“If it’s sent out to be cleaned it will cause trouble.  Hang it in the closet.”

Herbert muttered something about the movies having nothing on us, and was angrily hushed.  There was something quite outside of Miss Jeremy’s words that had impressed itself on all of us with a sense of unexpected but very real tragedy.  As I look back I believe it was a sort of desperation in her voice.  But then came one of those interruptions which were to annoy us considerably during the series of sittings; she began to recite Childe Harold.

When that was over,

“Now then,” Sperry said in a businesslike voice, “you see a dead man, and a young woman with him.  Can you describe the room?”

“A small room, his dressing-room.  He was shaving.  There is still lather on his face.”

“And the woman killed him?”

“I don’t know.  Oh, I don’t know.  No, she didn’t.  He did it!”

“He did it himself?”

There was no answer to that, but a sort of sulky silence.

“Are you getting this, Clara?” Mrs. Dane asked sharply.  “Don’t miss a word.  Who knows what this may develop into?”

I looked at the secretary, and it was clear that she was terrified.  I got up and took my chair to her.  Coming back, I picked up my forgotten watch from the floor.  It was still going, and the hands marked nine-thirty.

“Now,” Sperry said in a soothing tone, “you said there was a shot fired and a man was killed.  Where was this?  What house?”

“Two shots.  One is in the ceiling of the dressing-room.”

“And the other killed him?”

But here, instead of a reply we got the words, “library paste.”

Quite without warning the medium groaned, and Sperry believed the trance was over.

“She’s coming out,” he said.  “A glass of wine, somebody.”  But she did not come out.  Instead, she twisted in the chair.

“He’s so heavy to lift,” she muttered.  Then:  “Get the lather off his face.  The lather.  The lather.”

She subsided into the chair and began to breathe with difficulty.  “I want to go out.  I want air.  If I could only go to sleep and forget it.  The drawing-room furniture is scattered over the house.”

This last sentence she repeated over and over.  It got on our nerves, ragged already.

“Can you tell us about the house?”

There was a distinct pause.  Then:  “Certainly.  A brick house.  The servants’ entrance is locked, but the key is on a nail, among the vines.  All the furniture is scattered through the house.”

“She must mean the furniture of this room,” Mrs. Dane whispered.

The remainder of the sitting was chaotic.  The secretary’s notes consist of unrelated words and often childish verses.  On going over the notes the next day, when the stenographic record had been copied on a typewriter, Sperry and I found that one word recurred frequently.  The word was “curtain.”  Of the extraordinary event that followed the breaking up of the seance, I have the keenest recollection.  Miss Jeremy came out of her trance weak and looking extremely ill, and Sperry’s motor took her home.  She knew nothing of what had happened, and hoped we had been satisfied.  By agreement, we did not tell her what had transpired, and she was not curious.