She said, quite simply: "I have no objection at all. I am in your hands."
After the older women left the room Victor drew near to Leo with a low word. "Poor little mother! she is in the hands of the inquisition to-night."
Thrilling to the excitement of the hour, she forgot her resentful superior pose. "Isn"t that little man magnificent? Why didn"t you go in for civil engineering or chemistry?"
"Because no one had sense enough to advise me," he bitterly answered.
"Think where that funny little body has carried that head," she continued, still studying Stinchfield. "If he had only been given shoulders like yours--"
"I"m glad you like something about me."
"I was speaking of your body as a machine for carrying a brain around over the earth."
"You seem to think of me as having no brain."
"Oh, not quite so bad as that. You have a brain, but it"s undeveloped."
"I"m growing up rapidly these days. Seems like I"d lived a year since our walk last night."
She colored a little. "Forget that and I"ll forgive you."
"I can"t forget that."
"Have you any idea what the tests are to be?" she asked, in an effort to change the subject.
"No, I"m outside of it all. I hope they won"t scare my poor little mother out of her senses. Ought I to step in and stop it?"
"No, not unless The Voices say so. They welcome investigation--so they"ve always said. What I should insist on, if I were you, is plenty of time and a series of sittings."
She was speaking now in gracious mood, and he, eager to win from her a fuller expression of forgiveness, spoke again, bravely. "I hope you are not going to be angry with me?"
"Not at all," she replied, with disheartening, impersonal cordiality. "I was partly to blame. I forgot you were a hot-headed boy."
"Don"t take that tone with me--I won"t stand it!"
"How can you help it?" she answered, with a smile, and moved toward the end of the table where Bartol and Stinchfield still sat smoking and leisurely sipping their coffee.
The little engineer sprang up as she drew near, and stood like a soldier at attention as she said, "Are you in merciless mood to-night, Mr.
Stinchfield?"
"Far from it," he responded. "I"m in a receptive mood. The fact that Mr.
Bartol has found enough in this subject to wish to investigate predisposes me to open-mindedness."
"Suppose we go into the library," suggested Bartol, and they all followed him across the hall.
Leo walked with the engineer, leaving Victor in the rear, hurt and suffering sorely.
It was not so much her displayed interest in Stinchfield as her haughty disregard of himself that touched his self-esteem. Thereafter he sulked like the boy she declared him to be.
When his mother came in robed in black and looking the sad young widow he was on the verge of rebellion against the whole plan of action, but he kept silence while Bartol explained his design.
"It is customary for "mediums" to have things their own way, but in this case Mrs. Ollnee has placed herself entirely in my hands. The tests will be made in my study." He turned the key and unlocked the door. "Mr.
Stinchfield will enter first and see that the room is as we left it."
The engineer entered, and after a moment"s survey called: "All is untouched. Come in."
Bartol led the way with Mrs. Ollnee, and when Victor, the last to enter, had paced slowly over the threshold Stinchfield locked the door and handed the key to his host. The inquisition was begun.
The most notable furnishing of the room was a battery of three cameras, so arranged that they could be operated instantaneously, and Mrs. Joyce asked, anxiously, "Has the band consented to this?"
"They have consented to a trial," answered Mrs. Ollnee, in a faint voice. She had grown very pale, and her hands were trembling. To Victor this seemed like the tremor of terror, and his heart was aching with pity.
On one side of the room a deep alcove lined with books had been turned into a dark-room by means of curtains, and before these draperies stood the inevitable wooden table, but beside it, inclosing a chair, was a conical cage of wire netting encircled by bands of copper.
Mrs. Joyce exclaimed, "You do not intend to cage her in that?"
"That is my intention," calmly replied Bartol.
"Have the controls consented?" asked Mrs. Joyce.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Ollnee.
Of the further intricacies of Stinchfield"s preparation Victor had no hint, so artfully were they concealed; but he recognized in it all a kind of humorous skepticism (which the engineer radiated in spite of his manifest wish to appear respectful); and as his mother entered her little torture tent Victor said, "You needn"t do this if you don"t want to, mother."
"Your father commands it," she replied, submissively.
Stinchfield screwed the cage to the floor and made an attachment to a small wire which ran along the book-case to a dark corner. Victor was enough of the physicist to infer that his mother was now surrounded by an electric current.
Bartol explained: "We are to start in total darkness, and then we intend to try various degrees and colors of lights. Mrs. Ollnee, how will you have us sit?"
"I want Victor opposite me, with Leo at his right and Louise at his left. Mr. Stinchfield will then be able to operate his wires. You, Mr.
Bartol, sit at Leo"s right and nearest the cage." Her voice was now quite firm, and her manner decided. "All sit at the table for a time."
Stinchfield snapped out the lights, one by one, till only two, one red, the other green, struggled against the darkness. When these went out the room was perfectly black.
Bartol then said: "In the cabinet behind the medium is a self-registering column of mercury, a typewriter, and a switch, which will light a lamp which hangs in the ceiling above the cabinet, and which has no other connection. The psychic is inclosed in a mesh of steel wire too fine to permit the putting forth of a finger. If the lamp is lighted, the column of mercury lifted, or the typewriter keys depressed, it will be by some supra-normal power of the medium. There is also on a table just inside the curtains, with paper and pencils, a small tin trumpet, a bell, and a zither upon it. If possible, we wish to obtain a written message independent of Mrs. Ollnee."
"It is the unexpected that happens," remarked Mrs. Joyce. "Shall we clasp hands, Lucy?"
"Yes," answered Mrs. Ollnee.
Victor, reaching for Leo"s hand, tingled with something not scientific, a current of something subtler than electricity which came from her palm. He thought he detected in her fingers a returning warmth of grasp.
"They are here," announced Mrs. Joyce, after some ten minutes of silence.
"Who are here?" asked Bartol.
"My band--and many others."