minutes after nine I felt the top of the table waver under my fingers, a curious, fluid-like motion.
“The table is going to move,” I said.
Herbert laughed, a dry little chuckle. “Sure it is,” he said. “When we all get to acting together, it will probably do considerable moving. I feel what you feel. It’s flowing under my fingers.”
“Blood,” said Sperry. “You fellows feel the blood moving through the ends of your fingers. That’s all. Don’t be impatient.”
However, curiously enough, the table did not move. Instead, my watch, before my eyes, slid to the edge of the table and dropped to the floor, and almost instantly an object, which we recognized later as Sperry’s knife, was flung over the curtain and struck the wall behind Mrs. Dane violently.
One of the women screamed, ending in a hysterical giggle. Then we heard rhythmic beating on the top of the stand behind the medium. Startling as it was at the beginning, increasing as it did from a slow beat to an incredibly rapid drumming, when the initial shock was over Herbert commenced to gibe.
“Your fountain pen, Horace,” he said to me. “Making out a statement for services rendered, by its eagerness.”
The answer to that was the pen itself, aimed at him with apparent accuracy, and followed by an outcry from him.
“Here, stop it!” he said. “I’ve got ink all over me!”
We laughed consumedly. The sitting had taken on all the attributes of practical joking. The table no longer quivered under my hands.
“Please be sure you are holding my hands tight. Hold them very tight,” said Miss Jeremy. Her voice sounded faint and far away. Her head was dropped forward on her chest, and she suddenly sagged in her chair. Sperry broke the circle and coming to her, took her pulse. It was, he reported, very rapid.
“You can move and talk now if you like,” he said. “She’s in trance, and there will be no more physical demonstrations.”
Mrs. Dane was the first to speak. I was looking for my fountain pen, and Herbert was again examining the stand.
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