Valentine looked doubtful, but uneasy too.

“Let us go through the rooms,” he said.

They took a candle, and, as on the previous night, searched, but in vain.  They found no trace of any alien presence in the flat.  No book, no ornament, had been moved.  No door stood open.  There was no sound of any footsteps except their own.  When they came to Valentine’s bedroom, Rip leaped to greet them, and seemed in excellent spirits.  He showed no excitement until he had followed them back into the tentroom.  But, arrived there, he suddenly stood still, raised one white paw from the ground, and emitted a long and dreary howl.  The young men stared at him, and then at each other.

“Rip knows somebody has been here,” Julian said.

Valentine was much more uncomfortably impressed by the demeanour of the dog than by Julian’s declaration and subsequent agitation.  He had been inclined to attribute the whole affair to a trick of his friend’s nerves.  But the nervous system of a fox-terrier was surely, under such circumstances as these, more truth-telling than that of a man.

“But the thing is absolutely impossible,” he repeated, with some disturbance of manner.

“Is anything that we can’t investigate straight away absolutely impossible?”

Valentine did not reply directly.

“Here is a cigarette,” he said.  “Let us sit down, soothe our nerves, and talk things over calmly and openly.  We have not been quite frank with each other about these sittings yet.”

Julian accepted Valentine’s offer with his usual readiness.  The fire was relit with some difficulty.  Rip was coaxed into silence.

Presently, as the smoke curled upward with its lazy demeanour, the horror that had hung like a thin vapour in the atmosphere seemed to be dissipated.

“Now I think we are ourselves again, and can be reasonable,” Valentine began.  “Don’t let us be hysterical.  Spiritualists always suffer from hysteria.”

“The sceptics say, Val.”

“And probably they are generally right.  Now—­yes, do drink some more of that brandy and soda.  Now, Julian, do you still believe that a hand held yours just now?”

Julian answered quietly, showing no irritation at the question: 

“I simply know it as surely as I know that I am sitting with you at this moment.  And,—­look here, you may laugh at me as much as you. like,—­although I supposed the hand to be yours, until you denied it I had previously felt the most curious sensation.”

“Of what?”

“Well, that something was coming, even had actually come, into the room.”

Valentine answered nothing to this, so Julian went on.

“I thought it was a trick of the nerves, and determined to drive it away, and I succeeded.  And then, just as I was internally laughing at myself, this hand, as if groping about in the dark, was first laid on mine, full on it, Val, and then slid off onto the table and linked its little finger tightly in mine.  I, of course, supposed the hand was yours, and this finger was crooked round mine for fully five minutes, I should say.  After you spoke, thinking that you were trying to deceive me for a joke, I caught the hand in mine, and pinched it with all my strength until it was forcibly dragged away.”