“You think I’ve made a mistake?”

“I do.”

He flung away with an impatient gesture, then came back to me.

“Now look here,” he said, “I know what you mean, and the whole idea is absurd.  Of course I never thought about it, but even allowing for connivance—­which I don’t for a moment—­the fellow was not in the house at the time of the murder.”

“I know he says he was not.”

“Even then,” he said, “how about the first sitting?  I’ll swear she had never even heard of him then.”

“The fact remains that his presence here makes us all absurd.”

“Do you want me to throw him out?”

“I don’t see what possible good that will do now.”

I was uneasy all the way home.  The element of doubt, always so imminent in our dealings with psychic phenomena, had me by the throat.  How much did Hawkins know?  Was there any way, without going to the police, to find if he had really been out of the Wellses’ house that night, now almost two weeks ago, when Arthur Wells had been killed?

That evening I went to Sperry’s house, after telephoning that I was coming.  On the way I stopped in at Mrs. Dane’s and secured something from her.  She was wildly curious, and made me promise to go in on my way back, and explain.  I made a compromise.

“I will come in if I have anything to tell you,” I said.

But I knew, by her grim smile, that she would station herself by her window, and that I would stop, unless I made a detour of three blocks to avoid her.  She is a very determined woman.

Sperry was waiting for me in his library, a pleasant room which I have often envied him.  Even the most happily married man wishes, now and then, for some quiet, dull room which is essentially his own.  My own library is really the family sitting-room, and a Christmas or so ago my wife presented me with a very handsome phonograph instrument.  My reading, therefore, is done to music, and the necessity for putting my book down to change the record at times interferes somewhat with my train of thought.

So I entered Sperry’s library with appreciation.  He was standing by the fire, with the grave face and slightly bent head of his professional manner.  We say, in the neighborhood, that Sperry uses his professional manner as armor, so I was rather prepared to do battle; but he forestalled me.

“Horace,” he said, “I have been a fool, a driveling idiot.  We were getting something at those sittings.  Something real.  She’s wonderful.  She’s going to give it up, but the fact remains that she has some power we haven’t, and now I’ve discredited her!  I see it plainly enough.”  He was rather bitter about it, but not hostile.  His fury was at himself.  “Of course,” he went on, “I am sure that she got nothing from Hawkins.  But the fact remains —­” He was hurt in his pride of her.

“I wonder,” I said, “if you kept the letter Hawkins wrote you when he asked for a position.”