I sent Johnson after more varnish.  Also, I secured several other fluids, including water, milk, ink, and machine oil.  And when the painter returned we proceeded with a very thorough test indeed.

Presently it became clear that we were dealing with a phenomenon of the Blind Spot.  All told, we poured about nine pints of liquid into an area of about twenty square inches; all on the outer surface, for the split side would absorb nothing.  And to all appearances we might have continued to pour indefinitely.

Ten minutes later I went down into the basement to dispose of some rubbish. (Charlotte didn’t know of this defection in our housekeeping.) It was bright sunlight outside.  Thanks to the basement windows, I needed no artificial luminant.  And when my gaze rested upon the ground directly under the parlour, I saw something there that I most certainly had never noticed before.

The fact is, the basement at 288 Chatterton Place never did possess anything worthy of special notice.  Except for the partition which Harry Wendel and Jerome, the detective, were the first in years to penetrate—­except for that secret doorway, there was nothing down there to attract attention.  To be sure, there was a quantity of up-turned earth, the result of Jerome’s vigorous efforts to see whether or not there was any connection between the Blind Spot phenomena which he had witnessed and the cellar.  He had secured nothing but an appetite for all his digging.

However, it was still too dark for me to identify what I saw at once.  I stood for a few moments, accustoming my eyes to the light.  Except that the thing gleamed oddly like a piece of glass, and that it possessed a nearly circular outline about two feet across, I couldn’t tell much about it.

Then I stooped and examined it closely.  At once I became conscious of a smell which, somehow, I had hitherto not noticed.  Small wonder; it was as indescribable a smell as one could imagine.  It seemed to be a combination of several that are not generally combined.

Next instant it flashed upon me that the predominating odour was a familiar one.  I had been smelling it, in fact, all the morning.

But this did not prevent me from feeling very queer, indeed, as I realised what lay before me.  A curious chill passed around my shoulders, and I scarcely breathed.

At my feet lay a pool, composed of all the various liquids that had been poured, upstairs, into that baffling spot in the wood.

XXI

OUT OF THIN AIR

Except for the incident just related, when several pints of very real fluids were somehow “materialised” at a spot ten feet below where they had vanished, nothing worth recording occurred during the first seven days of our stay at Chatterton Place.

Seemingly nothing was to come of the Rhamda’s warning.

On the other hand we succeeded, during that week, in working a complete transformation of the old house.  It became one of the brightest spots in San Francisco.  It cost a good deal of money, all told, but I could well afford it.  I possessed the hundred thousand with which, I had promised myself and Harry, I should solve the Blind Spot.  That was what the money was for.