After dinner I went into our reception room, which is not lighted unless we are expecting guests, and peered out of the window.  The detective, or whoever he might be, was walking negligently up the street.

As that was the night of the third seance, I find that my record covers the fact that Mrs. Dane was housecleaning, for which reason we had not been asked to dinner, that my wife and I dined early, at six-thirty, and that it was seven o’clock when Sperry called me by telephone.

“Can you come to my office at once?” he asked.  “I dare say Mrs. Johnson won’t mind going to the Dane house alone.”

“Is there anything new?”

“No.  But I want to get into the Wells house again.  Bring the keys.”

“They were in the overcoat.  It came back today, but the keys are missing.”

“Did you lock the back door?”

“I don’t remember.  No, of course not.  I didn’t have the keys.”

“Then there’s a chance,” he observed, after a moment’s pause.  “Anyhow, it’s worth trying.  Herbert told you about the stick?”

“Yes.  I never had it, Sperry.”

Fortunately, during this conversation my wife was upstairs dressing.  I knew quite well that she would violently oppose a second visit on my part to the deserted house down the street.  I therefore left a message for her that I had gone on, and, finding the street clear, met Sperry at his door-step.

“This is the last sitting, Horace,” he explained, “and I feel we ought to have the most complete possible knowledge, beforehand.  We will be in a better position to understand what comes.  There are two or three things we haven’t checked up on.”

He slipped an arm through mine, and we started down the street.  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, Horace, old dear,” he said.

“Remember, we’re pledged to a psychic investigation only.”

“Rats!” he said rudely.  “We are going to find out who killed Arthur Wells, and if he deserves hanging we’ll hang him.”

“Or her?”

“It wasn’t Elinor Wells,” he said positively.  “Here’s the point:  if he’s been afraid to go back for his overcoat it’s still there.  I don’t expect that, however.  But the thing about the curtain interests me.  I’ve been reading over my copy of the notes on the sittings.  It was said, you remember, that curtains—­some curtains —­would have been better places to hide the letters than the bag.”

I stopped suddenly.  “By Jove, Sperry,” I said.  “I remember now.  My notes of the sittings were in my overcoat.”

“And they are gone?”

“They are gone.”

He whistled softly.  “That’s unfortunate,” he said.  “Then the other person, whoever he is, knows what we know!”

He was considerably startled when I told him I had been shadowed, and insisted that it referred directly to the case in hand.  “He’s got your notes,” he said, “and he’s got to know what your next move is going to be.”