She smiled a quick smile that was not without humor. Somehow I had never thought of a medium with a sense of humor. I liked her at once. We all liked her, and Sperry, Sperry the bachelor, the iconoclast, the antifeminist, was staring at her with curiously intent eyes.
Following her entrance Herbert had closed and bolted the drawing-room doors, and as an added precaution he now drew Mrs. Dane’s empty wheeled chair across them.
“Anything that comes in,” he boasted, “will come through the keyhole or down the chimney.”
And then, eying the fireplace, he deliberately took a picture from the wall and set it on the fender.
Miss Jeremy gave the room only the most casual of glances.
“Where shall I sit?” she asked.
Mrs. Dane indicated her place, and she asked for a small stand to be brought in and placed about two feet behind her chair, and two chairs to flank it, and then to take the black cloth from the table and hang it over the bamboo rod, which was laid across the backs of the chairs. Thus arranged, the curtain formed a low screen behind her, with the stand beyond it. On this stand we placed, at her order, various articles from our pockets—I a fountain pen, Sperry a knife; and my wife contributed a gold bracelet.
We all felt, I fancy, rather absurd. Herbert’s smile in the dim light became a grin. “The same old thing!” he whispered to me. “Watch her closely. They do it with a folding rod.”
We arranged between us that we were to sit one on each side of her, and Sperry warned me not to let go of her hand for a moment. “They have a way of switching hands,” he explained in a whisper. “If she wants to scratch her nose I’ll scratch it.”
We were, we discovered, not to touch the table, but to sit around it at a distance of a few inches, holding hands and thus forming the circle. And for twenty minutes we sat thus, and nothing happened. She was fully conscious and even spoke once or twice, and at last she moved impatiently and told us to put our hands on the table.
I had put my opened watch on the table before me, a night watch with a luminous dial. At five
Prev.
Back
Top