“Did he kill himself?”

“You can’t catch me on that.  I don’t know.”

Here the medium laughed.  It was horrible.  And the laughter made the whole thing absurd.  But it died away quickly.

“If only the pocketbook was not lost,” she said.  “There were so many things in it.  Especially car-tickets.  Walking is a nuisance.”

Mrs. Dane’s secretary suddenly spoke.  “Do you want me to take things like that?” she asked.

“Take everything, please,” was the answer.

“Car-tickets and letters.  It will be terrible if the letters are found.”

“Where was the pocketbook lost?” Sperry asked.

“If that were known, it could be found,” was the reply, rather sharply given.  “Hawkins may have it.  He was always hanging around.  The curtain was much safer.”

“What curtain?”

“Nobody would have thought of the curtain.  First ideas are best.”

She repeated this, following it, as once before, with rhymes for the final word, best, rest, chest, pest.

“Pest!” she said.  “That’s Hawkins!” And again the laughter.

“Did one of the bullets strike the ceiling?”

“Yes.  But you’ll never find it.  It is holding well.  That part’s safe enough—­unless it made a hole in the floor above.”

“But there was only one empty chamber in the revolver.  How could two shots have been fired?”

There was no answer at all to this.  And Sperry, after waiting, went on to his next question:  “Who occupied the room overhead?”

But here we received the reply to the previous question:  “There was a box of cartridges in the table-drawer.  That’s easy.”

From that point, however, the interest lapsed.  Either there was no answer to questions, or we got the absurdity that we had encountered before, about the drawing-room furniture.  But, unsatisfactory in many ways as the seance had been, the effect on Miss Jeremy was profound—­she was longer in coming out, and greatly exhausted when it was all over.

She refused to take the supper Mrs. Dane had prepared for her, and at eleven o’clock Sperry took her home in his car.

I remember that Mrs. Dane inquired, after she had gone.

“Does any one know the name of the Wellses’ butler?  Is it Hawkins?”

I said nothing, and as Sperry was the only one likely to know and he had gone, the inquiry went no further.  Looking back, I realize that Herbert, while less cynical, was still skeptical, that his sister was non-committal, but for some reason watching me, and that Mrs. Dane was in a state of delightful anticipation.

My wife, however, had taken a dislike to Miss Jeremy, and said that the whole thing bored her.

“The men like it, of course,” she said, “Horace fairly simpers with pleasure while he sits and holds her hand.  But a woman doesn’t impose on other women so easily.  It’s silly.”