Sight Unseen | Page 7

answer to that, but a sort of sulky silence.
"Are you getting this, Clara?" Mrs. Dane asked sharply. "Don't miss a
word. Who knows what this may develop into?"

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 nine-thirty.
"Now," Sperry said in a soothing tone, "you said there was a shot fired
and a man was killed. Where was this? What house?"
"Two shots. One is in the ceiling of the dressing-room."
"And the other killed him?"
But here, instead of a reply we got the words, "library paste."
Quite without warning the medium groaned, and Sperry believed the
trance was over.
"She's coming out," he said. "A glass of wine, somebody." But she did
not come out. Instead, she twisted in the chair.
"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
drawing-room furniture is scattered over the house."
This last sentence she repeated over and over. It got on our nerves,
ragged already.
"Can you tell us about the house?"
There was a distinct pause. Then: "Certainly. A brick house. The
servants' entrance is locked, but the key is on a nail, among the vines.
All the furniture is scattered through the house."
"She must mean the furniture of this room," Mrs. Dane whispered.
The remainder of the sitting was chaotic. The secretary's notes 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 was not curious.
Herbert saw her to the car, and came back, looking grave. We were
standing together in the center of the dismantled room, with the lights
going full now.
"Well," he said, "it is one of two things. Either we've been gloriously
faked, or we've been let in on a very tidy little crime.
It was Mrs. Dane's custom to serve a Southern eggnog as a sort of
stir-up-cup - 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 small object in the palm of his hand.
He started when he heard me, then laughed and held out his hand.
"Library paste!" he said. "It rolls into a soft, malleable ball. It could
quite easily be used to fill a small hole in plaster. The paper would
paste down over it, too."
"Then you think?"
"I'm not thinking at all. The thing she described may have taken place
in Timbuctoo. May have happened ten years ago. May be the plot of
some book she has read."
"On the other hand," I replied, "it is just possible that it was here, in this
neighborhood, while we were sitting in that room."

"Have you any idea of the time?"
"I know exactly. It was half-past nine."

III
At midnight, shortly after we reached home, Sperry called me on 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 patient in a bad way, and a will to be drawn."
I listened to sounds from upstairs. I heard my wife go into her room
and close the door.
"Tell me something about it," I urged.
"Just this. Arthur Wells killed himself tonight, shot himself in the head.
I want you to go there with me."
"Arthur Wells!"
"Yes. I say, Horace, did you happen to notice the time the seance began
tonight?"
"It was five minutes after nine when my watch fell."
"Then it would have been about half past when the trance began?"
"Yes."
There was a silence at Sperry's end of the wire. Then:
"He was shot