Dr. Malloy was from the university, an out-and-out materialist, a psychologist who made life interesting for those who agreed with William James.  His investigations of abnormal psychology are world-acknowledged.

Mme. Le Fabre, we afterwards learned, had come from Versailles especially to investigate the matter that was bothering us.  She possessed no mediumistic properties of her own but was a staunch proponent of spiritualism, believing firmly in immortality and the omnipotence of “translated” souls.

Professor Herold is most widely known as the inventor of certain apparatus connected with wireless.  But he is also considered the West’s most advanced student of electrical and radio-active subjects.

I was enormously glad to have this man’s expert, high-tension knowledge right on tap.

The remaining member of the quintet which Sir Henry advised me to summon requires a little explanation.  Also, I am obliged to give him a name not his own; for it is not often that brigadier-generals of the United States army can openly lend their names to anything so far removed apparently from militarism as the searching of the occult.

Yet we knew that this man possessed a power that few scientists have developed; the power of co-ordination, of handling and balancing great facts and forces, and of deciding promptly how best to meet any given situation.  Not that we looked for anything militaristic out of the Blind Spot; far from it.  We merely knew not what to expect, which was exactly why we wanted to have him with us; his type of mind is, perhaps, the most solidly comforting sort that any mystery-bound person can have at his side.

By the time these five had gathered, Jerome had neither returned nor telephoned.  There was not the slightest trace of Rhamda Avec; no guessing as to whether he had seen the ad.  It was then one o’clock in the afternoon.  Only six hours ago!  It doesn’t seem possible.

So there were eight of us—­three women and five men—­who went upstairs and quietly inspected the all but lifeless form of Ariadne and afterwards gathered in the library below.

All were thoroughly familiar with the situation.  Miss Clarke calmly commented to the effect that the entire Blind Spot affair was due wholly and simply to the cumulative effects of so many, many subjects; the result, in other words, of error.

Dr. Malloy was equally outspoken in his announcement that he proposed to deal with the matter from the standpoint of psychic aberration.  He mentioned dissociated personalities, group hypnosis, and so on.  But he declared that he was open to conviction, and anxious to get any and all facts.

Sir Henry had a good deal of difficulty in getting Mme. Le Fabre to commit herself.  Probably she felt that, since Sir Henry had gone on record as being doubtful of the spiritistic explanation of psychic phenomena, she might get into a controversy with him.  But in the end she stated that she expected to find our little mystery simply a novel variation on what was so familiar to her.