Part 21 (1/2)

”Mr. Ellingham was anxious to get it,” she finished. ”He had taken Mr.

Johnson's overcoat by mistake one night when you were both in the house, and the notes were in it. He saw that the stick was important.”

”Clara,” Sperry asked, ”did you see, the day you advertised for your bag, another similar advertis.e.m.e.nt?”

”I saw it. It frightened me.”

”You have no idea who inserted it?”

”None whatever.”

”Did you ever see Miss Jeremy before the first sitting? Or hear of her?”

”Never.”

”Or between the seances?”

Elinor rose and drew her veil down. ”We must go,” she said. ”Surely now you will cease these terrible investigations. I cannot stand much more.

I am going mad.”

”There will be no more seances,” Sperry said gravely.

”What are you going to do?” She turned to me, I daresay because I represented what to her was her supreme dread, the law.

”My dear girl,” I said, ”we are not going to do anything. The Neighborhood Club has been doing a little amateur research work, which is now over. That is all.”

Sperry took them away in his car, but he turned on the door-step, ”Wait downstairs for me,” he said, ”I am coming back.”

I remained in the library until he returned, uneasily pacing the floor.

For where were we, after all? We had had the medium's story elaborated and confirmed, but the fact remained that, step by step, through her unknown ”control” the Neighborhood Club had followed a tragedy from its beginning, or almost its beginning, to its end.

Was everything on which I had built my life to go? Its philosophy, its science, even its theology, before the revelations of a young woman who knew hardly the rudiments of the very things she was destroying?

Was death, then, not peace and an awakening to new things, but a wretched and dissociated clutching after the old? A wrench which only loosened but did not break our earthly ties?

It was well that Sperry came back when he did, bringing with him a breath of fresh night air and stalwart sanity. He found me still pacing the room.

”The thing I want to know,” I said fretfully, ”is where this leaves us?

Where are we? For G.o.d's sake, where are we?”

”First of all,” he said, ”have you anything to drink? Not for me. For yourself. You look sick.”

”We do not keep intoxicants in the house.”

”Oh, piffle,” he said. ”Where is it, Horace?”

”I have a little gin.”