servants' entrance is locked, but the key is on a nail, among the
vines. All the furniture is scattered through the house."

"She must mean the furniture of this room," Mrs. Dane whispered.

The remainder of the sitting was chaotic. The secretary's notes
consist of unrelated words and often childish verses. On going
over the notes the next day, when the stenographic record had been
copied on a typewriter, Sperry and I found that one word recurred
frequently. 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