Sight Unseen | Page 4

will probably be the medium
cracking the joint of her big toe."
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 drawing-room, occupying a corner of the house. Two
windows at the end faced on the street, with a patch of railed-in lawn
beneath them. A fire-place with a dying fire and flanked by two other
windows, occupied the long side opposite the door into the hall. These
windows, opening on a garden, were closed by outside shutters, now
bolted. The third side was a blank wall, beyond which lay the library.
On the fourth side were the double doors into the hall.
As, although the results we obtained were far beyond any expectations,
the purely physical phenomena were relatively insignificant, it is 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 by the close of the
narrative.
Further to satisfy Mrs. Dane, we examined the walls and floor-boards
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 we are happy and so everybody's happy. Hanky panky!"
"You may be as skeptical as you please, if you will only be fair,
Herbert," Mrs. Dane said.
"And by that you mean "
"During the sitting keep an open mind and a closed mouth," she replied,
cheerfully.
As I said at the beginning, this is not a ghost story. Parts of it 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 with things hitherto outside the orderly progression of our lives.
But at no time, although incredible things happened, did any one of us
glimpse that strange world of the spirit that seemed so often almost
within our range of vision.
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 bamboo rod.
"Don't ask me what they are for," he said to Herbert's grin of
amusement. "Every workman has his tools."
Herbert examined the rod, but it was what it appeared to be, and
nothing else.
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. Twenty-six, 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 waiting.
When she shook hands with me she looked at me keenly. "What a
strange day it has been!" she said. "I have been very nervous. I only
hope I can do what you want this evening."
"I am not at all sure what we do want, Miss Jeremy," I replied.
She smiled a quick smile that was not without humor. Somehow I had
never thought of a medium with a sense of humor. I liked her at once.