I know you believe in his methods."

"I do, indeed; but he may have been deceived, all the same. The failure
of all his experiments in Algiers lay in the fact that he was never able
to nail his psychic down, as we have done. He was the on-looker, after
all--not the experimenter he should have been and wished to be. Really
his photographs of the spirit 'B. B.' have not the weight as evidence of
the physical manifestation, as the phenomena which we have this evening
secured."

Fowler rose. "I have his report in my library. Let me get it."

He returned in a few minutes with a small blue book in his hand, from
which he began to read with gusto: "'I saw, as it were, a white luminous
ball floating over the floor; then rising straight upward, very rapidly,
as though issuing from a trap-door, appeared B. B., born, so to speak,
out of the flooring outside the curtain, which had not stirred. He
tries, as it seems to me, to come among us, but he has a limping,
hesitating gait. At one moment he reels as if about to fall, limping on
one leg; then he goes toward the opening of the curtains of the
cabinet. Then, without (as I believe) opening the curtains, he sinks
down, disappears into the floor.'"

"What are you reading from?" I asked.

"I am reading from the report which Richet made to the Annals of
Psychical Science. He goes on to say: 'It appears to me that this
experiment is decisive, for the formation of a luminous spot on the
ground, which then changes into a living and walking being, cannot
seemingly be produced by any trick. On the day after this experiment I
minutely examined the flagstones [which made up the floor of the seance
room], and also the coach-house and stable immediately under that part
of the kiosque.' There was no trap-door, and the cobwebs on the roof of
the stable were undisturbed. The photographs of the apparition were
taken on five different plates simultaneously, and the figure is the
same on each."

"Yes; but those experiments were afterward made of no value by the
confession of a coachman, who admitted his complicity in the fraud."

"No; that story is not true. The experiments stand, and Richet still
defends both himself and the circle against the charge of fraud."

"But read on," I insisted. "Does he not say that, in spite of all his
proof, he will not even hazard an affirmation of the phenomena?"

"Yes, he does say that," admitted Fowler; "but he also says: 'I have
thought it my duty to men