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THRE iy Sa ae HAT LE eB Ree N Page 7 HURSDAY, JUNE 23rd, 1932 ete Zp Ie Uhy iv SECOND INSTALMENT ' "Synopsis 'Six people, Horace Johnson (who tells this story), his wife, old Mrs. Dane, Herbert Robin- son and his. sister, Alice, IDs Sperry, friends and neighbors, are in the habit of holding week- ly meetings. At one of them Mrs. Dane, who is hostess, varies the program by unexpectedly arrang- ing a spiritualistic seance with Miss Jeremy, a. friend of ~Dr. Sperry and not a professional, as the medium. Now go on with the story | 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, re- turned 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. "Eyery workman oe _has his tools." , Herbert examined the rod, but it was what it appeared to be and "@@ onothing else. ; ; "Some .one had started the phonograph in the library, and it _was playing gloomily, " I we meet. beyond the river?" when Miss Jeremy came in. i he was not at all "what we had' expected. Twenty-six: I should say, and in black dinner _ dress. She seemed like a perfect- ly normal young woman, eyen at- tractive in a fragile, delicate way. Not much personality, perhaps, the very word : "medium" pre- cludes that.'A "sensitive," I think she called herself. We were pte- } sented to her, and but for the ) stripped and bare room, it might have been any evening, after any p@ dinner, with bridge waiting. ~ i We all liked her, and Sperry, » Sperry the bachelor, the antifem- inist, was staring at~ her with _ curiously intent eyes. ms - Miss Jeremy gave the room - only the most casual glances, . "Where shall I sit?" she asked. irs. Danie indicated her place, and she asked for a small stand * «comment iy 'two feet behind her chair, 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 form- ed a low screen behind her, with ™m the stand' beyond it. On' this. stand, we placed, at, her. order, - Various articles from our pockets -sl a fountain pen, Sperry a @ knife; and my wife contributed a gold bracelet. _ é We all felt, T fancy, rather ab- surd. : : ea 4 We arranged between us that owe were to sit on each side of her, and Sperry warned me not 4] to let go of her hand fora mom- * @ ent. "They have a way of switch-|, : ing 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 'j) 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 im- patiently 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 ve minutes after nine I felt the of the table waver under my fingers, a curious, fluid-like mo- Oris ri , "The table is going to move," BS alicl gh teeny : '. However, curiously enough, the table did not move. Instead my watch, before my eyes, slid to the edge of the table and drop- ped to the floor, and almost in- stantly an object, which we re- ognized as Sperry's knife, was flung over the curtain and struck the wall behind Mrs. Dane viol- One of. the women screamed, ing in an hysterical giggle. t id we heard rhythmic beating cet gaa the t ° t to an in- libly rapid drumming, when 'ial shock was over Herb- COPYRIGHT 192/ © be brought in and placed about} Sian, UNSEEN 1 MARY ROBERTS RINEHART yu by its eagerness." The answer to that was the pen itself, aimed at him with ap- parent 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 all the attri- butes of practical joking. The table no longer quivered under my hands. "Please be sure you are hold- ing my hands tight. Hold them very tight," said Miss Jeremy. her voice sounded faint and far awoy. Her head was dropped for- ward on her chest, and she sud- denly sagged in her chair. Sperry broke the circle, and coming to her took her pulse. It was, he re- ported, very rapid. "You can move 'and talk now if you like," he said. "She's in a trance, and there wilf be no more physical demonstrations. Mrs. Daneywas 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, Hor- ace, but tomorrow I won't be- Mevertcrat alles ie i "How about, your companion?" I' asked. "Can she take short- hand? We ought to have a re- Cord? ks . "Probably not in the dark." "We can have some light now" Sperry said. 4 : There was a sort of restrained movement. in the room - now. Herbert' 'turned on a_ bracket light, and I moved away the rol- ler chair... _ "Go and get Clara, Horace," Mrs. Dane said to me, "and have her bring a note book and pencil." Nothing, I believe, hapened dur- 'jing my absence. Miss) Jeremy. was sunk in her chair and breathing heavily when I came back with Clara, and Sperry was still watch- ing her pulse. Suddenly my wife said: * ; % "Why look! She's wearing my bracelet !" a 'This proved to "be the case, and by MARY ROBERTS RINEHART if you can. "Sure I can, and it will make your hair curl. Then suddenly there was sort of a dramatic pause and then an outburst. "He's dead." "Who is dead?" Sperry asked, with his voice drawn a trifle thin. "A bullet just above the ear. That's a bad place. I thank good- ness there's not much blood. Cold water will take it out of the car- pet. Not hot. Not hot. 'Do you want to set-the stain?" "Look here," Sperry said, look- ing around the table. "I don't like this. It's darned grisly." "Oh, fudge!" Herbert put in ir- reverenty. "Let her rave, or it, or whatever it is. Do you. mean that a man is dead?"--to the medium. "Yes. She has the revolver. She needn't cry so. He was cruel to her. He was a beast. Sullen." "Can' you 'see the woman?" I asked. "Tt 'it's sent out to be cleaned it will cause trouble. Hang it in the closet." Herbert muttered something about the movies having noth- ing on us, and was angrily hush- ed. : "Now then," Sperry said ina businesslike voice, "you see a dead man, and a: young woman with him. Can you describe the room?" -"A small room, his dressing room. He was shaving, There is still lather on his face." "And the woman killed him?" "T don't know. Oh, I don't know. No, she didn't. He did it." "He did it himself?" 4 There was no answer to that, but a sort of sulky silence. Mrs. Dane asked sharply. "Don't 'miss a word. Who knows what this may develop into?" it was clear that she was terri- fied. IT 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. Sperry threw open th "Are you getting this, Clara?" "Now," Sperry said in a 'sooth-} - on a typewriter, Sperry and I found that one word recurred frequently. The word was "cur- tain." Of the extraordinary' scene that followed the breaking up of the seance, I have the keenest re- collection. Miss Jeremy came out of her trance weak and looking extremely ill, and Sperry's mot- or took her home. She knew noth- ing 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 ,and came back, looking We were Standing together in the centre 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 nightcap 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 whole- some. The women of the party reacted quickly, but I looked ov- er to see Sperry at a corner desk intently working over a small object in the palm of his hand. car, grave. "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 coe "Y'm not thinkink at all. thing she described may taken place in Timbuctoo. May have happend ten years ago. May be the plot of some book she has read." "On the other hand," I replied, 'St is just possible that it was here in this neighborhood, while we were sitting in that room." "Have you any idea of the time ?"" "T know exactly. It was half- past nine." At midnight, shoftly after we reached home, Sperry called me on the phone. "Be careful Hor- ace," he said, "don't let Mrs. Horace think anything has hap- pened. Arthur Wells killed him- self 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 se- ance began tonight?" "Tt was five minutes after nine when my watch fell." "Then it would have been about half-past when the trance be- >) gan? The have (Continued Next Week.) Temiskaming © Northecn Ontario Railway TRAIN SERVICE Train No. 17--North Bay to Mooso- nee, leaves North Bay 10.00 a.m. Mon- days, Wednesday and Fridays, arrives Moosonee 8.00 am. Tuesdays, Thurs- days and Saturdays. Train No. 18--Moosonee to North Bay, leaves Moosonee 9.30 p.m. Tues- days, Thursdays and Sundays, arrives North Bay 5.50 p.m. Mondays, Wed- nesdays and Fridays. Trains Nos. 17 and 18 use Canadian Pacific Railway station at North Bay, and operate sleeping car service be- tween Moosonee, Cochrane, Porquis Jct., Swastika, Cobalt and Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. Trains Nos. 46 and 47--Through ser- vice daily between Toronto and Coch- rane ,carrying through sleepers be- tween Toronto and Timmins, Toronto and Rouyn, and between Montreal and Cochrane. Parlor Cafe Car service operating between North Bay and Swastika These trains use Canadian National Railways station at North Bay Connections at Earlton Jct: for Elk Lake, daily except Sunday. Daily except Sunday service between Englehart and Charlton. Connections at Porquis for Connaught, South Schumacher, Timmins Falls. Connections at Swastika daily for Kirkland Lake, Cheminis, Aldermac, Rouyn and Noranda. See current time table or apply to any T. & N. O. Railway Agent for full particulars Jct. daily Porcupine, and Iroquois A. J. PARR, General Freight and Passenger Agent, I looked at the secretary, and] ~ ¢ drawing-room doors. say, the cause of suspicion on, my was I regret to a most unjust wite's part. - Take down everything that happens, Clara, and all we say." Mrs. Dane said in alow tone. "Even if it sounds like nonsence put it down." It is because Clara took her orders literally that I am mak- ing this more readable version of her. script. ' ' For some five minutes, per- haps, Miss Jeremy breathed ster- torously, and it was during this interval that we introduced Clara and took up our positions. Sperry sat near the medium now, where Herbert had been. The 'rest of the party 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 up- right. - "Good evening, friends," she said. "I am glad to see you all again." ; I caught Herbert's eye and he grinned. ; "Good evening, little Bright Eyes," he said. "How's every- thing 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 will take the pain out." Herbert, who was : still flip- pantly amused, said: : endered Sick "Don't bother"about your knee. Give us some local stuff. Gossip, ing tone, "you said there was a shot fired and a man was killed? What house?" "Two shots. One is in the ceil- ing of the dressing room." "And the other killed him?" But here instead of a reply we got the words "library paste." Quite without warning medium groaned, and Sperry be- lieved the trance was over. "She's coming out," he said. "A glass of wine, somebody." But she did not come out. In- stead, she twisted in the chair. "He's so heavy to lift," she muttered. Then: "Get the lather off his face. The lather. The lath- en j She subsided into the chair and began to breathe with difficulty. "T want to go out. I want air. If I could only go to sleep and for- get it. The drawing-room furnit- ure is scattered over the house." "Can you tell us about the house?" somebody asked. 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 drawing-room furniture is scattered through the house." "She must mean the furniture of this room," Mrs. Dane whisp- ered. ; " The remainder of the sitting room was chaotic. The secretarys notes consist of unrelated words often being childish. On going over the written notes next day, when the steno- graphic record had been copied the} ill-fitting To Advertisers mind, comfort, culture. tural development. bealutification shoes, places indeed. 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