She stooped and untied a coil of rope from the case, and then the two lifted it to the floating stage. It weighed something over a hundred pounds, and it was all they could do to carry it together up the steep incline and along the pier to the shed. The woman took a key from her pocket, and unlocked the door. When the case was inside the room, which was scantily furnished with a few chairs and tables, they returned to the launch. As they approached the stage, Vango thought of the woman’s request for a seance, and her words struck him as curious. He asked her carelessly what it was she wished to find. “A scrap of red paper, with Chinese writing on it,” was the reply. She had no more than uttered the words, when, glancing over at the launch, Vango saw on the floor in the rays of the lantern a red spot. Looking more closely, he saw that it was undoubtedly the very paper the woman wanted. He turned suddenly and faced her to prevent her seeing it, and seized her hand. Then he sighed heavily, passing his free hand over his eyes. “I feel a vibration of a self-independent message from my control,” he said, and fetched a dramatic shudder. “They is a kind of a pain in my head, as though a party had passed out of a stab like.” This revelation was made in a die-away voice, as if from many miles off, and he glanced through a slit in his lids at the quadroon to see how she was taking it. Then he shuddered again more violently, but this time without dissimulation. His hand gripped hers like a wrestler’s, his eyes leaped past her, over her shoulder, staring; for there, dimly shadowed in the obscurity, holding up a spectral arm in warning, was Mrs. Higgins! Vango’s soul was torn between greed and fear. Here was another dupe who could restore his fortune, the way to cajole her plain before him—there was the threatening form of his Nemesis protesting against his roguery, and he faltered in dread. “Oh, what is it, what is it?” the quadroon woman cried, piteously. The medium’s cupidity won, and the credulous woman in the flesh was more potent than her sister in the spirit. He shut his eyes and went desperately on: “She gives me this message: What you’re a-lookin’ for will be found sooner than what you expect, and you’ll come by it on the water. You’ll be guided to it by a party who is a good friend to you and you can trust, and she gives me the letter ’V.’ He’s a dark-complected man with a beard, and there’ll be money a-comin’ to him through your help.” Having trembled again, and sighed himself back to life, the medium turned to her drowsily, as if he had just been called from bed. “Where am I?” he said, in mock surprise, and then with a groan of relief, as he saw that Mrs. Higgins had disappeared, he added, “Oh, what was I sayin’? I must have went into a trance.” The quadroon was in a high tremor of suspense. “What is your name? You never told me,” she demanded. “My name?” he repeated, with a baby stare. “Vango, Professor Vango. Why?”