"The sittings took place in the apartment of Monsieur Finzi at Milan, and were more rigid and searching than any Paladino had ever passed through, but she was again triumphant. She bewildered them all. Lombroso himself was present during some of the sittings. The results of the series of experiments were very notable and very far-reaching. For the first time, so far as I know, a table was photographed while floating in the air--" "No!" shouted Howard. "Yes; and certain other telekinetic happenings were proved, to the stupefaction of most of those in the group. One special experiment, the success of which confounded the shrewdest, was the attempt to secure on a smoke-blackened paper the print of one of the spectral hands." "Did it succeed?" "Yes. The impression was made while Paladino's hands were imprisoned beyond all question, and, what was most singular of all, the hand _that made the print smudged the wrists of one of the experimenters, and yet not a particle of black appeared on the fingers of the psychic_." "That ought to have convinced them of her honesty," remarked Fowler, with a note of amusement in his voice, "but it didn't; these scientific folk are so difficult." "No," I replied, "it didn't convince them, but it jarred them not a little. In their report they admitted this much. They said, 'We do not believe we have the right to explain these things by the aid of insulting assumptions.' (By this they meant to acquit the psychic of fraud.) 'We think, on the contrary, that _these experiments have to do with phenomena of an unknown nature_, and we confess that we do not know what the conditions are that are required to produce them.'" "That seems to me like a very mild statement, but I suppose they considered it epoch-making," remarked Fowler. "From this time forward learned men in Russia, France, and Italy successively sought Paladino out and tried to expose her to the world. Professor Wagner, of the Department of Zoology at the University of St. Petersburg, made a study of her in 1893, and found her powers real. A year later M. Siemeradski, correspondent of the Institute, experimented with her in Rome, obtaining, among other miracles, the plucking of the strings of a closed piano under strictly test conditions." "You had that experience, did you not?" asked Mrs. Cameron. "Yes, I've had that." "How do you account for a thing of that sort?"