“The fact that you haven’t proved a thing possible doesn’t mean that you’ve proved it impossible, does it? How about you, Gregory?” Fenwick turned to me. I threw up my hands. “Oh, I’m with Allis. It sounds queer and far-fetched and all, but anything is more reasonable than believing the dead communicate in that way. Even Mrs. Conway is more reasonable.” “Well, I wish to God they had rigged up their wireless on Allis’s roof instead of mine!” Fenwick exploded. He turned his back on us and walked over to a dark window. I tried to be judicial. “If Allis was thinking about the sort of creature Jack Hilles really was, that in itself accounts for the telepathy business.” Allis glared at me. “I wasn’t thinking of Jack Hilles. I knew he was a very bad lot, but I wasn’t thinking about it--not at all. I was wondering if Carter and Genevieve Ford would pull it off. And, anyhow, I couldn’t have thought that kind of thing about Hilles. It just wouldn’t naturally have occurred to me. Whereas, it might have, to Fenwick, with his background.” * * * * * Ben Allis stopped, suddenly, and I felt the blood in my body, for an instant, back up in its channels. For just as Allis finished speaking, Fenwick drew back from his window and crumpled up against the sofa. No, he did not faint. He was, rather, at bay there, against the world; against Allis and me, who rushed to him at once. I did not try to read that face, though it shouted at me silently. I turned my head away. “Damn you all, damn you all!” Fenwick’s white lips were saying. “And I thought I’d got rid of it forever. Oh, damn you both!” Yet he did not seem to be standing outside his own curse. Fenwick roused himself at the sound of a knock on the library door, and we faced about. The knock saved us three from something pretty awful. It was Maud Allis, and in her hand she carried a ouija-board. “I found Nora playing with this thing,” she said; “and after to-night it was more than I could bear. Will you please burn it up now--so I can see it burn?” “You bet I will!” Allis broke it over his knee, and went to the fire which had almost died out. With one eye on Fenwick, slowly, very slowly, composing himself to a normal posture and a normal expression, with a sense that I must keep Maud off him, I drew her away in the direction of the door. “I hope”--and I laid my hand on her wrist--“the thing hasn’t been worrying Nora. She didn’t get any echoes, did she?” “Oh dear, no. It had just been writing foolishness--probably the kind of foolishness you would expect to come out of Nora’s subconscious.” “Nothing about Jack Hilles?” I tried to laugh. “I should hope not! Betty Dane’s cousin, they’re all in love with; and their matinée heroes; and their school commencement. But I’ve put her to bed and taken it away. I will not have my niece ouija-ing.”