring at the ceiling, and I followed his eyes, but there was no mark on it.

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

I stooped and examined the carpet. It was a dark Oriental, with much red in it. I touched the place, and then

"There would be no object in using cold water there, so as not to set the stain," Sperry said thoughtfully.

"She dragged him, didn't she?" he demanded. Then the strangeness of what he was saying struck him, and he

smiled foolishly. "What I mean is, the medium said she did. I don't suppose any jury would pass us tonight as

He walked across to the bathroom and surveyed it from the doorway. I followed him. It was as orderly as the

other room. On a glass shelf over the washstand were his razors, a safety and, beside it, in a black case, an

assortment of the longbladed variety, one for each day of the week, and so marked.

"The servants are out," he said. "According to Elinor's statement he was dressing when he did it. And yet

some one has had a wild impulse for tidiness 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 her own 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 on much longer together. There had been no

quarrel other than their usual bickering. They had been going to a dance that night. The servants had all gone

out immediately after dinner to a servants' ball and the governess had gone for a walk. She was to return at

Arthur, she said, had been depressed for several days, and at dinner had hardly spoken at all. He had not,

however, objected to the dance. He had, indeed, seemed strangely determined to go, although she had pleaded

She was in her room, with the door shut, when she heard a shot. She ran in and found him lying on the floor

of his dressingroom with his revolver behind him. The governess was still out. The shot had roused the

children, and they had come down from the nursery above. She was frantic, but she had to soothe them. The

governess, however, came in almost immediately, and she had sent her to the telephone to summon help,

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

"If she cleaned up here for any reason," I began, and commenced a desultory examination of the room. Just

why I looked behind the bathtub forces me to an explanation I am somewhat loath to make, but which will

explain a rather unusual proceeding. For some time my wife has felt that I smoked too heavily, and out of her

solicitude for me has limited me to one cigar after dinner. But as I have been a heavy smoker for years I have

found this a great hardship, and have therefore kept a reserve store, by arrangement with the housemaid,

behind my tub. In selfdefence I must also state that I seldom have recourse to such stealthy measures.

Believing then that something might possibly be hidden there, I made an investigation, and could see some

small objects lying there. Sperry brought me a stick from the dressingroom, and with its aid succeeded in

bringing out the two articles which were instrumental in starting us on our brief but adventurous careers as

private investigators. One was a leather razor strop, old and stiff from disuse, and the other a wet bath sponge,

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

"I don't know," I said impatiently. "From some place where a man would be unlikely to kill himself, I

daresay. No one ever killed himself, for instance, in an open hallway. Or stopped shaving to do it."

"We have only Miss Jeremy's word for that," he said, sullenly. "Confound it, Horace, don't let's bring in that

We stared at each other, with the strop and the sponge between us. Suddenly he turned on his heel and went

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

But I did not go. There was a carafe of water in the bathroom, and I took a drink from it. My hands were

shaking. When I turned around I found Sperry in the hall, examining the carpet with his flash light, and now

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

How much of Sperry's proceeding with the carpet the governess had seen I do not know. I glanced up and she

was there, on the staircase to the third floor, watching us. I did not know, then, whether she recognized me or

not, for the Wellses' servants were as oblivious of the families on the street as their employers. But she knew

She came down the stairs, a lean young Frenchwoman in a dark dressing gown, and Sperry suggested that she

too should have an opiate. She seized at the idea, but Sperry did not go down at once for his professional bag.

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

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

To Sperry she showed, I observed, a slight deference, but when she glanced at me, as she did after each reply,

I thought her expression slightly altered. At the time this puzzled me, but it was explained when Sperry

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

I hesitated before I answered. I am a truthful man, and I hate unnecessary lying. But I ask consideration of the

circumstances. Neither then nor at any time later was the solving of the Wells mystery the prime motive

behind the course I laid out and consistently followed. I felt that we might be on the verge of some great

psychic discovery, one which would revolutionize human thought and to a certain extent human action. And

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

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

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

"When I first came it was in the drawer of that table. I suggested that it be placed beyond the children's reach.

"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 admit me. 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

"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

But I think my knowledge of the key bothered her, for some reason. And as I read over my questions,

certainly they indicated a suspicion that the situation was less simple than it appeared. She shot a quick

"I, monsieur? Non!" Then her fears, whatever they were, got the best of her. "I know nothing but what I tell

you. I was out. I can prove that that is so. I went to a pharmacy; the clerk will remember. I will go with you,

I daresay my business of crossexamination, of watching evidence helped me to my next question.

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 to hear," she muttered. Then, having determined on a course of action, she

followed it. "I am looking for another position. I do not like it here. The children are spoiled. I only came for

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 he was

"Now see here, Horace," he said, "suppose we had come in here, without the thought of that seance behind

us? We'd have accepted the thing as it appears to be, wouldn't we? There may be a dozen explanations for

that sponge, and for the razor strop. What in heaven's name has a razor strop to do with it anyhow? One bullet

was fired, and the revolver has one empty chamber. It may not be the custom to stop shaving in order to

commit suicide, but that's no argument that it can't be done, and as to the key how do I know that my own

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

But he glanced up at the ceiling nevertheless, and a moment later had drawn up a chair and stepped onto it,

and I did the same thing. We presented, I imagine, rather a strange picture, and I know that the presence of

The house was an old one, and in the center of the high ceiling a plaster ornament surrounded the chandelier.

Our search gradually centered on this ornament, but the chairs were low and our longdistance examination

revealed nothing. It was at that time, too, that we heard some one in the lower hall, and we had only a

moment to put our chairs in place before the butler came in. He showed no surprise, but stood looking at the

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

"Yes, sir." He went over to the sheet, lifted the edge slowly, and then replaced it, and tiptoed to the door.

"The others are not back yet. I'll admit them, and get them up quietly. How is Mrs. Wells?"

I realize now that Sperry was I am sure he will forgive this in a state of nerves that night. For example, he

returned only an impatient silence to my doubt as to whether Hawkins had really only just returned and he

quite missed something downstairs which I later proved to have an important bearing on the case. This was

when we were going out, and after Hawkins had opened the front door for us. It had been freezing hard, and

Sperry, who has a bad ankle, looked bout for a walking stick. He found one, and I saw Hawkins take a swift

And if I realize that Sperry was nervous that night, I also realize that he was fighting a battle quite his own,

"She's got to quit this sort of thing," he said savagely and apropos of nothing, as we walked along. "It's hard

"She couldn't have learned about it," he said, following his own trail of thought. "My car brought her from

her home to the housedoor. She was brought in to us at once. But don't you see that if there are other

developments, to prove her statements she well, she's as innocent as a child, but take Herbert, for instance.

"So Elinor claims. But if there was anything to hide, it would have taken time. An hour or so, perhaps. You

We went back, I remember, to speaking of the seance itself, and to the safer subject of the physical

phenomena. As I have said, we did not then know of those experimenters who claim that the medium can

evoke socalled rods of energy, and that by its means the invisible "controls" can perform their strange feats

of levitation and the movement of solid bodies. Sperry touched very lightly on the spirit side.

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

He was inclined, however, to believe that there were laws of which we were still in ignorance, and that we

might some day find and use the fourth dimension. He seemed to be able to grasp it quite clearly. "The cube

of the cube, or hypercube," he explained. "Or get it this way: a cone passed apexdownward through a

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

"It's perfectly clear, Horace," he insisted. "But remember this when you try to work it out; it is necessary to

"I don't intend to work it out," I said irritably. "But I mean to use motion as a translator of the time, which is

But as it happened, I did not go into my house when I reached it. I was wide awake, and I perceived, on

looking up at my wife's windows, that the lights were out. As it is her custom to wait up for me on those rare

occasions when I spend an evening away from home, I surmised that she was comfortably asleep, and made

The nightclerk was in the prescriptionroom behind the shop. He had fixed himself comfortably on two

chairs, with an old tablecover over his knee and a halfempty bottle of sarsaparilla on a wooden box beside

He flung off the cover and jumped up, upsetting the bottle, which trickled a stale stream to the floor. "Oh,

I let that go, and went at once to the object of our visit. Yes, he remembered the governess, knew her, as a

matter of fact. The Wellses' bought a good many things there. Asked as to her telephoning, he thought it was

about nine o'clock, maybe earlier. But questioned as to what she had telephoned about, he drew himself up.

"Oh, see here," he said. "I can't very well tell you that, can I? This business 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 there was no more argument in him. He

"She's done it several times," he said. "I'll be frank with you. I got curious after the third evening, and called

it myself. You know the trick. I found out it was the Ellingham, house, up State Street."

"Oh, she was very careful. It's an open phone and any one could hear her. Once she said somebody was not to

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

"A lot of people get the bug once in a while," he said. "They come in here for a dose of sudden death, and it

takes watching. You'd be surprised the number of things that will do the trick if you take enough. I don't

"It's a matter of the point of view," he said more cheerfully. "And my point of view just now is that this place

is darned cold, and so's the street. You'd better have a little something to warm you up before you go out, Mr.

I was chilled through, to tell the truth, and although I rarely drink anything I went back with him and took an

ounce or two of villainous whiskey, poured out of a jug into a graduated glass. It is with deep humiliation of

spirit I record that a housemaid coming into my library at seven o'clock the next morning, found me, in top

I had, however, removed my collar and tie, and my watch, carefully wound, was on the smokingstand

The death of Arthur Wells had taken place on Monday evening. Tuesday brought nothing new. The coroner

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

But I think the situation was bothering him, and that he hoped to discount in advance the second sitting by

Miss Jeremy, which Mrs. Dane had already arranged for the following Monday, for on Wednesday afternoon,

following a conversation over the telephone, Sperry and I had a private sitting with Miss Jeremy in Sperry's

private office. I took my wife into our confidence and invited her to be present, but the unfortunate coldness

following the housemaid's discovery of me asleep in the library on the morning after the murder, was still

The sitting, however, was totally without value. There was difficulty on the medium's part in securing the

trance condition, and she broke out once rather petulantly, with the remark that we were interfering with her

I noticed that Sperry had placed Arthur Wells's stick unobtrusively on his table, but we secured only rambling

and nonpertinent replies to our questions, and whether it was because I knew that outside it was broad day,

or because the Wells matter did not come up at all I found a total lack of that sense of the unknown which

I am sure she knew we had wanted something, and that she had failed to give it to us, for when she came out

She was tired. I felt suddenly very sorry for her. She was so pretty and so young only twentysix or

thereabouts to be in the grip of forces so relentless. Sperry sent her home in his car, and took to pacing the

"I'm going to give it up, Horace," he said. "Perhaps you are right. We may be on the verge of some real

discovery. But while I'm interested, so interested that it interferes with my work, I'm frankly afraid to go on.

I argued with him. There could be no question that if things were left as they were, a number of people would

go through life convinced that Elinor Wells had murdered her husband. Look at the situation. She had sent

out all the servants and the governess, surely an unusual thing in an establishment of that sort. And Miss

Jeremy had been vindicated in three points; some stains had certainly been washed up, we had found the key

"In other words," I argued, "we can't stop, Sperry. You can't stop. But my idea would be that our

"Also, in other words," he said, "you think we will discover something, so you suggest that we compound a

It is of course possible that my nerves were somewhat unstrung during the days that followed. I wakened one

night to a terrific thump which shook my bed, and which seemed to be the result of some one having struck

the footboard with a plank. Immediately following this came a sharp knocking on the antique bedwarmer

which hangs beside my fireplace. When I had sufficiently recovered my selfcontrol I turned on my bedside

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 to do with the surface of my body. I have no explanation to make of these

But on Thursday night of that week my wife came into my bedroom, and stated flatly that there were burglars

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 had recently

acquired a tea set formerly belonging to her greatgrandmother, and apprehension regarding it made her, for

I got out of bed at that, and went down the stairs. But I must confess that I felt, the moment darkness

surrounded me, considerably less trepidation concerning the possible burglar than I felt as to the darkness

itself. Mrs. Johnson had locked herself in my bedroom, and there was something horrible in the black depths

We are oldfashioned people, and have not yet adopted electric light. I carried a box of matches, but at the

foot of the stairs the one I had lighted went out. I was terrified. I tried to light another match, but there was a

draft from somewhere, and it too was extinguished before I had had time to glance about. I was immediately

conscious of a sort of soft 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 not lifted, but instead dissolved into the other

shadows around. The sudden striking of the clock on the stair landing completed my demoralization. I turned

and fled upstairs, pursued, to my agonized nerves, by ghostly hands that came toward me from between the

At dawn I went downstairs again, heartily ashamed of myself. I found that a door to the basement had been

left open, and that the soft movement had probably been my overcoat, swaying in the draft.

Probably. I was not certain. Indeed, I was certain of nothing during those strange days. I had built up for

myself a universe upheld by certain laws, of day and night, of food and sleep and movement, of three

dimensions of space. And now, it seemed to me, I had stood all my life but on the threshold, and, for an hour

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 they were wildly curious, and the night of the second seance Mrs. Dane

drew me aside and I saw that she suspected, without knowing, that we had been endeavoring to check up our

"I want you to promise me one thing," she said. "I'll not bother you now. But I'm an old woman, with not

much more of life to be influenced by any disclosures. When this thing is over, and you have come to a

conclusion I'll not put it that way: you may not come to a conclusion but when it is over, I want you to

Miss Jeremy did not come to dinner. She never ate before a seance. And although we tried to keep the

conversational ball floating airily, there was not the usual effervescence of the Neighborhood Club dinners.

I am sorry to record that there were no physical phenomena of any sort at this second seance. The room was

arranged as it had been at the first sitting, except that a table with a candle and a chair had been placed behind

There was one other change. Sperry had brought the walkingstick he had taken from Arthur Wells's room,

The first questions were disappointing in results. Asked about the stick, there was only silence. When,

however, Sperry went back to the sitting of the week before, and referred to questions and answers at that

time, the medium seemed uneasy. Her hand, held under mine, made an effort to free itself and, released,

Then, instantly and with great rapidity, followed a wild torrent of words and incomplete sentences. It is

inarticulate, and the secretary made no record of it. As I recall, however, it was about water, children, and the

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

She named, without hesitation, a seaside resort about fifty miles from our city. There was not one of us, I dare

say, who did not know that the Wellses had spent the preceding summer there and that Charlie Ellingham had

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

"If only the pocketbook was not lost," she said. "There were so many things in it. Especially cartickets.

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

"If that were known, it could be found," was the reply, rather sharply given. "Hawkins may have it. He was

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

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

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

There was no answer at all to this. And Sperry, after waiting, went on to his next question: "Who occupied

But here we received the reply to the previous question: "There was a box of cartridges in the tabledrawer.

>From that point, however, the interest lapsed. Either there was no answer to questions, or we got the

absurdity that we had encountered before, about the drawingroom furniture. But, unsatisfactory in many

ways as the seance had been, the effect on Miss Jeremy was profound she was longer in coming out, and

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

I said nothing, and as Sperry was the only one likely to know and he had gone, the inquiry went no further.

Looking back, I realize that Herbert, while less cynical, was still skeptical, that his sister was noncommittal,

but for some reason watching me, and that Mrs. Dane was in a state or delightful anticipation.

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

"The men like it, of course," she said, "Horace fairly simpers with pleasure while he sits and holds her hand.

"My dear," Mrs. Dane said, reaching over and patting my wife's hand, "people talked that way about

I find that the solution of the Arthur Wells mystery for we did solve it takes three divisions in my mind.

But for some reason, after Miss Jeremy's second sitting, I found that my reasoning mind was stronger than

my credulity. And as Sperry had at that time determined to have nothing more to do with the business, I made

a resolution to abandon my investigations. Nor have I any reason to believe that I would have altered my

attitude toward the case, had it not been that I saw in the morning paper on the Thursday following the second

I tried to put the fact out of my mind that morning. After all, what good would it do? No discovery of mine

could bring Arthur Wells back to his family, to his seat at the bridge table at the club, to his too expensive

On the other hand, I confess to an overwhelming desire to examine again the ceiling of the dressing room and

thus to check up one degree further the accuracy of our revelations. After some debate, therefore, I called up

"Miss Jeremy has been ill since Monday," he said. "Mrs. Dane's rheumatism is worse, her companion is

nervously upset, and your own wife called me up an hour ago and says you are sleeping with a light, and she

But, although I am a small and not a courageous man, the desire to examine the Wells house clung to me

tenaciously. Suppose there were cartridges in his table drawer? Suppose I should find the second bullet hole

in the ceiling? I no longer deceived myself by any argument that my interest was purely scientific. There is a

point at which curiosity becomes unbearable, when it becomes an obsession, like hunger. I had reached that

Nevertheless, I found it hard to plan the necessary deception to my wife. My habits have always been entirely

orderly and regular. My wildest dissipation was the Neighborhood Club. I could not recall an evening away

from home in years, except on business. Yet now I must have a free evening, possibly an entire night.

In planning for this, I forgot my nervousness for a time. I decided finally to tell my wife that an outoftown

client wished to talk business with me, and that day, at luncheon I go home to luncheon I mentioned that

"It is possible," I said, as easily as I could, "that we may not get through this afternoon. If things should run

She took it calmly enough, but later on, as I was taking an electric flash from the drawer of the hall table and

putting it in my overcoat pocket, she came on me, and I thought she looked surprised.

During the afternoon I was beset with doubts and uneasiness. Suppose she called up my office and found that

the client I had named was not in town? It is undoubtedly true that a tangled web we weave when first we

practise to deceive, for on my return to the office I was at once quite certain that Mrs. Johnson would

After some debate I called my secretary and told her to say, if such a message came in, that Mr. Forbes was in

town and that I had an appointment with him. As a matter of fact, no such inquiry came in, but as Miss Joyce,

my secretary, knew that Mr. Forbes was in Europe, I was conscious for some months afterwards that Miss

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. Nothing was more unlikely than that the key would still be hanging there. I must,

At three o'clock I sent the officeboy out for a backdoor key. He looked so surprised that I explained that

"Just an ordinary key," I said. "Not a Yale key. Nothing fancy. Just a plain backdoor key." At something

after four my wife called up, in great excitement. A boy and a man had been to the house and had fitted an

extra key to the back door, which had two excellent ones already. She was quite hysterical, and had sent for

"They are burglars, of course!" she said. "Burglars often have boys with them, to go through the pantry

I tried to tell her that if the door was unlocked there was no need to use 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 out was

By going through my desk I found a number of keys, mostly trunk keys and one the key to a dogcollar. But

late in the afternoon I visited a client of mine who is in the hardware business, and secured quite a selection.

One of them was a skeleton key. He persisted in regarding the matter as a joke, and poked me between the

"If you're arrested with all that hardware on you," he said, "you'll be held as a firstclass burglar. You are

equipped to open anything from a can of tomatoes to the missionary box in church."

But I felt that already, innocent as I was, I was leaving a trail of suspicion behind me: Miss Joyce and the

I dined in a small chophouse where I occasionally lunch, and took a large cup of strong black coffee. When

I went out into the night again I found that a heavy fog had settled down, and I began to feel again something

of the strange and disturbing quality of the day which had ended in Arthur Wells's death. Already a potential

housebreaker, I avoided policemen, and the very jingling of the keys in my pocket sounded loud and

The Wells house was dark. Even the arclamp in the street was shrouded in fog. But the darkness, which

I turned and felt my way cautiously to the rear of the house. Suddenly I remembered the dog. But of course

he was gone. As I cautiously ascended the steps the dead leaves on the vines rattled, as at the light touch of a

I do not like deserted houses. Even in daylight they have a sinister effect on me. They seem, in their empty

spaces, to have held and recorded all that has happened in the dusty past. The Wells house that night, looming

before me, silent and mysterious, seemed the embodiment of all the deserted houses I had known. Its empty

Nevertheless, now that the time had come a certain amount of courage came with it. I am not ashamed to

confess that a certain part of it came from the anticipation of the Neighborhood Club's plaudits. For Herbert

to have made such an investigation, or even Sperry, with his height and his iron muscles, would not have

surprised them. But I was aware that while they expected intelligence and even humor, of a sort, from me,

The flash was working, but rather feebly. I found the nail where the doorkey had formerly hung, but the

key, as I had expected, was gone. I was less than five minutes, I fancy, in finding a key from my collection

It was still early in the evening, eightthirty or thereabouts. I tried to think of that; to remember that, only a

few blocks away, some of my friends were still dining, or making their way into theaters. But the silence of

the house came out to meet me on the threshold, and its blackness enveloped me like a wave. It was

unfortunate, too, that I remembered just then that it was, or soon would be, the very hour of young Wells's

Nevertheless, once inside the house, the door to the outside closed and facing two alternatives, to go on with

it or to cut and run, I found a sort of desperate courage, clenched my teeth, and felt for the nearest light

I should have expected it, but I had not. I remember standing in the back hall and debating whether to go on

or to get out. I was not only in 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 no mysterious sounds, I gained a certain

confidence. After a short period of readjustment, therefore, I felt my way to the library door, and into the

room. Once there, I used the flash to discover that the windows were shuttered, and proceeded to take off my

hat and coat, which I placed on a chair near the door. It was at this time that I discovered that the battery of

my lamp was very weak, and finding a candle in a tall brass stick 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 stood unprotected. The rug had been folded into the center of the room, and covered

with heavy brown papers, and I was extremely startled to hear the papers rustling. A mouse, however, proved

It is to be remembered that I had left my hat and overcoat on a chair near 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 met by a crash which reverberated through

the house. In my alarm my teeth closed on the end of my tongue, with agonizing results, but the sound died

away, and I concluded that an upper window had been left open, and that the rising wind had slammed a

door. But my morale, as we say since the war, had been shaken, and I recklessly lighted a second candle and

placed it on the table in the hall at the foot of the staircase, to facilitate my exit in case I desired to make a

Then I climbed slowly. The fog had apparently made its way into the house, for when, halfway up, I turned

and looked down, the candlelight was 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 in the house. It was, I think, when I was on a

chair on top of a table in Arthur's room, with my candle upheld to the ceiling. It seemed to me that something

was moving stealthily in the room overhead. I stood there, candle upheld, and every faculty I possessed

seemed centered in my ears. It was not a footstep. It was a soft and dragging movement. Had I not been near

the ceiling I should not have heard it. Indeed, a moment later I was not certain that I had heard it.

My chair, on top of the table, was none too securely balanced. I had found what I was looking for, a part of

the plaster ornament broken away, and replaced by a whitish substance, not plaster. I got out my penknife and

cut away the foreign matter, showing a small hole beneath, a bullethole, if I knew anything about

Then I heard the dragging movement above, and what with alarm and my insecure position, I suddenly

overbalanced, chair and all. My head must have struck on the corner of the table, for I was dazed for a few

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 afraid to move, lest the dragging thing above come down and creep over me in the

And sitting there, I remembered the very things I most wished to forget the black curtain behind Miss

Jeremy, the things flung by unseen hands into the room, the way my watch had slid over the table and fallen

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 is the same insanity that drove men out of the trenches to the charge and almost certain

In a way, I daresay I charged the upper floor of the house. Recalling the situation from this safe lapse of time,

I think that I was in a condition close to frenzy. I know that it did not occur to me to leap down the staircase

and escape, and I believe now this was due to a conviction that I was dealing with the supernatural, and that

on no account did I dare to turn my back on it. All children and some adults, I am sure, have known this

Whatever drove me, I know that, candle in hand, and hardly sane, I ran up the staircase, and into the room

As suddenly as my sanity had gone, it returned to me. The sight of two small beds, side by side, a tiny

dressingtable, a row of toys on the mantelpiece, was calming. Here was the children's night nursery, a white

I was humiliated and ashamed. I, Horace Johnson, a man of dignity and reputation, even in a small way, a

successful afterdinner speaker, numbering fiftyodd years of logical living to my credit, had been running

After a time I got up, and going to a window looked down at the quiet world below. The fog was lifting.

Automobiles were making cautious progress along the slippery street. A woman with a basket had stopped

under the street light and was rearranging her parcels. The clock of the city hall, visible over the opposite

roofs, marked only twenty minutes to nine. It was still early evening not even midnight, the magic hour of

Somehow that fact reassured me, and I was able to take stock of my surroundings. I realized, for instance,

that I stood in the room over Arthur's dressing room, and that it was into the ceiling under me that the second

or probably the first bullet had penetrated. I know, as it happens, very little of firearms, but I did realize

that a shot from a .45 Colt automatic would have considerable penetrative power. To be exact, that the bullet

had probably either lodged itself in a joist, or had penetrated through the flooring and might be somewhere

But my candle was inadequate for more than the most superficial examination of the ceiling, which presented

so far as I could see an unbroken surface. I turned my attention, therefore, to the floor. It was when I was

turning the rug back that I recognized the natural and not supernatural origin of the sound which had so

startled me. It had been the 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.

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

There was no answer. I tried again, calling Herbert. But only my own voice came back to me, and the

My fears, never long in abeyance that night, roused again. I had instantly a conviction that some human

figure, sinister and dangerous, was lurking in the shadows of that empty floor, and I remember backing away

from the door and standing in the center of the room, prepared for some stealthy, murderous assault. When

none came I looked about for a weapon, and finally took the only thing in sight, a coaltongs from the

fireplace. Armed with that, I made a cursory round of the nearby rooms but there was no one hiding in

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, and had,

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

Here was a young woman, Miss Jeremy, who had not known young Wells, had not known his wife, had, until

that first meeting at Mrs. Dane's, never met any member of the Neighborhood Club. Yet, but for her, Arthur

Wells would have gone to his grave bearing the stigma of moral cowardice, of suicide.

The solution, when it came, was amazing, but remarkably simple. Like most mysteries. I have in my own

house, for instance, an example of a great mystery, founded on mere absentmindedness.

I had left the Wells house as soon as I had made the discovery in the night nursery. I carried the candle and

the firetongs downstairs. I was, apparently, calm but watchful. I would have said that I had never been more

calm in my life. I knew quite well that I had the firetongs in my hand. Just when I ceased to be cognizant of

them was probably when, on entering the library, I found that my overcoat had disappeared, and that my stiff

hat, badly broken, lay on the floor. However, as I say, I was still extraordinarily composed. I picked up my

hat, and moving to the rear door, went out and closed it. When I reached the street, however, I had only gone

a few yards when I discovered that I was still carrying the lighted candle, and that a man, passing by, had

My composure is shown by the fact that I dropped the candle down the next sewer opening, but the fact

remains that I carried the firetongs home. I do not recall doing so. In fact, I knew nothing of the matter until

morning. On the way to my house I was elaborating a story to the effect that my overcoat had been stolen

from a restaurant where I and my client had dined. The hat offered more serious difficulties. I fancied that, by

kissing my wife goodby at the breakfast table, I might be able to get out without her following me to the

But, as a matter of fact, I need not have concerned myself about the hat. When I descended to breakfast the

next morning I found her surveying the umbrellastand in the hall. The firetongs were standing there,

I lied. I lied shamelessly. She is a nervous woman, and, as we have no children, her attitude toward me is one

of watchful waiting. Through long years she has expected me to commit some indiscretion innocent, of

course, such as going out without my overcoat on a cool day and she intends to be on hand for every

emergency. I dared not confess, therefore, that on the previous evening I had burglariously entered a closed

house, had there surprised another intruder at work, had fallen and bumped my head severely, and had,

"What I would like to ask," she said, with an icy calmness that I have learned to dread, "is whether you

carried them home over your head, under the impression that you had your umbrella."

"I am not a curious woman," she put in incisively, "but when my husband spends an evening out, and returns

minus his overcoat, with his hat mashed, a lump the size of an egg over his ear, and puts a pair of firetongs

in the umbrella stand under the impression that it is an umbrella, I have a right to ask at least if he intends to

I made a mistake then. I should have told her. Instead, I took my broken hat and jammed it on my head with a

When, at noon and luncheon, I tried to tell her the truth, she listened to 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 had a certain compensation for them when I

"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, and there is an intelligent effort being made to eliminate every particle of

"He took your overcoat, instead of his own, didn't he? It may have been it's curious, isn't it, that we've had

Like the other members of the Neighborhood Club, he had a copy of the proceedings at the two seances, and

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

He shuffled the loose pages of the record. "Cane washed away by the water a knee that is hurt the

curtain would have been safer Hawkins the drawingroom furniture is all over the house. That last.,

Horace, isn't pertinent. It refers clearly to the room we were in. Of course, the point is, how much of the rest

is also extraneous matter?" He reread one of the sheets. "Of course that belongs, about Hawkins. And

probably this: 'It will be terrible if the letters are found.' They were in the pocketbook, presumably."

"We'd better go back to the house," he said. "Whoever took your overcoat by mistake probably left one. The

difficulty is, of course, that he probably discovered his error and went back again last night. Confound it,

man, if you had thought of that at the time, we would have something to go on today."

"If I had thought of a number of things I'd have stayed out of the place altogether," I retorted tartly. "I wish

you could help me about the firetongs, Sperry. I don't seem able to think of any explanation that Mrs.

"I don't think you understand," I explained. "She simply wouldn't believe it. And if she did I should have to

agree to drop the investigation. As a matter of fact, Sperry, I had resorted to subterfuge in order to remain out

"Every man," he said, "would rather tell the truth, but every woman makes it necessary to lie to her. Forget

the firetongs, Horace, and forget Mrs. Johnson tonight. He may not have dared to go back in daylight for

But it was not very well, and I knew it. I felt that, in a way, my whole domestic happiness was at stake. My

wife is a difficult person to argue with, and as tenacious of an opinion once formed as are all very amiable

people. However, unfortunately for our investigation, but luckily for me, under the circumstances, Sperry was

It was, it will be recalled, on the Thursday night following the second sitting that I had gone alone to the

Wells house, and my interview with Sperry was on Friday. It was on Friday afternoon that I received a

It was actually from her secretary, the Clara who had recorded the seances. It was Mrs. Dane's misfortune to

be almost entirely dependent on the various young women who, one after the other, were employed to look

after her. I say "one after the other" advisedly. It had long been a matter of goodnatured jesting in the

Neighborhood Club that Mrs. Dane conducted a matrimonial bureau, as one young woman after another was

married 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 my privilege 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 this afternoon, Mr. Johnson," said the

I hesitated. I felt that my wife was waiting at home for further explanation of the coaltongs, and that the

sooner we had it out the better. But, on the other hand, Mrs. Dane's invitations, by reason of her infirmity,

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

She was in the drawingroom, now restored to its usual clutter of furniture and ornaments. I made my way

around two tables, stepped over a hassock 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 a wheelchair, 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 her

chair, herself the nucleus around which were enacted all sorts of small neighborhood dramas and romances.

It is curious to look back and remember how Herbert and Sperry and myself had ignored this quality in her, in

Nothing escapes her eyes, so I was careful to place myself with the lump on my head turned away from her.

"Loathed you," she said with unction. "You are cruel and ungrateful. Herbert has influenza, and does not

count. And Sperry is in love oh yes, I know it. I know a great many things. But you!"

"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, if I tell you that your lack of humor was to my mind the only flaw in an

"I am not aware " I began stiffly. "I have always believed that I furnished to the Neighborhood Club its

"Don't spoil it," she begged. "Don't. If you could know how I have enjoyed it. All afternoon I have been

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 the wretched things home and er placed them where they were found, I

"Amusing!" she cried. "It's delicious. It has made me a young woman again. Horace, if I could have seen

your wife's face when she found them, I would give cheerfully almost anything I possess."

But underneath her mirth I knew there was something else. And, after all, she could convince my wife if she

were convinced herself. I told the whole story of the visit Sperry and I had made the night Arthur Wells

was shot, and of what we discovered; of the clerk at the pharmacy and his statement, and even of the whiskey

and its unfortunate effect at which, I regret to say, she was vastly amused; and, last of all, of my experience

She was very serious when I finished. Tea came, but we forgot to drink it. Her eyes flashed with excitement,

her faded face flushed. And, with it all, as I look back, there was an air of suppressed excitement that seemed

to have nothing to do with my narrative. I remembered it, however, when the denouement came the following

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 I think it only fair to record that she was in possession of facts which we

"You have been so ungenerous with me," she said finally, "that I am tempted not to tell you why I sent for

you. Of course, I know I am only a helpless old woman, and you men are people of affairs. But now and then

I have a flash of intelligence. I'm going to tell you, but you don't deserve it."

She went down into the black silk bag at her side which was as much a part of her attire as the false front she

wore with such careless abandon, and which, brown in color and indifferently waved, was invariably parting

"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 was important. More important, probably, than the mere record shows. Do

"I have plenty of time to think," she added, not without pathos. "There is only one Monday night in the week,

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

"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 we were all wrong, anyhow. If there was such a bag, I wanted it. Here is the

"Lost, a handbag containing private letters, cartickets, etc. Liberal reward paid for its return. Please write to

I sat with it on my palm. It was so simple, so direct. And I, a lawyer, and presumably reasonably acute, had

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

"On the day that I had that inserted," she said impressively, "this also appeared. They were in the same

column." She read the second clipping aloud, slowly, that I might gain all its significance:

"Lost on the night of Monday, November the second, between State Avenue and Park Avenue, possibly on an

Eastern Line street car, a black handbag containing keys, cartickets, private letters, and a small sum of

She passed the clipping to me and I compared the two. It looked strange, and I confess to a tingling feeling

that coincidence, that element so much to be feared in any investigation, was not the solution here. But there

She went down into the bag again, and I expected nothing less than the pocketbook, letters and all, to appear.

But she dragged up, among a miscellany of handkerchiefs, a bottle of smellingsalts, and a few almonds, of

"Yesterday," she said, "I took a taxicab ride. You know my chair gets tiresome, occasionally. I stopped at the

newspaper office, and found the bag had not been turned in, but that there was a letter for A 31." She held out

"Read it," she observed. "It is a curious human document. You'll probably be no wiser for reading it, but it

I have the letter before me now. It is written on glazed paper, ruled with blue lines. The writing is of the

flowing style we used to call Spencerian, and if it lacks character I am inclined to believe that its weakness is

You know who this is from. I have the bag and the letters. In a safe place. If you would treat me like a human

being, you could have them. I know where the walkingstick is, also. I will tell you this. I have no wish to do

her any harm. She will have to pay up in the next world, even if she gets off in this. The way I reason is this:

As long as I have the things, I've got the whiphand. I've got you, too, although you may think I haven't.

About the other matter I was innocent. I swear it again. I never did it. You are the only one in all the world. I

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

"You and I, Horace," she said, "live our orderly lives. We eat, and sleep, and talk, and even labor. We think

we are living. But for the last day or two I have been seeing visions you and I and the rest of us, living on

the surface, and underneath, carefully kept down so it will not make us uncomfortable, a world of passion and

But if she had any suspicion then as to the writer, and I think she had not, she said nothing, and soon after I

started for home. I knew that one of two things would have happened there: either my wife would have put

away the firetongs, which would indicate a truce, or they would remain as they had been, which would

indicate that she still waited for the explanation I could not give. It was with a certain tension, therefore, that I

In one way, however, Mrs. Johnson's refusal to speak to me that evening had a certain value, for it enabled

me to leave the house without explanation, and thus to discover that, if an overcoat had been left in place of

my own, it had been taken away. It also gave me an opportunity to return the firetongs, a proceeding which

I had considered would assist in a return of the entente cordiale at home, but which most unjustly appeared to

have exactly the opposite effect. It has been my experience that the most innocent action may, under certain

By Saturday the condition of affairs between my wife and myself remained in statu quo, and I had decided on

a bold step. This was to call a special meeting of the Neighborhood Club, without Miss Jeremy, and put

before them the situation as it stood at that time, with a view to formulating a future course of action, and also

In deference to Herbert Robinson's recent attack of influenza, we met at the Robinson house. Sperry himself

"We have called this meeting," he said, "because a rather singular situation has developed. What was

commenced purely as an interesting experiment has gone beyond that stage. We find ourselves in the curious

position of taking what comes very close to being a part in a domestic tragedy. The affair is made more

delicate by the fact that this tragedy involves people who, if not our friends, at least are very well known to

us. The purpose of this meeting, to be brief, is to determine whether the Neighborhood Club, as a body,

He paused, but, as no one spoke, he went on again. "It is really not as simple as that," he said. "To stop now,

in view of the evidence we intend to place before the Club, is to leave in all our minds certain suspicions that

may be entirely unjust. On the other hand, to go on is very possible to place us all in a position where to keep

He then proceeded, in orderly fashion, to review the first sitting and its results. He read from notes,

elaborating them as he went along, for the benefit of the women, who had not been fully informed. As all the

"I shall review briefly the first sitting, and what followed it." He read the notes of the sitting first. "You will

notice that I have made no comment on the physical phenomena which occurred early in the seance. This is

for two reasons: first, it has no bearing on the question at issue. Second, it has no quality of novelty. Certain

people, under certain conditions, are able to exert powers that we can not explain. I have no belief whatever

in their spiritistic quality. They are purely physical, the exercise of powers we have either not yet risen high

enough in our scale of development to recognize generally, or which have survived from some early period

And, to make our position clear, that is today the attitude of the Neighborhood Club. The supernormal, as I

(a) At 9:15, or somewhat earlier, on Monday night a week ago Arthur Wells 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 a

(b) At midnight, Sperry, reaching home, had found a message summoning him to the Wells house. The

message had been left at 9:35. He had telephoned me, and we had gone together, arriving at approximately

had searched for and found such a key, and had admitted ourselves. Mrs. Wells, a governess, a doctor, and

two policemen were in the house. The dead man lay in the room in which he had died. (Here he went at

length into the condition of the room, the revolver with one chamber empty, and the bloodstained sponge

and razorstrop behind the bathtub. We had made a hasty examination of the ceiling, but had found no trace of

(d) The governess had come in at just after the death. Mr. Horace Johnson had had a talk with her. She had

left the front door unfastened when she went out at eight o'clock. She said she had gone out to telephone

about another position, as she was dissatisfied. She had phoned from, Elliott's pharmacy on State Avenue.

Later that night Mr. Johnson had gone to Elliott's. She had lied about the message. She had really telephoned

to a number which the pharmacy clerk had already discovered 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 was not the first time she

There was a stir in the room. Something which we had tacitly avoided had come suddenly into the open.

"It is necessary to be explicit," he said, "that the Club may see where it stands. It is, of course, not necessary

to remind ourselves that this evening's disclosures are of the most secret nature. I urge that the Club jump to

no hasty conclusions, and that there shall be no interruptions until we have finished with our records.

(e)At a private seance, which Mr. Johnson and I decided was excusable under the circumstances, the medium

was unable to give us anything. This in spite of the fact that we had taken with us a walkingstick belonging

(f) The second sitting of the Club. I need only refresh your minds as to one or two things; the medium spoke

of a lost pocketbook, and of letters. While the point is at least capable of doubt, apparently the letters were in

the pocketbook. Also, she said that a curtain would have been better, that Hawkins was a nuisance, and that

everything was all right unless the bullet had made a hole in the floor above. You will also recall the mention

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

"I do not think Horace has a very clear recollection of last Thursday night," my wife said, coldly. "And I wish

to go on record at once that if he claims that spirits broke his hat, stole his overcoat, bumped his head and

sent him home with a pair of firetongs for a walkingstick, I don't believe him."

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

I have quoted this interruption to show how little, outside of Sperry, Mrs. Dane and myself, the

Neighborhood Club appreciated the seriousness of the situation. Herbert, for instance, had been greatly

amused when Sperry spoke of my finding the razorstrop and had almost chuckled over our investigation of

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

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

It was a real compensation for that night of terror and for the uncomfortable time since to find her gaze no

longer cold, but sympathetic, and if I may be allowed to say so admiring. When at last I sat down beside

her, she put her hand on my arm in a way that I had missed since the unfortunate affair of the pharmacy

Mrs. Dane then read and explained the two clippings and the letter, and the situation, so far as it had

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

"We're getting in pretty deep," he said. "We have no right to step in where the law has stepped out no legal

right, that is. As to moral right, it depends on what we are holding these sittings for. If we are making what

we started out to make, an investigation into psychic matters, then we can go on. But with this proviso, I

think: Whatever may come of it, the result is of psychic interest only. We are not trailing a criminal."

"Crime is the affair of every decentminded citizen," his sister put in concisely.

But the general view was that Herbert was right. I am not defending our course. I am recording it. It is, I

Having decided on what to do, or not to do, we broke into animated discussion. The letter to A 31 was the

rock on which all our theories foundered, that and the message the governess had sent to Charlie Ellingham

not to come to the Wells house that night. By no stretch of rather excited imaginations could we imagine

Ellingham writing such a letter. Who had written the letter, then, and for whom was it meant?

As to the telephone message, it seemed to preclude the possibility of Ellingham's having gone to the house

that night. But the fact remained that a man, as yet unidentified, was undoubtedly concerned in the case, had

written the letter, and had probably been in the Wells house the night I went there alone.

In the end, we decided to hold one more seance, and then, unless the further developments were such that we

It is typical of the strained nervous tension which had developed in all of us during the past twelve days, that

that night when, having forgotten to let the dog in, my wife and I were roused from a sound sleep by his

On Sunday I went to church. I felt, after the strange phenomena in Mrs. Dane's drawingroom, and after the

contact with tragedy to which they had led, that I must hold with a sort of desperation to the traditions and

beliefs by which I had hitherto regulated my conduct. And the church did me good. Between the immortality

it taught and the theory of spiritualism as we had seen it in action there was a great gulf, and I concluded that

this gulf was the soul. The conclusion that mind and certain properties of mind survived was not enough. The

thought of a disembodied intelligence was pathetic, depressing. But the thought of a glorified soul was the

My wife, too, was in a penitent and rather exalted mood. During the sermon she sat with her hand in mine,

and I was conscious of peace and a deep thankfulness. We had been married for many years, and we had

grown very close. Of what importance was the Wells case, or what mattered it that there were strange

That my wife had felt a certain bitterness toward Miss Jeremy, a jealousy of her powers, even of her youth,

had not dawned on me. But when, in her new humility, she suggested that we call on the medium that

Miss Jeremy lived with an elderly spinster cousin, a short distance out of town. It was a grim house, coldly

and rigidly Calvinistic. It gave an unpleasant impression at the start, and our comfort was not increased by the

discovery, made early in the call, that the cousin regarded the Neighborhood Club and its members with

The cousin her name was Connell was small and sharp, and she entered the room followed by a train of

cats. All the time she was frigidly greeting us, cats were coming in at the door, one after the other. It

fascinated 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 a seemingly endless procession, and one of them took a fancy to me, and leaped from

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

"I may as well tell you, I disapprove of what Alice is doing," said Miss Connell. "She doesn't have to. I've

offered her a good home. She was brought up a Presbyterian. I call this sort of thing playing with the powers

of darkness. Only the eternally damned are doomed to walk the earth. The blessed are at rest."

"I believe she can do extraordinary things. She saw my father's spirit in this very room last night, and

As she had said that only the eternally damned were doomed to walk the earth, I was tempted to comment on

this stricture on her departed parent, but a large cat, much scarred with fighting and named Violet, insisted at

"But the whole thing is unChristian and undignified," Miss Connell proceeded, in her cold voice. "Come,

Violet, don't annoy the gentleman. I have other visions of the next life than of rapping on tables and chairs,

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 out of her wraps with a manner that was

almost proprietary, and drew a chair for her close to the small fire which hardly affected the chill of the room.

With their entrance a spark of hospitality seemed to kindle in the cat lady's breast. It was evident that she

liked Sperry. Perhaps she saw in him a method of weaning her cousin from traffic with the powers of

He stood up, and with that unconscious drama which actuates a man at a crisis in his affairs, he put a hand on

her shoulder. "This young lady is going to marry me," he said. "We are very happy today."

But I thought he eyed us anxiously. We were very close friends, and he wanted 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 must

"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 strangely normal. And yet, even there, something

happened that set me to thinking afterward. Not that it was strange in itself, but that it seemed never possible

I knew him immediately, but he did not at once see me. He was evidently accustomed to seeing Sperry there,

and he did not recognize my wife. But when he had put down the tray and turned to pick up Sperry's overcoat

to carry it into the hall, he saw me. The man actually started. I cannot say that he changed color. He was

always a pale, anemiclooking individual. But it was a perceptible instant before he stooped and gathered up

Sperry turned to me when he had gone out. "That was Hawkins, Horace," he said. "You remember, don't

"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

As I drank my tea, I pondered. After all, the Neighborhood Club must guard against the possibility of fraud,

and I felt that Sperry had been indiscreet, to say the least. From the time of Hawkins' service in Miss Jeremy's

home there would always be the suspicion of collusion between them. I did not believe it was so, but Herbert,

for instance, would be inclined to suspect her. Suppose that Hawkins knew about the crime? Or knew

"Now look here," he said, "I know what you mean, and the whole idea is absurd. Of course I never thought

about it, but even allowing for connivance which I don't for a moment the fellow was not in the house at

"Even then," he said, "how about the first sitting? I'll swear she had never even heard of him then."

I was uneasy all the way home. The element of doubt always so imminent in our dealings with psychic

phenomena, had me by the throat. How much did Hawkins know? Was there any way, without going to the

police, to find if he had really been out of the Wells house that night, now almost two weeks ago, when

That evening I went to Sperry's house, after telephoning that I was coming. On the way I stopped in at Mrs.

Dane's and secured something from her. She was wildly curious, and made me promise to go in on my way

But I knew, by her grim smile, that she would station herself by her window, and that I would stop, unless I

Sperry was waiting for me in his library, a pleasant room which I have often envied him. Even the most

happily married man wishes, now and then, for some quiet, dull room which is essentially his own. My own

library is really the family sittingroom, and a Christmas or so ago my wife presented me with a very

handsome phonograph instrument. My reading, therefore, is done to music, and the necessity for putting my

book down to change the record at times interferes somewhat with my train of thought.

So I entered Sperry's library with appreciation. He was standing by the fire, with the grave face and slightly

bent head of his professional manner. We say, in the neighborhood, that Sperry uses his professional manner

"Horace," he said, "I have been a fool, a driveling idiot. We were getting something at those sittings.

Something real. She's wonderful. She's going to give it up, but the fact remains that she has some power we

haven't, and now I've discredited her! I see it plainly enough." He was 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

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

He was not sure. He went into his consulting room and was gone for some time. I took the opportunity to

Arthur Wells's stick was standing in a corner, and I took it up and examined it. It was an English malacca,

light and strong, and had seen service. It was long, too long for me; it occurred to me that Wells had been

about my height, and that it was odd that he should have carried so long a stick. There was no ease in

>From that to the memory of Hawkins's face when Sperry took it, the night of the murder, in the hall of the

Wells house, was only a step. I seemed that day to be thinking considerably about Hawkins.

When Sperry returned I laid the stick on the table. There can be no doubt that I did so, for I had to move a

bookrack to place it. One end, the handle, was near the inkwell, and the ferrule lay on a copy of Gibson's

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

Dear Sir: Since Mr. Wells's death I am out of employment. Before I took the position of butler with Mr.

Wells I was valet to Mr. Ellingham, and before that, in England, to Lord Condray. I have a very good letter of

recommendation from Lord Condray. If you need a servant at this time I would do my best to give

I put down the application, and took the anonymous letter about the bag from 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 put them down. "Hawkins!" he said.

"Exactly," I commented dryly. "In other words, Hawkins was in Miss Jeremy's house when, at the second

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

"But why should he tell her, if he did?" he demanded. "The writer of that anonymous letter was writing for

"The question now is, to whom was it written?" We pondered that, to no effect. That Hawkins had certain

letters which touched on the Wells affair, that they were probably in his possession in the Connell house, was

clear enough. But we had no possible authority for trying to get the letters, although Sperry was anxious to

"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 in that legal mind of yours. It is wrong to discredit her because I did a foolish thing." He

warmed to his argument. "Why, think, man," he said. "The whole first sitting was practically coincident with

It was true enough. Whatever suspicion might be cast on the second seance, the first at least remained

inexplicable, by any laws we recognized. In a way, I felt sorry for Sperry. Here he was, on the first day of his

engagement, protesting her honesty, her complete ignorance of the 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 that Hawkins had been employed by

So even Sperry was watching. He was in love with her, but his scientific mind, like my legal one, was slow to

I left him at ten o'clock. Mrs. Dane was still at her window, and her farsighted old eyes caught me as I tried

to steal past. She rapped on the window, and I was obliged to go in. Obliged, too, to tell her of the discovery

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

So far as I know, Mrs. Dane was the only one among us who had entirely escaped certain strange phenomena

during that period, and as I have only so far recorded my own experiences, I shall here place in order the

various manifestations made to the other members of the Neighborhood Club during that trying period and in

their own words. As none of them have suffered since, a certain allowance must be made for our nervous

Alice Robinson: On night following second seance saw a light in room, not referable to any outside influence.

Was an amorphous body which glowed pallidly and moved about wall over fireplace, gradually coming to

Clara , Mrs. Dane's secretary: Had not slept much since first seance. Was frequently conscious that she was

not alone in room, but on turning on light room was always empty. Wakened twice with sense of extreme

Sperry has consistently maintained that he had no experiences whatever during that period, but admits that he

heard various knockings in his bedroom at night, which he attributed to the lighting of his furnace, and the

Herbert Robinson: Herbert was the most difficult member of the Club from whom to secure data, but he has

recently confessed that he was wakened one night by the light falling on to his bed from a picture which hung

on the wall over his mantelpiece, and which stood behind a clock, two glass vases and a pair of candlesticks.

Mrs. Johnson: Had a great many minor disturbances, so that on rousing one night to find me closing a

window against a storm she thought I was a spectre, and to this day insists that I only entered her room when

I heard her scream. For this reason I have made no record of her various experiences, as I felt that her nervous

As in all records of psychic phenomena, the human element must be considered, and I do not attempt either to

analyze these various phenomena or to explain them. Herbert, for instance, has been known to walk in his

sleep. But I respectfully offer, as opposed to this, that my watch has never been known to walk at all, and that

The following day was Monday. When I came downstairs I found a neat bundle lying in the hall, and

I had a curious feeling about the parcel, and was for cutting the cord with my knife. But my wife is careful

about string. She has always fancied that the time would come when we would need some badly, and it would

not be around. I have an entire drawer of my chiffonier, which I really need for other uses, filled with bundles

of twine, pink, white and brown. I recall, on one occasion, packing a suitcase in the dusk, in great hasty, and

emptying the drawer containing my undergarments into it, to discover, when I opened it on the train for my

pajamas, nothing but rolls of cord and several packages of Christmas ribbons. So I was obliged to wait until

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

The address was printed, not written, in a large, strong hand, with a stub pen. I did not, at the time, notice the

loss of certain papers which had been in the breast pocket. I am rather absentminded, and it was not until the

At something after eleven Herbert Robinson called me up at my office. He was at Sperry's house, Sperry

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

"You were here last night, he says." Herbert has a circumlocutory manner over the phone which irritates me.

He begins slowly and does not know how to stop. Talk with him drags on endlessly.

He lowered his voice. "Do you happen to have noticed a walkingstick in the library when you were here?"

"You are an absentminded beggar, you know," he explained. "You remember about the firetongs. And a

He rang off. I was ruffled, I admit; but I was uneasy, also. To tell the truth, the affair of the firetongs had

cost me my selfconfidence. I called up my wife, and she said Herbert was a fool and Sperry also. But she

made an exhaustive search of the premises, without result. Whoever had taken the stick, I was cleared.

Cleared, at least, for a time. There were 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 my house, but I had not noticed. When I went out to lunch a youngish man

in a dark overcoat was waiting for the elevator, and I saw him again when I came out of my house. We went

Perhaps I would have thought nothing of it, had I not been summoned to the suburbs on a piece of business

concerning a mortgage. He was at the far end of the platform as I took the train to return to the city, with his

back to me. I lost him in the crowd at the downtown station, but he evidently 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 to search his past for some dereliction,

possibly forgotten, I puzzled over the situation for some time that afternoon. I did not connect it with the

Although I found no explanation for the matter, I did not tell my wife that evening. Women are strange and

she would, I feared, immediately jump to the conclusion that there was something in my private life that I

Almost all women, I have found, although not overconscious themselves of the charm and attraction of their

husbands, are of the conviction that these husbands exert a dangerous fascination over other women, and that

this charm, which does not reveal itself in the home circle, is used abroad with occasionally disastrous effect.

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

After dinner I went into our reception room, which is not lighted unless we are expecting guests, and peered

out of the window. The detective, or whoever he might be, was walking negligently up the street.

As that was the night of the third seance, I find that my record covers the fact that Mrs. Dane was

housecleaning, for which reason we had not been asked to dinner, that my wife and I dined early, at

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

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

Fortunately, during this conversation my wife was upstairs dressing. I knew quite well that she would

violently oppose a second visit on my part to the deserted house down the street. I therefore left a message for

her that I had gone on, and, finding the street clear, met Sperry at his doorstep.

"This is the last sitting, Horace," he explained, "and I feel we ought to have the most complete possible

knowledge, beforehand. We will be in a better position to understand what comes. There are two or three

He slipped an arm through mine, and we started down the street. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this,

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

"It wasn't Elinor Wells," he said positively. "Here's the point: if he's been afraid to go back for his overcoat

it's still there. I don't expect that, however. But the thing about the curtain interests me. I've been reading over

my copy of the notes on the sittings. It was said, you remember, that curtains some curtains would have

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

He whistled softly. "That's unfortunate," he said. "Then the other person, whoever he is, knows what we

He was considerably startled when I told him I had been shadowed, and insisted that it referred directly to the

case in hand. "He's got your notes," he said, "and he's got to know what your next move is going to be."

His intention, I found, was to examine the carpet outside of the dressingroom door, and the floor beneath it,

"Because I think you are right," he said. "He wouldn't have been likely to shoot himself in a hall, and because

the very moving of the body would be in itself suspicious. Then I want to look at the curtains. 'The curtains

would have been safer.' Safer for what? For the bag with the letters, probably, for she followed that with the

The Wells house was dark and forbidding. We walked past it once, as an officer was making his rounds in

leisurely fashion, swinging his nightstick in circles. But on our return the street was empty, and we turned in

I led the way with comparative familiarity. It was, you will remember, my third similar excursion. With

We had reached the end of the narrow passage, and emerged into the square of brick and grass that lay behind

the house. While the night was clear, the place lay in comparative darkness. Sperry stumbled over something,

The rear porch lay in deep shadow. We went up the steps together. Then Sperry stopped, and I advanced to

With my hand on the doorknob, I turned to Sperry. He was struggling violently with a dark figure, and even

as I turned they went over with a crash and rolled together down the steps. Only one of them rose.

I was terrified. I confess it. It was impossible to see whether it was Sperry or his assailant. If it was Sperry

who lay in a heap on the ground, I felt that I was lost. I could not escape. The way was blocked, and behind

Then, out of the darkness behind me, came Sperry's familiar, booming bass. "I've knocked him out, I'm

Much shaken, I went down the steps and gave Sperry a wooden toothpick, under the impression that it was a

"Knocked out, for sure," said Sperry, "but I think it's not serious. A watchman, I suppose. Poor devil, we'll

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 combination of carpets, cooked food, and floor wax. My nerves, now taxed to their utmost,

He bore the brunt of the weight as we carried the watchman in, holding him with his arms dangling, helpless

We had hardly laid him on the floor when I heard the slow stride of the officer of the beat. He had turned into

the paved alleyway, and was advancing 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 turn it from the inside, before I heard him hailing

He listened for a moment, then came up and tried the door. I crouched inside, as guilty as the veriest

housebreaker in the business. But he had no suspicion, clearly, for he turned and went away, whistling as he

Not until we heard him going down the street again, absently running his nightstick along the fence palings,

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

"Now, friend Horace," he said, "if you have anything but toothpicks for matches, we will look for the

As we had anticipated, there was no overcoat in the library, and after listening a moment at the kitchen door,

we ascended a rear staircase to the upper floor. I had, it will be remembered, fallen from a chair on a table in

the dressing room, and had left them thus overturned when I charged the third floor. The room, however, was

now in perfect order, and when I held my candle to the ceiling, I perceived that the bullet hole had again been

"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 a woman wanted to hide some letters from her husband, and chose a

curtain for a receptacle, what room would hide them in. Not in his dressingroom, 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, had I not remembered my wife's custom of folding draperies when we close the

Our inspection of the curtains was hurried, and broken by various excursions on my part to listen for the

watchman. But he remained quiet below, and finally we found what we were looking for. In the lining of one

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

The result was a sort of pocket in the curtain, concealed on the chintz side, which was the side which would

"Probably," he said, "the curtain would have been better. It would have stayed anyhow. Whereas the bag "

He was flushed with triumph. "How in the world would Hawkins know that?" he demanded. "You can talk all

Before examining the floor in the hall I went downstairs and listened outside the kitchen door. The watchman

was stirring inside the room, and groaning occasionally. Sperry, however, when I told him, remained cool and

in his exultant mood, and I saw that he meant to vindicate Miss Jeremy if he flung me into jail and the

"We'll have a go at the floors under the carpets now," he said. "If he gets noisy, you can go down with the

The dressingroom had a large rug, like the nursery above it, and turning back the carpet was a simple

matter. There had been a stain beneath where the dead man's head had lain, but it had been scrubbed and

Sperry eyed the spot with indifference. "Not essential," he said. "Shows good housekeeping. That's all. The

And, after a time, we found what we were after. The upper hall was carpeted, and my penknife came into

requisition to lift the tacks. They came up rather easily, as if but recently put in. That, indeed, proved to be

Just outside the dressingroom door the boards for an area of two square feet or more beneath the carpet had

been scraped and scrubbed. With the lifting of the carpet came, too, a strong odor, as of ammonia. But the

Sperry, kneeling on the floor with the candle held close, examined the wood. "Not only scrubbed," he said,

"but scraped down, probably with a floorscraper. 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 in a hallway. It's a sort of solitary deed. He fell here, and was dragged into the room.

The angle of the bullet in the ceiling would probably show it came from here, too, and went through the

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

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

He was still hammering on the door as we went down the rear stairs, and Sperry stood outside the door and to

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

By the faint light from outside I could see him stooping, not in front of the door, but behind it. And it was

well he did, for the moment the key was on the other side, a shot zipped through one of the lower panels. I

"No more of that, George," said Sperry calmly and cheerfully. "This is a quiet neighborhood, and we don't

like shooting. What is more, my friend here is very expert with his own particular weapon, and at any

I have no idea why Sperry chose to be facetious at that time, and my resentment rises as I record it. For when

we reached the yard we heard the officer running along the alleyway, calling as he ran.

I am not very good at fences, as a rule, but I leaped that one like a cat, and came down in a barrel of

wastepaper on the other side. Getting me out was a breathless matter, finally accomplished by turning the

barrel over so that I could crawl out. We could hear the excited voices of the two men beyond the fence, and

we ran. I was better than Sperry at that. I ran like a rabbit. I never even felt my legs. And Sperry pounded on

We heard, behind us, one of the men climbing the fence. But in jumping down 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 not intent

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

It was as well that we did, for we had not gone a half block before we saw our policeman again, lumbering

The policeman stared at us fixedly, stopping to do so, but all he saw was two welldressed and

professionallooking men, one of them rather elderly who was hailing a streetcar. I had the presence of

"Just in good time," I said distinctly, and we mounted the car step. Sperry remained on the platform and

"Rather narrow squeak, that," he observed, as he came in and sat down beside me. "Your gray hairs probably

I was quite numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I

"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 at all. But I am anxious. I always am. These things do not come for the calling."

It appeared that Herbert Robinson had been reading, during his convalescence, a considerable amount of

psychic literature, and that we were to hold this third and final sitting under test conditions. As before, the

room had been stripped of furniture, and the cloth and rod which formed the low screen behind Miss Jeremy'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 businesslike manner 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 of her own ignorance of the methods employed

in professional seances, that she was as much interested and puzzled as we were.

"Members of the Neighborhood Club," he said impressively, "we have agreed among ourselves that this is to

be our last meeting for the purpose that is before us. I have felt, therefore, that in justice to the medium this

final seance should leave us with every conviction of its genuineness. Whatever phenomena occur, the

medium must be, as she has been, above suspicion. For the replies of her 'control,' no particular precaution

seems necessary, or possible. But the first seance divided itself into two parts: an early period when, so far as

we could observe, 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 physical

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 fine threads, drawn sufficiently taut to snap with any movement.

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

The proceedings were saved from absurdity by what we all felt was the extreme gravity of the situation.

There were present in the room Mrs. Dane, the Robinsons, Sperry, my wife and myself. Clara, Mrs. Dane's

secretary, had begged off on the plea of nervousness from the earlier and physical portion of the seance, and

Sperry objected to this, as movement in the circle during the trance had, in the first seance, induced fretful

uneasiness in the medium. But Clara, appealed to, begged to be allowed to remain outside until she was

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

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

I found a stick in the rack outside and brought it in. The lights were still on in the chandelier overhead, and as

But I caught Sperry's eye. We had both recognized it. It was Arthur Wells's, the one which Sperry had taken

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

"Look here, Horace," he said, more gently, "you come in and see me some day soon. You're not as fit as you

I confess to a sort of helpless indignation that was far from the composure the occasion required. But the

others, I believe, were fully convinced that no human agency had operated to bring the stick into Mrs. Dane's

A number of things occurred almost as soon as the lights were out, interrupting a train of thought in which I

saw myself in the first stages of mental decay, and carrying about the streets not only firetongs and

Perhaps my excitement had a bad effect on the medium. She was uneasy and complained that the threads that

bound her arms were tight. She was distinctly fretful. But after a time she settled down in her chair. Her

figure, a deeper shadow in the semidarkness of the room, seemed sagged seemed, in some indefinable

way, smaller. But there was none of the stertorous breathing that preceded trance.

Then, suddenly, a bell that Sperry had placed on the stand beyond the black curtain commenced to ring. It

rang at first gently, then violently. It made a hideous clamor. I had a curious sense that it was ringing up in

the air, near the top of the curtain. It was a relief to have it thrown to the ground, its racket silenced.

Quite without warning, immediately after, my chair twisted under me. "I am being turned around," I said, in a

low tone. "It as if something has taken hold of the back of the chair, and is twisting it. It has stopped now." I

For five minutes, by the luminous dial of my watch on the table before me, nothing further occurred, except

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

"It is not possible," Herbert assured her. "Nothing, that is there is only one door, and it is closed. I have

At the end of five minutes something soft and fragrant fell on to the table near me. I had not noticed Herbert

when he placed the flowers from Mrs. Dane's table on the stand, and I was more startled than the others. Then

the glass prisms in the chandelier over our heads clinked together, as if they had been swept by a finger. More

of the flowers came. We were pelted with them. And into the quiet that followed there came a light, fine but

steady tattoo on the table in our midst. Then at last silence, and the medium in deep trance, and Mrs. Dane

When Clara came in, Mrs. Dane told her to switch on the lights. Miss Jeremy had dropped in her chair until

the silk across her chest was held taut. But investigation showed that none of the threads were broken and that

her evening slippers still fitted into the outline on the paper beneath them. Without getting up, Sperry reached

to the stand behind Miss Jeremy, and brought into view a piece of sculptor's clay he had placed there. The

handle of the bell was now jammed into the mass. He had only time to show it to us when the medium began

I find, on rereading the earlier part of this record, that I have omitted mention of Miss Jeremy's "control." So

suddenly had we jumped, that first evening, into the trail that led us to the Wells case, that beyond the rather

raucous "goodevening," and possibly the extraneous matter referring to Mother Goose and so on, we had

On this night, however, we were obliged to sit impatiently through a rambling discourse, given in a

halfbelligerent manner, on the deterioration of moral standards. Rereading Clara's notes, I find that the

subject matter is without originality and the diction inferior. But the lecture ceased abruptly, and the time for

"Now," Herbert said, "we want you to go back to the house where you saw the dead man on the floor. You

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

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

Up to that time the replies had come easily and quickly. But beginning with the cane question, the medium

was in difficulties. She moved uneasily, and spoke irritably. The replies were slow and grudging. Foreign

"Horace's wife certainly bullies him," said the voice. "He's afraid of her. And the firetongs the firetongs

"Horace," said my wife, leaning forward, "why not ask her about that stock of mine? If it is going down, I

"We are here to make a serious investigation," he said. "If the members of the club will keep their attention

on what we are doing, we may get somewhere. Now," to the medium, "the man is dead, and the revolver is

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

Instead, the voice of the "control" began to recite a verse of poetry a cheap, sentimental bit of trash. It was

"He found them when he was looking for his razorstrop. They were in the top of a closet. His revolver was

There was a profound silence, followed by a slight exclamation from Sperry 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 next instant it

In this, the final chapter of the record of these seances, I shall give, as briefly as possible, the events of the

day following the third sitting. I shall explain the mystery of Arthur Wells's death, and I shall give the

solution arrived at by the Neighborhood Club as to the strange communications from the medium, Miss

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 yet living? Is death, then, only a gateway into higher space, from which, through the

open door of a "sensitive" mind, we may be brought back on occasion to commit the inadequate absurdities

Or is Sperry right, and do certain individuals manifest powers of a purely physical nature, but powers which

Sperry characterizes as the survival of some longlost development by which at one time we knew how to

Who can say? We do not know. We have had to accept these things as they have been accepted through the

ages, and give them either a spiritual or a purely natural explanation, as our minds happen to be adventurous

But outside of the purely physical phenomena of those seances, we are provided with an explanation which

satisfies the Neighborhood Club, even if it fails to satisfy the convinced spiritist. We have been accused

merely of substituting one mystery for another, but I reply by saying that the mystery we substitute is not a

On Tuesday morning I wakened after an uneasy night. I knew certain things, knew them definitely in the

clear light of morning. Hawkins had the letters that Arthur Wells had found; that was one thing. I had not

taken Ellingham's stick to Mrs. Dane's house; that was another. I had not done it. I had placed it on the table

But those were immaterial, compared with one outstanding fact. Any supernatural solution would imply full

knowledge by whatever power had controlled the medium. And there was not full knowledge. There was, on

To my surprise, Sperry and Herbert Robinson came together to see me that morning at my office. Sperry, like

myself, was pale and tired, but Herbert was restless and talkative, for all the world like a terrier on the scent

They had brought a newspaper account of an attempt by burglars to rob the Wells house, and the usual police

formula that arrests were expected to be made that day. There was a diagram of the house, and a picture of

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

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

Herbert was examining the door of my office. He set the spring lock. "He may try to bolt," he explained.

I pressed a button, and Miss Joyce came in. "Take the testimony of the man who is coming in, Miss Joyce.," I

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

I can still see Hawkins as Sperry let him in a tall, cadaverous man of good manners and an English accent,

a superior servant. He was cool but rather resentful. I judged that he considered carrying letters as in no way a

part of his work, and that he was careful of his dignity. "Miss Jeremy sent this, sir," he said.

"You were in the employ of Mr. Wells. We know that. Also we saw you there the night he died, but some

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

"How do you expect us to believe that?" Sperry demanded irritably. "There was only one key. Could you lock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I haven't said I have them. I haven't admitted I wrote that one on the desk. Suppose I have them, I'll not give

We tried to assure him that we were not, in a sense, seeking to involve him in the situation, and I even went

"I'd better explain, Hawkins. We are not doing police work. But, owing to a chain of circumstances, we have

learned that Mr. Wells did not kill himself. He was murdered, or at least shot, by some one else. It may not

have been deliberate. Owing to what we have learned, certain people are under suspicion. We want to clear

He could only have guessed it, but he saw that he was right, by our faces. He smiled bitterly. "Go on," he

said. "Take it down. It can't hurt anybody. I don't know who did it, and that's God's truth."

He suspected who had done it, but he did not know. He absolutely refused to surrender the letters in his

possession, and a sense of delicacy, I think, 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

When he had gone, there seemed to be nothing to say. He had left the same impression on all of us, I think

of trouble, but not of crime. Of a man fairly driven; of wretchedness that was almost despair. He still had the

letters. He had, after all, as much right to them as we had, which was, actually, no right at all. And, whatever

Herbert was almost childishly crestfallen. Sperry's attitude was more philosophical.

"A woman, of course," he said. "The A 31 letter shows it. He tried to get her back, perhaps, by holding the

letters over her head. And it hasn't worked out. Poor devil! Only who is the woman?"

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

I was in the library, reading, or trying to read, a rather abstruse book on psychic phenomena. My wife, I

recall, had just asked me to change a banjo 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

To my surprise, it was Sperry, accompanied by two ladies, one of them heavily veiled. It was not until I had

ushered them into the reception room and lighted the gas that I saw who they were. It was Elinor Wells, in

I am afraid I was rather excited, for I took Sperry's hat from him, and placed it on the head of a marble bust

which I had given my wife on our last anniversary, and Sperry says that I drew a smokingstand up beside

Elinor Wells with great care. I do not know. It has, however, passed into history in the Club, where every

now and then for some time Herbert offered one of the ladies a cigar, with my compliments.

My wife, I believe, was advancing along the corridor when Sperry closed the 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 I found

While I am quite sure that I was not thinking clearly at the opening of the interview, I know that I was

puzzled at the presence of Mrs. Dane's secretary, but I doubtless accepted it as having some connection with

"Mrs. Wells suggested that we come here, Horace," he began. "We may need a legal mind on this. I'm not

sure, or rather I think it unlikely. But just in case suppose you tell him, Elinor."

I have no record of the story Elinor Wells told that night in our little receptionroom, with Clara sitting in a

corner, grave and white. It was fragmentary, incoordinate. But I got it all at last.

Charlie Ellingham had killed Arthur Wells, but in a struggle. In parts the 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, she hastened to add, would not have

But on the subject of Charlie Ellingham she was emphatic. She knew that there had been talk, but there had

been no real basis for it. She had turned to him for comfort, and he gave her love. She didn't know where he

was now, and didn't greatly care, but she would like to recover and destroy some letters he had written her.

She was looking crushed and ill, and she told her story incoordinately and nervously. Reduced to its

On the night of Arthur Wells's death they were dressing for a ball. She had made a private arrangement with

Ellingham to plead a headache at the last moment and let Arthur go alone. But he had been so insistent that

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 not at his house, and the message was left with his valet. As it turned out, he had

Elinor was dressed, all but her ballgown, and had put on a negligee, to wait for the governess to return and

help her. Arthur was in his dressingroom, and she heard him grumbling about having no blades for his

He got out a case of razors and searched for the strop. When she remembered where the strop was, it was too

late. The letters had been beside it, and he was coming toward her, with them in his hand.

She was terrified. He had read only one, but that was enough. He muttered something and turned away. She

saw his face as he went toward where the revolver had been hidden from the children, and she screamed.

Charlie Ellingham heard her. The door had been left unlocked by the governess, and he was in the lower hall.

He ran up and the two men grappled. The first shot was fired by Arthur. It struck the ceiling. The second she

was doubtful about. She thought the revolver was still in Arthur's hand. It was all horrible. He went down like

They were nearly mad, the two of them. They had dragged the body in, and then faced each other. Ellingham

was for calling the police at once and surrendering, but she had kept him away from the telephone. She

maintained, and I think it very possible, that her whole thought was for 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 they heard footsteps below, and, thinking

it was Mademoiselle Gautier, she drove Ellingham into the rear of the house, from which later he managed to

"She had been our first governess for the children," Elinor said, "and she often came in. She had made a

birthday smock for Buddy, and she had it in her hand. She almost fainted. I couldn't tell her about Charlie

Ellingham. I couldn't. I told her we had been struggling, and that I was afraid I had shot him. She is quick.

She knew just what to do. We worked fast. 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, with his eyes half open "

The letters, it seems, were all over the place. Elinor thought of the curtain, 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 for Suzanne Gautier's return; filled the second

empty chamber of the revolver, dragged the body out of the hall and washed the carpet, and called Doctor

Clara had only a little time, and with the letters in her handbag she started down the stairs. There she heard

some one, possibly Ellingham, on the back stairs, and in her haste, she fell, hurting her knee, and she must

have dropped the handbag at that time. They knew now that Hawkins had found it later on. But for a few days

"I think we would better explain Hawkins," Sperry said. "Hawkins was married 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 a personal matter. It has nothing to do

"It doesn't explain how that medium knew everything that happened," Clara put in, excitedly. "She knew it

all, even the library paste! I can tell you, Mr. Johnson, I was close to fainting a dozen times before I finally

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

"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.

She sat, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. She was a proud woman, 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, terribly frightened. But not about discovery. That

"How does this woman, this medium, know these things?" Her voice rose, with an unexpected hysterical

"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 simple explanation, and I think I've got it. What about the stick that was taken from my

"It was Charlie Ellingham's. He had left it there. We had to have it, doctor. Alone it might not mean much,

"I stole it from your office," Clara said, looking straight ahead. "We had to have it. I knew at the second

"On Monday morning, I went for Mrs. Dane's medicine, and you had promised her a book. Do you

remember? I told your man, and he allowed me to go up to the library. It was there, on the table. I had

expected to have 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 her intently, with the same sort of grim

"I put it in the closet in my room. I meant to get rid of it, when I had a little time. I don't know how it got

"We are housecleaning. A housemaid was washing closets. I suppose she found it and, thinking it was one

of Mrs. Dane's, took it downstairs. That is, unless " It was clear that, like Elinor, she had a supernatural

"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 your bag, another similar advertisement?"

Elinor rose and drew her veil down. "We must go," she said. "Surely now you will cease these terrible

"What are you going to do?" She turned to me, I daresay because I represented what to her was her supreme

"My dear girl," I said, "we are not going to do anything. The Neighborhood Club has been doing a little

Sperry took them away in his car, but he turned on the doorstep, "Wait downstairs for me," he said, "I am

For where were we, after all? We had had the medium's story elaborated and confirmed, but the fact remained

that, step by step, through her unknown "control" the Neighborhood Club had followed a tragedy from its

Was everything on which I had built my life to go? Its philosophy, its science, even its theology, before the

revelations of a young woman who knew hardly the rudiments of the very things she was destroying?

Was death, then, not peace and an awakening to new things, but a wretched and dissociated clutching after

It was well that Sperry came back when he did, bringing with him a breath of fresh night air and stalwart

"The thing I want to know," I said fretfully, "is where this leaves us? Where are we? For God's sake, where

"First of all," he said, "have you anything to drink? Not for me. For yourself. You look sick."

I drew a chair before the bookshelves, which in our oldfashioned house reach almost to the ceiling, and,

"Now and then, when I have had a bad day," I explained, "I find that it makes me sleep."

"Well," said Sperry, when he had lighted a cigar. "So you want to know where we are."

"That's easy. Horace, you should be a heart specialist, and I should have taken the law. It's as plain as the

alphabet." He took his notes of the sittings from his pocket. "I'm going to read a few things. Keep what is left

"I want to go out. I want air. If I could only go to sleep and forget it. The drawingroom furniture is scattered

"'It is writing.' (The stick.) "It is writing, but the water washed it away. All of it, not a trace.' 'If only the

pocketbook were not lost. Cartickets and letters. It will be terrible if the letters are found.' 'Hawkins may

have it. The curtain was much safer.' 'That part's safe enough, unless it made a hole in the floor above.'"

"Irrelevant nothing! Wake up, Horace! But remember this. I'm not explaining the physical phenomena. We'll

never do that. It wasn't extraordinary, as such things go. Our little medium in a trance condition has read poor

Clara's mind. It's all here, all that Clara knew and nothing that she didn't know. A mindreader, friend

As I have said, the Neighborhood Club ended its investigations with this conclusion, which I believe is

properly reached. It is only fair to state that there are those among us who have accepted that theory in the

Wells case, but who have preferred to consider that behind both it and the physical phenomena of the seances

there was an intelligence which directed both, an intelligence not of this world as we know it. Both Herbert

and Alice Robinson are now pronounced spiritualists, although Miss Jeremy, now Mrs. Sperry, has definitely

Personally, I have evolved no theory. It seems beyond dispute that certain individuals can read minds, and

that these same, or other socalled "sensitives," are capable of liberating a form of invisible energy which,

however, they turn to no further account than the useless ringing of bells, moving of small tables, and

To me, I admit, the solution of the Wells case as one of mindreading is more satisfactory than explanatory.

For mental waves remain a mystery, acknowledged, as is electricity, but of a nature yet unrevealed. Thoughts

The Neighborhood Club has recently disbanded. We tried other things, but we had been spoiled. Our Kipling

winter was a failure. We read a play or two, with Sperry's wife reading the heroine, and the rest of us taking

other parts. She has a lovely voice, has Mrs. Sperry. But it was all stale and unprofitable, after the Wells

affair. With Herbert on a lecture tour on spirit realism, and Mrs. Dane at a sanatorium for the winter, we have

After dinner I read, or, as lately, I have been making this record of the 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, she is

waiting for me to change the record. I will be frank. I hate the phonograph. I hope it will be destroyed, or

"Horace," says my wife, "whatever would we do without the phonograph? I wish you would put it in the