As he waited the pencil began to tap on the table, and with its stir his nerves took fire. A leaf of paper flew by, brushing his face like the wing of a bird. A hand clutched his shoulder; then, as if to make every explanation of no avail, the room filled with fairy unseen folk. Books began to hurtle through the air and to fall upon the table. A banjo on the wall was strummed. The entire library seemed crowded with tricksy pucks, a bustling, irresponsible, elfish crew, each on some inconsequential action bent; until, as if at a signal, the megaphone tumbled to the floor with a clang, and all was still--a silence deathly deep, as if a bevy of sprites, frightened from their play, had whirled upward and away, leaving the scene of their revels empty, desolate, and forlorn. "That is all," said Clarke. "How can you tell?" asked Kate, her voice faint and shrill with awe. "The fall of the horn to the floor is a sure sign of the end. You may turn up the gas, but very slowly." Stunned by the significance, the far-reaching implications of his experiment, Morton remained standing while Weissmann turned on the light. Pale, in deep, placid sleep, Viola sat precisely as they had left her, bound, helpless, and exonerated. She recalled to Morton's mind a picture (in his school-books) of a martyr-maiden, who was depicted chained to the altar of some hideous, heathen deity, a monster who devoured the flesh of virgins and demanded with pitiless lust the fairest of the race. Of her innocence he was at that moment profoundly convinced. XIV PUZZLED PHILOSOPHERS While he still stood looking down upon her Viola began to moan and toss her head from side to side. "She is waking," cried Mrs. Lambert. "Let me go to her." "No!" commanded Weissmann, "disturb nothing till we have examined all things." "Make your studies quickly," said Morton, his heart tender to the girl's sufferings. "We must release her as soon as possible." Weissmann was not to be hastened. "If we do not now go slowly we lose much of what we are trying to attain. We must take her pulse and temperature, and observe the position of every object." "Quite right," agreed Clarke, "Do not be troubled--the psychic is being cared for." Thus reassured the two investigators scrutinized, measured, made notes, while Kate and Mrs. Lambert stood waiting, watching with anxious eyes the changes which came to Viola's face. Weissmann talked on in a disjointed mutter. "You see? She has no pulse. The threads are unbroken. The table is thirty inches from her finger-tips. Observe this pad, forty-eight inches from her hand--and which contains a message." "Read it!" demanded Kate. He complied. "'_You ask for a particle of matter to be moved from A to B without the use of any force known to science. Here in this wineglass is the test. Oh, men of science, how long will you close your eyes to the grander truths._'" "That is from father," remarked Mrs. Lambert.