I smiled to myself in the Harlem dusk. It was so obviously the usual racket. There was the medium in her ten cent trance--the voice of her "control" was coming through. I had only to ask and I would receive a vague and blotting paper reply to any question. "I'se here, mammy," the child's voice repeated. "What you want, mammy? Silver-Bell's here." Madam la Lune snorted and snored on the couch. My eyes had become more accustomed to the dim light and I noticed how she had loosened her blouse so that her superb bust rose in twin-peaked Kilimanjaro against the wall. "Silver-Bell's here, mammy," the child's voice said again. "What you want?" "I want," I said, "to speak to Frank Jacklin. He died in the North Pacific about three weeks ago." There was a pause, during which the snorting breaths of the medium were the only sound in the smelly little room. Then the child's voice rose, shrill and petulant. "You funning, mammy, you funning. They ain't no Jacklin over here. Jacklin ain' dead. Jacklin sittin' right by yo' side, mammy. He police, mammy, he police." Madam la Lune stirred and I sensed her sightless eyes turning, turning toward me in the dark. "No, I'm not police, Silver-Bell," I said. "If you can't find Jacklin, I want to speak to Winnie Tompkins." For several minutes there was a long silence. Then came an impish giggle. "Here's Mr. Tompkins, mammy, but my! he do look funny. He don' look like he used ter look." Again silence. "Here he is, mammy. Here he is. What do you want to know?" "Ask him," I said, "whether he is well and happy." The hair rose on the back of my neck and a slow shiver ran down my spine as the answer came. The answer was the familiar barking of a dog--deep, strong, savage. "Is that you, Ponto?" I asked. The answering bark came "Woof! Woof!" "Where is Mr. Tompkins?" More "woofs." "Where is Commander Jacklin?" Silence. "Are you alive?" "Woof! Woof!" "Am I alive?" Silence. "Is your name Ponto?" I ventured again. "Where is Von Bieberstein?" I demanded but my question was drowned in a storm of barking. "I's tired, mammy," came the child's voice. "Silver-Bell's tired." The voice trailed off, leaving me in the stifling little Harlem parlor with the mulatto woman snoring. I sat, bemused, in the straight-back chair across the room from her. My eyes had now got used to the thin light that filtered around the heavy black curtain. I noticed a fleck of white about the corners of her mouth and I made silent note of the way her body heaved with its tortured breathing. After a while, she stirred. "You theah, Mr. Tompkins?" "Yes, I'm here." "You fin' out what you wan'?" she inquired. "I found out that you're a fraud," I told her. "You're welcome to my money but I'm damned if I think you've earned it." She sat up and adjusted her clothing calmly. "What for you say that, Mr. Tompkins?" she demanded. "Spirits come, and spirits go. You ask questions. Maybe they give you the answers. I don't know."