what happened.’
‘He is a sensitive,’ Miss Crush confided to the others in a stage whisper.
‘Shall we begin?’ said Jowett. ‘I believe you turned out the light, Doctor.’
Before the switch was turned, Cribb glanced rapidly round the table at the faces of his fellow-sitters: Miss Crush, on his right, eyes agape with expectation; Strathmore, by contrast grimly sceptical, even his monocle flashing hostility; Jowett with the fixed smile of a chairman anticipating trouble; Alice, dignified, demure and difficult to connect with Maids of Honour Row; Captain Nye, head erect as if in the front line of battle (and the Soudan campaign suggested itself here, for as Probert had once remarked, there was a striking resemblance to the features of a camel); and finally Probert himself, on his feet to switch off the light, red-faced and frowning, but visibly deflated since Saturday.
The light went out.
‘Kindly link hands,’ said Jowett, sounding oddly like a dancing-instructor.
‘Surely it isn’t necessary to re-enact last Saturday so slavishly as that?’ protested Nye. ‘Holding hands in these conditions is a very doubtful practice, and I objected to it then. My fiancee is not used to being grasped by strange men.’
‘But William, you are holding my right hand and the inspector has my left,’ said Alice.
‘You agreed to co-operate,’ Jowett reminded him.
‘Only after somebody approached my Commanding Officer. Very well, but tell me the moment anything untoward occurs, Alice.’
Cribb smiled in the darkness, imagining how Jowett would receive that remark, but no more was said on the matter. It was time, anyway, to begin his own part in the proceedings. He moved forward in his chair and turned his feet on their sides to bring the heels of his boots silently into contact, face to face. Then he addressed the company: ‘I believe Mr Brand began by asking you not to be alarmed if anybody behaved irregular. I make the same request, ladies and gentlemen. Soon after this one of you indicated that you sensed a supernatural presence in the room.’ As a cue, he gently squeezed Miss Crush’s left hand.
‘Oh! It’s me!’ she announced in a squeak. ‘That is to say, I did.’
‘Say it again then, madam,’ said Jowett with an obvious effort to be amiable.
‘I sense a presence,’ said Miss Crush flatly.
‘Is anyone trying to get in touch?’ asked Cribb with rather more conviction. The whole situation verged on the ridiculous and it was only too easy to imagine what they would make of it in the mess-room at the Yard, but having brought himself to the brink, so to speak, he was not the man to stand quivering there.
‘Not a thing,’ said Nye, after some five seconds had passed. ‘The whole exercise is futile, in my opinion.’
‘Is there anyone there?’ asked Cribb. He pressed the soles of his shoes together and gently clicked his heels three times.
‘Did you hear that?’ demanded Miss Crush.
Before anyone had time to respond there were five independent raps. They appeared to have originated from Alice’s area of the table.
‘Alphabet,’ said Dr Probert mechanically.
‘There is no need for that,’ said Miss Crush. ‘We know it will be Uncle Walter.’
Cribb clicked three times to confirm the fact and at the same time withdrew his right hand from Miss Crush’s grasp. She passed no comment. By keeping two of his fingers folded against his palm he had avoided rubbing off much of the fluor-spar he had assiduously applied before the seance. The hand was warm from being held in front of the fire a few minutes before.
‘I recollect that we were treated to the apparent manifestation of a spirit hand at this juncture,’ said Strathmore in a bored voice which changed dramatically to exclaim, ‘My eyes! There it is!’
Perhaps because he had not had the opportunity of seeing Brand’s performance, Cribb’s hand-movements were different in character, more suggestive of traffic-control duty than the conducting of the choir invisible, but the fluor-spar glowed bravely, drawing gasps of admiration.
‘How the devil did that thing get in here?’ asked Nye. ‘We want no repetition of that deplorable episode last time.’
‘You can’t stop it!’ cried Miss Crush excitedly. ‘I can feel my skirt being pulled already.’
‘Mine too,’ said Alice, adding quickly, ‘It is lightly fingering the hem, William, that is all.’
The pace of events surprised even Cribb. An orange thudded against Captain Nye before he had a chance to protest about the skirt-pulling. Cribb noticed that Dr Probert was no longer holding his left hand. Another orange bounced across the table. A bellow from Nye signalled a second hit.
‘I say!’ called Strathmore. ‘This is carrying verisimilitude too far!’
‘Lights, if you please,’ said Cribb.
Dr Probert obliged by going to the switch, but not before another orange had found its mark. When the light went on, Nye was seen to be stooping below the level of the table.
‘My poor William!’ said Alice, leaning over to stroke his forehead, on which a red mark was forming. ‘You must be bruised all over.’
‘I’d like to know who was so beastly inconsiderate as to set out another bowl of oranges,’ muttered Nye.
‘They were there on my instruction,’ said Jowett. ‘Most obliging of you to take a second pummelling so manfully, Captain. The East Surreys can be proud of you. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think we have reproduced the first half of the seance with passable fidelity, with one small exception which we must not overlook.’ He got up from the table and approached the mantelpiece behind Nye’s chair. ‘I recollect that on Saturday this vase of chrysanthemums was tipped over by a stray orange, like so.’ He pushed his forefinger towards the vase and gently toppled it on to its side. The water coursed along the shelf and dripped noisily into the hearth.
‘That’s mahogany, damn you!’ said Probert, starting towards it.
‘It won’t hurt if it is kept well polished,’ said Jowett, waving him back. ‘If I have it right, the medium wiped the surface dry with his handkerchief while the rest of us examined the chair in the study.’ He beckoned to Cribb with his finger. ‘If you please, Sergeant.’
Cribb set to work with a white handkerchief he had thoughtfully brought with him, and the others obediently followed Jowett through the curtain into the study. By the time the call came for Cribb to take his place in the chair, he had mopped up the water, removed the fluor-spar from his hand and drawn aside the fire-screen.
He went through to the study. Probert and Strathmore were ready with lint and salted water. It reminded him rather of visiting the dentist, except that in this surgery six attendants surrounded the chair and one of them was a murderer.
Probert dipped two small squares of lint into the water and placed them over the brass handles attached to the arms of the chair. ‘Please sit down, Sergeant, and grip the handles. Captain Nye, would you be so good as to go down to the cellar and switch off the electric power until I call out to you to turn it on again? Alice, would you light the candles, please?’
In a matter of minutes the chair was ready and a gentle current was passing through Cribb and registering 200 divisions on the galvanometer.
Everyone but Cribb returned to the other side of the curtain and the candles were extinguished. The play of firelight on the faces of the sitters caught clear indications of apprehension that had not been evident before. However artificial the reconstruction had been so far, it was fast approaching the moment when its purpose was inescapably relevant.
‘Do you have a reading?’ asked Probert.
‘198, and the time is 10.20 p.m.,’ responded Jowett, from beside the galvanometer. He turned to face Miss Crush. ‘Don’t you have something to tell us, madam?’
She gave a start that jerked her jet ear-rings into glittering movement. ‘Oh good gracious me! What do you wish me to say?’
‘Merely what you said at this moment on Saturday evening- that you have reason to suspect that a spirit is abroad in the room, or words to that effect.’
‘Did I really say such a thing?’ asked Miss Crush.
‘You detected a presence,’ whispered Alice.
‘Oh, my stars and garters! Yes, I did!’ Miss Crush held up her forefinger. ‘I divine a presence. We have a
