g over the table as if to pick up
something that lay across it. She was not looking at him, she was
looking at the Medium. Her face was set and white. Then, as if she
felt his glance, her eyes met his.

She started back, stood erect, facing him with a strange hardness in
her eyes.

In the moment Lewisham did not grasp the situation. He wanted to show
that he was acting upon equal terms with Smithers in the exposure. For
the moment her action simply directed his attention to the object
towards which she had been leaning, a thing of shrivelled membrane, a
pneumatic glove, lying on the table. This was evidently part of the
mediumistic apparatus. He pounced and seized it.

"Look!" he said, holding it towards Smithers. "Here is more! What is
this?"

He perceived that the girl started. He saw Chaffery, the Medium, look
instantly over Smithers' shoulders, saw his swift glance of reproach
at the girl. Abruptly the situation appeared to Lewisham; he perceived
her complicity. And he stood, still in the attitude of triumph, with
the evidence against her in his hand! But his triumph had vanished.

"Ah!" cried Smithers, leaning across the table to secure it. "_Good_
old Lewisham!... Now we _have_ it. This is better than the
tambourine."

His eyes shone with triumph. "Do you see, Mr. Lagune?" said
Smithers. "The Medium held this in his teeth and blew it out. There's
no denying this. This wasn't falling on your head, Mr. Medium, was
it? _This_--this was the luminous hand!"

CHAPTER XII.

LEWISHAM IS UNACCOUNTABLE.

That night, as she went with him to Chelsea station, Miss Heydinger
discovered an extraordinary moodiness in Lewisham. She had been
vividly impressed by the scene in which they had just participated,
she had for a time believed in the manifestations; the swift exposure
had violently revolutionised her ideas. The details of the crisis were
a little confused in her mind. She ranked Lewisham with Smithers in
the scientific triumph of the evening. On the whole she felt
elated. She had no objection to being confuted by Lewisham. But she
was angry with the Medium, "It is dreadful," she said. "Living a lie!
How can the world grow better, when sane, educated people use their
sanity and enlightenment to darken others? It is dreadful!

"He was a horrible man--such an oily, dishonest voice. And the girl--I
was sorry for her. She must have been oh!--bitterly ashamed, or why
should she have burst out crying? That _