Mrs. Johnson:  Had a great many minor disturbances, so that on rousing one night to find me closing a window against a storm she thought I was a spectre, and to this day insists that I only entered her room when I heard her scream.  For this reason I have made no record of her various experiences, as I felt that her nervous condition precluded accurate observation.

As in all records of psychic phenomena, the human element must be considered, and I do not attempt either to analyze these various phenomena or to explain them.  Herbert, for instance, has been known to walk in his sleep.  But I respectfully offer, as opposed to this, that my watch has never been known to walk at all, and that Mrs. Johnson’s bracelet could hardly be accused of an attack of nerves.

IX

The following day was Monday.  When I came downstairs I found a neat bundle lying in the hall, and addressed to me.  My wife had followed me down, and we surveyed it together.

I had a curious feeling about the parcel, and was for cutting the cord with my knife.  But my wife is careful about string.  She has always fancied that the time would come when we would need some badly, and it would not be around.  I have an entire drawer of my chiffonier, which I really need for other uses, filled with bundles of twine, pink, white and brown.  I recall, on one occasion, packing a suit-case in the dusk, in great hasty, and emptying the drawer containing my undergarments into it, to discover, when I opened it on the train for my pajamas, nothing but rolls of cord and several packages of Christmas ribbons.  So I was obliged to wait until she had untied the knots by means of a hairpin.

It was my overcoat!  My overcoat, apparently uninjured, but with the collection of keys I had made missing.

The address was printed, not written, in a large, strong hand, with a stub pen.  I did not, at the time, notice the loss of certain papers which had been in the breast pocket.  I am rather absent-minded, and it was not until the night after the third sitting that they were recalled to my mind.

At something after eleven Herbert Robinson called me up at my office.  He was at Sperry’s house, Sperry having been his physician during his recent illness.

“I say, Horace, this is Herbert.”

“Yes.  How are you?”

“Doing well, Sperry says.  I’m at his place now.  I’m speaking for him.  He’s got a patient.”

“Yes.”

“You were here last night, he says.”  Herbert has a circumlocutory manner over the phone which irritates me.  He begins slowly and does not know how to stop.  Talk with him drags on endlessly.

“Well, I admit it,” I snapped.  “It’s not a secret.”

He lowered his voice.  “Do you happen to have noticed a walking-stick in the library when you were here?”

“Which walking-stick?”