wound, was on the smoking-stand beside me.

The death of Arthur Wells had taken place on Monday evening.
Tuesday brought nothing new. The coroner was apparently satisfied,
and on Wednesday the dead man's body was cremated.

"Thus obliterating all evidence," Sperry said, with what I felt was
a note of relief.

But I think the situation was bothering him, and that he hoped to
discount in advance the second sitting by Miss Jeremy, which Mrs.
Dane had already arranged for the following Monday, for on
Wednesday afternoon, following a conversation over the telephone,
Sperry and I had a private sitting with Miss Jeremy in Sperry's
private office. I took my wife into our confidence and invited
her to be present, but the unfortunate coldness following the
housemaid's discovery of me asleep in the library on the morning
after the murder, was still noticeable and she refused.

The sitting, however, was totally without value. There was
difficulty on the medium's part in securing the trance condition,
and she broke out once rather petulantly, with the remark that we
were interfering with her in some way.

I noticed that Sperry had placed Arthur Wells's stick unobtrusively
on his table, but we secured only rambling and non-pertinent replies
to our questions, and whether it was because I knew that outside it
was broad day, or because the Wells matter did not come up at all I
found a total lack of that sense of the unknown which made all the
evening sittings so grisly.