No. 32 Hanford Gardens was a little box of a place with a small walled garden. It was an old house, and the tiny room into which my new friend brought me was panelled. The panels had been painted a dark green, and the thick noiseless carpet was of the same colour. It struck me, I remember, that they must have given a good price for that carpet. It was scantily furnished with a square table, a few solid mahogany chairs, and a couch in the recess by the fireplace. A man sat by the table, and in front of him was what looked like a glass ball, the size of a cricket-ball, resting on a strip of black velvet. He rose as we came in. The light was dim--for the room was lit only by one small shaded lamp in a sconce on the wall--but I could see that he was a gaunt man of forty, hollow-eyed, with a strong blue chin, looking like a tired actor. I had already given my new acquaintance my name and learned that she was Mrs. Dentry. She presented her husband, and in a few words explained the situation. He had a pleasant voice and rather a dreamy, abstracted manner. “It is very kind of you,” he said hesitatingly. “I do not know, of course, if you have a spiritual power, and one meets with many disappointments--as I have already done this evening. Still, one can try.” “My husband,” said Mrs. Dentry, in explanation, “has been to-night to see a medium who professed to get most wonderful results. So he was no good, Hector?” “Worse than that. Conjuring tricks--and not even new conjuring tricks.” Then he turned to me with a host of rapid questions, and seemed satisfied with my answers. “We may have no results, but at any rate there will be no trickery.” He glanced at his watch. “Unfortunately, I have to go out for half an hour to see a client of mine. But my wife knows what to do--you will be able to make your first experiments without me.” He went out and presently I heard the front door bang. Mrs. Dentry made me sit at the table and place my hands on it. “Wait,” she said, “until you are sure that the spirits are present, and then ask them aloud to raise the table from the floor.” She went over to the other end of the room and turned out the lamp; then she lit a lamp that gave a little blue flicker, by which I could distinguish nothing except the face of Mrs. Dentry standing beside it. For a few moments nothing happened; then loud raps came from all parts of the room, and the pictures rattled on the walls, and a cold wind blew sharply across my face and hands. I was astounded. Mrs. Dentry had not moved from her position at the other end of the room, and I could just see that she was smiling. “I knew it would be all right,” she said softly. “Go on, please.” “If there are spirits here,” I said--and somehow the voice hardly sounded like my own--“I ask them to raise this table from the ground.”