A rap or tip!
Inspector Jowett gently squeezed Miss Alice Probert’s left hand, securely clasped in his right. The pressure was delicately calculated to convey the promise of support, nothing else. After all, he had his reputation at the Yard to consider. The consequence of an incautious squeeze was quite unthinkable. Yet the experience of holding hands, for all its hazards, was not unpleasant. And it was illuminating. Sitting here in the dark next to Miss Probert he understood perfectly why seances were all the rage.
His left hand was held in the unequivocal grasp of Mr Strathmore, the spirit investigator. Strathmore was similarly linked to Miss Crush, and the circle was completed by Peter Brand, Dr Probert and Captain William Nye, Miss Probert’s fiance, who very properly held her other hand. They were seated at an oval table in the library of Dr Probert’s house in Richmond.
He had readily accepted Probert’s invitation to attend the next experiment, as it was termed. Not that he believed in this table-turning nonsense, but if the rest of sociable London was dabbling in it, he could hardly ignore it. The one condition he had demanded of Probert was that he was not to be introduced as a detective-inspector. It was certain to excite people, and lead them to expect clever explanations of everything that happened. Explanations were not his
The preliminaries had been got over quickly: introductions, a glass of sherry in the drawing-room and then to the library. Seven chairs were already positioned round the table, which was of polished mahogany. The room was narrow and shelved to the ceiling, but the electric light, the pride of Probert’s establishment, more than compensated for the sombre bindings of the books. At one end, a set of velvet curtains divided the room, to provide a recess, which the doctor used as a study.
Hearts were alleged to beat faster when the lights went out at a seance, but the moment when Probert pulled the switch had come as a distinct relief to Jowett. Young Nye, on Miss Probert’s other side, had been scrutinising him in a manner decidedly antagonistic, quite unjustifiably, in his opinion. Why should he be blamed if the fellow’s Intended addressed almost all her conversation to him? Alice Probert was uncommonly appealing, he was ready to admit, with natural black curls and flashing eyes and a figure he could only describe as precocious at the age of nineteen, so perhaps Nye’s state of agitation was not surprising. What torment the wretched man must be suffering with the light off!
‘Please feel free to engage in subdued conversation,’ said Brand’s voice from the darkness. He articulated each word with the care of one who had studied elocution without altogether mastering the vowel sounds. ‘I like it better than a wearisome silence and so do the spirits. If at any time during the seance you feel constrained to shout something aloud, or sing at the top of your voice, or gesticulate, I urge you for your own good to give way to the impulse. Likewise, if the person next to you goes into convulsions do not be alarmed. It is quite normal. Put a supporting arm around them and let them lean against you until the fit passes.’
That was bad news for Nye! Jowett gave Alice’s hand another gentle squeeze to let her know that support was available on the left.
‘I’ve given the domestics a night off,’ said Probert, in response to the call for conversation. ‘Sent them out. Didn’t want them making noises round the house and alarming us.’
‘Where is Mama?’ asked Alice.
‘As far away as she can get,’ said Probert. ‘I gave her a volume of
‘Sixty-eight point five degrees,’ said Strathmore. ‘That was five minutes ago, at half past eight.’
‘Excellent. I’m sorry about the fire-screen, ladies and gentlemen, but darkness is essential. Does anyone feel anything yet? What about you, Jowett? This is your first seance, isn’t it?’
‘That is so. I feel nothing exceptional, I assure you.’
‘Capital. And Miss Crush?’
‘I begin to feel a presence,’ said the voice of Miss Crush, speaking with a strange emphasis. ‘The room has become colder, has it not?’
Jowett, certainly, had goose-pimples forming rapidly on the backs of his legs.
‘Is there someone wishing to get in touch?’ asked Brand.
There was no response, but now the atmosphere was charged with tension. Subdued conversation had terminated for the night. The sitters waited breathlessly for Brand to put the question again.
‘Please signify your presence if you are here.’
It came at once: a distinct rap on the table.
‘There it is!’ cried Miss Crush superfluously.
Brand was into his routine with professional slickness.
‘Are you prepared to answer questions, three raps for yes and one for no?’
Three confident raps were heard.
‘Are you known to any of us?’
The same.
‘To our host?’
One rap.
‘Miss Crush?’
Three clear raps.
‘Can you give your name?’
Five raps.
‘Alphabet,’ said Dr Probert, who also seemed to know his seance procedures.
Brand recited the alphabet at a rate so brisk that it seemed he was determined to get to Z without being stopped, but at W there was a sharp rap on the table. He began again, and was stopped at once by a second rap.
‘A,’ said Dr Probert. ‘W followed by A.’
‘Walter!’ exclaimed Miss Crush in an intuitive flash. ‘Uncle Walter!’
Three loud raps confirmed the fact.
Jowett leaned forward in the darkness, trying to locate the rappings. First they had seemed to come from the medium’s side of the table, but the latest sounded closer at hand. He was not taken in by them, of course. There were at least a dozen ways of producing sounds of that sort without invoking the spirits. Over the years, so-called mediums had confessed to everything from castanets between their knees to cracking the joints of their big toes. There was the story of a lady at a seance who had fainted when one of her companions cracked a biscuit. It would take something more sensational than a few knockings under a table to convince a Scotland Yard man that he was in the presence of the paranormal.
Even so, the darkness evoked irrational possibilities. The senses were primed to respond to the smallest suggestion of anything irregular. It wanted all the self-possession cultivated in a lifetime in the Force to keep things in their proper perspective.
‘These scientific gentlemen are here to observe the phenomena of the seance,’ Brand explained to the spirit of Uncle Walter. ‘Are you prepared to assist us in our experiments?’
Three raps.
Jowett felt a sudden pressure from Alice Probert’s hand.
‘Look!’ she said. ‘Something is hovering over the table.’
‘By Jove, yes, I can see it!’ said her fiance.
‘I, too,’ said Probert.
Jowett straightened up from trying to locate the source of the raps and to his intense astonishment saw the phenomenon for himself: a patch of light, the size of a small bird, fluttering three feet above the table. The luminosity was not sufficient to irradiate the faces of the sitters, but something was undeniably there, and it was animated, too. It rose and swooped, seeming to vanish at will and reappear in another position, altering its shape miraculously.
‘Do you see it, Strathmore?’ asked Probert.
