Then there was an uproar.  The whole room was in indescribable confusion.

Somebody turned up the light.  For an instant Nick, grappling with the spirit, saw Colonel Richmond.

The colonel had not been given a private seance.  Possibly he had not desired it.  He had come with a dozen other victims of the same delusion.

He had been given a seat a little in the rear.

Before him, as is usual, was a row of persons who were “in the game.”

The space where the spirits appear is always encircled by such a line as a guard against possible attempts at exposure.

Of course, everybody in the room was on his feet.

Some of the front-row people were rushing upon Nick.

Others had crowded around Colonel Richmond so closely that Nick was afraid he might not fully see the exposure of this fake.

The person whom Nick had seized was not a woman, as might have been expected, but a man.  He was of short stature, but surprising strength.

Even in the mighty arms of the detective, he managed to struggle vigorously, and for a moment prevented Nick from tearing away the white and ghostly wrappings.

But a complete expose could not have been long delayed.  In spite of the odds against him, Nick was certain to come out ahead.

He called out to Colonel Richmond: 

“Look!  Look at this!  It’s a man!”

Just at that instant a tall man who had been standing beside the female “medium,” and acting as master of ceremonies, seized an ornament from the mantelpiece, and hurled it not at Nick, as the detective expected, but at the lamp in the corner of the room.

This lamp had been turned up by one of the timid believers as soon as the row began.

The missile which the spiritualistic “bouncer” hurled was well directed.  It smashed the lamp to fragments, and the room for a minute was dark.

Then another light flashed up.  The broken lamp had set fire to the window curtains.

The scene hadn’t been what one would call peaceful before, but it had been nothing at all to what it became when the fire leaped up.

Pandemonium broke loose.  Doors and windows were burst out, and everybody rushed toward the outer air.

Among the last to emerge was Nick.

He held the “bouncer” in one hand and the ghost of Aunt Lavina in the other.

Both of them were very badly used up.  When the detective dropped them on the lawn they made no attempt to rise.

Some of the medium’s stool-pigeons were beginning to get their wits together, and were making preparations for putting out the fire.

Nick yelled to them, and pointed to a line of garden hose on the lawn.

There was a head of water in this pipe, and with the aid of its stream the fire was extinguished.

The detective did not assist.  He turned his attention to discovering what had become of Colonel Richmond.