Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ We're late as it is.”
He put the lights out, and we sat as we had on the preceding nights. But I was uneasy and alarmed. Was Sperry right? Had I brought the wretched thing along, as I had brought the coal-tongs? After all my years of clear thinking and clean living, was I now in the first stage of mental decay?
I gave myself a jerk and sat up in my chair. No, I knew better. I had left Arthur Wells's stick on Sperry's table. I had not brought it to Mrs. Dane's. I knew that, as surely as I knew my name, or that my wife sat across from me, tense and rigid with excitement. ”

“ Miss Jeremy had already arrived, looking rather pale, as I had noticed she always did before a séance. The color of the day before had faded, and her eyes seemed sunken in her head.
“Not ill, are you?” Sperry asked her, as he took her hand.
“Not at all. But I am anxious. I always am. These things do not come for the calling, and—I should hate to disappoint you.”
“This is the last time. You have promised.”
“This is the last time.”
It had been our custom to leave the general arrangements for the sittings to Herbert. He liked to fuss about, preparing what he called “test conditions.” ”

“ Clara and he were married, had been married while she was a nursery governess for Mrs. Wells. It was a poor match for her. She was studying stenography, was ambitious. And Hawkins was not of the sort to better himself. They kept the marriage secret, but she had suspected him of an affair, more or less innocent, with a pretty parlor-maid. Finally she left the Wells house, estranged from him.
Even to Clara, Elinor had not told of young Ellingham's part in the affair. She said, truthfully enough, that there had been a quarrel over the letters. That was all Clara knew. ”

“ In our modest establishment the maids retire early, and it is my custom, on those rare occasions when the bell rings after nine o'clock, to answer the door myself.
To my surprise, it was Sperry, accompanied by two ladies, one of them heavily veiled. It was not until I had ushered them into the reception-room and lighted the gas, that I saw who they were. It was Elinor Wells, in deep mourning, and Clara, Mrs. Dane's companion and secretary. ”

“ Dane's suggestion Clara was not brought in at once.
“Miss Jeremy says the taking of notes worries her,” she said. “Clara can wait in the hall until she is in the trance.”
“How are we to call her?” I asked. For I had the feeling—we were all novices, remember—that to break the circle would be to destroy the séance.
“Does noise disturb her?”
I thought not, and Sperry corroborated me. “It bothers her,” he said. “She speaks fretfully. That is all.”
Mrs. Dane reflected. “Bring me my stick from the hall, Horace,” she said. “And tell Clara I'll rap with it when I want her.” ”

“ Could you lock yourself in and then place the key outside?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied impassively. “By opening the kitchen window, I could reach out and hang it on the nail.”
“You were out of the house, then, at the time Mr. Wells died?”
“I can prove it by as many witnesses as you wish to call.”
“Now, about these letters, Hawkins,” Sperry said. “The letters in the bag. Have you still got them?”
He half rose—we had given him a chair facing the light—and then sat down again. “What letters?”
“Don't beat about the bush. We know you have the letters. And we want them.” ”

“ THIS is a record of the strange case of Arthur Wells, as investigated by six people who called themselves the Neighborhood Club. They were in the habit of dining together once a week and discussing some subject chosen by the host of the evening. One night old Mrs. Dane elected to have a séance. A Miss Jeremy, an attractive young woman, was the medium. After some trifling occurrences of the usual sort, Miss Jeremy told vivid details of a suicide or murder—a man killed by a bullet while shaving, blood on the carpet, a hole in the ceiling, a woman, in a yellow kimono, holding a revolver ”

“ It is axiomatic in my profession that the more innocent a man is, the guiltier he looks, very often. So I dare say I was an uncomfortable dinner companion. In fact, my wife said so.
AFTER dinner I went into the reception-room, which is not lighted, unless we are expecting guests, and peered out of the window. The detective was walking negligently up the street.
Owing to the fact that Mrs. Dane was house-cleaning, we had not been asked to dinner, and the séance was set for 8:30.
We dine at half-past six, and our simple meal was over by seven. Shortly after, Sperry called me up. ”

“ Just outside the dressing-room door the gray boards beneath the carpet had been scraped and scrubbed. With the lifting of the carpet came, too, a strong odor, as of ammonia. But the stain of blood had absolutely disappeared.
“The poor devil fell here,” Sperry said. “There was a struggle, and he went down. He lay there for a while, too, until some plan was thought out. A man does not usually kill himself in a hallway. ”

“ Thoughts are things. That is all we know.
Mrs. Dane, I believe, had suspected the solution from the start.
The Neighborhood Club has recently disbanded. We tried other things, but we had been spoiled. Our Kipling winter was a failure. We read a play or two, with Sperry's wife reading the heroine, and the rest of us taking other parts. She has a lovely voice, has Mrs. Sperry.
But it was all stale and unprofitable, after the Wells affair. With Herbert gone now as a correspondent to the war, and Mrs. Dane at a sanatorium for the winter, we have given it all up. ”

“ But Herbert had been reading a book on the work of a well-known medium, and was prepared with what he said was the best thing known for the purpose. “I propose,” he said, going into his pockets, “to tie Miss Jeremy with silk thread. It can not possibly hurt her, and if we wrap her, chair and all, thoroughly, the slightest movement will snap the thread.” ”

“ Only, Mrs. Wells was wearing a green kimono, and the testimony of the governess indicated that the death must have taken place as early as 9:15. Following a clue, the two men went to a drug-store where the governess had been telephoning that evening. They found the number she had called was that of young Ellingham, who was known to be in love with Elinor Wells.
At a second séance the medium dwelt especially on a lost handbag that contained letters, and on a bullet in the ceiling. Alone, Johnson went to the Wells house at night to search. ”

“ Dane.”
“Horace,” said my wife, leaning forward, “why not ask her about that stock of mine? If it is going down, I ought to sell, oughtn't I?”
Herbert eyed her with some exasperation.
“We are here to make a serious investigation,” he said. “If the members of the Club will keep their attention on what we are doing, we may get somewhere. Now,” to the medium, “the man is dead, and the revolver is beside him. Did he kill himself?” ”

“ That has come, and can not be helped.”
“Then why?”
“How does this woman, this medium, know these things?” Her voice rose, with an unexpected hysterical catch. “It is superhuman. I am almost mad.”
And then I knew. I saw that Sperry knew also. Clara had told Elinor of the sittings, and had shown her notes. One after the other, day after day, things that they had held to be buried with Arthur Wells had come to the light. Small wonder that, to the nerves of the two women, a hand that was not human had unearthed them.
To Elinor Wells the hand was that of her dead husband. ”

“ She is quick. She knew just what to do. Clara says you know what we did. We worked fast. She said a suicide would not have fired one shot into the ceiling, and she fixed that. It was terrible. And all the time he lay there, with his eyes half open——!”
THE letters, it seems, were all over the place. Elinor thought of the curtain, but she was afraid of the police. Finally she gave them to Clara, who was to take them away and burn them.
But Clara lost them. Poor Clara, hurrying back to Mrs. Dane's and that first séance! She did not know where she had lost them. They had fallen, in her haste. ”

“ I'd better explain, Hawkins. We are not doing police work. But, owing to a chain of circumstances, we have learned that Mr. Wells did not kill himself. He was murdered, or at least shot, by some one else. It may not have been deliberate. Owing to what we have learned, certain people are under suspicion. We want to clear things up for our own satisfaction. ”

“ To tell the truth, the affair of the coal-tongs had cost me my self-confidence. I called up my wife, and she said Herbert was a fool and Sperry also. But she made an exhaustive search of the premises, without result. Whoever had taken the stick, I was cleared. Cleared, at least, for a time. There were strange developments coming that threatened my peace of mind.
That day I discovered that I was being watched. Shadowed is the technical word. ”

“ Dane. “Perhaps it is Herbert's.”
But I caught Sperry's eye. We had both recognized it. It was Arthur Wells's, the one which Sperry had taken from his room, and which, in turn, had been taken from Sperry's library'.
“You didn't, by any chance,” Sperry asked cynically, “stop here on your way back from my place the other night, did you?”
“I did. But I didn't bring that thing.”
“Look here, Horace,” he said, more gently, “you come in and see me some day soon. You're not as fit as you ought to be.”
Herbert had arranged the others about the table and now called to us sharply. “Come on,” he said. ”

“ So it was Herbert who brought the meeting to order shortly after our arrival, by clapping his hands.
{{fqm|“}MEMBERS of the Neighborhood Club,” he said impressively, “we have agreed among ourselves that this is to be our last meeting for the purpose that is before us. I have felt, therefore, that in justice to the medium this final séance should leave us with every conviction of its genuineness. Whatever phenomena occur, the medium must be, as she has been, above suspicion. ”

“ And then, at last, silence, and the medium in deep trance, and Mrs. Dane rapping on the floor for Clara.
When Clara came in, Mrs. Dane told her to switch on the lights. Miss Jeremy had dropped in her chair until the silk across her chest was held taut. But investigation showed that none of the threads was broken. Sperry cut the ones around her arms with his penknife, and Herbert took advantage of the interval to go behind the curtain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So we are, as far as prosecution goes. But I've got my mind on this thing now, and I'm going to see it through. There's another point. I want to look at the curtains in that room. I've been reading over my copy of the notes on the sittings. ”