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III

It was a singular thing, but so convincing had my vision been to me that I felt no immediate desire to verify the details of its setting by an examination of Gertrude's boudoir. It had come to me bearing its own credentials, its own satisfying accent of truth. One question did, however, fasten upon me, as I followed Conlon's bulky form, down the hall to Lucette's bedroom. Whence had this vision, this psychic reel come to me? What was its source? How could the mere fact of it – clearing, as it did, at least, all perplexities from my own mind – have occurred? For the moment I could find no answer; the mystery had happened, had worked, but remained a mystery.

Like most men in this modern world I had taken a vague, mild interest in psychical research, reading more or less casually, and with customary suspension of judgment, anything of the sort that came in my way. I had a bowing acquaintance with its rapidly growing literature; little more; and until now I had had no striking psychical experiences of my own, and had never, as it happened, attended a séance of any kind, either popular or scientific. Nevertheless, I could – to put it so – speak that language. I was familiar with the described phenomena, in a general way, and with the conflicting theories of its leading investigators; but I had – honestly speaking – no pet theories of my own, though always impatient of spiritistic explanations, and rather inclined to doubt, too, the persistent claim that thought transference had been incontrovertibly established. On the whole, I suppose I was inclined to favor common-sense mechanistic explanations of such phenomena, and to regard all others with alert suspicion or wearily amused contempt.

Now at last, in my life's most urgent crisis, I had had news from nowhere; now, furthermore, the being I loved and would protect, must protect, had been thrown by psychic shock into that grim borderland, the Abnormal: that land of lost voices, of the fringe of consciousness, of dissociated personalities, of morbid obsession, and wild symbolic dreams. Following on Conlon's heels, then, I entered a softly illumined room – a restrained Louis Seize room – a true Gertrude room, with its cool French-gray panelled walls; but entered there as into sinister darkness, as if groping for light. The comfortably accustomed, the predictable, I felt, lay all behind me; I must step warily henceforth among shifting shadows and phosphoric blurs. The issues were too terrifying, too vast, for even one little false move; Susan's future, the very health of her soul, might depend now upon the blundering clumsiness or the instinctive tact with which I attempted to pick and choose my way. It was with a secret shuddering of flesh and spirit that I entered that discreet, faultless room.

Susan was lying on the low single French bed, a coverlet drawn over her; they had removed her trim tailored hat, the jacket of her dark suit, and her walking-boots, leaving them on the couch by the silk-curtained windows, where they had perhaps first placed her. She had not dressed for the evening before coming up to Gertrude's; it was evidently to have been a businesslike call. Her black weblike hair – smoky, I always called it, to tease her; it never fell lank or separated into strings – had been disordered, and a floating weft of it had drifted across her forehead and hung there. Her face was moon-white, her lips pale, the lines of cheek and chin had sharpened, her eyes were closed. It was very like death. My throat tightened and ached..

Doctor Askew stood across the bed from us, looking down at her.

"Here's Mr. Hunt," said Conlon, without further introduction. "He wants to see you." Then he stepped back to the door and shut it, remaining over by it, at some distance from the bed. His silence was expressive. "Now show me!" it seemed to say. "This may be a big case for me and it may not. If not, I'm satisfied; I'm ready for anything. Go on, show me!"

Doctor Askew was not, as I had expected to find him, old; nor even middle-aged; an expectation caught, I presume, from Conlon's laconic "One of the best – a big rep"; he was, I now estimated, a year or so younger than I. I had never heard of him and knew nothing about him, but I liked him at once when he glanced humorously up at Conlon's "He wants to see you," nodded to me, and said: "I've been hoping you'd come soon, Mr. Hunt. I've a mind to try something here – if you've no objection to an experiment?"

He was a short man, not fat, but thickset like Conlon; only, with a higher-strung vitality, carrying with it a sense of intellectual eagerness and edge. He had a sandy, freckled complexion, bronzy, crisp-looking hair with reddish gleams in it, and an unmistakably red, aggressive mustache, close-clipped but untamed. Green-blue eyes. A man, I decided, of many intensities; a willful man; but thoughtful, too, and seldom unkind.

"Why did you wait for my permission?" I asked.

"I shouldn't have – much longer," he replied, his eyes returning to Susan's unchanging face. "But I've read one or two of your essays, so I know something of the feel of your mind. It occurred to me you might be useful. And besides, I badly need some information about this" – he paused briefly – "this very lovely child." Again he paused a moment, adding: "This is a singular case, Mr. Hunt – and likely to prove more singular as we see it through. I acted too impulsively in sending for Conlon; I apologize. It's not a police matter, as I at first supposed. However, I hope there's no harm done. Conlon is holding his horses and trying to be discreet. Aren't you, Conlon?"

"What's the idea?" muttered Conlon, from the doorway; Conlon was not used to being treated thus, de haut en bas. "Even if that poor little girl's crazy, we'll have to swear out a warrant for her. It's a police matter all right."

"I think not," said Doctor Askew, dismissing Conlon from the conversation. "Have you ever," he then asked me, "seen Miss Blake like this before?"

I was about to say "No!" with emphasis, when a sudden memory returned to me – the memory of a queer, crumpled little figure lying on the concrete incline of the Eureka Garage; curled up there, like an unearthed cutworm, round a shining dinner-pail. "Yes," I replied instead; "once – I think."

"You think?"

I sketched the occasion for him and explained all its implications as clearly and briefly as I could; and while I talked thus across her bed Susan's eyes did not open; she did not stir. Doctor Askew heard me out, as I felt, intently, but kept his eye meanwhile – except for a keen glance or two in my direction – on Susan's face.

"All right," he said, when I had concluded; "that throws more or less light. There's nothing to worry us, at least, in Miss Blake's condition. Under psychical trauma – shock – she has a tendency to pass into a trance state – amounting practically to one of the deeper stages of hypnosis. She'll come out of it sooner or later – simply wake up – if we leave her alone. Perhaps, after all, that's the wisest thing for us to do."

On this conclusion he walked away from the bed, as if it ended the matter, and lit a cigarette.

"Well, Conlon," he grinned, "we're making a night of it, eh? Come, let's all sit down and talk things over." He seated himself on the end of the couch as he spoke, lounging back on one elbow and crossing his knees. "I ought to tell you, Mr. Hunt," he added, "that nervous disorders are my specialty; more than that, indeed – my life! I studied under Janet in Paris, and later put in a couple of years as assistant physician in the Clinic of Psychiatry, Zurich. Did some work, too, at Vienna – with Stekel and Freud. So I needn't say a problem of this kind is simply meat and drink to me. I wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world!"

I was a little chilled by his words, by an attitude that seemed to me cold-bloodedly professional; nevertheless, I joined him, drawing up a chair, and Conlon gradually worked his way toward us, though he remained standing.

"What I want to know, doc," demanded Conlon, "is why you've changed your mind?"

"I haven't," Doctor Askew responded. "I can't have, because I haven't yet formed an opinion. I'm just beginning to – and even that may take me some time." He turned to me. "What's your theory, Mr. Hunt?"

I was prepared for this question; my mind had been busying itself foresightedly with every possible turn our conversation was likely to take. All my faculties were sharpened by strain, by my pressing sense that Susan's future, for good or evil, might somehow be linked to my lightest word. I had determined, then, in advance, not to speak in Conlon's presence of my inexplicable vision, not to mention it at all to anyone unless some unexpected turn of the wheel might make it seem expedient. I could use it to Susan's advantage, I believed, more effectively by indirection; I endeavored to do so now.

"My theory?" I queried.

"As to how Mrs. Hunt met her death. However painful, we've got to face that out, sooner or later."

"Naturally. But I have no theory," I replied; "I have an unshakable conviction."

"Ah! Which is – "

"That the whole thing was accidental, of course; just as Miss Blake affirmed it to be over the telephone."

"You believe that because she affirmed it?"

"Exactly."

"That won't go down with the coroner," struck in Conlon. "How could it? I'd like to think it, well enough – but it don't with me!"

"Wait, Conlon!" suggested Doctor Askew, sharply. "I'll conduct this inquiry just now, if you don't mind – and if Mr. Hunt will be good enough to answer."

"Why not?" I replied.

"Thank you. Conlon's point is a good one, all the same. Have you been able to form any reasonable notion of how such an accident could have occurred?"

"Yes."

"The hell you have!" exclaimed Conlon excitedly, not meaning, I think, to be sarcastic. "Why, you haven't even been in there" – he referred to Gertrude's boudoir – "or seen the body!"

"No," I responded, "but you and Doctor Askew have, so you can easily put me right. Extraordinary as the whole thing is – the one deadly chance in perhaps a million – there's nothing impossible about it. Merely from the facts you've given me, Sergeant Conlon, I can reconstruct the whole scene – come pretty near it, at any rate. But the strength of my conviction is based on other grounds – don't lose sight of that! Miss Blake didn't kill Mrs. Hunt; she's incapable of such an action; and if she didn't, no one else did. An accident is the only alternative."

"Well, then," grunted Conlon, "tell us about it! It'll take some tellin'!"

"Hold on!" exclaimed Doctor Askew before I could begin. "Sorry, Mr. Hunt – but you remember, perhaps – when you first came in – I had half a mind to try something – an experiment?" I nodded. "Well, I've made up my mind. We'll try it right now, before it's too late. If it succeeds, it may yield us a few facts to go on. Your suppositions can come afterward."

I felt, as he spoke, that something behind his words belied their rudeness, that their rudeness was rather for Conlon's benefit than for mine. He got up briskly and crossed to the bedside. There after a moment he turned and motioned us both to join him.

As we did so, tiptoeing instinctively: "Yes – this is fortunate," he said; "she's at it again. Look."

Susan still lay as I had first seen her, with shut eyes, her arms extended outside the coverlet; but she was no longer entirely motionless. Her left arm lay relaxed, the palm of her left hand upward. I had often seen her hands lie inertly thus in her lap, the palms upward, in those moments of silent withdrawal which I have more than once described. But now her right hand was turned downward, the fingers slightly contracted, as if they held a pen, and the hand was creeping slowly on the coverlet from left to right; it would creep slowly in this way for perhaps eight inches, then draw quickly back to its point of starting and repeat the manœuvre. It was uncanny, this patient repetition – over and over – of a single restricted movement.

"My God," came from Conlon in a husky whisper, "is she dyin' – or what?"

"Far from it!" said Doctor Askew, his abrupt, crisp speech in almost ludicrous contrast to Conlon's sudden awe. "Get me some paper from that desk over there, Conlon. A pad, if possible."

He drew out a pencil from his pocket as he spoke. Conlon hesitated an instant, then obeyed, tiptoeing ponderously, with creaking boots, over to a daintily appointed writing-table, and returning with a block of linen paper. Doctor Askew, meanwhile, holding the pencil between his teeth, had lifted Susan's unresisting shoulders – too roughly, I thought – from the bed.

"Stick that other pillow under her," he ordered me, sharply enough in spite of the impeding pencil. "A little farther down – so!"

Susan now lay, no less limply than before, with her trunk, shoulders, and head somewhat raised. Her right hand had ceased its slow, patient movement.

"What's the idea?" Conlon was muttering. "What's the idea, doc?"

Whatever it was, it was evident that Conlon didn't like it.

"Got the pad?" demanded Doctor Askew. "Oh, good! Here!"

He almost snatched the pad from Conlon and tore the blotter cover from it; then he slipped it beneath Susan's right palm and finally thrust his pencil between her curved fingers, its point resting on the linen block, which he steadied by holding one corner between finger and thumb. For a moment the hand remained quiet; then it began to write. I say "it" advisedly; no least trace of consciousness or purposed control could be detected in Susan's impassive face or heavily relaxed body. Susan was not writing; her waking will had no part in this strange automatism; so much, at least, was plain to me and even to Conlon.

"Mother of God," came his throaty whisper again, "it's not her that's doin' it. Who's pushin' that hand?"

"It's not sperits, Conlon," said Doctor Askew ironically; "you can take my say-so for that." With the words he withdrew the scribbled top sheet from the pad, glanced at it, and handed it to me. The hand journeyed on, covering a second sheet as I read. "That doesn't help us much, does it?" was Doctor Askew's comment, when I had devoured the first sheet.

"No," I replied; "not directly. But I'll keep this if you don't mind."

I folded the sheet and slipped it into my pocket. Doctor Askew removed the second sheet.

"Same sort of stuff," he grunted, passing it over to me. "It needs direction." And he began addressing – not Susan, to Conlon's amazement – the hand! "What happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?" he demanded firmly of the hand. "Tell us exactly what happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night! It's important. What happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?"

Always addressing the hand, his full attention fixed upon it as it moved, he repeated this burden over and over. "We must know exactly what happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night! Tell us what happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night… What happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?"

Conlon and I both noted that Susan's breathing, hitherto barely to be detected, gradually grew more labored while Doctor Askew insisted upon and pressed home his monotonous refrain. He had so placed himself now that he could follow the slowly pencilled words. More and more deliberately the hand moved; then it paused..

"What happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?" chanted Doctor Askew.

"This ain't right," muttered Conlon. "It's worse'n the third degree. I don't like it."

He creaked uneasily away. The hand moved again, hesitatingly, briefly.

"Ah," chanted Doctor Askew – always to the hand – "it was an accident, was it? How did it happen? Tell us exactly how it happened – exactly how it happened. We must know… How did the accident happen in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?"

Again the hand moved, more steadily this time, and seemingly in response to his questions.

Doctor Askew glanced up at me with an encouraging smile. "We'll get it now – all of it. Don't worry. The hand's responding to control."

Though sufficiently astonished and disturbed by this performance, I was not, like Conlon, wholly at sea. Sober accounts of automatic writing could be found in all modern psychologies; I had read some of these accounts – given with all the dry detachment of clinical data. They had interested me, not thrilled me. No supernatural power was involved. It was merely the comparative rarity of such phenomena in the ordinary normal course of experience that made them seem awe-inspiring. And yet, the hand there, solely animate, patiently writing in entire independence of a consciously directing will – ! My spine, too, like Conlon's, registered an authentic shiver of protest and atavistic fear. But, throughout, I kept my tautened wits about me, busily working; and they drove me now on a sudden inspiration to the writing-table, where I seized pen and paper and wrote down with the most collected celerity a condensed account of – for so I phrased it – "what must, from the established facts, be supposed to have taken place in Mrs. Hunt's boudoir, just after Miss Blake had entered it." I put this account deliberately as my theory of the matter, as the one solution of the problem consistent with the given facts and the known characters involved; and I had barely concluded when I was startled to my feet by Doctor Askew's voice – raised cheerily above its monotonous murmur of questions to the hand – calling my name.

"What are you up to, Mr. Hunt? My little experiment's over. It's a complete success."

He was walking toward me with a handful of loose scribbled sheets from the linen block.

"How is she now?" I inquired anxiously, as if she had just been subjected to a dangerous operation.

"All right. Deep under. I shan't try to pull her out yet. Much better for her to come out of it naturally herself. I suggest we darken the room and leave her."

"That suits me!" I just caught from Conlon, over by the door.

"She'll be quite safe alone?"

"Absolutely. I want to read this thing to Conlon and Mrs. Arthur and Mr. Phar, before the coroner gets here. I rather think they'll find it convincing."

"Good," I responded. "But, first of all, let me read them this. I've just jotted down my analysis of the whole situation. It's a piece of cold constructive reasoning from the admitted data, and I shall be greatly surprised if it doesn't on the whole agree with what you've been able to obtain."

Doctor Askew stared at me a moment curiously. "And if it doesn't agree?" he asked.

"If it don't," exclaimed Conlon, with obvious relief, "it may help us, all the same! This thing can't be settled by that kind of stuff, doc." He gave a would-be contemptuous nod toward Doctor Askew's handful of scrawled pages. "That's no evidence – whatever it says. Where does it come from? Who's givin' it? It can't be sworn to on the Book, that's certain – eh? Let's get outa here and begin to talk sense!" Conlon opened the door eagerly, and creaked off through the hall.

"Go with him," ordered Doctor Askew. "I'll put out the lights." Then he touched my elbow and gave me a slight nod. "I see your point of course. But I hope to God you've hit somewhere near it?"

"Doctor," I replied, "this account of mine is exact. I'll tell you later how I know that."

"Ah!" he grunted, with a green-blue flash of eyes. "What a lucky devil I am!.. But I've felt all along this would prove a rewarding case."

IV

Up to this point I have been necessarily thus detailed, but I am eager now to win past the cruder melodrama of this insanely disordered night. I am eager to win back from all these damnable and distracting things to Susan. This book is hers, not mine; it is certainly not Sergeant Conlon's or Doctor Askew's. So you will forgive me, and understand, if I present little more than a summary of the immediately following hours.

We found Maltby and Lucette in the drawing-room, worn out with their night-long vigil; Maltby, somnolent and savage; Lucette still keyed high, suffering from exasperated nerves which – perhaps for the first time in her life – she could not control. They were seated as far apart as the room permitted, having long since talked themselves out, and were engaged, I think, in tacitly hating one another. The situation was almost impossible; yet I knew I must dominate it somehow, and begin by dominating myself – and in the end, with Conlon's and Doctor Askew's help, I succeeded. Conlon, I confess, proved to be an unexpected ally all through.

"Now, Mrs. Arthur, and you, Mr. Phar," he stated at once as we entered the drawing-room together, "I've brought Mr. Hunt in here to read you his guess at what happened last evenin'. Doctor Askew'll be with us in a minute, and he's got somethin' to lay before you… No; Miss Blake's not come round yet. The doc'll explain about her. But we'll hear from Mr. Hunt first, see? I've examined him and I'm satisfied he's straight. You've known him long enough to form your own opinions, but that's mine. Oh, here's the doc! Go on, Mr. Hunt."

With this lead, I was at length able to persuade Lucette and Maltby to listen, sullenly enough, to my written analysis. My feeling toward them both, though better concealed, was quite as hostile as theirs toward me, but I saw that I caught their reluctant attention and that Maltby was somewhat impressed by what I had written, and by my interjected amplifications of the more salient points. I had been careful to introduce no facts not given me by Sergeant Conlon, and when I had finished, ignoring Lucette's instant murmur of impatience and incredulity, I turned to him and said: "Sergeant, is there anything known to you and not known to me – any one detail discovered during your examination of Mrs. Hunt's boudoir, say – which makes my deductions impossible or absurd?"

He reflected a moment, then acknowledged: "Well, no, Mr. Hunt. Things might 'a' happened like that; maybe they did. But just sayin' so don't prove they did!"

"May I ask you a few questions?"

"Sure."

"Had Mrs. Hunt's body been moved when you arrived? I mean, from the very spot where it fell?"

"It had and it hadn't. The doc here found her lyin' face down on the floor, right in front of the couch. He had to roll her over on her back to examine her. That's all. The body's there now like that, covered with a sheet. Nothin' else has been disturbed."

"The body was lying face down, you say?"

"Yes," struck in Doctor Askew; "it was."

"At full length?"

"Yes."

"Isn't that rather surprising?"

"Unquestionably."

"How do you account for the position?"

"There's only one possible explanation," replied Doctor Askew, as if giving expert testimony from a witness box; "a sudden and complete loss of balance, pitching the body sharply forward, accompanied by such a binding of the legs and feet as to prevent any instinctive movement toward recovery."

"Thank you. Were there any indications of such binding?"

"Yes. Mrs. Hunt's trailing draperies had somehow wound themselves tightly about her legs below the knee, and I judge her feet were further impeded by a sort of coverlet which I found touselled up on the rug beneath them."

"Grant all that!" growled Maltby. "It points to just the opposite of what we'd all like to think is true. If Mrs. Hunt had risen slowly to greet a caller in the usual way – well, she wouldn't have gotten herself tangled up. She was the last woman in the world to do anything awkwardly. But if she leaped to her feet in terror – what? To defend herself – or try to escape? Don't you see?"

"Of course we see!" cried Lucette. "It proves everything!"

"Hardly," I replied. "Try to imagine the scene, Maltby, as you seem to believe it occurred. I won't speak of the major impossibility – that Susan, a girl you've known and have asked to be your wife, could under any circumstances be the author of such a crime! We'll pass that. Simply try to picture the crime itself. Susan, showing no traces of unnatural excitement, is conducted to my wife's boudoir. She enters, shuts the door, turns, then rushes at her with so hideous an effect of insane fury that Gertrude springs up, terrified. Susan – more slightly built than Gertrude, remember! – grapples with her, tears a paper knife from her hand, and plunges it deep into her eye, penetrating the brain. Suppose, if you will, that madness lent her this force. But, obviously, for the point of the knife to enter the eye in that way, Gertrude must have been fronting Susan, her chin well raised. Obviously, the force of such a blow would have thrown her head, her whole body, backward, not forward; and if her feet were bound, as Doctor Askew says they were, she must have fallen backward or to one side, certainly not forward at full length, on her face."

"You've said somethin' this time, Mr. Hunt!" exclaimed Conlon. "There's a lot to that!"

Maltby was visibly impressed; but not Lucette. "As if," she said, "Susan wouldn't have arranged the body – afterward – in any way she thought to her advantage!"

"There wasn't time!" Doctor Askew objected impatiently. "And," he went on, "it happens that all this is futile! I have proof here, corroborating Mr. Hunt's remarkably acute theories in the most positive way."

But before reading what Susan's hand had written, he turned to Sergeant Conlon, requesting his close attention, and then gave him briefly a popular lecture on the nature of automatic writing as understood by a tough-minded neurologist with no faith in the supernatural. It was really a masterly performance in its way, for he avoided the jargon of science and cut down to essentials.

"Conlon," he said, "you've often forgotten something, tried to recall it, and finally given it up. We all have. And then some day, when you least expected it and were thinking of something else, that forgotten something has popped into your mind again – eh? All right. Where was it in the meantime, when you couldn't put your finger on it? Since it eventually came back, it must have been preserved somewhere. That's plain enough, isn't it? But when you say something you've forgotten 'pops into your mind' again, you're wrong. It's never been out of your mind. What too many of us still don't know is that a man's mind has two parts to it. One part, much the smallest, is consciousness – the part we're using now, the part we're always aware of. The other part is a big dark storehouse, where pretty much everything we've forgotten is kept. We're not aware of the storehouse or the things kept in it, so the ordinary man doesn't know anything about it. You're not aware of your spleen, and wouldn't know you had one if doctors hadn't cut up a lot of people and found spleens in every one of them. You believe you've got a spleen because we doctors tell you so. Well, I'm telling you now that your mind has a big storehouse, where most of the things you've forgotten are preserved. We mind-doctors call it your Unconscious Mind. All clear so far?.. Good.

"Now then – when a man's hypnotized, it means his conscious mind has been put to sleep, practically, and his unconscious mind has, in a sense, waked up. When a man's hypnotized we can fish all sorts of queer things from his big storehouse, his unconscious mind; things he didn't know were there, things he'd forgotten… And it's the same with what we call trances. A man in a trance is a man whose conscious mind is asleep and whose unconscious mind is awake.

"That's exactly Miss Blake's condition now. The shock of what she saw last evening threw her into a trance; she doesn't know what's going on round her – but her unconscious mind has a record, a sort of phonograph-record of more or less everything that's ever happened to her, and if she speaks or writes in this trance state she'd simply play one of these stored-up records for us; play it just like a phonograph, automatically. Her will power's out of commission, you see; in this state she's nothing more nor less than a highly complicated instrument. And the record she plays may be of no interest to anybody; some long-forgotten incident or experience of childhood, for example. On the other hand, if we can get the right record going – eh? – we've every chance of finding out exactly what we want to know!" He paused, fixing his already attentive pupil with his peculiarly vivid green-blue glance.

"Now, Conlon, get this – it's important! I must ask you to believe one other thing about the Unconscious Mind – simply take it on my say-so, as a proved fact: When the conscious mind is temporarily out of business – as under hypnotism, or in trance – the unconscious mind, like the sensitive instrument it is, will often obey or respond to outside suggestions. I can't go into all this, of course. But what I ask you to believe about Miss Blake is this: In her present state of trance, at my suggestion, she has played the right record for us! She has automatically written down for us an account of her experiences last evening. And I assure you this account, obtained in this way, is far more reliable and far more complete than any she could give us in her normal, conscious, waking state. There's nothing marvellous or weird about it, Conlon. We have here" – and he slightly rattled the loose sheets in his hand – "simply an automatic record of stored-up impressions. Do you see?"

Conlon grunted that he guessed maybe he saw; at any rate, he was willing to be shown.

Then Doctor Askew read us Susan's own story of the strange, idiotically meaningless accident to Gertrude. As it corresponded in every particular with my vision, I shall not repeat it; but it produced an enormous impression on Sergeant Conlon and Maltby, and even on Lucette. Taken in connection with my independent theory of what must have occurred, they found Susan's story entirely convincing; though whether Lucette really found it so or had suddenly decided – because of certain uncomfortable accusations against herself made by Susan's hand – that the whole matter had gone quite far enough and any further publicity would be a mistake, I must leave to your later judgment.

As for the coroner, when at length he arrived, he too – to my astonishment and unspeakable relief – accepted Susan's automatic story without delay or demur. Here was a stroke of sheer good luck, for a grateful change – but quite as senseless in itself, when seriously considered, as the cruel accident to Gertrude. It merely happened that the coroner's sister was a professional medium, and that he and his whole family were ardent believers in spiritualism, active missionaries in that cause. He had started life as an East Side street-urchin, had the coroner, and had scrambled up somehow from bondage to influence, fighting his way single-fisted through a hard school that does not often foster illusions; but I have never met a more eagerly credulous mind. He accepted the automatic writing as evidence without a moment's cavil, assuring us at once that it undoubtedly came as a direct message from the dead.