"No. Everything went on quite as briskly as before, and all the while
I thought I could see her arms lying limp along her chair--lovely arms
they were, too. She isn't poor, you must understand that, Kate; and
that really makes the crime worse, for she has not the usual
excuse--she is not doing it for her daily bread."
Kate sat like a judge, "Go on. You seized her, of course?"
"Yes; just when the cone was emitting an old man's pompous harangue I
laid my hand on her arm. The horn dropped, the circle rose in
confusion, and I came away."
"I expected you'd do that. All sceptics do, I believe. But I want to
know _all_ that took place. You're so concise. You say the cone
emitted a man's voice. Now, how could--"
"It produced the _impression_ of a man's voice. It is easy to deceive
under such conditions. The cone was passed from her hand to Clarke's
at the proper moments, and, as you say, there might have been a
child--"
"You must not infer, Mort--my faith in that girl is at stake. Was
there nothing in her favor? Nothing that justified her claim?"
He hesitated and Kate leaned forward in excess of interest. "Go on,
Morton, be honest."
"Well, now, as I think of it there was one little thing which was
rather curious. I don't know how she or Clarke or any one there should
know what we used to call Uncle Ben."
"What? Did you get a message from him?"
"A voice from the megaphone asked for me, and when I requested the
name of 'the party speaking,' as Clarke says, it replied with an oily
chuckle, exactly like the old duffer, '_It's old Loggy._'"
"It did?" Her voice was sharp with surprise. "Well, now, that is as
wonderful as my experience. How do you account for _that_? How _do_
you account for such things?" she repeated, insistently.
"Clarke must have known--"
"Nonsense. No one outside our immediate family knows of that nickname.
Besides, how would he know the way 'Loggy' laughed? I'd forgotten it
myself."
"So had I. But what would you say? Would you jump to the conclusion--"
"_You_ are jumping at the conclusion, Mort. If there is one single
thing that you can't understand, you must give that girl the benefit
of the doubt. What did 'Loggy' say?"
"There you go! You're ready to swallow the whole lump of humbuggery,
just because there is one little puzzling plum in it."
Kate was not to be put down. "What did uncle _say_?"
He submitted. "Nothing else. Like most of those dead folk, he was
there just to manifest, not to impart wisdom."
Kate leaned back in her chair and grew thoughtful. "Morton, that was
wonderful. No one knew you were coming, no one knew you except those
people, and they're from, the other end of the earth--and yet
_somebody_ speaks, using a pet name we've both forgotten. Now, I call
that a most important thing to dwell upon. How can _you_, a scientist,
overlook it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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