“Look!” he said, holding it towards Smithers.  “Here is more!  What is this?”

He perceived that the girl started.  He saw Chaffery, the Medium, look instantly over Smithers’ shoulders, saw his swift glance of reproach at the girl.  Abruptly the situation appeared to Lewisham; he perceived her complicity.  And he stood, still in the attitude of triumph, with the evidence against her in his hand!  But his triumph had vanished.

“Ah!” cried Smithers, leaning across the table to secure it. “Good old Lewisham!...  Now we have it.  This is better than the tambourine.”

His eyes shone with triumph.  “Do you see, Mr. Lagune?” said Smithers.  “The Medium held this in his teeth and blew it out.  There’s no denying this.  This wasn’t falling on your head, Mr. Medium, was it? This—­this was the luminous hand!”

CHAPTER XII.

LEWISHAM IS UNACCOUNTABLE.

That night, as she went with him to Chelsea station, Miss Heydinger discovered an extraordinary moodiness in Lewisham.  She had been vividly impressed by the scene in which they had just participated, she had for a time believed in the manifestations; the swift exposure had violently revolutionised her ideas.  The details of the crisis were a little confused in her mind.  She ranked Lewisham with Smithers in the scientific triumph of the evening.  On the whole she felt elated.  She had no objection to being confuted by Lewisham.  But she was angry with the Medium, “It is dreadful,” she said.  “Living a lie!  How can the world grow better, when sane, educated people use their sanity and enlightenment to darken others?  It is dreadful!

“He was a horrible man—­such an oily, dishonest voice.  And the girl—­I was sorry for her.  She must have been oh!—­bitterly ashamed, or why should she have burst out crying?  That did distress me.  Fancy crying like that!  It was—­yes—­abandon.  But what can one do?”

She paused.  Lewisham was walking along, looking straight before him, lost in some grim argument with himself.

“It makes me think of Sludge the Medium,” she said.

He made no answer.

She glanced at him suddenly.  “Have you read Sludge the Medium?”

“Eigh?” he said, coming back out of infinity.  “What?  I beg your pardon.  Sludge, the Medium?  I thought his name was—­it was—­Chaffery.”

He looked at her, clearly very anxious upon this question of fact.

“But I mean Browning’s ‘Sludge.’  You know the poem.”

“No—­I’m afraid I don’t,” said Lewisham.

“I must lend it to you,” she said.  “It’s splendid.  It goes to the very bottom of this business.”

“Does it?”

“It never occurred to me before.  But I see the point clearly now.  If people, poor people, are offered money if phenomena happen, it’s too much.  They are bound to cheat.  It’s bribery—­immorality!”