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."

"Then it would have been about half past when the trance began?"

"Yes."

There was a silence at Sperry's end of the wire. Then:

"He was shot about 9:30," he said, and rang off.

I am not ashamed to confess that my hands shook as I hung up the
receiver. A brick house, she had said; the Wells house was brick.
And so were all the other houses on the street. Vines in the back?
Well, even my own house had vines. It was absurd; it was pure
coincidence; it was--well, I felt it was queer.