Sight Unseen | Page 5

We all liked her, and Sperry, Sperry the bachelor, the iconoclast, the
antifeminist, was staring at her with curiously intent eyes.
Following her entrance Herbert had closed and bolted the
drawing-room doors, and as an added precaution he now drew Mrs.
Dane's empty wheeled chair across them.
"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.
Miss Jeremy gave the room only the most casual of glances.
"Where shall I sit?" she asked.
Mrs. Dane indicated her place, and she asked for a small stand to 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 - I a fountain pen, Sperry a knife; and my wife contributed
a gold bracelet.
We all felt, I fancy, rather absurd. Herbert's smile in the dim light
became a grin. "The same old thing!" he whispered to me. "Watch her
closely. They do it with a folding rod."
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 scratch her nose I'll scratch it."
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 table.
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, fluid-like motion.
"The table is going to move," I said.
Herbert laughed, a dry little chuckle. "Sure it is," he said. "When we all
get to acting together, it will probably do considerable moving. I feel
what you feel. It's flowing under my fingers."
"Blood," said Sperry. "You fellows feel the blood moving through the
ends of your fingers. That's all. Don't be impatient."
However, curiously enough, the table did not move. Instead, my watch,
before my eyes, slid to the edge of the table and dropped to the floor,

and almost instantly an object, which we recognized later as Sperry's
knife, was flung over the curtain and struck the wall behind Mrs. Dane
violently.
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 him.
"Here, stop it!" he said. "I've got ink all over me!"
We laughed consumedly. The sitting had taken on all the attributes of
practical joking. The table no longer quivered under my hands.
"Please be sure you are holding my hands tight. Hold them very tight,"
said Miss Jeremy. Her voice sounded faint and far away. Her head 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 demonstrations."
Mrs. Dane was the first to speak. I was looking for my fountain pen,
and Herbert was again examining the stand.
"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."

"Probably not in the dark."
"We can have some light now," Sperry said.
There was a sort of restrained movement in the room now. Herbert
turned on a bracket light, and I moved away the roller chair.
"Go and get Clara, Horace," Mrs. Dane said