My third question immediately followed:  “Can you give me any information as to where even a portion of the body is?” Again I was waved to my seat, again my strip of paper and the hands were concealed, again the arms were nervously moved.  This answer I awaited with not a little anxiety.  Surely, surely, Marie St. Clair and Sister Belle would remember that their joint skull was in my library.  They had told me so, only a few weeks before, and as that skull was known to be fifty or sixty years old, and their united memory of it had lasted throughout those long years, surely that memory would not desert them now.  And Dr.  ‘Benja’ Rush, who had recently greeted me as ‘townsman,’ he was present and surely he would come to the rescue of Spiritualism, and gladly seize the chance to settle the question which he had once discussed with Combe, and Gall, and Spurzheim by bringing forward the frail Marie and the golden-haired, black-eyed Belle as tenants in common (and uncommon) of the same skull.  Moreover, I thought, are there not to be found in Anatomical Museums skeletons of infants with one body and two heads?  Why may not this have been an instance of one head and two bodies?  To be sure, one of the bodies lived in Ohio and the other in Massachusetts, but then when we have once started on a journey through the marvels of Spiritualism, as portrayed by these four Mediums, what does such a trifle as this amount to?  I had, I reflected, in all seriousness, taken no single step in the investigation of these Mediums that was not fully authorized by the explicit statements received from the Mediums themselves.  I had accepted as truth what they told me was truth.  If Spiritualism is hereby wounded, it is wounded in the house of its own disciples.

At last my answer came:  ’I am not allowed to divulge what I think—­much less what I know—­it would be productive of more harm than good—­let them have it—­it is but earth at best—­they have not got our precious Belle—­she is safe in the Haven of Eternal repose—­I would not make any noise about it—­but let it pass—­as a discovery of it would give you pain rather than otherwise—­Belle says let it pass—­the triune that have it bought it without knowing whose it was, and such care as little as they know.

Marie St. Clair.’

I felt that it was time that a conclusion should be put to this farce, so humiliating in the thought that honest, unsuspicious, gentle men and gentle women are daily deceived by it.  Nevertheless, I wished to bring the ‘wheel full circle’ to this Medium’s Spiritual communications of aforetime.  I recalled that Cornelia Winnie’s spirit had said that she thought the skull was Dina Melish’s ‘top not.’  My fourth, and last, question therefore ran:  ’Do you think that by any chance Dina Melish would know?’ To which the answer came:  ’Well Brother, as to that She may know more than She may be willing to divulge—­you see, Brother, it places Dinah in a very unpleasant position, i.e., should it be noised abroad that she was in the secret.  I do not by any means censure Dinah for what she may know, if know she does.  You could xamine Dinah on that point—­carefully, not allowing her to suspect your object in so doing.  You might and might not elicit some light on the matter.