looked up at us earnestly from their chairs. They were gathered round the oval of a large table covered by a crimson velvet drape. Above it, a brass gasolier with vine-patterned branches was burning low, casting a stark but limited radiance on the ceiling. In the shadows at either side, a further platoon of guests sat on upright chairs along the walls, waiting their turn to be called like patients at a dentist’s surgery. There must have been thirty or forty, all told.
In the dim background, a rounded archway opened into a darkened conservatory with a vaulted roof of glass panes. Palm branches and white orchids gave off a cheap illusion of night in the mystic East.
At the head of the table, immediately opposite us, sat a woman whom I suppose I must describe as the mistress of ceremonies. Her appearance would have been overdone even on a vaudeville stage. The rouge alone might not have called attention, had not her hair been a little too auburn, her lips a little too rosy. She wore a wide-brimmed picture-hat of blue velvet, set at a slant like a mushroom. A patterned decolletage covered her neck and shoulders, almost transparently, above a bodice of lilac-mauve silk. This extraordinary ensemble was completed by black elbow-gloves, leaving exposed the coloured imitation gem-stones on her fingers.
A semi-circle of playing cards, which she had apparently been studying with the aid of a lorgnette, lay before her on the crimson velvet of the table-cloth. To either side of these a skull and a stuffed raven on a plinth stood guard. A small plaque by the raven identified her as “Madame Rosa, Clairvoyante.” It would not have surprised me in the least to learn that she had a police record.
Flanking this personage sat two women, evidently there to do her bidding. One I judged to be in her fifties, a plump and respectable-looking body. The other was younger, her black velvet hat coming coquettishly to a peak at one side. I thought her a pretty witch. A half-veil obscured her features, but I heard her addressed as Miss Shelley.
Had our mission not been of possible importance to Victoria Temple, I should have burst out laughing, turned on my heel, and left. According to Holmes, this was not the first time he had been here and so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Madame Rosa favoured us with a slow nod and indicated a pair of vacant chairs in the shadows.
I will not try your patience by a full account. I was less interested in Madame Rosa than in the men and women who came to sit under her spell. Their dress and manner were sober, they behaved with decorum. Most of them might easily have changed places with a congregation at Sunday Evensong in one of the more fashionable churches of Knightsbridge or Chelsea. Even so, several were no doubt accomplices of Madame Rosa, masquerading as inquirers after spiritual truth.
Our evening began with a “photographic” seance and all the tricks of that trade. The gasolier was dimmed to a feeble glow and the spirits of the dead were summoned by Madame Rosa. She had a rather peremptory manner, like a schoolteacher calling the roll of her class. We saw no sign of the immortals, though a mysterious tapping was said to be proof of their presence. A tame photographer, his lens facing the conservatory, exposed a series of glass plates. His head was under the usual black linen hood as he did so. In order that he should not be accused of exposing his plates in advance, one of the newcomers was invited to take up any position or pose of his choice in the view of the lens.
I intervened at this point to ask that this person should also hold my copy of that evening’s
Presently, we observed the development of the glass-plate negatives in the conservatory sink by infra-red light. Who could doubt that spirits had been with us? Each image included the man holding my evening paper with headlines of the Colonial Secretary’s speech at Birmingham. But in the photograph the walls of the conservatory were decorated with cabalistic inscriptions and “spirit portraits” done by invisible fingers. Madame Rosa closed her hands together, prayer-fashion, giving thanks for these messages from beyond the grave. None of the graffiti and portraits were visible to our unaided sight. No mortal hands could have painted them there while so many witnesses were watching. To my chagrin, my newspaper had merely strengthened the imposture.
Alas, the wondrous inscriptions and portraits are explained by simple truth. It was known to Holmes and me, doubtless to Madame Rosa and her photographer, but apparently not to anyone else present. The fact is this: quinine sulphate painted on a surface is invisible to the naked eye but will appear on a photographic collodion image. Whoever staged this little drama in Kensington knew that many of the guests at the seance waited in an agony of hope for spirit messages from their departed loved ones. They would not have thanked Holmes or me for undeceiving them. Does the owner of an old master painting thank the art historian who proves it to be a forgery?
On other prints from the glass plates we marvelled at phantasmal spirits in angel robes, smiling upon the flesh-and-blood witness holding my evening newspaper. Alas, how easy it was for the cameraman, while his head was under the hood of black linen, to insert a “ghost transparency” in front of the glass plate to be exposed. Or perhaps it was possible to effect a double exposure. Since Holmes made no comment, I kept my peace. Perhaps I over-estimated the importance of the occasion. Docile though the onlookers appeared to be, they may have come for no more than the fun of the fair, as if to Jasper Maskelyne’s stage “magic” at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly.
In a finale to the first part of the performance, half-a-dozen spirit messages were miraculously revealed in chalk on sealed slates. Madame Rosa was quick to remind us that the late William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister until four years earlier, had been a believer in this art.
To the initiated, the trick is simple enough. Two blank classroom slates in wooden frames are hinged and folded to face inwards to each other. The moistened surfaces of the wooden frames are coated with white adhesive powder and pressed together. They are also locked together and sealed with a stamp on melted red wax. The metal die which has stamped the seal is then placed where everyone can see it. Any interference with the slates appears impossible.
On this occasion, the gasolier was extinguished altogether to effect a “dark seance.” Madame Rosa in her sumptuous decolletage sat holding the locked plates in her lap. We were invited to close our eyes but even with mine open I could see almost nothing by the dying glow of the gas mantels. Our hostess sat apparently motionless. She could certainly not have held a pen nor a stick of chalk.
After five minutes of invocations, the gaslight was turned up. We were able to confirm that each seal was unbroken and the lock secure. It had been impossible for our hostess to separate the two slates. Miss Shelley was then commanded to break the wax seal, open the lock, and ease apart the two gummed frames. As the light fell on the first slate it showed a faint but perfectly legible inscription in white chalk. It was written unevenly, as if with difficulty from a great distance. “Your darling little Charley still waits for you where the special flowers you loved are for ever in bloom.”
All but one guest stared at this, knowing the message was not for them. When the words were read out, however, I saw that it was Miss Shelley on her upright chair who turned her face quickly away and inclined her head. She was surely hiding her tears and my instinct told me that her grief was not a trick. I had made a mistake in her case. Because she sat next to Madame Rosa and performed small tasks for her, I had assumed that my pretty witch was one of the conspirators. I was wrong—she had been one of the dupes.
The public had not yet read the warning against slate-writing by Count Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovevo of the Society for Psychical Research, first contained in a private letter to Sherlock Holmes. A few years later, this Russian nobleman exposed the deception to the world. When two slates are to be fastened hermetically face to face, some of the white adhesive powder is left unmoistened. It is allowed to fall “accidentally” and harmlessly into a corner where the slates join. Even if it is noticed, the guests think nothing of it. In truth the mixture contains sufficient chalk to inscribe a faint but legible message—and enough iron filings to respond to the attraction of a small but efficient electro-magnet.
The right hand and fingers of the medium are easily concealed beneath the slates. Skilfully palmed, a miniature magnet attracts iron filings in the powder within the thin slate. A small amount is gathered during the dark seance. With a magnet as “pen,” words are inscribed within the slates through their underside. It takes a little practice but, as I find from experiments, a birthday-party conjuror can master the technique. The effect of “spirit- writing” on the susceptible and willing, when the seal and the lock have plainly not been tampered with, is apt to be sensational.
