ght. Also the theory
of rods of invisible matter emanating from the medium's body, to move
bodies at a distance from her, had only been evolved; and none of the
methods for calculation of leverages and strains had been formulated, so
far as I know.

To be frank, I am quite convinced that, even had we known of these
so-called explanations, which in reality explain nothing, we would
have ignored them as we became involved in the dramatic movement of
the revelations and the personal experiences which grew out of them. I
confess that following the night after the first seance any observations
of mine would have been of no scientific value whatever, and I believe I
can speak for the others also.

Of the medium herself I can only say that we have never questioned her
integrity. The physical phenomena occurred before she went into trance,
and during that time her forearms were rigid. During the deep trance,
with which this unusual record deals, she spoke in her own voice, but in
a querulous tone, and Sperry's examination of her pulse showed that it
went from eighty normal to a hundred and twenty and very feeble.

With this preface I come to the death of Arthur Wells, our acquaintance
and neighbor, and the investigation into that death by a group of six
earnest people who call themselves the Neighborhood Club.

*****

The Neighborhood Club was organized in my house. It was too small really
to be called a club, but women have a way these days of conferring a
titular dignity on their activities, and it is not so bad, after all.
The Neighborhood Club it really was, composed of four of our neighbors,
my wife, and myself.

We had drifted into the habit of dining together on Monday evenings
at the different houses. There were Herbert Robinson and his sister
Alice--not a young woman, but clever, alert, and very alive; Sperry, the
well-known heart specialist, a bachelor still in spite of much feminine
activity; and there was old Mrs. Dane, hopelessly crippled as to the
knees with rheumatism, but one of those glowing and kindly souls that
have a way of being a neighborhood nucleus. It was around her that we
first gathered, with an idea of forming for her certain contact points
with the active life from which she was otherwise cut off. But she gave
us, I am sure, more than we brought her, and, as will be seen later, her
shrewdness was an important element in solving our mystery.

In addition to these four there were my wife and m