Herbert laughed, a dry little chuckle. “Sure it is,” he said. “When we
all get to acting together, it will probably do considerable moving. I
feel what you feel. It’s flowing under my fingers.”
“Blood,” said Sperry. “You fellows feel the blood moving through the
ends of your fingers. That’s all. Don’t be impatient.”
However, curiously enough, the table did not move. Instead, my watch,
before my eyes, slid to the edge of the table and dropped to the floor,
and almost instantly an object, which we recognized later as Sperry’s
knife, was flung over the curtain and struck the wall behind Mrs. Dane
violently.
One of the women screamed, ending in a hysterical giggle. Then we heard
rhythmic beating on the top of the stand behind the medium. Startling
as it was at the beginning, increasing as it did from a slow beat to
an incredibly rapid drumming, when the initial shock was over Herbert
commenced to gibe.
“Your fountain pen, Horace,” he said to me. “Making out a statement for
services rendered, by its eagerness.”
The answer to that was the pen itself, aimed at him with apparent
accuracy, and followed by an outcry from him.
“Here, stop it!” he said. “I’ve got ink all over me!”
We laughed consumedly. The sitting had taken on all the attributes of
practical joking. The table no longer quivered under my hands.
“Please be sure you are holding my hands tight. Hold them very tight,”
said Miss Jeremy. Her voice sounded faint and far away. Her head was
dropped forward on her chest, and she suddenly sagged in her chair.
Sperry broke the circle and coming to her, took her pulse. It was, he
reported, very rapid.
“You can move and talk now if you like,” he said. “She’s in trance, and
there will be no more physical demonstrations.”
Mrs. Dane was the first to speak. I was looking for my fountain pen, and
Herbert was again examining the stand.
“I believe it now,” Mrs. Dane said. “I saw your watch go, Horace, but
tomorrow I won’t believe it at all.”
“How about your companion?” I asked. “Can she take shorthand? We ought
to have a record.”
“Probably not in the dark.”
“We can have some light now,” Sperry said.
There was a sort of restrained movement in the room now. Herbert turned
on a bracket light, and I moved away the roller chair.
“Go and get Clara, Horace,” Mrs. Dane said to me, “and have her bring a
note-book and pencil.” Nothing, I believe, happened during my absence.
Miss Jeremy was sunk in her chair and breathing heavily when I came back
with Clara, and Sperry was still watching her pulse. Suddenly my wife
said:
“Why, look! She’s wearing my bracelet!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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