“It was deliberate—deliberate suicide. And attempted murder. It was a trap. I was the victim. He had me, and he threw himself over with me. Yet he did not hate me. He loved me ... as much as it is possible for a horse to love. I am confounded. I cannot understand it any more than you can understand Dolly’s behavior yesterday.” “But horses go insane, Chris,” Lute said. “You know that. It’s merely coincidence that two horses in two days should have spells under you.” “That’s the only explanation,” he answered, starting off with her. “But why am I wanted urgently?” “Planchette.” “Oh, I remember. It will be a new experience to me. Somehow I missed it when it was all the rage long ago.” “So did all of us,” Lute replied, “except Mrs. Grantly. It is her favorite phantom, it seems.” “A weird little thing,” he remarked. “Bundle of nerves and black eyes. I’ll wager she doesn’t weigh ninety pounds, and most of that’s magnetism.” “Positively uncanny ... at times.” Lute shivered involuntarily. “She gives me the creeps.” “Contact of the healthy with the morbid,” he explained dryly. “You will notice it is the healthy that always has the creeps. The morbid never has the creeps. It gives the creeps. That’s its function. Where did you people pick her up, anyway?” “I don’t know—yes, I do, too. Aunt Mildred met her in Boston, I think—oh, I don’t know. At any rate, Mrs. Grantly came to California, and of course had to visit Aunt Mildred. You know the open house we keep.” They halted where a passageway between two great redwood trunks gave entrance to the dining room. Above, through lacing boughs, could be seen the stars. Candles lighted the tree-columned space. About the table, examining the Planchette contrivance, were four persons. Chris’s gaze roved over them, and he was aware of a guilty sorrow-pang as he paused for a moment on Lute’s Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert, mellow with ripe middle age and genial with the gentle buffets life had dealt them. He passed amusedly over the black-eyed, frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and halted on the fourth person, a portly, massive-headed man, whose gray temples belied the youthful solidity of his face. “Who’s that?” Chris whispered. “A Mr. Barton. The train was late. That’s why you didn’t see him at dinner. He’s only a capitalist—water-power-long-distance-electricity transmitter, or something like that.” “Doesn’t look as though he could give an ox points on imagination.” “He can’t. He inherited his money. But he knows enough to hold on to it and hire other men’s brains. He is very conservative.” “That is to be expected,” was Chris’s comment. His gaze went back to the man and woman who had been father and mother to the girl beside him. “Do you know,” he said, “it came to me with a shock yesterday when you told me that they had turned against me and that I was scarcely tolerated. I met them afterwards, last evening, guiltily, in fear and trembling—and to-day, too. And yet I could see no difference from of old.”