ently.
The word was "curtain." Of the extraordinary event that followed the
breaking up of the seance, I have the keenest recollection. Miss Jeremy
came out of her trance weak and looking extremely ill, and Sperry's
motor took her home. She knew nothing of what had happened, and hoped
we had been satisfied. By agreement, we did not tell her what had
transpired, and she was not curious.

Herbert saw her to the car, and came back, looking grave. We were
standing together in the center of the dismantled room, with the lights
going full now.

"Well," he said, "it is one of two things. Either we've been gloriously
faked, or we've been let in on a very tidy little crime."

It was Mrs. Dane's custom to serve a Southern eggnog as a sort of
stir-up-cup--nightcap, she calls it--on her evenings, and we found it
waiting for us in the library. In the warmth of its open fire, and the
cheer of its lamps, even in the dignity and impassiveness of the butler,
there was something sane and wholesome. The women of the party reacted
quickly, but I looked over to see Sperry at a corner desk, intently
working over a small object in the palm of his hand.

He started when he heard me, then laughed and held out his hand.

"Library paste!" he said. "It rolls into a soft, malleable ball. It
could quite easily be used to fill a small hole in plaster. The paper
would paste down over it, too."

"Then you think?"

"I'm not thinking at all. The thing she described may have taken place
in Timbuctoo. May have happened ten years ago. May be the plot of some
book she has read."

"On the other hand," I replied, "it is just possible that it was here,
in this neighborhood, while we were sitting in that room."

"Have you any idea of the time?"

"I know exactly. It was half-past nine."

III

At midnight, shortly after we reached home, Sperry called me on the
phone. "Be careful, Horace," he said. "Don't let Mrs. Horace think
anything has happened. I want to see you at once. Suppose you say I have
a patient in a bad way, and a will to be drawn."

I listened to sounds from upstairs. I heard my wife go into her room and
close the door.

"Tell me something about it," I urged.

"Just this. Arthur Wells killed himself tonight, shot himself in the
head. I want you to go there with me."

"Arthur Wells!"

"Yes. I say, Horace, did you happen to notice the time the seance began
tonight?"

"It was five minutes after nine when my watch fell."