It was true enough.  Whatever suspicion might be cast on the second seance, the first at least remained inexplicable, by any laws we recognized.  In a way, I felt sorry for Sperry.  Here he was, on the first day of his engagement, protesting her honesty, her complete ignorance of the revelations she had made and his intention to keep her in ignorance, and yet betraying his own anxiety and possible doubt in the same breath.

“She did not even know there was a family named Wells.  When I said that Hawkins had been employed by the Wells, it meant nothing to her.  I was watching.”

So even Sperry was watching.  He was in love with her, but his scientific mind, like my legal one, was slow to accept what during the past two weeks it had been asked to accept.

I left him at ten o’clock.  Mrs. Dane was still at her window, and her far-sighted old eyes caught me as I tried to steal past.  She rapped on the window, and I was obliged to go in.  Obliged, too, to tell her of the discovery and, at last, of Hawkins being in the Connell house.

“I want those letters, Horace,” she said at last.

“So do I. I’m not going to steal them.”

“The question is, where has he got them?”

“The question is, dear lady, that they are not ours to take.”

“They are not his, either.”

Well, that was true enough.  But I had done all the private investigating I cared to.  And I told her so.  She only smiled cryptically.

So far as I know, Mrs. Dane was the only one among us who had entirely escaped certain strange phenomena during that period, and as I have only so far recorded my own experiences, I shall here place in order the various manifestations made to the other members of the Neighborhood Club during that trying period and in their own words.  As none of them have suffered since, a certain allowance must be made for our nervous strain.  As before, I shall offer no explanation.

Alice Robinson:  On night following second seance saw a light in room, not referable to any outside influence.  Was an amorphous body which glowed pallidly and moved about wall over fireplace, gradually coming to stop in a corner, where it faded and disappeared.

Clara, Mrs. Dane’s secretary:  Had not slept much since first seance.  Was frequently conscious that she was not alone in room, but on turning on light room was always empty.  Wakened twice with sense of extreme cold. (I have recorded my own similar experience.)

Sperry has consistently maintained that he had no experiences whatever during that period, but admits that he heard various knockings in his bedroom at night, which he attributed to the lighting of his furnace, and the resulting expansion of the furniture due to heat.

Herbert Robinson:  Herbert was the most difficult member of the Club from whom to secure data, but he has recently confessed that he was wakened one night by the light falling on to his bed from a picture which hung on the wall over his mantelpiece, and which stood behind a clock, two glass vases and a pair of candlesticks.  The door of his room was locked at the time.