rose to his feet, but Farrington quickly interposed.

"Something was working against us to-night, gentlemen. Yet you
demanded results. And when the spirits will not come, what is she
to do? She forgets herself in her trance; she produces, herself,
the things that you all could see supernaturally if you were in
sympathy."

The mere sound of Farrington's voice seemed to rouse in me all
the animosity of my nature. I felt that a man who could trump up
an excuse like that when a person was caught with the goods was
capable of almost anything.

"Enough of this fake seance," exclaimed Craig. "I have let it go
on merely for the purpose of opening the eyes of a certain
deluded gentleman in this room. Now, if you will all be seated I
shall have something to say that will finally establish whether
Mary Vandam was the victim of accident, suicide, or murder."

With hearts beating rapidly we sat in silence.

Craig took the beakers and test-tubes from the shelf behind the
curtain and placed them on the little deal table that had been so
merrily dancing about the room.

"The increasing frequency with which tales of murder by poison
appear in the newspapers," he began formally, "is proof of how
rapidly this new civilisation of ours is taking on the aspects of
the older civilisations across the seas. Human life is cheap in
this country; but the ways in which human life has been taken