n 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.

"I believe it now," Mrs. Dane said. "I saw your watch go, Horace, but
tomorrow I won't believe it at all."

"How about your companion?" I asked. "Can she take shorthand? We ought
to have a record."

"Probably not in the dark."

"We can have some light now," Sperry said.

There was a sort of restrained movement in the room now. Herbert turned
on a bracket light, and I moved away the roller chair.

"Go and get Clara, Horace," Mrs. Dane said to me, "and have her bring a
note-book and pencil." Nothing, I believe, happened during my absence.
Miss Jeremy was sunk in her chair and breathing heavily when I came back
with Clara, and Sperry was still watching her pulse. Suddenly my wife
said:

"Why, look! She's wearing my bracelet!"

This proved to be the case, and was, I regret to say, the cause of
a most unjust suspicion on my wife's part. Even today, with all the
knowledge she possesses, I am certain that Mrs. Johnson believes that
some mysterious power took my watch and dragged it off the table, and
threw the pen, but that I myself under cover of darkness placed her
bracelet on Miss Jeremy's arm. I can only reiterate here what I have
told her many times, that I never touched the bracelet after it was
placed on the stand.

"Take down everything that happens, Clara, and all we say," Mrs. Dane
said in a low tone. "Even if it sounds like nonsense, put it down."

It is because Clara took her orders literally that I am making this
more readable version of her script. There was a certain amount of
non-pertinent matter which would only cloud the statement if rendered
word for word, and also certain scattered, unrelated words with which
many of the statements terminated. For instance, at the end of the
sentence, "Just above the ear," came a number of rhymes to the final
word, "dear, near, fear, rear, cheer,