"Probably not in the dark."
"We can have some light now," Sperry said.
There was a sort of restrained movement in the room now. Herbert turned on a bracket light, and I moved away the roller chair.
"Go and get Clara, Horace," Mrs. Dane said to me, "and have her bring a note-book and pencil." Nothing, I believe, happened during my absence.
Miss Jeremy was sunk in her chair and breathing heavily when I came back with Clara, and Sperry was still watching her pulse. Suddenly my wife said:
"Why, look! She"s wearing my bracelet!"
This proved to be the case, and was, I regret to say, the cause of a most unjust suspicion on my wife"s part. Even today, with all the knowledge she possesses, I am certain that Mrs. Johnson believes that some mysterious power took my watch and dragged it off the table, and threw the pen, but that I myself under cover of darkness placed her bracelet on Miss Jeremy"s arm. I can only reiterate here what I have told her many times, that I never touched the bracelet after it was placed on the stand.
"Take down everything that happens, Clara, and all we say," Mrs. Dane said in a low tone. "Even if it sounds like nonsense, put it down."
It is because Clara took her orders literally that I am making this more readable version of her script. There was a certain amount of non-pertinent matter which would only cloud the statement if rendered word for word, and also certain scattered, unrelated words with which many of the statements terminated. For instance, at the end of the sentence, "Just above the ear," came a number of rhymes to the final word, "dear, near, fear, rear, cheer, three cheers." These I have cut, for the sake of clearness.
For some five minutes, perhaps, Miss Jeremy breathed stertorously, and it was during that interval that we introduced Clara and took up our positions. Sperry sat near the medium now, having changed places with Herbert, and the rest of us were as we had been, save that we no longer touched hands. Suddenly Miss Jeremy began to breathe more quietly, and to move about in her chair. Then she sat upright.
"Good evening, friends," she said. "I am glad to see you all again."
I caught Herbert"s eye, and he grinned.
"Good evening, little Bright Eyes," he said. "How"s everything in the happy hunting ground tonight?"
"Dark and cold," she said. "Dark and cold. And the knee hurts. It"s very bad. If the key is on the nail--Arnica will take the pain out."
She lapsed into silence. In transcribing Clara"s record I shall make no reference to these pauses, which were frequent, and occasionally filled in with extraneous matter. For instance, once there was what amounted to five minutes of Mother Goose jingles. Our method was simply one of question, by one of ourselves, and of answer by Miss Jeremy. These replies were usually in a querulous tone, and were often apparently unwilling. Also occasionally there was a bit of vernacular, as in the next reply. Herbert, who was still flippantly amused, said:
"Don"t bother about your knee. Give us some local stuff. Gossip. If you can."
"Sure I can, and it will make your hair curl." Then suddenly there was a sort of dramatic pause and then an outburst.
"He"s dead."
"Who is dead?" Sperry asked, with his voice drawn a trifle thin.
"A bullet just above the ear. That"s a bad place. Thank goodness there"s not much blood. Cold water will take it out of the carpet. Not hot. Not hot. Do you want to set the stain?"
"Look here," Sperry said, looking around the table. "I don"t like this.
It"s darned grisly."
"Oh, fudge!" Herbert put in irreverently. "Let her rave, or it, or whatever it is. Do you mean that a man is dead?"--to the medium.
"Yes. She has the revolver. She needn"t cry so. He was cruel to her. He was a beast. Sullen."
"Can you see the woman?" I asked.
"If it"s sent out to be cleaned it will cause trouble. Hang it in the closet."
Herbert muttered something about the movies having nothing on us, and was angrily hushed. There was something quite outside of Miss Jeremy"s words that had impressed itself on all of us with a sense of unexpected but very real tragedy. As I look back I believe it was a sort of desperation in her voice. But then came one of those interruptions which were to annoy us considerably during the series of sittings; she began to recite Childe Harold.
When that was over,
"Now then," Sperry said in a businesslike voice, "you see a dead man, and a young woman with him. Can you describe the room?"
"A small room, his dressing-room. He was shaving. There is still lather on his face."
"And the woman killed him?"
"I don"t know. Oh, I don"t know. No, she didn"t. He did it!"
"He did it himself?"
There was no answer to that, but a sort of sulky silence.
"Are you getting this, Clara?" Mrs. Dane asked sharply. "Don"t miss a word. Who knows what this may develop into?"
I looked at the secretary, and it was clear that she was terrified. I got up and took my chair to her. Coming back, I picked up my forgotten watch from the floor. It was still going, and the hands marked nine-thirty.
"Now," Sperry said in a soothing tone, "you said there was a shot fired and a man was killed. Where was this? What house?"
"Two shots. One is in the ceiling of the dressing-room."
"And the other killed him?"
But here, instead of a reply we got the words, "library paste."
Quite without warning the medium groaned, and Sperry believed the trance was over.
"She"s coming out," he said. "A gla.s.s of wine, somebody." But she did not come out. Instead, she twisted in the chair.
"He"s so heavy to lift," she muttered. Then: "Get the lather off his face. The lather. The lather."
She subsided into the chair and began to breathe with difficulty. "I want to go out. I want air. If I could only go to sleep and forget it.
The drawing-room furniture is scattered over the house."
This last sentence she repeated over and over. It got on our nerves, ragged already.
"Can you tell us about the house?"
There was a distinct pause. Then: "Certainly. A brick house. The servants" entrance is locked, but the key is on a nail, among the vines.
All the furniture is scattered through the house."
"She must mean the furniture of this room," Mrs. Dane whispered.
The remainder of the sitting was chaotic. The secretary"s notes consist of unrelated words and often childish verses. On going over the notes the next day, when the stenographic record had been copied on a typewriter, Sperry and I found that one word recurred frequently.
The word was "curtain." Of the extraordinary event that followed the breaking up of the seance, I have the keenest recollection. Miss Jeremy came out of her trance weak and looking extremely ill, and Sperry"s motor took her home. She knew nothing of what had happened, and hoped we had been satisfied. By agreement, we did not tell her what had transpired, and she was not curious.