There was no mistaking the touch, firm and yet soft, of finger-tips.  Almost simultaneously, Miss Heydinger cried out that something was smoothing her hair, and suddenly the musical box set off again with a reel.  The faint oval of the tambourine rose, jangled, and Lewisham heard it pat Smithers in the face.  It seemed to pass overhead.  Immediately a table somewhere beyond the Medium began moving audibly on its castors.

It seemed impossible that the Medium, sitting so still beside him, could be doing all these things—­grotesquely unmeaning though they might be.  After all....

The ghostly hand was hovering almost directly in front of Mr. Lewisham’s eyes.  It hung with a slight quivering.  Ever and again its fingers flapped down and rose stiffly again.

Noise!  A loud noise it seemed.  Something moving?  What was it he had to do?

Lewisham suddenly missed the Medium’s little finger.  He tried to recover it.  He could not find it.  He caught, held and lost an arm.  There was an exclamation.  A faint report.  A curse close to him bitten in half by the quick effort to suppress it.  Tzit!  The little pinpoint of light flew up with a hiss.

Lewisham, standing, saw a circle of blinking faces turned to the group of two this sizzling light revealed.  Smithers was the chief figure of the group; he stood triumphant, one hand on the gas tap, the other gripping the Medium’s wrist, and in the Medium’s hand—­the incriminatory tambourine.

“How’s this, Lewisham?” cried Smithers, with the shadows on his face jumping as the gas flared.

“Caught!” said Lewisham loudly, rising in his place and avoiding Ethel’s eyes.

“What’s this?” cried the Medium.

“Cheating,” panted Smithers.

“Not so,” cried the Medium.  “When you turned up the light ... put my hand up ... caught tambourine ... to save head.”

“Mr. Smithers,” cried Lagune.  “Mr. Smithers, this is very wrong.  This—­shock—­”

The tambourine fell noisily to the floor.  The Medium’s face changed, he groaned strangely and staggered back.  Lagune cried out for a glass of water.  Everyone looked at the man, expecting him to fall, save Lewisham.  The thought of Ethel had flashed back into his mind.  He turned to see how she took this exposure in which he was such a prominent actor.  He saw her leaning over the table as if to pick up something that lay across it.  She was not looking at him, she was looking at the Medium.  Her face was set and white.  Then, as if she felt his glance, her eyes met his.

She started back, stood erect, facing him with a strange hardness in her eyes.

In the moment Lewisham did not grasp the situation.  He wanted to show that he was acting upon equal terms with Smithers in the exposure.  For the moment her action simply directed his attention to the object towards which she had been leaning, a thing of shrivelled membrane, a pneumatic glove, lying on the table.  This was evidently part of the mediumistic apparatus.  He pounced and seized it.