“I am here with Colonel Olcott,” I continued. “I was hoping to see the room in which these mystic experiences occur, before the seance starts properly.”
“The devil you were,” he said coarsely, and went inside, pushing past Sherlock who was just coming to join me.
“Pleasant fellow,” he observed. “A nice attempt, Mycroft, but he seems unlikely to cooperate. However,” he moved a few feet along the porch to peer in the dining room window, “I see that both brothers have deigned to join their guests for coffee. We have a few moments. Quickly now.” He took my elbow. “We must have a look at that room.”
I shook him off. “You are not seriously suggesting that I sprint nimbly up some dark staircase to sneak around looking for clues?”
He looked me up and down. “You’re right. Sprinting nimbly isn’t in it for you. You return to the dining room and distract them.”
And before I could object to this high-handed order, he was gone, silent as a cat, I’ll say that for him. I hurried back to the dining room, aware that, as it is beneath the seance chamber, Sherlock was in danger of being heard at some point, no matter how softly he tried to move. I confess I was at something of a loss. Rapidly improvised actions are not my forte. I am a man who values careful planning. The best I could do when I rejoined the diners was request-impolitely, as they were just finishing-that I might also have coffee.
The Eddy I had met had been joined by his brother. He was a bit younger and had a higher forehead and a tiny patch of beard beneath his lip, but otherwise they were enough alike almost to have been twins. Both stared at me obstinately and were on the point of denying my request when, by a stroke of fortune, a young lady at the table requested a second cup for herself. Grudgingly, Mary Eddy returned to the kitchen while the brothers glowered at me. Olcott, whom my rudeness clearly embarrassed (greatly to my regret, but it couldn’t be helped) introduced me, but they responded with little better than grunts. Attempts at small talk were met with the same response.
An uncomfortable silence took over the table, and I expected any moment to hear the thump of a footfall from above. So, like a buffoon, I rose from my seat, saying with forced jollity, “Perhaps your sister could use some help carrying the cups,” and rushed into the kitchen. This bizarre act stunned both my fellow diners and Mary Eddy, who regarded me with alarm as I bustled in. In truth, even before I rose, it had occurred to me that a look at the kitchen ceiling might be in order. Now I saw that it was simple plaster over lathe, obviously impenetrable. In the opposite wall, the doors of the two small butteries stood darkly open. “Some more milk perhaps?” I inquired idiotically and dashed through the right-hand door, followed by Miss Eddy’s “Here now!” A glance upward showed me that the family had economized on the ceiling. It was not lathe and plaster but only naked beams, on which the platform and cabinet above sat, the underside of their shared floor exposed. I turned instantly back to the kitchen with a fatuous, “Dear me, it’s dark in there, isn’t it?” and returned to the dining room just as the brothers were rising to come after me. “My apologies,” I said sincerely, for I had not enjoyed making such a fool of myself. “The lady did not need my help.”
“Where’s the other one?” said William Eddy (the brother who had met me on the porch) suspiciously, and to my relief, Sherlock’s voice replied from outside, “Here,” and we saw the glow of his cigarette through the window. He entered a moment later, not a hair out of place, and coolly took his former seat beside the colonel, to whom he leaned over with a whispered apology. I heard the words “too much cider at dinner,” and, truly, if it had not been seven miles of bad road, I would have walked out then and there and gone straight to a hotel in Rutland. Instead, I sat where I was, inanely praising the very poor coffee Miss Eddy brought in, while the people around me exchanged embarrassed glances and the Eddys looked thunderous. A more unpleasant quarter hour I have never spent.
We were all ushered to the porch while the Eddys ascended to the upper room to prepare, and no doubt to see if there were any traces of meddling. Knowing Sherlock, I was certain there would not be. He had lit another cigarette and looked altogether too pleased with himself. I took him down into the yard to tell him what he could do the next time he thought of involving me in one of his silly adventures, but he disarmed me by saying, “Well done, Mycroft. I know how unpleasant you must have found that, yet you did splendidly,” and offered me a cigarette.
I took it.
We smoked for a few minutes. The stars were brilliant in the clear, cool night, and here in the mountains there seemed to be many more of them.
“Is it the window?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “The seals are in place, and the window frame is secure in the wall.”
“They might have made an impress of the signet and reproduced it.”
“I think it more likely that-”
But at this point we were summoned to the seance.
The upstairs chamber was a large one. Though distance was difficult to judge in the very poor light (as the colonel had said, there was but a single lantern, and that in a corner farthest from the cabinet and platform), I would hazard it was a good thirty feet from the rear wall to the edge of the platform, which itself appeared to be five or six feet deep. Sherlock whispered to me that there was roughly a yard between the door of the cabinet and the back wall of the house with its little window. “But I don’t think they bothered with the window. The nailheads in the floor of the cabinet are much battered.”
I nodded. All had become clear.
The Eddy brothers mounted the platform. With their deep-set eyes and surly faces, they looked grim enough, if not particularly spiritual. William gave a short speech about spirits and their nature and the responsibility of the medium and so forth; then he and Horatio entered the chamber, where he bound Horatio to a chair with thick rope. The audience was invited to come up one by one to observe this and to test the final result, which took several minutes, as there were nearly thirty people present. The dress of these revealed most of them as visitors, but there were several who appeared to be residents of the town. The latter did not bother to check the binding, and neither did Sherlock and I: no doubt the trick would be done well. Colonel Olcott too kept his place, up near the front and to one side, expectant but relaxed.
Finally, everyone was seated again. A curtain was drawn across the cabinet door and William Eddy repeated most of his speech. He moved to the center of the platform and shut his eyes. He swayed slightly. The room was hushed. From the cabinet, all was quiet. Then, from within, a violin began to play.
Sherlock winced. Whoever the spirit was, the violin was not his or her first instrument. The rest of the audience did not seem to notice the quality of the music, but gasped and murmured. They were equally impressed by the rattling of an invisible tambourine. However, the spirits did not seem to be in the mood for physical contact tonight. I saw no one flinch or start at a ghostly touch. Indeed, the presentation felt rather paltry. I suspect that mistrust of Sherlock and me had something to do with this.
Suddenly, William Eddy moved to the far right of the platform. The violin and tambourine fell silent. A tense moment passed before the curtain moved aside. The doorway was dark. Then a figure appeared and stepped solemnly out.
I found myself, quite unexpectedly, embarrassed. Embarrassed for the figure on the platform, for the audience around me, and for Colonel Olcott. I heard Sherlock sigh softly and realized he had had a similar reaction. Morosely, I examined the “apparition.” It was a tall man clearly meant to be a red Indian, though a combination of wig and headdress so obscured his face that he might have been Chinese, or a woman. His hands were indeed, so far as it was possible to tell in the shadows, reddish, as if some rouge had been rubbed over a deep tan. And I suppose one could say that his face glowed if a couple of smudgy gleams from the half-hidden face could be called a glow. He began to chant nonsense syllables in a deep voice. William Eddy stood with his head respectfully bowed. My embarrassment faded to be replaced by boredom. If I could have left without notice, I would have.
But I was trapped for the evening.
And a long evening it was. “Spirits” trouped in and out of the cabinet, William Eddy pacing the platform and making some brief remarks between each appearance. There were more red Indians and a number of white people in clothing from a few generations past who, indeed, had slightly greyish skin where it wasn’t streaked with phosphorous-some attempt to make them look misty, perhaps, though a more solid bunch I never saw. The audience had begun to recover from its dumb wonder, and a few bold souls ventured questions. Some of the “spirits” ignored them. Others nodded and then turned to William Eddy, apparently communicating with him through some thought process, for he was the one who answered. Still others answered, in a variety of voices, almost all of them bearing traces at the very least of the local accent.
The questions were what I suppose are the usual sort at these affairs. Will my crop yield be high or poor?
