SIGHT UNSEEN AND 
 THE CONFESSION 
 
 MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 
 
THE WORKS OF 
 
 MARY ROBERTS 
 RINEHART 
 
 f/ 
 
 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 and 
 
 THE CONFESSION 
 
 THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY 
 
 Publishers NEW YORK 
 
 PfBUBHCD BT AlRAIf OBMBNT WITH G*OSG H. DOXIN COMPACT. 
 
Copyright, 
 By George H. Doran Company 
 
 Copyright, 1916, by The Ridgway Company 
 
 Copyright, 1917, by The International Magazine 
 Company 
 
 printed in the United States of America 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PA OB 
 
 SIGHT UNSEEN . . . . 9 
 
 n 
 
 THE CONFESSION ... , ; .. . 175 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 THE rather extraordinary story revealed by 
 the experiments of the Neighborhood Club 
 have been until now a matter only of private 
 record. But it seems to me, as an active partici 
 pant in the investigations, that they should be 
 given to the public; not so much for what they 
 will add to the existing data on psychical re 
 search, for from that angle they were not un 
 usual, but as yet another exploration into that 
 still uncharted territory, the human mind. 
 
 The psycho-analysts have taught us something 
 about the individual mind. They have their own 
 patter, of complexes and primal instincts, of the 
 unconscious,, which is a sort of bonded warehouse 
 from which we clandestinely withdraw our stored 
 thoughts and impressions. They lay to this un- 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 conscious mind of ours all phenomena that can 
 not otherwise be labeled, and ascribe such demon 
 strations of power as cannot thus be explained 
 to trickery., to black silk threads and folding rods, 
 to slates with false sides and a medium with chalk 
 on his finger nail. 
 
 In other words, they give us subjective mind 
 but never objective mind. They take the mind 
 and its reactions on itself and on the body. But 
 what about objective mind? Does it make its 
 only outward manifestations through speech and 
 action? Can we ignore the effect of mind on 
 mind, when there are present none of the ordi 
 nary media of communication? I think not. 
 
 In making the following statement concerning 
 our part in the strange case of Arthur Wells, a 
 certain allowance must be made for our ignorance 
 of so-called psychic phenomena, and also for the 
 fact that since that time, just before the war, 
 great advances have been made in scientific 
 methods of investigation. For instance, we did 
 not place Miss Jeremy s chair on a scale, to meas 
 ure for any loss of weight. Also the theory of 
 rods of invisible matter emanating from the 
 medium s body,, to move bodies at a distance 
 from her, had only been evolved; and none of 
 the methods for calculation of leverages and 
 strains had been formulated, so far as I know. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 11 
 
 To be frank, I am quite convinced that, even 
 had we known of these so-called explanations, 
 which in reality explain nothing, we would have 
 ignored them as we became involved in the dra 
 matic movement of the revelations and the per 
 sonal experiences which grew out of them. I 
 confess that following the night after the first 
 seance any observations of mine would have been 
 of no scientific value whatever, and I believe I 
 can speak for the others also. 
 
 Of the medium herself I can only say that w r e 
 have never questioned her integrity. The phys 
 ical phenomena occurred before she went into 
 trance, and during that time her forearms were 
 rigid. During the deep trance, with which this 
 unusual record deals, she spoke in her own voice,, 
 but in a querulous tone, and Sperry s examina 
 tion of her pulse showed that it went from eighty 
 normal to a hundred and twenty and very feeble. 
 
 With this preface I come to the death of 
 Arthur Wells, our acquaintance and neighbor, 
 and the investigation into that death by a group 
 of six earnest people who call themselves the 
 Neighborhood Club. 
 
 ******** 
 
 The Neighborhood Club was organized in my 
 house. It was too small really to be called a club, 
 but women have a way these days of conferring 
 
12 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 a titular dignity on their activities, and it is not 
 so bad, after all. The Neighborhood Club it 
 really was, composed of four of our neighbors, 
 my wife, and myself. 
 
 We had drifted into the habit of dining to 
 gether on Monday evenings at the different 
 houses. There were Herbert Robinson and his 
 sister Alice not a young woman, but clever, 
 alert, and very alive; Sperry, the well-known 
 heart specialist, a bachelor still in spite of much 
 feminine activity; and there was old Mrs. Dane, 
 hopelessly crippled as to the knees with rheu 
 matism, but one of those glowing and kindly souls 
 that have a way of being a neighborhood nucleus. 
 It was around her that we first gathered, with an 
 idea of forming for her certain contact points 
 with the active life from which she was other 
 wise cut off. But she gave us, I am sure, more 
 than we brought her, and, as will be seen later, 
 her shrewdness was an important element in 
 solving our mystery. 
 
 In addition to these four there were my wife 
 and myself. 
 
 It had been our policy to take up different sub 
 jects for these neighborhood dinners. Sperry 
 was a reformer in his way, and on his nights we 
 generally took up civic questions. He was par 
 ticularly interested in the responsibility of the 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 13 
 
 state to the sick poor. My wife and I had "po 
 litical" evenings. Not really politics, except in 
 their relation to life. I am a lawyer by profes 
 sion, and dabble a bit in city government. The 
 Robinsons had literature. 
 
 Don t misunderstand me. We had no papers, 
 no set programs. On the Robinson evenings we 
 discussed editorials and current periodicals, as 
 well as the new books and plays. We were fre 
 quently acrimonious, I fear, but our small 
 wrangles ended with the evening. Robinson was 
 the literary editor of a paper, and his sister read 
 for a large publishing house. 
 
 Mrs. Dane was a free-lance. "Give me that 
 privilege/ she begged. "At least, until you find 
 my evenings dull. It gives me, during all the 
 week before you come,, a sort of thrilling feeling 
 that the world is mine to choose from/ The 
 result was never dull. She led us all the way 
 from moving-pictures to modern dress. She led 
 us even further, as you will see. 
 
 On consulting my note-book I find that the first 
 evening which directly concerns the Arthur 
 Wells case was Monday, November the second, 
 of last year. 
 
 It was a curious day, to begin with. There 
 come days, now and then, that bring with them 
 a strange sort of mental excitement. I have 
 
14 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 never analyzed them. With me on this occasion 
 it took the form of nervous irritability, and some 
 thing of apprehension. My wife, I remember, 
 complained of headache, and one of the stenog 
 raphers had a fainting attack. 
 
 I have often wondered for how much of what 
 happened to Arthur Wells the day was responsi 
 ble. There are days when the world is a place 
 for love and play and laughter. And then there 
 are sinister days,, when the earth is a hideous 
 place, when even the thought of immortality is 
 unbearable, and life itself a burden; when all 
 that is riotous and unlawful comes forth and 
 bares itself to the light. 
 
 This was such a day. 
 
 I am fond of my friends, but I found no 
 pleasure in the thought of meeting them that 
 evening. I remembered the odious squeak in the 
 wheels of Mrs. Dane s chair. I resented the way 
 Sperry would clear his throat. I read in the 
 morning paper Herbert Robinson s review of a 
 book I had liked, and disagreed with him. Disa 
 greed violently. I wanted to call him on the tele 
 phone and tell him that he was a fool. I felt old, 
 although I am only fifty-three, old and bitter, and 
 tired. 
 
 With the fall of twilight, things changed some 
 what. I was more passive. Wretchedness en- 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 15 
 
 compassed me, but I was not wretched. There 
 was violence in the air, but I was not violent. 
 And with a bath and my dinner clothes I put away 
 the horrors of the day. 
 
 My wife was better, but the cook had given 
 notice. 
 
 There has been quarreling among the serv 
 ants all day,/* my wife said. "I wish I could 
 go and live on a desert island." 
 
 We have no children, and my wife, for lack 
 of other interests, finds her housekeeping an en 
 grossing and serious matter. She is in the habit 
 of bringing her domestic difficulties to me when 
 I reach home in the evenings, a habit which some 
 times renders me unjustly indignant. Most un 
 justly, for she has borne with me for thirty years 
 and is known throughout the entire neighborhood 
 as a perfect housekeeper. I can close my eyes 
 and find any desired article in my bedroom at 
 any time. 
 
 We passed the Wellses house on our way to 
 Mrs. Dane s that night, and my wife commented 
 on the dark condition of the lower floor. 
 
 "Even if they are going out," she said, "it 
 would add to the appearance of the street to leave 
 a light or two burning. But some people have 
 no public feeling." 
 
 I made no comment, I believe. The Wellses 
 
16 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 were a young couple, with children, and had been 
 known to observe that they considered the neigh 
 borhood "stodgy." And we had retaliated, I re 
 gret to say, in kind, but not with any real unkind- 
 ness, by regarding them as interlopers. They 
 drove too many cars, and drove them too fast; 
 they kept a governess and didn t see enough of 
 their children; and their English butler made 
 our neat maids look commonplace. 
 
 There is generally, in every old neighborhood, 
 some one house on which is fixed, so to speak, 
 the community gaze, and in our case it was on 
 the Arthur Wellses . It was a curious, not un 
 friendly staring, much I daresay like that of the 
 old robin who sees two young wild canaries build 
 ing near her. 
 
 We passed the house, and went on to Mrs. 
 Dane s. 
 
 She had given us no inkling of what we were 
 to have that night, and my wife conjectured a 
 conjurer ! She gave me rather a triumphant smile 
 when we were received in the library and the 
 doors into the drawing-room were seen to be 
 tightly closed. 
 
 We were early, as my wife is a punctual per 
 son, and soon after our arrival Sperry came. 
 Mrs. Dane was in her chair as usual, with her 
 companion in attendance, and when she heard 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 17 
 
 Sperry s voice outside she excused herself and 
 was wheeled out to him,, and together we heard 
 them go into the drawing-room. When the Rob 
 insons arrived she and Sperry reappeared, and 
 we waited for her customary announcement of 
 the evening s program. When none came, even 
 during the meal, I confess that my curiosity was 
 almost painful. 
 
 I think, looking back, that it was Sperry who 
 turned the talk to the supernatural, and that, to 
 the accompaniment of considerable gibing by 
 the men, he told a ghost story that set the women 
 to looking back over their shoulders into the dark 
 corners beyond the zone of candle-light. All of 
 us, I remember, except Sperry and Mrs. Dane, 
 were skeptical as to the supernatural, and Her 
 bert Robin? on believed that while there were so- 
 called sensitives who actually went into trance, 
 the controls which took possession of them were 
 buried personalities of their own, released during 
 trance from the sub-conscious mind. 
 
 "If not," he said truculently, "if they are really 
 spirits, why can t they tell us what is going on, 
 not in some vague place where they are always 
 happy, but here and now, in the next house? I 
 don t ask for prophecy, but for some evidence of 
 their knowledge. Are the Germans getting ready 
 
18 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 to fight England? Is Horace here the gay dog 
 some of us suspect?" 
 
 As I am the Horace in question, I must explain 
 that Herbert was merely being facetious. My 
 life is a most orderly and decorous one. But my 
 wife, unfortunately, lacks a sense of humor, and 
 I felt that the remark might have been more 
 fortunate. 
 
 "Physical phenomena !" scoffed the cynic. 
 "I ve seen it all objects moving without visible 
 hands, unexplained currents of cold air, voice 
 through a trumpet I know the whole rotten 
 mess, and I ve got a book which tells how to do 
 all the tricks. I ll bring it along some night." 
 
 Mrs. Dane smiled, and the discussion was 
 dropped for a time. It was during the coffee 
 and cigars that Mrs. Dane made her announce 
 ment. As Alice Robinson takes an after-dinner 
 cigarette, a custom my wife greatly deplores, the 
 ladies had remained with us at the table. 
 
 "As a matter of fact, Herbert," she said, "we 
 intend to put your skepticism to the test tonight. 
 Doctor Sperry has found a medium for us,, a non- 
 professional and a patient of his, and she has 
 kindly consented to give us a sitting." 
 
 Herbert wheeled and looked at Sperry. 
 
 "Hold up your right hand and state by your 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 19 
 
 honor as a member in good standing- that you 
 have not primed her, Sperry." 
 
 Sperry held up his hand. 
 
 "Absolutely not," he said, gravely. "She is 
 coming in my car. She doesn t know to what 
 house or whose. She knows none of you. She 
 is a stranger to the city, and she will not even 
 recognize the neighborhood." 
 
 II 
 
 The butler wheeled out Mrs. Dane s chair, as 
 her companion did not dine with her on club 
 nights, and led us to the drawing-room doors. 
 There Sperry threw them open, and we saw that 
 the room had been completely metamorphosed. 
 
 Mrs. Dane s drawing-room is generally rather 
 painful. Kindly soul that she is, she has consid 
 ered it necessary to preserve and exhibit there 
 the many gifts of a long lifetime. Photographs 
 long outgrown, onyx tables., a clutter of odd 
 chairs and groups of discordant bric-a-brac 
 usually make the progress of her chair through 
 it a precarious and perilous matter. We paused 
 in the doorway, startled. 
 
 The room had been dismantled. It opened be 
 fore us, walls and chimney-piece bare, rugs gone 
 from the floor, even curtains taken from the win- 
 
20 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 dows. To emphasize the change, in the center 
 stood a common pine table, surrounded by seven 
 plain chairs. All the lights were out save one, a 
 corner bracket, which was screened with a red- 
 paper shade. 
 
 She watched our faces with keen satisfaction. 
 "Such a time I had doing it!" she said. "The 
 servants, of course,, think I have gone mad. All 
 except Clara. I told her. She s a sensible girl." 
 
 Herbert chuckled. 
 
 "Very neat," he said, "although a chair or two 
 for the spooks would have been no more than 
 hospitable. All right Now bring on your 
 ghosts." 
 
 My wife,, however, looked slightly displeased. 
 "As a church-woman," she said, "I really feel 
 that it is positively impious to bring back the souls 
 of the departed, before they are called from on 
 High." 
 
 "Oh, rats," Herbert broke in rudely. "They ll 
 not come. Don t worry. And if you hear raps, 
 don t worry. It will probably be the medium 
 cracking the joint of her big toe." 
 
 There was still a half hour until the medium s 
 arrival. At Mrs. Dane s direction we employed 
 it in searching the room. It was the ordinary 
 rectangular drawing-room, occupying a corner 
 of the house. Two windows at the end faced 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 21 
 
 on the street, with a patch of railed-in lawn be 
 neath them. A fire-place with a dying fire and 
 flanked by two other windows, occupied the long 
 side opposite the door into the hall. These win 
 dows., opening on a garden, were closed by outside 
 shutters, now bolted. The third side was a blank 
 wall, beyond which lay the library. On the fourth 
 side were the double doors into the hall. 
 
 As, although the results we obtained were 
 far beyond any expectations, the purely physical 
 phenomena were relatively insignificant, it is not 
 necessary to go further into the detail of the 
 room. Robinson has done that, anyhow, for the 
 Society of Psychical Research, a proceeding to 
 which I was opposed, as will be understood by 
 the close of the narrative. 
 
 Further to satisfy Mrs. Dane, we examined the 
 walls and floor-boards carefully, and Herbert, 
 armed with a candle, went down to the cellar and 
 investigated from below, returning to announce 
 in a loud voice which made us all jump that it 
 seemed all clear enough down there. After that 
 we sat and waited, and I daresay the bareness 
 and darkness of the room put us into excellent 
 receptive condition. I know that I myself, prob 
 ably owing to an astigmatism, once or twice felt 
 that I saw wavering shadows in corners, and I 
 felt again some of the strangeness I had felt dur- 
 
22 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 ing the day. We spoke in whispers, and Alice 
 Robinson recited the history of a haunted house 
 where she had visited in England. But Herbert 
 was still cynical. He said, I remember : 
 
 "Here we are, six intelligent persons of above 
 the average grade, and in a few minutes our hair 
 will be rising and our pulses hammering while a 
 Choctaw Indian control, in atrocious English, 
 will tell us she is happy and we are happy and so 
 everybody s happy. Hanky panky !" 
 
 "You may be as skeptical as you please, if you 
 will only be fair, Herbert," Mrs. Dane said. 
 
 "And by that you mean " 
 
 "During the sitting keep an open mind and a 
 closed mouth," she replied,, cheerfully. 
 
 As I said at the beginning, this is not a ghost 
 story. Parts of it we now understand, other 
 parts we do not. For the physical phenomena we 
 have no adequate explanation. They occurred. 
 We saw and heard them. For the other part of 
 the seance we have come to a conclusion satisfac 
 tory to ourselves, a conclusion not reached, how 
 ever, until some of us had gone through some 
 dangerous experiences, and had been brought 
 into contact with things hitherto outside the 
 orderly progression of our lives. 
 
 But at no time, although incredible things hap 
 pened, did any one of us glimpse that strange 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 23 
 
 world of the spirit that seemed so often almost 
 within our range of vision. 
 
 Miss Jeremy, the medium., was due at 8:30 and 
 at 8:20 my wife assisted Mrs. Dane into one of 
 the straight chairs at the table, and Sperry, sent 
 out by her, returned with a darkish bundle in 
 his arms, and carrying a light bamboo rod. 
 
 "Don t ask me what they are for," he said to 
 Herbert s grin of amusement. "Every work 
 man has his tools." 
 
 Herbert examined the rod, but it was what it 
 appeared to be, and nothing else. 
 
 Some one had started the phonograph in the 
 library, and it was playing gloomily, "Shall we 
 meet beyond the river?" At Sperry s request 
 we stopped talking and composed ourselves, and 
 Herbert, I remember, took a tablet of some sort, 
 to our intense annoyance, and crunched it in his 
 teeth. Then Miss Jeremy came in. 
 
 She was not at all what we had expected. 
 Twenty-six, I should say, and in a black dinner 
 dress. She seemed like a perfectly normal young 
 woman, even attractive in a fragile., delicate way. 
 Not much personality, perhaps; the very word 
 "medium" precludes that. A "sensitive," I think 
 she called herself. We were presented to her, 
 and but for the stripped and bare room, it might 
 
24 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 have been any evening after any dinner, with 
 bridge waiting. 
 
 When she shook hands with me she looked at 
 me keenly. "What a strange day it has been!" 
 she said. "I have been very nervous. I only 
 hope I can do what you want this evening." 
 
 "I am not at all sure what we do want, Miss 
 Jeremy," I replied. 
 
 She smiled a qukk smile that was not without 
 humor. Somehow I had never thought of a me 
 dium with a sense of humor. I liked her at once. 
 We all liked her, and Sperry, Sperry the bachelor, 
 the iconoclast, the anti feminist, was staring at 
 her with curiously intent eyes. 
 
 Following her entrance Herbert had closed and 
 bolted the drawing-room doors, and as an added 
 precaution he now drew Mrs. Dane s empty 
 wheeled chair across them. 
 
 "Anything that comes in," he boasted, "will 
 come through the keyhole or down the chimney." 
 And then, eying the fireplace, he deliberately took 
 a picture from the wall and set it on the fender. 
 
 Miss Jeremy gave the room only the most 
 casual of glances. 
 
 "Where shall I sit?" she asked. 
 
 Mrs. Dane indicated her place, and she asked 
 for a small stand to be brought in and placed 
 about two feet behind her chair, and two chairs 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 25 
 
 to flank it, and then to take the black cloth from 
 the table and hang it over the bamboo rod, which 
 was laid across the backs of the chairs. Thus 
 arranged, the curtain formed a low screen be 
 hind her, with the stand beyond it. On this stand 
 we placed, at her order, various articles from 
 our pockets I a fountain pen, Sperry a knife; 
 and my wife contributed a gold bracelet. 
 
 We all felt, I fancy, rather absurd. Herbert s 
 smile in the dim light became a grin. "The same 
 old thing!" he whispered to me. "Watch her 
 closely. They do it with a folding rod." 
 
 We arranged between us that we were to sit 
 one on each side of her, and Sperry warned me 
 not to let go of her hand for a moment. "They 
 have a way of switching hands.," he explained in 
 a whisper. "If she wants to scratch her nose I ll 
 scratch it." 
 
 We were, we discovered, not to touch the table, 
 but to sit around it at a distance of a few inches, 
 holding hands and thus forming the circle. And 
 for twenty minutes we sat thus, and nothing hap 
 pened. She was fully conscious and even spoke 
 once or twice, and at last she moved impatiently 
 and told us to put our hands on the table. 
 
 I had put my opened watch on the table before 
 me, a night watch with a luminous dial. At five 
 minutes after nine I felt the top of the table 
 
26 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 waver under my fingers, a curious, fluid-like 
 motion. 
 
 "The table is going to move," I said. 
 
 Herbert laughed,, a dry little chuckle. "Sure 
 it is," he said. "When we all get to acting to 
 gether, it will probably do considerable moving. 
 I feel what you feel. It s flowing under my 
 fingers." 
 
 "Blood," said Sperry. "You fellows feel the 
 blood moving through the ends of your fingers. 
 That s all. Don t be impatient." 
 
 However, curiously enough, the table did not 
 move. Instead, my watch, before my eyes, slid 
 to the edge of the table and dropped to the floor, 
 and almost instantly an object, which we recog 
 nized later as Sperry s knife,, was flung over the 
 curtain and struck the wall behind Mrs. Dane 
 violently. 
 
 One of the women screamed, ending in a hys 
 terical giggle. Then we heard rhythmic beating 
 on the top of the stand behind the medium. 
 Startling as it was at the beginning, increasing as 
 it did from a slow beat to an incredibly rapid 
 drumming, when the initial shock was over Her 
 bert commenced to gibe. 
 
 "Your fountain pen, Horace," he said to me. 
 "Making out a statement for services rendered, 
 by its eagerness." 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 27 
 
 The answer to that was the pen itself, aimed at 
 him with apparent accuracy, and followed by an 
 outcry from him. 
 
 "Here, stop it !" he said. "I ve got ink all over 
 me!" 
 
 We laughed consumedly. The sitting had 
 taken on all the attributes of practical joking. 
 The table no longer quivered under my hands. 
 
 "Please be sure you are holding my hands 
 tight. Hold them very tight," said Miss Jeremy. 
 Her voice sounded faint and far away. Her head 
 was dropped forward on her chest, and she sud 
 denly sagged in her chair. Sperry broke the 
 circle and coming to her, took her pulse. It was, 
 he reported, very rapid. 
 
 "You can move and talk now if you like/ he 
 said. "She s in trance, and there will be no more 
 physical demonstrations." 
 
 Mrs. Dane was the first to speak. I was look 
 ing for my fountain pen, and Herbert was again 
 examining the stand. 
 
 "I believe it now," Mrs. Dane said. "I saw 
 your watch go, Horace, but tomorrow I won t 
 believe it at all." 
 
 "How about your companion ?" I asked. "Can 
 she take shorthand? We ought to have a record." 
 
 "Probably not in the dark." 
 
 "We can have some light now," Sperry said. 
 
28 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 There was a sort of restrained movement in 
 the room now. Herbert turned on a bracket light,, 
 and I moved away the roller chair. 
 
 "Go and get Clara, Horace/ Mrs. Dane said 
 to me, "and have her bring a note-book and 
 pencil/ Nothing, I believe, happened during my 
 absence. Miss Jeremy was sunk in her chair and 
 breathing heavily when I came back with Clara, 
 and Sperry was still watching her pulse. Sud 
 denly my wife said: 
 
 "Why, look ! She s wearing my bracelet !" 
 
 This proved to be the case, and was, I regret to 
 say, the cause of a most unjust suspicion on my 
 wife s part. Even today, with all the knowledge 
 she possesses, I am certain that Mrs. Johnson be 
 lieves that some mysterious power took my watch 
 and dragged it off the table, and threw the pen, 
 but that I myself under cover of darkness placed 
 her bracelet on Miss Jeremy s arm. I can only 
 reiterate here what I have told her many times, 
 that I never touched the bracelet after it was 
 placed on the stand. 
 
 "Take down everything that happens, Clara, 
 and all we say," Mrs. Dane said in a low tone. 
 "Even if it sounds like nonsense, put it down." 
 
 It is because Clara took her orders literally 
 that I am making this more readable version of 
 her script. There was a certain amount of non- 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 29 
 
 pertinent matter which would only cloud the 
 statement if rendered word for word,, and also 
 certain scattered, unrelated words with which 
 many of the statements terminated. For in 
 stance, at the end of the sentence, "Just above 
 the ear/ came a number of rhymes to the final 
 word,, "dear, near, fear, rear, cheer, three 
 cheers." These I have cut, for the sake of clear 
 ness. 
 
 For some five minutes, perhaps, Miss Jeremy 
 breathed stertorously, and it was during that in 
 terval that we introduced Clara and took up our 
 positions. Sperry sat near the medium now, hav 
 ing changed places with Herbert, and the rest of 
 us were as we had been, save that we no longer 
 touched hands. Suddenly Miss Jeremy began to 
 breathe more quietly, and to move about in her 
 chair. Then she sat upright. 
 
 "Good evening, friends," she said. "I am glad 
 to see you all again." 
 
 I caught Herbert s eye,, and he grinned. 
 
 "Good evening, little Bright Eyes," he said. 
 "How s everything in the happy hunting ground 
 tonight?" 
 
 "Dark and cold," she said, "Dark and cold. 
 And the knee hurts. It s very bad. If the key 
 is on the nail Arnica will take the pain out." 
 
 She lapsed into silence. In transcribing Clara s 
 
30 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 record I shall make no reference to these pauses, 
 which were frequent, and occasionally filled in 
 with extraneous matter. For instance, once 
 there was what amounted to five minutes of 
 Mother Goose jingles. Our method was simply 
 one of question, by one of ourselves, and of an 
 swer by Miss Jeremy. These replies were usually 
 in a querulous tone, and were often apparently 
 unwilling. Also occasionally there was a bit of 
 vernacular,, as in the next reply. Herbert, who 
 was still flippantly amused, said : 
 
 "Don t bother about your knee. Give us some 
 local stuff. Gossip. If you can." 
 
 "Sure I can, and it will make your hair curl/ 
 iThen suddenly there was a sort of dramatic 
 pause and then an outburst. 
 
 "He s dead." 
 
 "Who is dead?" Sperry asked, with his voice 
 drawn a trifle thin. 
 
 "A bullet just above the ear. That s a bad 
 place. Thank goodness there s not much blood. 
 Cold water will take it out of the carpet. Not 
 hot. Not hot. Do you want to set the stain?" 
 
 "Look here," Sperry said, looking around the 
 table. "I don t like this. It s darned grisly." 
 
 "Oh, fudge!" Herbert put in irreverently. 
 "Let her rave, or it, or whatever it is. Do you 
 mean that a man is dead?" to the medium. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 31 
 
 "Yes. She has the revolver. She needn t cry 
 so. He was cruel to her. He was a beast. 
 Sullen," 
 
 "Can you see the woman?" I asked. 
 
 "If it s sent out to be cleaned it will cause 
 trouble. Hang it in the closet." 
 
 Herbert muttered something about the movies 
 having nothing on us, and was angrily hushed. 
 There was something quite outside of Miss 
 Jeremy s words that had impressed itself on all 
 of us with a sense of unexpected but very real 
 tragedy. As I look back I believe it was a sort 
 of desperation in her voice. But then came one 
 of those interruptions which were to annoy us 
 considerably during the series of sittings; she be 
 gan to recite Childe Harold. 
 
 When that was over, 
 
 "Now then," Sperry said in a businesslike 
 voice, "you see a dead man, and a young woman 
 with him. Can you describe the room?" 
 
 "A small room, his dressing-room. He was 
 shaving. There is still lather on his face." 
 
 "And the woman killed him?" 
 
 "I don t know. Oh, I don t know. No, she 
 didn t. He did it!" 
 
 "He did it himself?" 
 
 There was no answer to that, but a sort of 
 sulky silence. 
 
32 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "Are you getting this, Clara?" Mrs. Dane 
 asked sharply. " Don t miss a word. Who 
 knows what this may develop into ?" 
 
 I looked at the secretary, and it was clear that 
 she was terrified. I got up and took my chair 
 to her. Coming back, I picked up my forgotten 
 watch from the floor. It was still going, and the 
 hands marked nine-thirty. 
 
 "Now," Sperry said in a soothing tone, "you 
 said there was a shot fired and a man was killed. 
 Where was this? What house?" 
 
 "Two shots. One is in the ceiling of the dress 
 ing-room." 
 
 "And the other killed him?" 
 
 But here, instead of a reply we got the words, 
 "library paste." 
 
 Quite without warning the medium groaned, 
 and Sperry believed the trance was over. 
 
 "She s coming out," he said. "A glass of. 
 wine, somebody." But she did not come out. In 
 stead, she twisted in the chair. 
 
 "He s so heavy to lift," she muttered. Then : 
 "Get the lather off his face. The lather. The 
 lather." 
 
 She subsided into the chair and began to 
 breathe with difficulty. "I want to go out. I 
 want air. If I could only go to sleep and forget 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 33 
 
 it. The drawing-room furniture is scattered over 
 the house." 
 
 This last sentence she repeated over and over. 
 It got on our nerves, ragged already. 
 
 "Can you tell us about the house?" 
 
 There was a distinct pause. Then : "Certainly. 
 A brick house. The servants entrance is locked, 
 but the key is on a nail, among the vines. All the 
 drawing-room furniture is scattered through the 
 house." 
 
 "She must mean the furniture of this room," 
 Mrs. Dane whispered. 
 
 The remainder of the sitting was chaotic. The 
 secretary s notes consist of unrelated words and 
 often childish verses. On going over the notes 
 the next day, when the stenographic record had 
 been copied on a typewriter, Sperry and I found 
 that one word recurred frequently. The word 
 
 \vas "curtain." 
 
 Of the extraordinary event that followed the 
 breaking up of the seance, I have the keenest rec 
 ollection. Miss Jeremy came out of her trance 
 weak and looking extremely ill, and Sperry s mo 
 tor took her home. She knew nothing of what 
 had happened, and hoped we had been satisfied. 
 By agreement, we did not tell her what had trans 
 pired, and she was not curious. 
 
 Herbert saw her to the car, and came back, 
 
34 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 looking grave. We were standing together in 
 the center of the dismantled room, with the lights 
 going full now. 
 
 "Well/ he said, "it is one of two things. 
 Either we ve been gloriously faked, or we ve been 
 let in on a very tidy little crime." 
 
 It was Mrs. Dane s custom to serve a Southern 
 eggnog as a sort of stir-up-cup nightcap, she 
 calls it on her evenings, and we found it waiting 
 for us in the library. In the warmth of its open 
 fire, and the cheer of its lamps, even in the dignity 
 and impassiveness of the butler, there was some 
 thing sane and wholesome. The women of the 
 party reacted quickly, but I looked over to see 
 Sperry at a corner desk, intently working over a 
 small object in the palm of his hand. 
 
 He started when he heard me, then laughed 
 and held out his hand. 
 
 "Library paste !" he said. "It rolls into a soft, 
 malleable ball. It could quite easily be used to 
 fill a small hole in plaster. The paper would 
 paste down over it, too." 
 
 "Then you think ?" 
 
 "I m not thinking at all. The thing she de 
 scribed may have taken place in Timbuctoo. May 
 have happened ten years ago. May be the plot 
 of some book she has read." 
 
 "On the other hand," I replied, "it is just pos- 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 35 
 
 sible that it was here, in this neighborhood, while 
 
 we were sitting in that room." 
 
 "Have you any idea of the time?" 
 
 "I know exactly. It was half-past nine." 
 
 in 
 
 At midnight, shortly after we reached home, 
 Sperry called me on the phone. "Be careful, 
 Horace," he said. "Don t let Mrs. Horace think 
 anything has happened. I want to see you at 
 once. Suppose you say I have a patient in a bad 
 way, and a will to be drawn." 
 
 I listened to sounds from upstairs. I heard 
 my wife go into her room and close the door. 
 
 "Tell me something about it," I urged. 
 
 "Just this. Arthur Wells killed himself to 
 night, shot himself in the head. I want you to go 
 there with me." 
 
 "Arthur Wells!" 
 
 "Yes. I say, Horace, did you happen to no 
 tice the time the seance began tonight?" 
 
 "It was five minutes after nine when my watch 
 fell." 
 
 "Then it would have been about half past when 
 the trance began?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
36 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 There was a silence at Sperry s end of the wire. 
 Then: 
 
 "He was shot about 9:30," he said, and rang 
 off. 
 
 I am not ashamed to confess that my hands 
 shook as I hung up the receiver. A brick house, 
 she had said ; the Wells house was brick. And so 
 were all the other houses on the street. Vines in 
 the back? Well, even my own house had vines. 
 It was absurd ; it was pure coincidence ; it was 
 well, I felt it was queer. 
 
 Nevertheless, as I stood there, I wondered for 
 the first time in a highly material existence, 
 whether there might not be, after all, a spirit- 
 world surrounding us, cognizant of all that we 
 did, touching but intangible, sentient but tuned 
 above our common senses? 
 
 I stood by the prosaic telephone instrument and 
 looked into the darkened recesses of the passage. 
 It seemed to my disordered nerves that back of 
 the coats and wraps that hung on the rack, beyond 
 the heavy curtains, in every corner, there lurked 
 vague and shadowy forms, invisible when I 
 stared, but advancing a trifle from their obscurity 
 when, by turning my head and looking ahead, they 
 impinged on the extreme right or left of my field 
 of vision. 
 
 I was shocked by the news,, but not greatly 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 37 
 
 grieved. The Wellses had been among us but 
 not of us, as I have said. They had come, like 
 gay young comets, into our orderly constellation, 
 trailing behind them their cars and servants, their 
 children and governesses and rather riotous 
 friends, and had flashed on us in a sort of bright 
 impermanence. 
 
 Of the two, I myself had preferred Arthur. 
 His faults were on the surface. He drank hard, 
 gambled,, and could not always pay his gambling 
 debts. But underneath it all there had always 
 been something boyishly honest about him. He 
 had played, it is true, through most of the thirty 
 years that now marked his whole life, but he could 
 have been made a man by the right woman. And 
 he had married the wrong one. 
 
 Of Elinor Wells I have only my wife s verdict, 
 and I have found that, as is the way with many 
 good women, her judgments of her own sex are 
 rather merciless. A tall, handsome girl, very 
 dark, my wife has characterized her as cold, cal 
 culating and ambitious. She has said frequently, 
 too, that Elinor Wells was a disappointed woman, 
 that her marriage, while giving her social iden 
 tity, had disappointed her in a monetary way. 
 Whether that is true or not, there was no doubt, 
 by the time they had lived in our neighborhood 
 
38 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 for a year, that a complication had arisen in the 
 shape of another man. 
 
 My wife, on my return from my office in the 
 evening, had been quite likely to greet me with : 
 
 "Horace, he has been there all afternoon. I 
 really think something should be done about it." 
 
 "Who has been where?" I would ask, I am 
 afraid not too patiently. 
 
 "You know perfectly well. And I think you 
 ought to tell him." 
 
 In spite of her vague pronouns, I understood, 
 and in a more masculine way I shared her sense 
 of outrage. Our street has never had a scandal 
 on it,, except the one when the Berringtons music 
 teacher ran away with their coachman, in the 
 days of carriages. And I am glad to say that 
 that is almost forgotten. 
 
 Nevertheless,, we had realized for some time 
 that the dreaded triangle was threatening the 
 repute of our quiet neighborhood, and as I stood 
 by the telephone that night I saw that it had come. 
 More than that, it seemed very probable that into 
 this very triangle our peaceful Neighborhood 
 Club had been suddenly thrust. 
 
 My wife accepted my excuse coldly. She dis 
 likes intensely the occasional outside calls of my 
 profession. She merely observed, however, that 
 she would leave all the lights on until my return. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 39 
 
 "I should think you could arrange things better, 
 Horace," she added. "It s perfectly idiotic the 
 way people die at night. And tonight, of all 
 nights!" 
 
 I shall have to confess that through all of the 
 thirty years of our married life my wife has 
 clung to the belief that I am a bit of a dog. 
 Thirty years of exemplary living have not af 
 fected this conviction, nor had Herbert s foolish 
 remark earlier in the evening helped matters. 
 But she watched me put on my overcoat without 
 further comment. When I kissed her good-night, 
 however, she turned her cheek. 
 
 The street, with its open spaces, was a relief 
 after the dark hall. I started for Sperry s house, 
 my head bent against the wind, my mind on the 
 news I had just heard. Was it, I wondered, just 
 possible that we had for some reason been al 
 lowed behind the veil which covered poor Wells 
 last moments? And, to admit that for a mo 
 ment, where would what we had heard lead us ? 
 Sperry had said he had killed himself. But 
 suppose he had not? 
 
 I realize now, looking back, that my recollec 
 tion of the other man in the triangle is largely 
 colored by the fact that he fell in the great war. 
 At that time I hardly knew him, except as a 
 wealthy and self-made man in his late thirties; 
 
40 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 I saw him now and then, in the club playing bil 
 liards or going in and out of the Wells house, a 
 large, fastidiously dressed man, strong featured 
 and broad shouldered, with rather too much man 
 ner. I remember particularly how I hated the 
 light spats he affected, and the glaring yellow 
 gloves. 
 
 A man who would go straight for the thing 
 he wanted,, woman or power or money. And 
 get it. 
 
 Sperry was waiting on his door-step, and we 
 went on to the Wells house. What with the mag 
 nitude of the thing that had happened, and our 
 mutual feeling that we were somehow involved 
 in it, we were rather silent. Sperry asked one 
 question, however, "Are you certain about the 
 time when Miss Jeremy saw what looks like this 
 thing?" 
 
 "Certainly. My watch fell at five minutes 
 after nine. When it was all over, and I picked 
 it up, it was still going, and it was 9:30." 
 
 He was silent for a moment. Then: 
 
 "The Wellses nursery governess telephoned 
 for me at 9:35. We keep a record of the time 
 of all calls." 
 
 Sperry is a heart specialist,, I think I have said, 
 with offices in his house. 
 
 And, a block or so farther on: "I suppose it 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 41 
 
 was bound to come. To tell the truth, I didn t 
 think the boy had the courage." 
 
 "Then you think he did it?" 
 
 "They say so/ he said grimly. And added, 
 irritably: "Good heavens, Horace, we must keep 
 that other fool thing out of our minds." 
 
 "Yes," I agreed. "We must." 
 
 Although the Wells house was brilliantly 
 lighted when we reached it, we had difficulty in 
 gaining admission. Whoever were in the house 
 were up-stairs., and the bell evidently rang in the 
 deserted kitchen or a neighboring pantry. 
 
 "We might try the servants entrance," Sperry 
 said. Then he laughed mirthlessly. 
 
 "We might see," he said, "if there s a key on 
 the nail among the vines." 
 
 I confess to a nervous tightening of my muscles 
 as we made our way around the house. If the 
 key was there, we were on the track of a revela 
 tion that might revolutionize much that we had 
 held fundamental in science and in our knowl 
 edge of life itself. If, sitting in Mrs. Dane s 
 quiet room, a woman could tell us what was hap 
 pening in a house a mile or so away, it opened 
 up a new earth. Almos^ a new heaven. 
 
 I stopped and touched Sperry s arm. "This 
 Miss Jeremy did she know Arthur Wells or 
 Elinor? If she knew the house, and the situa- 
 
42 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 tion between them,, isn t it barely possible that she 
 anticipated this thing?" 
 
 "We knew them/ he said gruffly, "and what 
 ever we anticipated, it wasn t this." 
 
 Sperry had a pocket flash, and when we found 
 the door locked we proceeded with our search 
 for the key. The porch had been covered with 
 heavy vines, now dead of the November frosts, 
 and showing, here and there,, dead and dried 
 leaves that crackled as we touched them. In the 
 darkness something leaped against me, and I 
 almost cried out. It was, however, only a collie 
 dog, eager for the warmth of his place by the 
 kitchen fire. 
 
 "Here s the key," Sperry said, and held it out. 
 The flash wavered in his hand, and his voice was 
 strained. 
 
 "So far,, so good," I replied, and was conscious 
 that my own voice rang strange in my ears. 
 
 We admitted ourselves, and the dog, bounding 
 past us, gave a sharp yelp of gratitude and ran 
 into the kitchen. 
 
 "Look here, Sperry," I said, as we stood inside 
 the door, "they don t want me here. They ve 
 sent for you, but I m the most casual sort of an 
 acquaintance. I haven t any business here." 
 
 That struck him, too. We had both been so 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 43 
 
 obsessed with the scene at Mrs. Dane s that we 
 had not thought of anything else. 
 
 "Suppose you sit down in the library/ he said. 
 "The chances are against her coming down, and 
 the servants don t matter." 
 
 As a matter of fact, we learned later that all the 
 servants were out except the nursery governess. 
 There were two small children. There was a 
 servants ball somewhere, and, with the exception 
 of the butler, it was after two before they com 
 menced to straggle in. Except two plain-clothes 
 men from the central office, a physician who was 
 with Elinor in her room, and the governess, there 
 was no one else in the house but the children, 
 asleep in the nursery. 
 
 As I sat alone in the library, the house was 
 perfectly silent. But in some strange fashion 
 it had apparently taken on the attributes of the 
 deed that had preceded the silence. It was sin 
 ister, mysterious, dark. Its immediate effect on 
 my imagination was apprehension almost ter 
 ror. Murder or suicide, here among the shadows 
 a soul, an indestructible thing, had been recently 
 violently wrenched from its body. The body lay 
 in the room overhead. But what of the spirit? 
 I shivered as I thought that it might even then 
 be watching me with formless eyes from some 
 dark corner. 
 
44 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 Overwrought as I was, I was forced to bring 
 my common sense to bear on the situation. Here 
 was a tragedy, a real and terrible one. Suppose 
 we had, in some queer fashion, touched its outer 
 edges that night? Then how was it that there 
 had come, mixed up with so much that might be 
 pertinent, such extraneous and grotesque things 
 as Childe Harold, a hurt knee, and Mother 
 Goose ? 
 
 I remember moving impatiently, and trying to 
 argue myself into my ordinary logical state of 
 mind, but I know now that even then I was won 
 dering whether Sperry had found a hole in the 
 ceiling upstairs. 
 
 I wandered, I recall, into the realm of the clair 
 voyant and the clairaudient. Under certain con 
 ditions, such as trance, I knew that some individ 
 uals claimed a power of vision that was super 
 normal, and I had at one time lunched at my club 
 with a well-dressed gentleman in a pince nez who 
 said the room was full of people I could not see, 
 but who were perfectly distinct to him. He 
 claimed, and I certainly could not. refute him,, that 
 he saw further into the violet of the spectrum 
 than the rest of us, and seemed to consider it noth 
 ing unusual when an elderly woman, whose de 
 scription sounded much like my great-grand 
 mother, came and stood behind my chair. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 45 
 
 I recall that he said she was stroking my hair, 
 and that following that I had a distinctly creepy 
 sensation along my scalp. 
 
 Then there were those who claimed that in 
 trance the spirit of the medium, giving place to 
 a control, was free to roam whither it would, and, 
 although I am not sure of this, that it wandered 
 in the fourth dimension. While I am very vague 
 about the fourth dimension, I did know that in 
 it doors and walls were not obstacles. But as 
 they would not be obstacles to a spirit, even in 
 the world as we know it, that got me nowhere. 
 
 Suppose Sperry came down and said Arthur 
 Wells had been shot above the ear, and that there 
 was a second bullet hole in the ceiling? Added 
 to the key on the nail, a careless custom and 
 surely not common,, we would have conclusive 
 proof that our medium had been correct. There 
 was another point, too. Miss Jeremy had said, 
 "Get the lather off his face." 
 
 That brought me up with a turn. Would a 
 man stop shaving to kill himself ? If he did, why 
 a revolver? Why not the razor in his hand? 
 
 I knew from my law experience that suicide is 
 either a desperate impulse or a cold-blooded and 
 calculated finality. A man who kills himself 
 while dressing comes under the former classifica 
 tion, and will usually seize the first method at 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 hand. But there was something else, too. Shav 
 ing is an automatic process. It completes itself. 
 My wife has an irritated conviction that if the 
 house caught fire while I was in the midst of the 
 process, I would complete it and rinse the soap 
 from my face before I caught up the fire-extin 
 guisher. 
 
 Had he killed himself, or had Elinor killed him ? 
 Was she the sort to sacrifice herself to a violent 
 impulse? Would she choose the hard way, when 
 there was the easy one of the divorce court? I 
 thought not. And the same was true of Elling- 
 ham. Here were two people, both of them careful 
 of appearance, if not of fact. There was another 
 possibility, too. That he had learned something 
 while he was dressing, had attacked or threatened 
 her with a razor, and she had killed him in self- 
 defence. 
 
 I had reached that point when Sperry came 
 down the staircase, ushering out the detectives 
 and the medical man. He came to the library 
 door and stood looking at me, with his face rather 
 paler than usual. 
 
 "I ll take you up now/ he said. "She s in her 
 room., in bed, and she has had an opiate." 
 
 "Was he shot above the ear?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 I did not look at him, nor he at me. We 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 47 
 
 climbed the stairs and entered the room, where, 
 according to Elinor s story, Arthur Wells had 
 killed himself. It was a dressing-room, as Miss 
 Jeremy had described. A wardrobe, a table 
 with books and magazines in disorder, two chairs, 
 and a couch, constituted the furnishings. Beyond 
 was a bathroom. On a chair by a window the 
 dead man s evening clothes were neatly laid out, 
 his shoes beneath. His top hat and folded gloves 
 were on the table. 
 
 Arthur Wells lay on the couch. A sheet had 
 been drawn over the body, and I did not disturb 
 it. It gave the impression of unusual length that 
 is always found, I think, in the dead, and a breath 
 of air from an open window, by stirring the sheet, 
 gave a false appearance of life beneath. 
 
 The house was absolutely still. 
 
 When I glanced at Sperry he was staring at the 
 ceiling, and I followed his eyes, but there was no 
 mark on it. Sperry made a little gesture. 
 
 "It s queer," he muttered. "It s " 
 
 "The detective and I put him there. He was 
 here." He showed a place on the floor midway 
 of the room. 
 
 "Where was his head lying?" I asked, cau 
 tiously. 
 
 "Here." 
 
 I stooped and examined the carpet. It was 
 
48 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 a dark Oriental, wkh much red in it. I touched 
 the place, and then ran my folded handkerchief 
 over it. It came up stained with blood. 
 
 "There would be no object in using cold water 
 there, so as not to set the stain," Sperry said 
 thoughtfully. "Whether he fell there or not, that 
 is where she allowed him to be found." 
 
 "You don t think he fell there?" 
 
 "She dragged him, didn t she?" he demanded. 
 Then the strangeness of what he was saying 
 struck him, and he smiled foolishly. "What I 
 mean is, the medium said she did. I don t sup 
 pose any jury would pass us tonight as entirely 
 sane, Horace," he said. 
 
 He walked across to the bathroom and sur 
 veyed it from the doorway. I followed him. It 
 was as orderly as the other room. On a glass 
 shelf over the wash-stand were his razors, a 
 safety and, beside it, in a black case, an assort 
 ment of the long-bladed variety, one for each day 
 of the week, and so marked. 
 
 Sperry stood thoughtfully in the doorway. 
 
 "The servants are out," he said. "According 
 to Elinor s statement he was dressing when he 
 did it. And yet some one has had a wild impulse 
 for tidiness here, since it happened. Not a towel 
 out of place!" 
 
 It was in the bathroom that he told me Elinor s 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 49 
 
 story. According to her, it was a simple case 
 of suicide. And she was honest about it, in her 
 own way. She was shocked, but she was not 
 pretending any wild grief. She hadn t wanted- 
 him to die, but she had not felt that they could 
 go on much longer together. There had been no 
 quarrel other than their usual bickering. They 
 had been going to a dance that night. The serv 
 ants had all gone out immediately after dinner 
 to a servants ball and the governess had gone 
 for a walk. She was to return at nine-thirty to 
 fasten Elinor s gown and to be with the children. 
 
 Arthur, she said, had been depressed for sev 
 eral days, and at dinner had hardly spoken at all. 
 He had not, however, objected to the dance. He 
 had, indeed, seemed strangely determined to go, 
 although she had pleaded a headache. At nine 
 o clock he went upstairs, apparently to dress. 
 
 She was in her room, with the door shut, when 
 she heard a shot. She ran in and found him 
 lying on the floor of his dressing-room with his 
 revolver behind him. The governess was still 
 out. The shot had roused the children, and they 
 had come down from the nursery above. She 
 was frantic, but she had to soothe them. The 
 governess, however, came in almost immediately, 
 and she had sent her to the telephone to summon 
 
50 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 help, calling Sperry first of all, and then the 
 police. 
 
 "Have you seen the revolver?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes. It s all right, apparently. Only one 
 shot had been fired." 
 
 "How soon did they get a doctor?" 
 
 "It must have been some time. They gave up 
 telephoning, and the governess went out, finally, 
 and found one." 
 
 "Then, while she was out ?" 
 
 "Possibly," Sperry said. "If we start with the 
 hypothesis that she was lying." 
 
 "If she cleaned up here for any reason," I 
 began, and commenced a desultory examination 
 of the room. Just why I looked behind the bath 
 tub forces me to an explanation I am somewhat 
 loath to make, but which will explain a rather 
 unusual proceeding. For some time my wife has 
 felt that I smoked too heavily, and out of her so 
 licitude for me has limited me to one cigar after 
 dinner. But as I have been a heavy smoker for 
 years I have found this a great hardship, and 
 have therefore kept a reserve store, by arrange 
 ment with the housemaid, behind my tub. In self- 
 defence I must also state that I seldom have re 
 course to such stealthy measures. 
 
 Believing then that something might possibly 
 be hidden there, I made an investigation, and 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 51 
 
 could see some small objects lying there. Sperry 
 brought me a stick from the dressing-room, and 
 with its aid succeeded in bringing out the two 
 articles which were instrumental in starting us 
 on our brief but adventurous careers as private 
 investigators. One was a leather razor strop, 
 old and stiff from disuse, and the other a wet 
 bath sponge, now stained with blood to a yellow 
 ish brown. 
 
 "She is lying, Sperry," I said. "He fell some 
 where else, and she dragged him to where he was 
 found." 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 "I don t know," I said impatiently. "From 
 some place where a man would be unlikely to 
 kill himself, I daresay. No one ever killed him 
 self, for instance, in an open hallway. Or 
 stopped shaving to do it." 
 
 "We have only Miss Jeremy s word for that," 
 he said, sullenly. "Confound it, Horace, don t 
 let s bring in that stuff if we can help it." 
 
 We stared at each other, with the strop and 
 the sponge between us. Suddenly he turned on 
 his heel and went back into the room, and a mo 
 ment later he called me, quietly. 
 
 "You re right," he said. "The poor devil was 
 shaving. He had it half done. Come and look." 
 
 But I did not go. There was a carafe of water 
 
52 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 in the bathroom, and I took a drink from it. My 
 hands were shaking. When I turned around I 
 found Sperry in the hall, examining the carpet 
 with his flash light, and now and then stooping 
 to run his hand over the floor. 
 
 "Nothing here," he said in a low tone, when I 
 had joined him. "At least I haven t found any 
 thing." 
 
 IV 
 
 How much of Sperry s proceeding with the car 
 pet the governess had seen I do not know. I 
 glanced up and she was there, on the staircase to 
 the third floor, watching us. I did not know, 
 then, whether she recognized me or not, for the 
 Wellses servants were as oblivious of the families 
 on the street as their employers. But she knew 
 Sperry, and was ready enough to talk to him. 
 
 "How is she now?" she asked. 
 
 "She is sleeping, Mademoiselle." 
 
 "The children also." 
 
 She came down the stairs, a lean young French 
 woman in a dark dressing gown, and Sperry sug 
 gested that she too should have an opiate. She 
 seized at the idea, but Sperry did not go down at 
 once for his professional 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 53 
 
 "You were not here when it occurred, Made 
 moiselle?" he inquired. 
 
 "No, doctor. I had been out for a walk." She 
 clasped her hands. "When I came back " 
 
 "Was he still on the floor of the dressing-room 
 when you came in?" 
 
 "But yes. Of course. She was alone. She 
 tould not lift him." 
 
 "I see," Sperry said thoughtfully. "No, I 
 daresay she couldn t. Was the revolver on the 
 floor also?" 
 
 "Yes, doctor. I myself picked it up." 
 
 To Sperry she showed, I observed, a slight def 
 erence, but when she glanced at me, as she did 
 after each reply, I thought her expression slightly 
 altered. At the time this puzzled me, but it was 
 explained when Sperry started down the stairs. 
 
 "Monsieur is of the police?" she asked, with 
 a Frenchwoman s timid respect for the constabu 
 lary. 
 
 I hesitated before I answered. I am a truthful 
 man, and I hate unnecessary lying. But I ask 
 consideration of the circumstances. Neither then 
 nor at any time later was the solving of the Wells 
 mystery the prime motive behind the course I laid 
 out and consistently followed. I felt that we 
 might be on the vevge of some great psychic dis 
 covery, one which w\>ald revolutionize human 
 
54 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 thought and to a certain extent human action. 
 And toward that end I was prepared to go to al 
 most any length. 
 
 "I am making a few investigations," I told her. 
 "You say Mrs. Wells was alone in the house, 
 except for her husband?" 
 
 "The children." 
 
 "Mr. Wells was shaving, I believe, when the 
 er impulse overtook him?" 
 
 There was no doubt as to her surprise. "Shav 
 ing? I think not." 
 
 "What sort of razor did he ordinarily use?" 
 
 "A safety razor always. At least I have never 
 seen any others around." 
 
 "There is a case of old-fashioned razors in the 
 bathroom." 
 
 She glanced toward the room and shrugged her 
 shoulders. "Possibly he used others. I have not 
 seen any." 
 
 "It was you, I suppose, who cleaned up after 
 wards." 
 
 "Cleaned up?" 
 
 "You who washed up the stains/ 
 
 "Stains? Oh, no, monsieur. Nothing of the 
 sort has yet been done." 
 
 I felt that she was telling the truth, so far as 
 she knew it, and I then asked about the revol 
 ver. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 55 
 
 "Do you know where Mr. Wells kept his re 
 volver?" 
 
 "When I first came it was in the drawer of that 
 table. I suggested that it be placed beyond the 
 children s reach. I do not know where it was 
 put." 
 
 "Do you recall how you left the front door 
 when you went out? I mean, was it locked?" 
 
 "No. The servants were out and I knew there 
 would be no one to admit me. I left it unfas 
 tened." 
 
 But it was evident that she had broken a rule of 
 the house by doing so, for she added: "I am afraid 
 to use the servants entrance. It is dark there." 
 
 "The key is always hung on the nail when they 
 are out?" 
 
 "Yes. If any one of them is out it is left there. 
 There is only one key. The family is out a great 
 deal, and it saves bringing some one down from 
 the servants rooms at the top of the house." 
 
 But I think my knowledge of the key bothered 
 her, for some reason. And as I read over my 
 questions, certainly they indicated a suspicion that 
 the situation was less simple than it appeared. 
 She shot a quick glance at me. 
 
 "Did you examine the revolver when you picked 
 it up?" 
 
 "I, monsieur? Non!" Then her fears, what- 
 
56 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 ever they were, got the best of her. "I know 
 nothing but what I tell you. I was out. I can 
 prove that that is so. I went to a pharmacy ; the 
 clerk will remember. I will go with you, mon 
 sieur, and he will tell you that I used the tele 
 phone there. " 
 
 I daresay my business of cross-examination, of 
 watching evidence helped me to my next question. 
 
 "You went out to telephone when there is a 
 telephone in the house ?" 
 
 But here again, as once or twice before, a veil 
 dropped between us. She avoided my eyes, 
 "There are things one does not want the family 
 to hear/ she muttered. Then, having deter 
 mined on a course of action, she followed it. "I 
 am looking for another position. I do not like it 
 here. The children are spoiled. I only came 
 for a month s trial." 
 
 "And the pharmacy?" 
 
 "Elliott s, at the corner of State Avenue and 
 McKee Street." 
 
 I told her that it would not be necessary for 
 her to go to the pharmacy, and she muttered some 
 thing about the children and went up the stairs. 
 When Sperry came back with the opiate she was 
 nowhere in sight, and he was considerably an 
 noyed. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 57 
 
 "She knows something/ I told him. "She is 
 frightened." 
 
 Sperry eyed me with a half frown. 
 
 "Now see here, Horace/ he said, "suppose we 
 had come in here, without the thought of that 
 seance behind us? We d have accepted the 
 thing as it appears to be, wouldn t we? There 
 may be a dozen explanations for that sponge, 
 and for the razor strop. What in heaven s name 
 has a razor strop to do with it anyhow? One 
 bullet was fired, and the revolver has one empty 
 chamber. It may not be the custom to stop shav 
 ing in order to commit suicide, but that s no argu 
 ment that it can t be done, and as to the key 
 how do I know that my own back door key isn t 
 hung outside on a nail sometimes?" 
 
 "We might look again for that hole in the ceil- 
 ing." 
 
 "I won t do it. Miss Jeremy has read of some 
 thing of that sort, or heard of it, and stored it in 
 her subconscious mind." 
 
 But he glanced up at the ceiling nevertheless, 
 and a moment later had drawn up a chair and 
 stepped onto it, and I did the same thing. We 
 presented, I imagine, rather a strange picture, 
 and I know that the presence of the rigid figure 
 on the couch gave me a sort of ghoulish feeling. 
 
 The house was an old one, and in the center of 
 
58 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 the high ceiling a plaster ornament surrounded 
 the chandelier. Our search gradually centered 
 on this ornament, but the chairs were low and 
 our long-distance examination revealed nothing. 
 It was at that time, too, that we heard some one 
 in the lower hall, and we had only a moment to 
 put our chairs in place before the butler came in. 
 He showed no surprise, but stood looking at the 
 body on the couch, his thin face working. 
 
 "I met the detectives outside, doctor," he said. 
 "It s a terrible thing, sir, a terrible thing." 
 
 "I d keep the other servants out of this room, 
 Hawkins." 
 
 "Yes, sir." He went over to the sheet, lifted 
 the edge slowly, and then replaced it, and tip-toed 
 to the door. "The others are not back yet. I ll 
 admit them, and get them up quietly. How is 
 Mrs. Wells?" 
 
 "Sleeping," Sperry said briefly, and Hawkins 
 went out. 
 
 I realize now that Sperry was I am sure he 
 will forgive this in a state of nerves that night. 
 For example, he returned only an impatient silence 
 to my doubt as to whether Hawkins had really 
 only just returned and he quite missed something 
 downstairs which I later proved to have an im 
 portant bearing on the case. This was when we 
 were going out, and after Hawkins had opened 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 59 
 
 the front door for us. It had been freezing hard, 
 and Sperry., who has a bad ankle, looked about 
 for a walking stick. He found one, and I saw 
 Hawkins take a swift step forward, and then stop, 
 with no expression whatever in his face. 
 
 "This will answer, Hawkins." 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Hawkins impassively. 
 
 And if I realize that Sperry was nervous that 
 night, I also realize that he was fighting a battle 
 quite his own, and with its personal problems. 
 
 "She s got to quit this sort of thing," he said 
 savagely and apropos of nothing, as we walked 
 along. "It s hard on her, and besides " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "She couldn t have learned about it," he said, 
 following his own trail of thought. "My car 
 brought her from her home to the house-door. 
 She was brought in to us at once. But don t 
 you see that if there are other developments, to 
 prove her statements she well, she s as innocent 
 as a child,, but take Herbert, for instance. Do 
 you suppose he ll believe she had no outside infor 
 mation?" 
 
 "But it was happening while we were shut in 
 the drawing-room." 
 
 "So Elinor claims. But if there was anything 
 to hide, it would have taken time. An hour or 
 
60 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 so, perhaps. You can see how Herbert would 
 jump on that." 
 
 We went back, I remember, to speaking of the 
 seance itself, and to the safer subject of the phys 
 ical phenomena. As I have said, we did not then 
 know of those experimenters who claim that the 
 medium can evoke so-called rods of energy, and 
 that by its means the invisible "controls" can per 
 form their strange feats of levitation and the 
 movement of solid bodies. Sperry touched very 
 lightly on the spirit side. 
 
 "At least it would mean activity," he said. 
 "The thought of an inert eternity is not bearable." 
 
 He was inclined, however, to believe that there 
 were laws of which we were still in ignorance, 
 and that we might some day find and use the 
 fourth dimension. He seemed to be able to grasp 
 it quite clearly. "The cube of the cube, or hyper- 
 cube,," he explained. "Or get it this way: a cone 
 passed apex-downward through a plane." 
 
 "I know," I said, "that it is perfectly simple. 
 But homehow it just sounds like words to me." 
 
 "It s perfectly clear, Horace," he insisted. "But 
 remember this when you try to work it out; it 
 is necessary to use motion as a translator of time 
 into space, or of space into time." 
 
 "I don t intend to work it out," I said irritably. 
 "But I mean to use motion as a translator of the 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 61 
 
 time, which is 1 130 in the morning 1 , to take me 
 to a certain space, which is where I live." 
 
 But as it happened, I did not go into my house 
 when I reached it. I was wide awake, and I per 
 ceived, on looking up at my wife s windows, that 
 the lights were out. As it is her custom to wait 
 up for me on those rare occasions when I spend 
 an evening away from home, I surmised that she 
 was comfortably asleep, and made my way to the 
 pharmacy to which the Wellses governess had 
 referred. 
 
 The night-clerk was in the prescription-room 
 behind the shop. He had fixed himself comfort 
 ably on two chairs, with an old table-cover over 
 his knee and a half-empty bottle of sarsaparilla 
 on a wooden box beside him. He did not waken 
 until I spoke to him. 
 
 "Sorry to rouse you, Jim," I said. 
 
 He flung off the cover and jumped up, upsetting" 
 the bottle, which trickled a stale stream to the 
 floor. "Oh, that s all right, Mr. Johnson, I wasn t 
 asleep, anyhow." 
 
 I let that go, and went at once to the object 
 of our visit. Yes, he remembered the governess, 
 knew her, as a matter of fact. The Wellses 
 bought a good many things there. Asked as to 
 her telephoning, he thought it was about nine 
 
62 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 o clock, maybe earlier. But questioned as to what 
 she had telephoned about, he drew himself up. 
 
 "Oh, see here/ he said. "I can t very well tell 
 you that, can I? This business has got ethics, 
 all sorts of ethics." 
 
 He enlarged on that. The secrets of the city, 
 he maintained loftily, were in the hands of the 
 pharmacies. It was a trust that they kept. 
 "Every trouble from dope to drink, and then 
 some/ he boasted. 
 
 When I told him that Arthur Wells was dead 
 his jaw dropped, but there was no more argu 
 ment in him. He knew very well the number the 
 governess had called. 
 
 "She s done it several times/ he said. "I ll be 
 frank with you. I got curious after the third 
 evening, and called it myself. You know the 
 trick. I found out it was the Ellingham house, 
 up State Street." 
 
 "What was the nature of the conversations?" 
 
 "Oh, she was very careful. It s an open phone 
 and any one could hear her. Once she said some 
 body was not to come. Another time she just said, 
 This is Suzanne Gautier. 9:30, please/ " 
 
 "And tonight?" 
 
 "That the family was going out not to call." 
 
 When I told him it was a case of suicide, his 
 jaw dropped. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 63 
 
 "Can you beat it ?" he said. "I ask you, can you 
 beat it? A fellow who had everything!" 
 
 But he was philosophical, too. 
 
 "A lot of people get the bug once in a while," 
 he said. "They come in here for a dose of sudden 
 death, and it takes watching. You d be surprised 
 the number of things that will do the trick if 
 you take enough. I don t know. If things get to 
 breaking wrong " 
 
 His voice trailed off, and he kicked at the old 
 table cover on the floor. 
 
 "It s a matter of the point of view," he said 
 more cheerfully. "And my point of view just 
 now is that this place is darned cold, and so s the 
 street. You d better have a little something to 
 warm you up before you go out, Mr. Johnson." 
 
 I was chilled through, to tell the truth, and al 
 though I rarely drink anything I went back with 
 him and took an ounce or two of villainous 
 whiskey, poured out of a jug into a graduated 
 glass. It is with deep humiliation of spirit I re 
 cord that a housemaid coming into my library 
 at seven o clock the next morning, found me, 
 in top hat and overcoat, asleep on the library 
 couch. 
 
 I had, however, removed my collar and tie, and 
 my watch, carefully wound, was on the smoking- 
 stand beside me. 
 
64 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 The death of Arthur Wells had taken place on 
 Monday evening. Tuesday brought nothing 
 new. The coroner was apparently satisfied, and 
 on Wednesday the dead man s body was cre 
 mated. 
 
 Thus obliterating all evidence/ Sperry said, 
 with what I felt was a note of relief. 
 
 But I think the situation was bothering him, 
 and that he hoped to discount in advance the sec 
 ond sitting by Miss Jeremy, which Mrs. Dane had 
 already arranged for the following Monday, for 
 on Wednesday afternoon, following a conversa 
 tion over the telephone, Sperry and I had a private 
 sitting with Miss Jeremy in Sperry s private office. 
 I took my wife into our confidence and invited her 
 to be present, but the unfortunate coldness fol 
 lowing the housemaid s discovery of me asleep 
 in the library on the morning after the murder, 
 was still noticeable and she refused. 
 
 The sitting, however, was totally without value. 
 There was difficulty on the medium s part in se 
 curing the trance condition, and she broke out 
 once rather petulantly, with the remark that we 
 were interfering with her in some way. 
 
 I noticed that Sperry had placed Arthur Wells s 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 65 
 
 stick unobtrusively on his table, but we secured 
 only rambling and non-pertinent replies to our 
 questions, and whether it was because I knew that 
 outside it was broad day, or because the Wells 
 matter did not come up at all I found a total lack 
 of that sense of the unknown which made all the 
 evening sittings so grisly. 
 
 I am sure she knew we had wanted something, 
 and that she had failed to give it to us, for when 
 she came out she was depressed and in a state of 
 lowered vitality. 
 
 "I m afraid I m not helping you," she said. 
 "I m a little tired, I think." 
 
 She was tired. I felt suddenly very sorry for 
 her. She was so pretty and so young only 
 twenty-six or thereabouts to be in the grip of 
 forces so relentless. Sperry sent her home in his 
 car, and took to pacing the floor of his office. 
 
 "I m going to give it up, Horace," he said. 
 "Perhaps you are right. We may be on the verge 
 of some real discovery. But while I m interested, 
 so interested that it interferes with my work, I m 
 frankly afraid to go on. There are several 
 reasons." 
 
 I argued with him. There could be no question 
 that if things were left as they were, a number 
 of people would go through life convinced that 
 Elinor Wells had murdered her husband. Look 
 
66 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 at the situation. She had sent out all the servants 
 and the governess, surely an unusual thing in an 
 establishment of that sort. And Miss Jeremy 
 had been vindicated in three points ; some stains 
 had certainly been washed up, we had found the 
 key where she had stated it to be, and Arthur 
 had certainly been shaving himself. 
 
 "In other words," I argued, "we can t stop, 
 Sperry. You can t stop. But my idea would be 
 that our investigations be purely scientific and not 
 criminal." 
 
 "Also, in other words/ he said, "you think 
 we will discover something, so you suggest that 
 we compound a felony and keep it to ourselves !" 
 
 "Exactly," I said drily. . . . 
 
 It is of course possible that my nerves were 
 somewhat unstrung during the days that fol 
 lowed. I wakened one night to a terrific thump 
 which shook my bed, and which seemed to be the 
 result of some one having struck the foot-board 
 with a plank. Immediately following this came 
 a sharp knocking on the antique bed-warmer 
 which hangs beside my fireplace. When I had 
 sufficiently recovered my self-control I turned 
 on my bedside lamp, but the room was empty. 
 
 Again I wakened with a feeling of intense cold. 
 I was frozen with it, and curiously enough it was 
 an inner cold. It seemed to have nothing to 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 67 
 
 do with the surface of my body. I have no ex 
 planation to make of these phenomena. Like the 
 occurrences at the seance, they were, and that 
 was all. 
 
 But on Thursday night of that week my wife 
 came into my bedroom, and stated flatly that 
 there were burglars in the house. 
 
 Now it has been my contention always that if a 
 burglar gains entrance, he should be allowed to 
 take what he wants. Silver can be replaced, but 
 as I said to my wife then, Horace Johnson could 
 not. But she had recently acquired a tea set 
 formerly belonging to her great-grandmother, 
 and apprehension regarding it made her, for the 
 nonce, less solicitous for me than usual. 
 
 "Either you go or I go," she said. "Where s 
 your revolver?" 
 
 I got out of bed at that, and went down the 
 stairs. But I must confess that I felt, the mo 
 ment darkness surrounded me, considerably less 
 trepidation concerning the possible burglar than 
 I felt as to the darkness itself. Mrs. Johnson 
 had locked herself in my bedroom, and there was 
 something horrible in the black depths of the 
 lower hall. 
 
 We are old-fashioned people, and have not yet 
 adopted electric light. I carried a box of 
 matches, but at the foot of the stairs the one I had 
 
68 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 lighted went out. I was terrified. I tried to 
 light another match, but there was a draft from 
 somewhere, and it too was extinguished before 
 I had had time to glance about. I was immedi 
 ately conscious of a sort of soft movement around 
 me, as of shadowy shapes that passed and re- 
 passed. Once it seemed to me that a hand was 
 laid on my shoulder and was not lifted, but instead 
 dissolved into the other shadows around. The 
 sudden striking of the clock on the stair landing 
 completed my demoralization. I turned and fled 
 upstairs, pursued, to my agonized nerves, by 
 ghostly hands that came toward me from between 
 the spindles of the stair-rail. 
 
 At dawn I went downstairs again, heartily 
 ashamed of myself. I found that a door to the 
 basement had been left open, and that the soft 
 movement had probably been my overcoat, sway 
 ing in the draft. 
 
 Probably. I was not certain. Indeed, I was 
 certain of nothing during those strange days. 
 I had built up for myself a universe upheld by 
 certain laws, of day and night, of food and sleep 
 and movement, of three dimensions of space. 
 And now, it seemed to me, I had stood all my life 
 but on the threshold, and, for an hour or so, the 
 door had opened. 
 
 Sperry had, I believe, told Herbert Robinson of 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 69 
 
 what we had discovered, but nothing had been 
 said to the women. I knew through my wife that 
 they were wildly curious, and the night of the 
 second seance Mrs. Dane drew me aside and I 
 saw that she suspected, without knowing, that 
 we had been endeavoring to check up our revela 
 tions with the facts. 
 
 "I want you to promise me one thing," she said. 
 Til not bother you now. But I m an old woman, 
 with not much more of life to be influenced by 
 any disclosures. When this thing is over, and 
 you have come to a conclusion I ll not put it that 
 way: you may not come to a conclusion but 
 when it is over, I want you to tell me the whole 
 story. Will you?" 
 
 I promised that I would. 
 
 Miss Jeremy did not come to dinner. She never 
 ate before a seance. And although we tried to 
 keep the conversational ball floating airily, there 
 was not the usual effervescence of the Neighbor 
 hood Club dinners. One and all, we were wait 
 ing, we knew not for what. 
 
 I am sorry to record that there were no physi 
 cal phenomena of any sort at this second seance. 
 The room was arranged as it had been at the first 
 sitting, except that a table with a candle and a 
 chair had been placed behind a screen for Mrs. 
 Dane s secretary. 
 
70 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 There was one other change. Sperry had 
 brought the walking-stick he had taken from 
 Arthur Wells s room, and after the medium was 
 in trance he placed it on the table before her. 
 
 The first questions were disappointing in 
 results. Asked about the stick, there was only 
 silence. When, however, Sperry went back to 
 the sitting of the week before, and referred to 
 questions and answers at that time, the medium 
 seemed uneasy. Her hand, held under mine, 
 made an effort to free itself,, and, released, 
 touched the cane. She lifted it, and struck the 
 table a hard blow with it. 
 
 "Do you know to whom that stick belongs ?" 
 
 A silence. Then: "Yes." 
 
 "Will you tell us what you know about it?" 
 
 "It is writing." 
 
 "Writing?" 
 
 "It was writing, but the water washed it 
 away." 
 
 Then, instantly and with great rapidity, fol 
 lowed a wild torrent of words and incomplete 
 sentences. It is inarticulate, and the secretary 
 made no record of it. As I recall, however, it 
 was about water, children, and the words "ten 
 o clock" repeated several times. 
 
 "Do you mean that something happened at ten 
 o clock?" 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 71 
 
 "No. Certainly not. No, indeed. The water 
 washed it away. All of it. Not a trace." 
 
 "Where did all this happen?" 
 
 She named, without hesitation, a seaside resort 
 about fifty miles from our city. There was not 
 one of us, I dare say, who did not know that the 
 Wellses had spent the preceding summer there 
 and that Charlie Ellingham had been there, also. 
 
 "Do you know that Arthur Wells is dead?" 
 
 "Yes. He is dead." 
 
 "Did he kill himself?" 
 
 "You can t catch me on that. I don t know." 
 
 Here the medium laughed. It was horrible. 
 And the laughter made the whole thing absurd. 
 But it died away quickly. 
 
 "If only the pocketbook was not lost," she said. 
 "There were so many things in it. Especially 
 car-tickets. Walking is a nuisance." 
 
 Mrs. Dane s secretary suddenly spoke. "Do 
 you want me to take things like that?" she asked. 
 
 "Take everything, please," was the answer. 
 
 "Car-tickets and letters. It will be terrible if 
 the letters are found." 
 
 "Where was the pocketbook lost?" Sperry 
 asked. 
 
 "If that were known, it could be found," was 
 the reply, rather sharply given. "Hawkins may 
 
72 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 have it. He was always hanging around. The 
 curtain was much safer." 
 
 "What curtain ?" 
 
 "Nobody would have thought of the curtain. 
 First ideas are best." 
 
 She repeated this, following it, as once before, 
 with rhymes for the final word, best, rest,, chest, 
 pest. 
 
 "Pest!" she said. "That s Hawkins!" And 
 again the laughter. 
 
 "Did one of the bullets strike the ceiling?" 
 
 "Yes. But you ll never find it. It is holding 
 well. That part s safe enough unless it made 
 a hole in the floor above." 
 
 "But there was only one empty chamber in 
 the revolver. How could two shots have been 
 fired?" 
 
 There was no answer at all to this. And 
 Sperry, after waiting, went on to his next ques 
 tion: "Who occupied the room overhead?" 
 
 But here we received the reply to the previous 
 question: "There was a box of cartridges in the 
 table-drawer. That s easy." 
 
 From that point, however, the interest lapsed. 
 Either there was no answer to questions, or we 
 got the absurdity that we had encountered before., 
 about the drawing-room furniture. But, unsat 
 isfactory in many ways as the seance had been, 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 73 
 
 the effect on Miss Jeremy was profound she 
 was longer in coming- out, and greatly exhausted 
 when it was all over. 
 
 She refused to take the supper Mrs. Dane had 
 prepared for her, and at eleven o clock Sperry 
 took her home in his car. 
 
 I remember that Mrs. Dane inquired, after she 
 had gone. 
 
 "Does any one know the name of the Wellses 
 butler? Is it Hawkins?" 
 
 I said nothing, and as Sperry was the only one 
 likely to know and he had gone, the inquiry went 
 no further. Looking back,, I realize that Herbert, 
 while less cynical, was still skeptical, that his sis 
 ter was non-committal, but for some reason 
 watching me, and that Mrs. Dane was in a state 
 or delightful anticipation. 
 
 My wife, however, had taken a dislike to Miss 
 Jeremy, and said that the whole thing bored her. 
 
 "The men like it, of course/ she said, "Horace 
 fairly simpers with pleasure while he sits and 
 holds her hand. But a woman doesn t impose on 
 other women so easily. It s silly." 
 
 "My dear," Mrs. Dane said, reaching over and 
 patting my wife s hand, "people talked that way 
 about Columbus and Galileo. And if it is non 
 sense., it is such thrilling nonsense !" 
 
74 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 VI 
 
 I find that the solution of the Arthur Wells 
 mystery for we did solve it takes three divi 
 sions in my mind. Each one is a sitting, followed 
 by an investigation made by Sperry and myself. 
 
 But for some reason, after Miss Jeremy s sec 
 ond sitting, I found that my reasoning mind was 
 stronger than my credulity. And as Sperry had 
 at that time determined to have nothing more to 
 do with the business, I made a resolution to aban 
 don my investigations. Nor have I any reason to 
 believe that I would have altered my attitude 
 toward the case, had it not been that I saw in the 
 morning paper on the Thursday following the 
 second seance, that Elinor Wells had closed her 
 house, and gone to Florida. 
 
 I tried to put the fact out of my mind that 
 morning. After all, what good would it do? No 
 discovery of mine could bring Arthur Wells back 
 to his family, to his seat at the bridge table at 
 the club, to his too expensive cars and his unpaid 
 bills. Or to his wife who was not grieving for 
 him. 
 
 On the other hand, I confess to an overwhelm 
 ing desire to examine again the ceiling of the 
 dressing room and thus to check up one degree 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 75 
 
 further the accuracy of our revelations. After 
 some debate, therefore, I called up Sperry, but 
 he flatly refused to go on any further. 
 
 "Miss Jeremy has been ill since Monday," he 
 said. "Mrs. Dane s rheumatism is worse., her 
 companion is nervously upset, and your own wife 
 called me up an hour ago and says you are sleep 
 ing with a light, and she thinks you ought to go 
 away. The whole club is shot to pieces." 
 
 But, although I am a small and not a coura 
 geous man, the desire to examine the Wells house 
 clung to me tenaciously. Suppose there were 
 cartridges in his table drawer? Suppose I should 
 find the second bullet hole in the ceiling? I no 
 longer deceived myself by any argument that my 
 interest was purely scientific. There is a point 
 at which curiosity becomes unbearable, when it 
 becomes an obsession, like hunger. I had reached 
 that point. 
 
 Nevertheless, I found it hard to plan the neces 
 sary deception to my wife. My habits have 
 always been entirely orderly and regular. My 
 wildest dissipation was the Neighborhood Club. 
 I could not recall an evening away from home in 
 years., except on business. Yet now I must have 
 a free evening, possibly an entire night. 
 
 In planning for this, I forgot my nervousness 
 for a time. I decided finally to tell my wife that 
 
76 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 an out-of-town client wished to talk business with 
 me, and that day, at luncheon I go home to 
 luncheon I mentioned that such a client was in 
 town. 
 
 "It is possible," I said, as easily as I could, 
 "that we may not get through this afternoon. If 
 things should run over into the evening, I ll 
 telephone." 
 
 She took it calmly enough, but later on, as I 
 was taking an electric flash from the drawer of 
 the hall table and putting it in my overcoat 
 pocket, she came on me, and I thought she looked 
 surprised. 
 
 During the afternoon I was beset with doubts 
 and uneasiness. Suppose she called up my office 
 and found that the client I had named was not in 
 town ? It is undoubtedly true that a tangled web 
 we weave when first we practise to deceive, for 
 on my return to the office I was at once quite 
 certain that Mrs. Johnson would telephone and 
 make the inquiry. 
 
 After some debate I called my secretary and 
 told her to say, if such a message came in, that 
 Mr. Forbes was in town and that I had an 
 appointment with him. As a matter of fact,, no 
 such inquiry came in, but as Miss Joyce, my sec 
 retary, knew that Mr. Forbes was in Europe, I 
 was conscious for some months afterwards that 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 77 
 
 Miss Joyce s eyes occasionally rested on me in a 
 speculative and suspicious manner. 
 
 Other things also increased my uneasiness as 
 the day wore on. There was, for instance, the 
 matter of the back door to the Wells house. 
 Nothing was more unlikely than that the key 
 would still be hanging there. I must, therefore,, 
 get a key. 
 
 At three o clock I sent the office-boy out for a 
 back-door key. He looked so surprised that I 
 explained that we had lost our key, and that I 
 required an assortment of keys of all sizes. 
 
 "What sort of key?" he demanded, eyeing me, 
 with his feet apart. 
 
 "Just an ordinary key," I said. "Not a Yale 
 key. Nothing fancy. Just a plain back-door 
 key." At something after four my wife called 
 up, in great excitement. A boy and a man had 
 been to the house and had fitted an extra key to 
 the back door, which had two excellent ones 
 already. She was quite hysterical, and had sent 
 for the police, but the officer had arrived after 
 they had gone. 
 
 "They are burglars, of course!" she said. 
 "Burglars often have boys with them, to go 
 through the pantry windows. I m so nervous I 
 could scream." 
 
 I tried to tell her that if the door was unlocked 
 
78 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 there was no need to use the pantry window., but 
 she rang off quickly and, I thought, coldly. Not, 
 however, before she had said that my plan to 
 spend the evening out was evidently known in 
 the underworld ! 
 
 By going through my desk I found a number of 
 keys, mostly trunk keys and one the key to a dog- 
 collar. But late in the afternoon I visited a client 
 of mine who is in the hardware business, and 
 secured quite a selection. One of them was a 
 skeleton key. He persisted in regarding the 
 matter as a joke, and poked me between the 
 shoulder-blades as I went out. 
 
 "If you re arrested with all that hardware on 
 you," he said,, "you ll be held as a first-class bur 
 glar. You are equipped to open anything from 
 a can of tomatoes to the missionary box in 
 church." 
 
 But I felt that already, innocent as I was, I 
 was leaving a trail of suspicion behind me : Miss 
 Joyce and the office boy, the dealer and my wife. 
 And I had not started yet. 
 
 I dined in a small chop-house where I occa 
 sionally lunch, and took a large cup of strong 
 black coffee. When I went out into the night 
 again I found that a heavy fog had settled down, 
 and I began to feel again something of the 
 strange and disturbing quality of the day which 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 79 
 
 had ended in Arthur Wells s death. Already a 
 potential housebreaker, I avoided policemen, and 
 the very jingling of the keys in my pocket sounded 
 loud and incriminating to my ears. 
 
 The Wells house was dark. Even the arc- 
 lamp in the street was shrouded in fog. But the 
 darkness, which added to my nervousness, added 
 also to my security. 
 
 I turned and felt my way cautiously to the rear 
 of the house. Suddenly I remembered the dog. 
 But of course he was gone. As I cautiously 
 ascended the steps the dead leaves on the vines 
 rattled, as at the light touch of a hand, and I 
 was tempted to turn and run. 
 
 I do not like deserted houses. Even in daylight 
 they have a sinister effect on me. They seem, in 
 their empty spaces, to have held and recorded all 
 that has happened in the dusty past. The Wells 
 house that night, looming before me, silent and 
 mysterious, seemed the embodiment of all the 
 deserted houses I had known. Its empty and 
 unshuttered windows were like blind eyes, gazing 
 in, not out. 
 
 Nevertheless, now that the time had come a 
 certain amount of courage came with it. I am 
 not ashamed to confess that a certain part of it 
 came from the anticipation of the Neighborhood 
 Club s plaudits. For Herbert to have made such 
 
80 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 an investigation, or even Sperry, with his height 
 and his iron muscles, would not have surprised 
 them. But I was aware that while they expected 
 intelligence and even humor, of a sort, from me, 
 they did not anticipate any particular bravery. 
 
 The flash was working, but rather feebly. I 
 found the nail where the door-key had formerly 
 hung, but the key, as I had expected, was gone. 
 I was less than five minutes, I fancy, in finding a 
 key from my collection that would fit. The bolt 
 slid back with a click, and the door opened. 
 
 It was still early in the evening, eight-thirty or 
 thereabouts. I tried to think of that; to remem 
 ber that, only a few blocks away, some of my 
 friends were still dining, or making their way 
 into theaters. But the silence of the house came 
 out to meet me on the threshold, and its blackness 
 enveloped me like a wave. It was unfortunate, 
 too, that I remembered just then that it was, or 
 soon would be, the very hour of young Wells s 
 death. 
 
 Nevertheless, once inside the house,, the door 
 to the outside closed and facing two alternatives, 
 to go on with it or to cut and run, I found a sort 
 of desperate courage, clenched my teeth, and felt 
 for the nearest light switch. 
 
 The electric light had been cut off ! 
 
 I should have expected it, but I had not. I 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 81 
 
 remember standing in the back hall and debating 
 whether to go on or to get out. I was not only in 
 a highly nervous state, but I was also badly handi 
 capped. However, as the moments wore on and 
 I stood there,, with the quiet unbroken by no 
 mysterious sounds, I gained a certain confidence. 
 After a short period of readjustment, therefore, 
 I felt my way to the library door, and into the 
 room. Once there, I used the flash to discover 
 that the windows were shuttered, and proceeded 
 to take off my hat and coat, which I placed on a 
 chair near the door. It was at this time that I 
 discovered that the battery of my lamp was very 
 weak, and finding a candle in a tall brass stick on 
 the mantelpiece, I lighted it. 
 
 Then I looked about. The house had evidently 
 been hastily closed. Some of the furniture was 
 covered with sheets, while part of it stood unpro 
 tected. The rug had been folded into the center 
 of the room, and covered with heavy brown 
 papers, and I was extremely startled to hear the 
 papers rustling. A mouse, however, proved to 
 be the source of the sound, and I pulled myself 
 together with a jerk. 
 
 It is to be remembered that I had left my hat 
 and overcoat on a chair near the door. There 
 could be no mistake, as the chair was a light one., 
 
82 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 and the weight of my overcoat threw it back 
 against the wall. 
 
 Candle in hand, I stepped out into the hall, 
 and was immediately met by a crash which rever 
 berated through the house. In my alarm my 
 teeth closed on the end of my tongue, with agoniz 
 ing results, but the sound died away, and I con 
 cluded that an upper window had been left open, 
 and that the rising wind had slammed a door. 
 But my morale, as we say since the war, had been 
 shaken, and I recklessly lighted a second candle 
 and placed it on the table in the hall at the foot 
 of the staircase, to facilitate my exit in case I 
 desired to make a hurried one. 
 
 Then I climbed slowly. The fog had appar 
 ently made its way into the house, for when, half 
 way up, I turned and looked down, the candle 
 light was hardly more than a spark, surrounded 
 by a luminous aura. 
 
 I do not know exactly when I began to feel that 
 I was not alone in the house. It was, I think, 
 when I was on a chair on top of a table in 
 Arthur s room, with my candle upheld to the ceil 
 ing. It seemed to me that something was moving 
 stealthily in the room overhead. I stood there, 
 candle upheld, and every faculty I possessed 
 seemed centered in my ears. It was not a foot 
 step. It was a soft and dragging movement. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 83 
 
 Had I not been near the ceiling I should not have 
 heard it. Indeed, a moment later I was not cer 
 tain that I had heard it. 
 
 My chair, on top of the table, was none too 
 securely balanced. I had found what I was look 
 ing for, a part of the plaster ornament broken 
 away, and replaced by a whitish substance, not 
 plaster. I got out my penknife and cut away the 
 foreign matter, showing a small hole beneath, a 
 bullet-hole, if I knew anything about bullet-holes. 
 
 Then I heard the dragging movement above, 
 and what with alarm and my insecure position, I 
 suddenly overbalanced, chair and all. My head 
 must have struck on the corner of the table, for I 
 was dazed for a few moments. The candle had 
 gone out, of course. I felt for the chair, righted 
 it, and sat down. I was dizzy and I was fright 
 ened. I was afraid to move, lest the dragging 
 thing above come down and creep over me in the 
 darkness and smother me. 
 
 And sitting there, I remembered the very things 
 I most wished to forget the black curtain behind 
 Miss Jeremy, the things flung by unseen hands 
 into the room,, the way my watch had slid over 
 the table and fallen to the floor. 
 
 Since that time I know there is a madness of 
 courage, born of terror. Nothing could be more 
 intolerable than to sit there and wait. It is the 
 
84 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 same insanity that drove men out of the trenches 
 to the charge and almost certain death, rather 
 than to sit and wait for what might come. 
 
 In a way, I daresay I charged the upper floor 
 of the house. Recalling the situation from this 
 safe lapse of time, I think that I was in a con 
 dition close to frenzy. I know that it did not 
 occur to me to leap down the staircase and escape, 
 and I believe now this was due to a conviction that 
 I was dealing with the supernatural, and that on 
 no account did I dare to turn my back on it. All 
 children and some adults, I am sure, have known 
 this feeling. 
 
 Whatever drove me,, I know that, candle in 
 hand, and hardly sane, I ran up the staircase, 
 and into the room overhead. It was empty. 
 
 As suddenly as my sanity had gone, it returned 
 to me. The sight of two small beds, side by side, 
 a tiny dressing-table, a row of toys on the mantel 
 piece, was calming. Here was the children s 
 night nursery, a white and placid room which 
 could house nothing hideous. 
 
 I was humiliated and ashamed. I, Horace 
 Johnson, a man of dignity and reputation, even 
 in a small way, a successful after-dinner speaker, 
 numbering fifty-odd years of logical living to* my 
 credit, had been running half -maddened toward 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 85 
 
 a mythical danger from which I had been afraid 
 to run away ! 
 
 I sat down and mopped my face with my pocket 
 handkerchief. 
 
 After a time I got up, and going to a window 
 looked down at the quiet world below. The fog 
 was lifting. Automobiles were making cautious 
 progress along the slippery street. A woman 
 with a basket had stopped under the street light 
 and was rearranging her parcels. The clock of 
 the city hall, visible over the opposite roofs, 
 marked only twenty minutes to nine. It was still 
 early evening not even midnight, the magic 
 hour of the night. 
 
 Somehow that fact reassured me., and I was 
 able to take stock of my surroundings. I realized, 
 for instance, that I stood in the room over 
 Arthur s dressing room, and that it was into the 
 ceiling under me that the second or probably 
 the first bullet had penetrated. I know, as it 
 happens, very little of firearms, but I did realize 
 that a shot from a .45 Colt automatic would have 
 considerable penetrative power. To be exact, that 
 the bullet had probably either lodged itself in a 
 joist, or had penetrated through the flooring and 
 might be somewhere over my head. 
 
 But my candle was inadequate for more than 
 the most superficial examination of the ceiling, 
 
86 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 which presented so far as I could see an unbroken 
 surface. I turned my attention, therefore, to the 
 floor. It was when I was turning the rug back 
 that I recognized the natural and not supernatu 
 ral origin of the sound which had so startled me. 
 It had been the soft movement of the carpet 
 across the floor boards. 
 
 Some one, then, had been there before me 
 some one who knew what I knew, had reasoned 
 as I reasoned. Some one who, in all probability., 
 still lurked on the upper floor. 
 
 Obeying an impulse, I stood erect and called 
 out sharply, "Sperry!" I said. "Sperry!" 
 
 There was no answer. I tried again, calling 
 Herbert. But only my own voice came back to 
 me, and the whistling of the wind through the 
 window I had opened. 
 
 My fears, never long in abeyance that night, 
 roused again. I had instantly a conviction that 
 some human figure, sinister and dangerous, was 
 lurking in the shadows of that empty floor, and 
 I remember backing away from the door and 
 standing in the center of the room, prepared for 
 some stealthy, murderous assault. When none 
 came I looked about for a weapon, and finally 
 took the only thing in sight, a coal-tongs from 
 the fireplace. Armed with that, I made a cursory 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 87 
 
 round of the near-by rooms but there was no one 
 hiding in them. 
 
 I went back to the rug and examined the floor 
 beneath it. I was right. Some one had been 
 there before me. Bits of splintered wood lay 
 about. The second bullet had been fired, had 
 buried itself in the flooring, and had, some five 
 minutes before, been dug out. 
 
 VII 
 
 The extraordinary thing about the Arthur 
 Wells story was not his killing. For killing it 
 was. It was the way it was solved. 
 
 Here was a young woman, Miss Jeremy, who 
 had not known young Wells, had not known his 
 wife, had,, until that first meeting at Mrs. Dane s, 
 never met any member of the Neighborhood 
 Club. Yet, but for her, Arthur Wells would 
 have gone to his grave bearing the stigma of 
 moral cowardice, of suicide. 
 
 The solution, when it came, was amazing, but 
 remarkably simple. Like most mysteries. I 
 have in my own house, for instance, an example 
 of a great mystery, founded on mere absent- 
 mindedness. 
 
88 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 This is what my wife terms the mystery of the 
 fire-tongs. 
 
 I had left the Wells house as soon as I had 
 made the discovery in the night nursery. I car 
 ried the candle and the fire-tongs downstairs. I 
 was, apparently, calm but watchful. I would 
 have said that I had never been more calm in my 
 life. I knew quite well that I had the fire-tongs 
 in my hand. Just when I ceased to be cognizant 
 of them was probably when, on entering the 
 library, I found that my overcoat had disap 
 peared, and that my stiff hat, badly broken, lay 
 on the floor. However, as I say, I was still 
 extraordinarily composed. I picked up my hat., 
 and moving to the rear door, went out and closed 
 it. When I reached the street, however, I had 
 only gone a few yards when I (Jiscovered that I 
 was still carrying the lighted candle, and that 
 a man, passing by, had stopped and was staring 
 after me. 
 
 My composure is shown by the fact that I 
 dropped the candle down the next sewer opening, 
 but the fact remains that I carried the fire-tongs 
 home. I do not recall doing so. In fact, I knew 
 nothing of the matter until morning. On the 
 way to my house I was elaborating a story to the 
 effect that my overcoat had been stolen from a 
 restaurant where I and my client had dined. The 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 89 
 
 hat offered more serious difficulties. I fancied 
 that, by kissing my wife good-by at the breakfast 
 table, I might be able to get out without her fol 
 lowing me to the front door, which is her cus 
 tom. 
 
 But., as a matter of fact, I need not have con 
 cerned myself about the hat. When I descended 
 to breakfast the next morning I found her sur 
 veying the umbrella-stand in the hall. The fire- 
 tongs were standing there, gleaming, among my 
 sticks and umbrellas. 
 
 I lied. I lied shamelessly. She is a nervous 
 woman, and, as we have no children, her attitude 
 toward me is one of watchful waiting. Through 
 long years she has expected me to commit some 
 indiscretion innocent, of course, such as going 
 out without my overcoat on a cool day and she 
 intends to be on hand for every emergency. I 
 dared not confess, therefore, that on the previous 
 evening I had burglariously entered a closed 
 house, had there surprised another intruder at 
 work, had fallen and bumped my head severely, 
 and had, finally, had my overcoat taken. 
 
 "Horace," she said coldly, "where did you get 
 those fire-tongs? * 
 
 "Fire-tongs?" I repeated. "Why, that s so. 
 They are fire-tongs." 
 
 "Where did you get them?" 
 
90 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "My dear/ I expostulated, "I get them?" 
 
 "What I would like to ask," she said, with an 
 icy calmness that I have learned to dread, "is 
 whether you carried them home over your head,, 
 under the impression that you had yotfr um 
 brella." 
 
 "Certainly not," I said with dignity. "I assure 
 you, my dear " 
 
 "I am not a curious woman," she put in 
 incisively, "but when my husband spends an even 
 ing out, and returns minus his overcoat, with his 
 hat mashed, a lump the size of an egg over his 
 ear, and puts a pair of fire-tongs in the umbrella 
 stand under the impression that it is an umbrella, 
 I have a right to ask at least if he intends to con 
 tinue his life of debauchery." 
 
 I made a mistake then. I should have told 
 her. Instead, I took my broken hat and jammed 
 it on my head with a force that made the lump she 
 had noticed jump like a toothache, and went out. 
 
 When, at noon and luncheon, I tried to tell her 
 the truth, she listened to the end: Then: "I 
 should think you could have done better than 
 that," she said. "You have had all morning to 
 think it out." 
 
 However, if things were in a state of armed 
 neutrality at home, I had a certain compensation 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 91 
 
 for them when I told my story to Sperry that 
 afternoon. 
 
 "You see how it is," I finished. "You can stay 
 out of this, or come in, Sperry, but I cannot stop 
 now. He was murdered beyond a doubt, and 
 there is an intelligent effort being made to elimi 
 nate every particle of evidence." 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "It looks like it. And this man who was there 
 last night " 
 
 "Why a man?" 
 
 "He took your overcoat, instead of his own,, 
 didn t he? It may have been it s curious, isn t 
 it, that we ve had no suggestion of Ellingham in 
 all the rest of the material." 
 
 Like the other members of the Neighborhood 
 Club, he had a copy of the proceedings at the two 
 seances, and now he brought them out and fell to 
 studying them. 
 
 "She was right about the bullet in the ceiling," 
 he reflected. "I suppose you didn t look for the 
 box of shells for the revolver?" 
 
 "I meant to, but it slipped my mind." 
 
 He shuffled the loose pages of the record. 
 "Cane washed away by the water a knee that 
 is hurt the curtain would have been safer 
 Hawkins the drawing-room furniture is all over 
 the house. That last., Horace, isn t pertinent. It 
 
92 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 refers clearly to the room we were in. Of course, 
 the point is, how much of the rest is also extra 
 neous matter?" He re-read one of the sheets. 
 "Of course that belongs, about Hawkins. And 
 probably this : It will be terrible if the letters are 
 found/ They were in the pocketbook, pre 
 sumably." 
 
 He folded up the papers and replaced them in 
 a drawer. 
 
 "We d better go back to the house," he said. 
 "Whoever took your overcoat by mistake prob 
 ably left one. The difficulty is, of course, that 
 he probably discovered his error and went back 
 again last night. Confound it, man, if you had 
 thought of that at the time, we would have some 
 thing to go on today." 
 
 "If I had thought of a number of things I d 
 have stayed out of the place altogether," I 
 retorted tartly. "I wish you could help me about 
 the fire-tongs, Sperry. I don t seem able to think 
 of any explanation that Mrs. Johnson would be 
 willing to accept." 
 
 "Tell her the truth." 
 
 "I don t think you understand," I explained. 
 "She simply wouldn t believe it. And if she did 
 I should have to agree to drop the investigation. 
 As a matter of fact, Sperry, I had resorted to 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 93 
 
 subterfuge in order to remain out last evening, 
 and I am bitterly regretting my mendacity/ 
 
 But Sperry has, I am afraid, rather loose ideas. 
 
 "Every man/ he said, "would rather tell the 
 truth, but every woman makes it necessary to lie 
 to her. Forget the fire-tongs, Horace, and forget 
 Mrs. Johnson to-night. He may not have dared 
 to go back in day-light for his overcoat." 
 
 "Very well," I agreed. 
 
 But it was not very well, and I knew it. I felt 
 that, in a way, my whole domestic happiness was 
 at stake. My wife is a difficult person to argue 
 with, and as tenacious of an opinion once formed 
 as are all very amiable people. However, unfor 
 tunately for our investigation, but luckily for me, 
 under the circumstances, Sperry was called to 
 another city that afternoon and did not return for 
 two days. 
 
 It was, it will be recalled, on the Thursday 
 night following the second sitting that I had gone 
 alone to the Wells house, and my interview with 
 Sperry was on Friday. It was on Friday after 
 noon that I received a telephone message from 
 Mrs. Dane. 
 
 It was actually from her secretary, the Clara 
 who had recorded the seances. It was Mrs. 
 Dane s misfortune to be almost entirely depend 
 ent on the various young women who, one after 
 
94 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 the other,, were employed to look after her. I 
 say "one after the other" advisedly. It had long 
 been a matter of good-natured jesting in the 
 Neighborhood Club that Mrs. Dane conducted a 
 matrimonial bureau,, as one young woman after 
 another was married from her house. It was 
 her kindly habit, on such occasions, to give the 
 bride a wedding, and only a month before it had 
 been my privilege to give away in holy wedlock 
 Miss Clara s predecessor. 
 
 "Mrs. Dane would like you to stop in and have 
 a cup of tea with her this afternoon, Mr. John 
 son/ said the secretary. 
 
 "At what time?" 
 
 "At four o clock." 
 
 I hesitated. I felt that my wife was waiting 
 at home for further explanation of the coal-tongs, 
 and that the sooner we had it out the better. But, 
 on the other hand,, Mrs. Dane s invitations, by 
 reason of her infirmity, took on something of the 
 nature of commands. 
 
 "Please say that I will be there at four," I 
 replied. 
 
 I bought a new hat that afternoon, and told 
 the clerk to destroy the old one. Then I went 
 to Mrs. Dane s. 
 
 She was in the drawing-room, now restored to 
 its usual clutter of furniture and ornaments. I 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 95 
 
 made my way around two tables, stepped over 
 a hassock and under the leaves of an artificial 
 palm, and shook her hand. 
 
 She was plainly excited. Never have I known 
 a woman who, confined to a wheel-chair, lived so 
 hard. She did not allow life to pass her windows, 
 if I may put it that way. She called it in, and 
 set it moving about her chair, herself the nucleus 
 around which were enacted all sorts of small 
 neighborhood dramas and romances. Her secre 
 taries did not marry. She married them. 
 
 It is curious to look back and remember how 
 Herbert and Sperry and myself had ignored this 
 quality in her, in the Wells case. She was not to 
 be ignored, as I discovered that afternoon. 
 
 "Sit down," she said. "You look half sick, 
 Horace." 
 
 Nothing escapes her eyes, so I was careful to 
 place myself with the lump on my head turned 
 away from her. But I fancy she saw it, for her 
 eyes twinkled. 
 
 "Horace! Horace!" she said. "How I have 
 detested you all week !" 
 
 "I? You detested me?" 
 
 "Loathed you," she said with unction. "You 
 are cruel and ungrateful. Herbert has influenza, 
 and does not count. And Sperry is in love oh 
 
96 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 yes, I know it. I know a great many things. 
 But you !" 
 
 I could only stare at her. 
 
 "The strange thing is," she went on,, "that I 
 have known you for years, and never suspected 
 your sense of humor. You ll forgive me, I know, 
 if I tell you that your lack of humor was to my 
 mind the only flaw in an otherwise perfect char 
 acter." 
 
 "I am not aware " I began stiffly. "I have 
 
 always believed that I furnished to the Neighbor 
 hood Club its only leaven of humor." 
 
 "Don t spoil it," she begged. "Don t. If you 
 could know how I have enjoyed it. All afternoon 
 I have been chuckling. The fire-tongs, Horace. 
 The fire-tongs !" 
 
 Then I knew that my wife had been to Mrs. 
 Dane and I drew a long breath. "I assure you," 
 I said gravely, "that while doubtless I carried the 
 wretched things home and er placed them 
 where they were found, I have not the slightest 
 recollection of it. And it is hardly amusing, 
 is it?" 
 
 "Amusing!" she cried. "It s delicious. It has 
 made me a young woman again. Horace, if I 
 could have seen your wife s face when she found 
 them, I would give cheerfully almost anything I 
 possess." 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 97 
 
 But underneath her mirth I knew there was 
 something else. And, after all, she could con 
 vince my wife if she were convinced herself. I 
 told the whole story of the visit Sperry and I 
 had made the night Arthur Wells was shot, and 
 of what we discovered; of the clerk at the phar 
 macy and his statement, and even of the whiskey 
 and its unfortunate effect at which, I regret to 
 say, she was vastly amused; and, last of all, of 
 my experience the previous night in the deserted 
 house. 
 
 She was very serious when I finished. Tea 
 came, but we forgot to drink it. Her eyes flashed 
 with excitement, her faded face flushed. And, 
 with it all, as I look back, there was an air of 
 suppressed excitement that seemed to have noth 
 ing to do with my narrative. I remembered it, 
 however, when the denouement came the fol 
 lowing week. 
 
 She was a remarkable woman. Even then she 
 knew, or strongly suspected, the thing that the 
 rest of us had missed, the x of the equation. But 
 I think it only fair to record that she was in pos 
 session of facts which we did not have, and 
 which she did not divulge until the end. 
 
 "You have been so ungenerous with me./ she 
 said finally, "that I am tempted not to tell you 
 why I sent for you. Of course, I know I am only 
 
98 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 a helpless old woman, and you men are people of 
 affairs. But now and then I have a flash of 
 intelligence. I m going to tell you, but you don t 
 deserve it." 
 
 She went down into the black silk bag at her 
 side which was as much a part of her attire as the 
 false front she wore with such careless abandon, 
 and which, brown in color and indifferently 
 waved, was invariably parting from its mooring. 
 She drew out a newspaper clipping. 
 
 "On going over Clara s notes," she said,, "I 
 came to the conclusion, last Tuesday, that the 
 matter of the missing handbag and the letters 
 was important. More important, probably, than 
 the mere record shows. Do you recall the note of 
 distress in Miss Jeremy s voice ? It was almost a 
 wail." 
 
 I had noticed it. 
 
 "I have plenty of time to think," she added, not 
 without pathos. "There is only one Monday night 
 in the week,, and the days are long. It occurred 
 to me to try to trace that bag." 
 
 "In what way?" 
 
 "How does any one trace lost articles?" she 
 demanded. "By advertising, of course. Last 
 Wednesday I advertised for the bag." 
 
 I was too astonished to speak. 
 
 "I reasoned like this: If there was no such 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 99 
 
 bag, there was no harm done. As a matter of 
 fact, if there was no such bag, the chances were 
 that we were all wrong, anyhow. If there was 
 such a bag, I wanted it. Here is the advertise 
 ment as I inserted it." 
 
 She gave me a small newspaper cutting : 
 
 "Lost,, a handbag containing private letters, 
 car-tickets, etc. Liberal reward paid for its 
 return. Please write to A 31, the Daily News/ 
 
 I sat with it on my palm. It was so simple, so 
 direct. And I, a lawyer, and presumably reason 
 ably acute, had not thought of it ! 
 
 "You are wasted on us, Mrs. Dane/ I ac 
 knowledged. "Well ? I see something has come 
 of it." 
 
 "Yes, but I m not ready for it." 
 
 She dived again into the bag, and brought up 
 another clipping. 
 
 "On the day that I had that inserted," she said 
 impressively, "this also appeared. They were in 
 the same column." She read the second clipping 
 aloud, slowly, that I might gain all its signifi 
 cance : 
 
 "Lost on the night of Monday, November the 
 second, between State Avenue and Park Avenue, 
 
r 
 
 100~ SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 possibly on an Eastern Line street car, a black 
 handbag containing keys, car-tickets, private let 
 ters, and a small sum of money. Reward and 
 no questions asked if returned to Daily News 
 office." 
 
 She passed the clipping to me and I compared 
 the two. It looked strange, and I confess to a 
 tingling feeling that coincidence., that element so 
 much to be feared in any investigation, was not 
 the solution here. But there was such a chance, 
 and I spoke of it. 
 
 "Coincidence rubbish!" she retorted. "I am 
 not through, my friend." 
 
 She went down into the bag again, and I 
 expected nothing less than the pocketbook, let 
 ters and all, to appear. But she dragged up, 
 among a miscellany of handkerchiefs,, a bottle 
 of smelling-salts, and a few almonds, of which 
 she was inordinately fond, an envelope. 
 
 "Yesterday," she said, "I took a taxicab ride. 
 You know my chair gets tiresome, occasionally. 
 I stopped at the newspaper office, and found the 
 bag had not been turned in, but that there was a 
 letter for A 31." She held out the envelope 
 to me. 
 
 "Read it," she observed. "It is a curious 
 human document. You ll probably be no wiser 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 101 
 
 for reading it, but it shows one thing: We are 
 on the track of something." 
 
 I have the letter before me now. It is written 
 on glazed paper, ruled with blue lines. The writ 
 ing is of the flowing style we used to call Spen- 
 cerian, and if it lacks character I am inclined to 
 believe that its weakness is merely the result 
 of infrequent use of a pen 
 
 You know who this is from. I have the bag 
 and the letters. In a safe place. If you would 
 treat me like a human being, you could have them. 
 I know where the walking-stick is, also. I will 
 tell you this. I have no wish to do her any harm. 
 She will have to pay up in the next world, even 
 if she gets off in this. The way I reason is this : 
 As long as I have the things, I ve got the whip- 
 hand. I ve got you, too, although you may think 
 I haven t. 
 
 About the other matter I was innocent. I 
 swear it again. I never did it. You are the only 
 one in all the world. I would rather be dead 
 than go on like this. 
 
 It is unsigned. 
 
 I stared from the letter to Mrs. Dane. She 
 
 was watching me, her face grave and rather sad. 
 
 "You and I, Horace," she said, "live our 
 
102 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 orderly lives. We eat, and sleep, and talk, and 
 even labor. We think we are living. But for 
 the last day or two I have been seeing visions 
 you and I and the rest of us, living on the surface, 
 and underneath, carefully kept down so it will 
 not make us uncomfortable, a w r orld of passion 
 and crime and violence and suffering. That let 
 ter is a tragedy." 
 
 But if she had any suspicion then as to the 
 writer, and I think she had not, she said nothing, 
 and soon after I started for home. I knew that 
 one of two things would have happened there: 
 either my wife would have put away the fire- 
 tongs, which would indicate a truce, or they would 
 remain as they had been, which would indicate 
 that she still waited for the explanation I could 
 not give. It was with a certain tension, therefore, 
 that I opened my front door. 
 
 The fire-tongs still stood in the stand. 
 
 In one way, however, Mrs. Johnson s refusal 
 to speak to me that evening had a certain value, 
 for it enabled me to leave the house without 
 explanation, and thus to discover that, if an over 
 coat had been left in place of my own, it had been 
 taken away. It also gave me an opportunity to 
 return the fire-tongs, a proceeding which I had 
 considered would assist in a return of the entente 
 cordiale at home, but which most unjustly 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 103 
 
 appeared to have exactly the opposite effect. 
 
 It has been my experience that the most inno 
 cent action may, under certain circumstances, 
 assume an appearance of extreme guilt. . . . 
 
 By Saturday the condition of affairs between 
 my wife and myself remained in statu quo, and I 
 had decided on a bold step. This was to call a 
 special meeting of the Neighborhood Club, with 
 out Miss Jeremy, and put before them the situa- 
 tionTas it stood at that timejwith a view to for 
 mulating a future course of action, and also of 
 publicly vindicating myself before my wife. 
 
 In deference to Herbert Robinson s recent 
 attack of influenza, we met at the Robinson house. 
 Sperry himself wheeled Mrs. Dane over, and 
 made a speech. 
 
 "We have called this meeting/ he said, "be 
 cause a rather singular situation has developed. 
 What was commenced purely as an interesting 
 experiment has gone beyond that stage. We find 
 ourselves in the curious position of taking what 
 comes very close to being a part in a domestic 
 tragedy. The affair is made more delicate by the 
 fact that this tragedy involves people who, if not 
 our friends, at least are very well known to us. 
 The purpose of this meeting, to be brief, is to 
 deteimine whether the Neighborhood Club, as a 
 
104 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 body, wishes to go on with the investigation, or 
 to stop where we are." 
 
 He paused, but, as no one spoke, he went on 
 again. "It is really not as simple as that,," he 
 said. "To stop now, in view of the evidence we 
 intend to place before the Club, is to leave in all 
 our minds certain suspicions that may be entirely 
 unjust. On the other hand, to go on is very 
 possible to place us all in a position where 
 to keep silent is to be an accessory after a crime." 
 
 He then proceeded, in orderly fashion, to 
 review the first sitting and its results. He read 
 from notes, elaborating them as he went along, 
 for the benefit of the women, who had not been 
 fully informed. As all the data of the Club is 
 now 7 in my possession, I copy these notes. 
 
 "I shall review briefly the first sitting, and what 
 followed it." He read the notes of the sitting 
 first. "You will notice that I have made no 
 comment on the physical phenomena which oc 
 curred early in the seance. This is for two rea 
 sons: first, it has no bearing on the question at 
 issue. Second, it has no quality of novelty. Cer 
 tain people, under certain conditions, are able to 
 exert powers that we can not explain. I have 
 no belief whatever in their spiritistic quality. 
 They are purely physical, the exercise of powers 
 we have either not yet risen high enough in our 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 105 
 
 scale of development to recognize generally,, or 
 which have survived from some early period 
 when our natural gifts had not been smothered 
 by civilization." 
 
 And, to make our position clear, that is today 
 the attitude of the Neighborhood Club. The 
 supernormal, as I said at the beginning, not the 
 supernatural, is our explanation. 
 
 Sperry s notes were alphabetical. 
 
 (a) At 9:15, or somewhat earlier, on Monday 
 night a week ago Arthur Wells killed himself, 
 or was killed. At 9:30 on that same evening by 
 Mr. Johnson s watch, consulted at the time, Miss 
 Jeremy had described such a crime. (Here he 
 elaborated, repeating the medium s account.) 
 
 (b) At midnight, Sperry, reaching home, had 
 found a message summoning him to the Wells 
 house. The message had been left at 9:35. He 
 had telephoned me, and we had gone together, 
 arriving at approximately 12:30. 
 
 (c) We had been unable to enter, and, recall 
 ing the medium s description of a key on a nail 
 among the vines, had searched for and found 
 such a key, and had admitted ourselves. Mrs. 
 Wells, a governess, a doctor, and two policemen 
 were in the house. The dead man lay in the room 
 in which he had died. (Here he went at length 
 into the condition of the room, the revolver with 
 
106 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 one chamber empty, and the blood-stained sponge 
 and razorstrop behind the bathtub. We had 
 made a hasty examination of the ceiling, but had 
 found no trace of a second shot. 
 
 (d) The governess had come in at 9:15, just 
 after the death. Mr. Horace Johnson had had 
 a talk with her. She had left the front door 
 unfastened when she went out at eight o clock. 
 She said she had gone out to telephone about 
 another position, as she was dissatisfied. She had 
 phoned from Elliott s pharmacy on State Avenue. 
 Later that night Mr. Johnson had gone to 
 Elliott s. She had lied about the message. She 
 had really telephoned to a number which the 
 pharmacy clerk had already discovered was that 
 of the Ellingham house. The message was that 
 Mr. Ellingham was not to come, as Mr. and Mrs. 
 Wells were going out. It was not <:he first time 
 she had telephoned to that number 
 
 There was a stir in the room. Something 
 which we had tacitly avoided had come suddenly 
 into the open. Sp erry raised his hand. 
 
 "It is necessary to be explicit," he said, "that 
 the Club may see where it stands. It is, of course, 
 not necessary to remind ourselves that this eve 
 ning s disclosures are of the most secret nature. 
 I urge that the Club jump to no hasty conclusions, 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 107 
 
 and that there shall be no interruptions until we 
 have finished with our records. 
 
 (e) At a private seance, which Mr. Johnson 
 and I decided was excusable under the circum 
 stances, the medium was unable to give us any 
 thing. This in spite of the fact that we had 
 taken with us a walking-stick belonging to the 
 dead man. 
 
 (f) The second sitting of the Club. I need 
 only refresh your minds as to one or two things ; 
 the medium spoke of a lost pocketbook, and of let 
 ters. While the point is at least capable of doubt, 
 apparently the letters were in the pocketbook. 
 Also, she said that a curtain would have been 
 better, that Hawkins was a nuisance, and that 
 everything was all right unless the bullet had 
 made a hole in the floor above. You will also 
 recall the mention of a box of cartridges in a 
 table drawer in Arthur Wells s room. 
 
 "I will now ask Mr. Horace Johnson to tell 
 what occurred on the night before last, Thursday 
 evening/ 
 
 "I do not think Horace has a very clear recol 
 lection of last Thursday night," my wife said, 
 coldly. "And I wish to go on record at once that 
 if he claims that spirits broke his hat, stole his 
 overcoat, bumped his head and sent him home 
 
108 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 with a pair of fire-tongs for a walking-stick, I 
 don t believe him." 
 
 Which attitude Herbert, I regret to say, did 
 not help when he said: 
 
 "Don t worry, Horace will soon be too old for 
 the gay life. Remember your arteries, Horace." 
 
 I have quoted this interruption to show how 
 little, outside of Sperry, Mrs. Dane and myself, 
 the Neighborhood Club appreciated the serious 
 ness of the situation. Herbert, for instance, had 
 been greatly amused when Sperry spoke of my 
 finding the razorstrop and had almost chuckled 
 over our investigation of the ceiling. 
 
 But they were very serious when I had fin 
 ished my statement. 
 
 "Great Scott !" Herbert said. "Then she was 
 right, after all! I say, I guess I ve been no end 
 of an ass." 
 
 I was inclined to agree with him. But the real 
 effect of my brief speech was on my wife. 
 
 It was a real compensation for that night of 
 terror and for the uncomfortable time since to 
 find her gaze no longer cold, but sympathetic, 
 and if I may be allowed to say so admiring. 
 When at last I sat down beside her, she put her 
 hand on my arm in a way that I had missed since 
 the unfortunate affair of the pharmacy whiskey. 
 
 Mrs. Dane then read and explained the two 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 109 
 
 clippings and the letter, and the situation, so far 
 as it had developed, was before the Club. 
 
 Were we to go on, or to stop ? 
 
 Put to a vote, the women were for going on. 
 The men were more doubtful, and Herbert voiced 
 what I think we all felt. 
 
 "We re getting in pretty deep," he said. "We 
 have no right to step in where the law has stepped 
 out no legal right, that is. As to moral right, it 
 depends on what we are holding these sittings 
 for. If we are making what we started out to 
 make, an investigation into psychic matters, then 
 we can go on. But with this proviso, I think: 
 Whatever may come of it, the result is of psychic 
 interest only. We are not trailing a criminal." 
 
 "Crime is the affair of every decent-minded 
 citizen,," his sister put in concisely. 
 
 But the general view was that Herbert was 
 right. I am not defending our course. I am 
 recording it. It is, I admit, open to argument. 
 
 Having decided on what to do, or not to do, 
 we broke into animated discussion. The letter 
 to A 31 was the rock on which all our theories 
 foundered, that and the message the governess 
 had sent to Charlie Ellingham not to come to the 
 Wells house that night. By no stretch of rather 
 excited imaginations could we imagine Ellingham 
 
110 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 writing such a letter. Who had written the let 
 ter, then, and for whom was it meant ? 
 
 As to the telephone message,, it seemed to pre 
 clude the possibility of Ellingham s having gone 
 to the house that night. But the fact remained 
 that a man, as yet unidentified, was undoubtedly 
 concerned in the case, had written the letter, and 
 had probably been in the Wells house the night I 
 went there alone. 
 
 In the end, we decided to hold one more seance, 
 and then, unless the further developments were 
 such that we must go on, to let the affair drop. 
 
 It is typical of the strained nervous tension 
 which had developed in all of us during the past 
 twelve days, that that night when, having for 
 gotten to let the dog in, my wife and I were 
 roused from a sound sleep by his howling, she 
 would not allow me to go down and admit him. 
 
 VIII 
 
 On Sunday I went to church. I felt, after 
 the strange phenomena in Mrs. Dane s drawing- 
 room, and after the contact with tragedy to which 
 they had led, that I must hold with a sort of 
 desperation to the traditions and beliefs by which 
 I had hitherto regulated my conduct. And the 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 111 
 
 church did me good. Between the immortality 
 it taught and the theory of spiritualism as we 
 had seen it in action there was a great gulf, and 
 I concluded that this gulf was the soul. The con 
 clusion that mind and certain properties of mind 
 survived was not enough. The thought of a 
 disembodied intelligence was pathetic, depressing. 
 But the thought of a glorified soul was the hope 
 of the world. . . . 
 
 My wife, too, was in a penitent and rather 
 exalted mood. During the sermon she sat with 
 her hand in mine, and I was conscious of peace 
 and a deep thankfulness. We had been married 
 for many years, and we had grown very close. 
 Of what importance was the Wells case, or what 
 mattered it that there were strange new-old laws 
 in the universe, so long as we kept together ? 
 
 That my wife had felt a certain bitterness 
 toward Miss Jeremy, a jealousy of her powers, 
 even of her youth, had not dawned on me. But 
 when, in her new humility, she suggested that we 
 call on the medium that afternoon. I realized that, 
 in her own way, she was making a sort of atone 
 ment. 
 
 Miss Jeremy lived with an elderly spinster 
 cousin, a short distance out of town. It was a 
 grim house, coldly and rigidly Calvinistic. It 
 gave an unpleasant impression at the start., and 
 
112 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 our comfort was not increased by the discovery, 
 made early in the call, that the cousin regarded 
 the Neighborhood Club and its members with 
 suspicion. 
 
 The cousin her name was Connell was small 
 and sharp, and she entered the room followed by 
 a train of cats. All the time she was frigidly 
 greeting us, cats were coming in at the door, one 
 after the other. It fascinated me. I do not like 
 cats. I am, as a matter of confession, afraid of 
 cats. They affect me as do snakes. They trailed 
 in in a seemingly endless procession, and one of 
 them took a fancy to me, and leaped from behind 
 on to my shoulder. The shock set me stammer 
 ing. 
 
 "My cousin is out," said Miss Connell, 
 "Doctor Sperry has taken her for a ride. She 
 will be back very soon." 
 
 I shook a cat from my trouser leg, and my wife 
 made an unimportant remark. 
 
 "I may as well tell you, I disapprove of what 
 Alice is doing/ said Miss Connell. "She doesn t 
 have to. I ve offered her a good home. She was 
 brought up a Presbyterian. I call this sort of 
 thing playing with the powers of darkness. Only 
 the eternally damned are doomed to walk the 
 earth. The blessed are at rest." 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 113 
 
 "But you believe in her powers, don t you?" 
 my wife asked. 
 
 "I believe she can do extraordinary things. 
 She saw my father s spirit in this very room last 
 night, and described him, although she had never 
 seen him." 
 
 As she had said that only the eternally damned 
 were doomed to walk the earth, I was tempted to 
 comment on this stricture on her departed parent, 
 but a large cat,, much scarred with fighting and 
 named Violet, insisted at that moment on crawl 
 ing into my lap, and my attention was distracted. 
 
 "But the whole thing is un-Christian and 
 undignified," Miss Connell proceeded, in her cold 
 voice. "Come, Violet, don t annoy the gentleman. 
 I have other visions of the next life than of rap 
 ping on tables and chairs, and throwing small 
 articles about." 
 
 It was an extraordinary visit. Even the 
 arrival of Miss Jeremy herself, flushed with the 
 air and looking singularly normal, was hardly a 
 relief. Sperry, who followed, was clearly pleased 
 to see us, however. 
 
 It was not hard to see how things were with 
 him. He helped the girl out of her wraps with a 
 manner that was almost proprietary, and drew 
 a chair for her close to the small fire which hardly 
 :ffected the chill of the room. 
 
114 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 With their entrance a spark of hospitality 
 seemed to kindle in the cat lady s breast. It was 
 evident that she liked Sperry. Perhaps she saw 
 in him a method of weaning her cousin from 
 traffic with the powers of darkness. She said 
 something about tea, and went out. 
 
 Sperry looked across at the girl and smiled. 
 
 "Shall I tell them?" he said. 
 
 "I want very much to have them know." 
 
 He stood up, and with that unconscious drama 
 which actuates a man at a crisis in his affairs, he 
 put a hand on her shoulder. "This young lady 
 is going to marry me," he said. "We are very 
 happy today." 
 
 But I thought he eyed us anxiously. We were 
 very close friends, and he wanted our approval. 
 I am not sure if we were wise. I do not yet 
 know. But something of the new understanding 
 between my wife and myself must have found its 
 way to our voices, for he was evidently satisfied. 
 
 "Then that s all right," he said heartily. And 
 my wife, to my surprise, kissed the girl. 
 
 Except for the cats, sitting around,, the whole 
 thing was strangely normal. And yet, even there, 
 something happened that set me to thinking after 
 ward. Not that it was strange in itself, but that 
 it seemed never possible to get very far away 
 from the Wells mystery. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 115 
 
 Tea was brought in by Hawkins! 
 
 I knew him immediately, but he did not at once 
 see me. He was evidently accustomed to seeing 
 Sperry there, and he did not recognize my wife. 
 But when he had put down the tray and turned 
 to pick up Sperry s overcoat to carry it into the 
 hall, he saw me. The man actually started. I 
 cannot say that he changed color. He was 
 always a pale, anaemic-looking individual. But 
 it was a j erceptible instant before he stooped and 
 gathered up the coat. 
 
 Sperry turned to me when he had gone out. 
 "That was Hawkins, Horace/ he said. "You 
 remember, don t you? The Wellses butler." 
 
 "I knew him at once." 
 
 "He wrote to me asking for a position, and I 
 got him this. Looks sick, poor devil. I intend 
 to have a go at his chest." 
 
 "How long has he been here?" 
 
 "More than a week, I think." 
 
 As I drank my tea, I pondered. After all, the 
 Neighborhood Club must guard against the pos 
 sibility of fraud, and I felt that Sperry had been 
 indiscreet, to say the least. From the time of 
 Hawkins service in Miss Jeremy s home there 
 would always be the suspicion of collusion 
 between them. I did not believe it was so, but 
 Herbert, for instance, would be inclined to sus- 
 
116 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 pect her. Suppose that Hawkins knew about the 
 crime? Or knew something and surmised the 
 rest? 
 
 When we rose to go Sperry drew me aside. 
 
 "You think I ve made a mistake?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 He flung away with an impatient gesture, then 
 came back to me. 
 
 "Now look here,," he said, "I know what you 
 mean, and the whole idea is absurd. Of coarse I 
 never thought about it, but even allowing for 
 connivance which I don t for a moment the 
 fellow was not in the house at the time of the 
 murder." 
 
 "I know he says he was not." 
 
 "Even then," he said, "how about the first 
 sitting? I ll swear she had never even heard of 
 him then." 
 
 "The fact remains that his presence here makes 
 us all absurd." 
 
 "Do you want me to throw him out?" 
 
 "I don t see what possible good that will do 
 now." 
 
 I was uneasy all the way home. The element 
 of doubt always so imminent in our dealings with 
 psychic phenomena, had me by the throat. How 
 much did Hawkins know? Was there any way, 
 without going to the police, to find if he had really 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 117 
 
 been out of the Wells house that night, now 
 almost two weeks ago, when Arthur Wells had 
 been killed? 
 
 That evening I went to Sperry s house, after 
 telephoning that I was coming. On the way I 
 stopped in at Mrs. Dane s and secured something 
 from her. She was wildly curious, and made me 
 promise to go in on my way back, and explain. 
 I made a compromise. 
 
 "I will come in if I have anything to tell you/ 
 I said. 
 
 But I knew, by her grim smile, that she would 
 station herself by her window,, and that I would 
 stop, unless I made a detour of three blocks to 
 avoid her. She is a very determined woman. 
 
 Sperry was waiting for me in his library, a 
 pleasant room which I have often envied him. 
 Even the most happily married man wishes, now 
 and then, for some quiet, dull room which is 
 essentially his own. My own library is really 
 the family sitting-room, and a Christmas or so 
 ago my wife presented me with a very handsome 
 phonograph instrument. My reading, therefore, 
 is done to music, and the necessity for putting my 
 book down to change the record at times inter 
 feres somewhat with my train of thought. 
 
 So I entered Sperry s library with appreciation. 
 He was standing by the fire, with the grave face 
 
118 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 and slightly bent head of his professional man 
 ner. We say, in the neighborhood, that Sperry 
 uses his professional manner as armor, so I was 
 rather prepared to do battle; but he forestalled 
 me. 
 
 "Horace," he said,, "I have been a fool, a drivel 
 ing idiot. We were getting something at those 
 sittings. Something real. She s wonderful. 
 She s going to give it up, but the fact remains that 
 she has some power we haven t, and now I ve 
 discredited her! I see it plainly enough." He 
 was rather bitter about it, but not hostile. His 
 fury was at himself. "Of course," he went on, 
 "I am sure that she got nothing from Hawkins. 
 
 But the fact remains " He was hurt in his 
 
 pride of her. 
 
 "I wonder," I said,, "if you kept the letter 
 Hawkins wrote you when he asked for a posi 
 tion." 
 
 He was not sure. He went into his consulting 
 room and was gone for some time. I took the 
 opportunity to glance over his books and over the 
 room. 
 
 Arthur Wells s stick was standing in a corner, 
 and I took it up and examined it. It was an 
 English malacca, light and strong, and had seen 
 service. It was long, too long for me ; it occurred 
 to me that Wells had been about my height, and 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 119 
 
 that it was odd that he should have carried so 
 long a stick. There was no ease in swinging it. 
 
 From that to the memory of Hawkins s face 
 when Sperry took it, the night of the murder, in 
 the hall of the Wells house, was only a step. I 
 seemed that day to be thinking considerably 
 about Hawkins. 
 
 When Sperry returned I laid the stick on the 
 table. There can be no doubt that I did so, for 
 I had to move a book-rack to place it. One end, 
 the handle, was near the ink-well, and the ferrule 
 lay on a copy of Gibson s "Life Beyond the 
 Grave/ which Sperry had evidently been read 
 ing. 
 
 Sperry had found the letter. As I glanced at 
 it I recognized the writing at once, thin and 
 rather sexless, Spencerian. 
 
 Dear Sir: Since Mr. Wells s death I am out 
 of employment. Before I took the position of 
 butler with Mr. Wells I was valet to Mr. Elling- 
 ham,, and before that, in England, to Lord 
 Condray. I have a very good letter of recom 
 mendation from Lord Condray. If you need a 
 servant at this time I would do my best to give 
 satisfaction. 
 
 (Signed) ARTHUR HAWKINS. 
 
120 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 I put down the application, and took the anony 
 mous letter about the bag from my pocketbook. 
 "Read this, Sperry," I said. "You know the let 
 ter. Mrs. Dane read it to us Saturday night. 
 But compare the writing." 
 
 He compared the two, with a slight lifting of 
 his eyebrows. Then he put them down. "Haw 
 kins!" he said. "Hawkins has the letters! And 
 the bag!" 
 
 "Exactly," I commented dryly. "In other 
 words, Hawkins was in Miss Jeremy s house 
 when, at the second sitting, she told of the let 
 ters." 
 
 I felt rather sorry for Sperry. He paced the 
 room wretchedly, the two letters in his hand. 
 
 "But why should he tell her, if he did?" he 
 demanded. "The writer of that anonymous let 
 ter was writing for only one person. Every effort 
 is made to conceal his identity." 
 
 I felt that he was right. The point was well 
 taken. 
 
 "The question now is, to whom was it written ?" 
 
 We pondered that, to no effect. That Hawkins 
 had certain letters which touched on the Wells 
 affair, that they were probably in his possession 
 in the Connell house, was clear enough. But we 
 had no possible authority for trying to get the 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 121 
 
 letters, although Sperry was anxious to make the 
 attempt. 
 
 "Although I feel," he said, "that it is too late 
 to help her very much. She is innocent; I know 
 that. I think you know that, too, deep in that 
 legal mind of yours. It is wrong to discredit her 
 because I did a foolish thing." He warmed to 
 his argument. "Why, think, man/ he said. 
 "The whole first sitting was practically coinci 
 dent with the crime itself." 
 
 It was true enough. Whatever suspicion 
 might be cast on the second seance,, the first at 
 least remained inexplicable, by any laws we rec 
 ognized. In a way, I felt sorry for Sperry. Here 
 he was, on the first day of his engagement, pro 
 testing her honesty, her complete ignorance of 
 the revelations she had made and his intention 
 to keep her in ignorance, and yet betraying his 
 own anxiety and possible doubt in the same 
 breath. 
 
 "She did not even know there was a family 
 named Wells. When I said that Hawkins had 
 been employed by the Wells, it meant nothing to 
 her. I was watching." 
 
 So even Sperry was watching. He was in love 
 with her., but his scientific mind, like my legal 
 one, was slow to accept what during the past two 
 weeks it had been asked to accept. 
 
122 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 I left him at ten o clock. Mrs. Dane was still 
 at her window, and her far-sighted old eyes 
 caught me as I tried to steal past. She rapped 
 on the window, and I was obliged to go in. 
 Obliged, too, to tell her of the discovery and, at 
 last, of Hawkins being in the Connell house. 
 
 "I want those letters, Horace,," she said at last. 
 
 "So do I. I m not going to steal them." 
 
 "The question is, where has he got them?" 
 
 "The question is, dear lady, that they are not 
 ours to take." 
 
 "They are not his, either." 
 
 Well, that was true enough. But I had done 
 all the private investigating I cared to. And I 
 told her so. She only smiled cryptically. . . . 
 
 So far as I know,, Mrs. Dane was the only one 
 among us who had entirely escaped certain 
 strange phenomena during that period, and as I 
 have only so far recorded my own experiences, 
 I shall here place in order the various manifesta 
 tions made to the other members of the Neighbor 
 hood Club during that trying period and in their 
 own words. As none of them have suffered since, 
 a certain allowance must be made for our nervous 
 strain. As before, I shall offer no explanation. 
 
 Alice Robinson: On night following second 
 seance saw a light in room, not referable to any 
 outside influence. Was an amorphous body 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 123 
 
 which glowed pallidly and moved about wall over 
 fireplace, gradually coming to stop in a corner, 
 where it faded and disappeared. 
 
 Clara , Mrs. Dane s secretary: Had not 
 
 slept much since first seance. Was frequently 
 conscious that she was not alone in room, but on 
 turning on light room was always empty. Wak 
 ened twice with sense of extreme cold. (I have 
 recorded my own similar experience.) 
 
 Sperry has consistently maintained that he had 
 no experiences whatever during that period, but 
 admits that he heard various knock ihgs in his 
 bedroom at night, which he attributed to the 
 lighting of his furnace, and the resulting expan 
 sion of the furniture due to heat. 
 
 Herbert Robinson: Herbert was the most 
 difficult member of the Club from whom to secure 
 data, but he has recently confessed that he was 
 wakened one night by the light falling on to his 
 bed from a picture which hung on the \vall over 
 his mantelpiece., and which stood behind a clock, 
 two glass vases and a pair of candlesticks. The 
 door of his room was locked at the time. 
 
 Mrs. Johnson: Had a great many minor dis 
 turbances, so that on rousing one night to find 
 me closing a window against a storm she thought 
 I was a spectre, and to this day insists that I 
 only entered her room when I heard her scream. 
 
 
124 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 For this reason I have made no record of her 
 various experiences, as I felt that her nervous 
 condition precluded accurate observation. 
 
 As in all records of psychic phenomena, the 
 human element must be considered, and I do not 
 attempt either to analyze these various phenom 
 ena or to explain them. Herbert, for instance, 
 has been known to walk in his sleep. But I 
 respectfully offer, as opposed to this, that my 
 watch has never been known to walk at all, and 
 that Mrs. Johnson s bracelet could hardly be 
 accused of an attack of nerves. 
 
 IX 
 
 The following day was Monday. When I 
 came downstairs I found a neat bundle lying in 
 the hall,, and addressed to me^ My wife had fol 
 lowed me down, and we surveyed it together. 
 
 I had a curious feeling about the parcel, and 
 was for cutting the cord with my knife. But my 
 wife is careful about string. She has always 
 fancied that the time would come when we would 
 need some badly, and it would not be around. ,..! 
 have an entire drawer of my chiffonier, which I 
 really need for other uses, filled with bundles of 
 twine., pink, white and brown. I recall, on one 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 125 
 
 occasion, packing a suit-case in the dusk, in great 
 haste, and emptying the drawer containing my 
 undergarments into it, to discover, when I opened 
 it on the train for my pajamas, nothing but rolls 
 of cord and several packages of Christmas rib 
 bons.^ So I~was obliged to wait until she had 
 untied the knots by means of a hairpin. 
 
 It was my overcoat ! My overcoat, apparently 
 uninjured, but with the collection of keys I had 
 made missing. 
 
 The address was printed,, not written, in a 
 large, strong hand, with a stub pen. I did not, 
 at the time, notice the loss of certain papers which 
 had been in the breast pocket. I am rather 
 absent-minded, and it was not until the night 
 after the third sitting that they were recalled to 
 my mind. 
 
 At something after eleven Herbert Robinson 
 called me up at my office. He was at Sperry s 
 house,, Sperry having been his physician during 
 his recent illness. 
 
 "I say, Horace, this is Herbert." 
 
 "Yes. How are you?" 
 
 "Doing well, Sperry says. I m at his place 
 now. I m speaking for him. He s got a patient." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You were here last night, he says." Herbert 
 has a circumlocutory manner over the phone 
 
126 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 which irritates me. He begins slowly and does 
 not know how to stop. Talk with him drags on 
 endlessly. 
 
 "Well, I admit it," I snapped. "It s not a 
 secret." 
 
 He lowered his voice. "Do you happen to have 
 noticed a walking-stick in the library when you 
 were here?" 
 
 "Which walking-stick?" 
 
 "You know. The one we " 
 
 "Yes. I saw it." 
 
 "You didn t, by any chance, take it home with 
 you?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Are you sure?" 
 
 "Certainly I m sure." 
 
 "You are an absent-minded beggar, you know," 
 he explained. "You remember about the fire- 
 tongs. And a stick is like an umbrella. One is 
 likely to pick it up and " 
 
 "One is not likely to do anything of the sort. 
 At least, I didn t." 
 
 "Oh, all right. Every one well?" 
 
 "Very well,, thanks." 
 
 "Suppose we ll see you tonight?" 
 
 "Not unless you ring off and let me do some 
 work," I said irritably. 
 
 He rang off. I was ruffled, I admit; but I 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 127 
 
 was uneasy, also. To tell the truth, the affair of 
 the fire-tongs had cost me my self-confidence. I 
 called up my wife, and she said Herbert was a 
 fool and Sperry also. But she made an exhaus 
 tive search of the premises, without result. Who 
 ever had taken the stick, I was cleared. Cleared, 
 at least, for a time. There were strange develop 
 ments coming that threatened my peace of mind. 
 
 It was that day that I discovered that I was 
 being watched. Shadowed, I believe is the tech 
 nical word. I daresay I had been followed from 
 my house, but I had not noticed. When I went 
 out to lunch a youngish man in a dark overcoat 
 was waiting for the elevator, and I saw him again 
 when I came out of my house. We went down 
 town again on the same car. 
 
 Perhaps I would have thought nothing of it, 
 had I not been summoned to the suburbs on a 
 piece of business concerning a mortgage. He 
 was at the far end of the platform as I took the 
 train to return to the city, with his back to me. 
 I lost him in the crowd at the downtown station, 
 but he evidently had not lost me, for, stopping 
 to buy a newspaper, I turned, and, as my pause 
 had evidently been unexpected, he almost ran 
 into me. 
 
 With that tendency of any man who finds him 
 self under suspicion to search his past for some 
 
128 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 dereliction, possibly forgotten, I puzzled over the 
 situation for some time that afternoon. I did 
 not connect it with the Wells case, for in that 
 matter I was indisputably the hunter, not the 
 hunted. 
 
 Although I found no explanation for the mat 
 ter, I did not tell my wife that evening. Women 
 are strange and she would, I feared, immediately 
 jump to the conclusion that there was something 
 in my private life that I was keeping from her. 
 
 Almost all women, I have found,, although "not 
 over-conscious themselves of the charm and at 
 traction of their husbands, are of the conviction 
 that these husbands exert a dangerous fascina 
 tion over other women, and that this charm, 
 which does not reveal itself in the home circle, is 
 used abroad with occasionally disastrous effect. 
 
 My preoccupation, however, did not escape 
 my wife,, and she commented on it at dinner. 
 
 "You are generally dull, Horace," she said, 
 "but tonight you are deadly." 
 
 After dinner I went into our reception room, 
 which is not lighted unless we are expecting 
 guests, and peered out of the window. The detec 
 tive, or whoever he might be, was walking negli 
 gently up the street. 
 
 As that was the night of the third seance, I find 
 that my record covers the fact that Mrs. Dane 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 129 
 
 was housecleaning, for which reason we had not 
 been asked to dinner, that my wife and I dined 
 early, at six-thirty, and that it was seven o clock 
 when Sperry called me by telephone. 
 
 "Can you come to my office at once?" he asked. 
 "I dare say Airs. Johnson won t mind going to 
 the Dane house alone. * 
 
 "Is there anything new?" 
 
 "No. But I want to get into the Wells house 
 again. Bring the keys." 
 
 "They were in the overcoat. It came back 
 today, but the keys are missing." 
 
 "Did you lock the back door?" 
 
 "I don t remember. No, of course not. I 
 didn t have the keys." 
 
 "Then there s a chance," he observed, after a 
 moment s pause. "Anyhow, it s worth trying. 
 Herbert told you about the stick?" 
 
 "Yes. I never had it, Sperry." 
 
 Fortunately, during this conversation my wife 
 was upstairs dressing. I knew quite well that 
 she would violently oppose a second visit on my 
 part to the deserted house down the street. I 
 therefore left a message for her that I had gone 
 on, and, finding the street clear, met Sperry at 
 his door-step. 
 
 "This is the last sitting, Horace," he explained, 
 "and I feel we ought to have the most complete 
 
130 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 possible knowledge, beforehand. We will be in 
 a better position to understand what comes. 
 There are two or three things we haven t checked 
 up on." 
 
 He slipped an arm through mine, and we 
 started down the street. "I m going to get to 
 the bottom of this, Horace, old dear," he said. 
 
 "Remember,, we re pledged to a psychic inves 
 tigation only." 
 
 "Rats !" he said rudely. "We are going to find 
 out who killed Arthur Wells, and if he deserves 
 hanging we ll hang him." 
 
 "Or her?" 
 
 "It wasn t Elinor Wells," he said positively. 
 "Here s the point: if he s been afraid to go back 
 for his overcoat it s still there. I don t expect 
 that, however. But the thing about the curtain 
 interests me. I ve been reading over my copy of 
 the notes on the sittings. It was said, you re 
 member, that curtains some curtains would 
 have been better places to hide the letters than the 
 bag." 
 
 I stopped suddenly. "By jove, Sperry," I said. 
 "I remember now. My notes of the sittings were 
 in my overcoat." 
 
 "And they are gone?" 
 
 "They are gone." 
 
 He whistled softly. "That s unfortunate," he 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 131 
 
 said. Then the other person, whoever he is, 
 knows what we know !" 
 
 He was considerably startled when I told him 
 I had been shadowed, and insisted that it referred 
 directly to the case in hand. "He s got your 
 notes," he said, "and he s got to know what your 
 next move is going to be." 
 
 His intention, I found, was to examine the car 
 pet outside of the dressing-room door, and the 
 floor beneath it, to discover if possible whether 
 Arthur Wells had fallen there and been moved. 
 
 "Because I think you are right," he said. "He 
 wouldn t have been likely to shoot himself in a 
 hall, and because the very moving of the body 
 would be in itself suspicious. Then I want to 
 look at the curtains. The curtains would have 
 been safer/ Safer for what? For the bag with 
 the letters, probably, for she followed that with 
 the talk about Hawkins. He d got them, and 
 somebody was afraid he had." 
 
 "Just where does Hawkins come in, Sperry ?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "I m damned if I know./ he reflected. "We 
 may learn tonight." 
 
 The Wells house was dark and forbidding. 
 We walked past it once, as an officer was making 
 his rounds in leisurely fashion, swinging his 
 night-stick in circles. But on our return the 
 
132 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 street was empty, and we turned in at the side 
 entry. 
 
 I led the way with comparative familiarity. 
 It was, you will remember, my third similar ex 
 cursion. With Sperry behind me I felt confident. 
 
 "In case the door is locked, I have a few skele 
 ton keys," said Sperry. 
 
 We had reached the end of the narrow pas 
 sage, and emerged into the square of brick and 
 grass that lay behind the house. While the night 
 was clear, the place lay in comparative darkness. 
 Sperry stumbled over something, and muttered 
 to himself. 
 
 The rear porch lay in deep shadow. We went 
 up the steps together. Then Sperry stopped, and 
 I advanced to the doorway. It was locked. 
 
 With my hand on the door-knob, I turned to 
 Sperry. He was struggling violently with a dark 
 figure, and even as I turned they went over with a 
 crash and rolled together down the steps. Only 
 one of them rose. 
 
 I was terrified. I confess it. It was impos 
 sible to see whether it was Sperry or his assailant. 
 If it was Sperry who lay in a heap on the ground, 
 I felt that I was lost. I could not escape. The 
 way was blocked, and behind me the door, to 
 which I now turned frantically, was a barrier I 
 could not move. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 133 
 
 Then, out of the darkness behind me, came 
 Sperry s familiar, booming bass. "I ve knocked 
 him out, I m afraid. Got a match, Horace?" 
 
 Much shaken, I went down the steps and gave 
 Sperry a wooden toothpick, under the impression 
 that it was a match. That rectified, we bent over 
 the figure on the bricks. 
 
 "Knocked out, for sure," said Sperry, "but I 
 think it s not serious. A watchman, I suppose. 
 Poor devil, we ll have to get him into the house." 
 
 The lock gave way to manipulation at last, and 
 the door swung open. There came to us the 
 heavy odor of all closed houses, a combination of 
 carpets, cooked food, and floor wax. My nerves, 
 now taxed to their utmost, fairly shrank from it, 
 but Sperry was cool. 
 
 He bore the brunt of the weight as we carried 
 the watchman in, holding him with his arms dan 
 gling, helpless and rather pathetic. Sperry 
 glanced around. 
 
 "Into the kitchen," he said. "We can lock him 
 
 in." 
 
 We had hardly laid him on the floor when I 
 heard the slow stride of the officer of the beat. 
 He had turned into the paved alley-way, and 
 was advancing with measured, ponderous steps. 
 Fortunately I am an agile man, and thus I was 
 able to get to the outer door, reverse the key 
 
134 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 and turn it from the inside, before I heard him 
 hailing the watchman. 
 
 "Hello there!" he called. "George, I say! 
 George!" 
 
 He listened for a moment, then came up and 
 tried the door. I crouched inside, as guilty as 
 the veriest house-breaker in the business. But 
 he, had no suspicion, clearly, for he turned and 
 went away, whistling as he w r ent. 
 
 Not until we heard him going down the street 
 again, absently running his night-stick along the 
 fence palings,, did Sperry or I move. 
 
 "A narrow squeak, that," I said, mopping my 
 face. 
 
 "A miss is as good as a mile," he observed, and 
 there was a sort of exultation in his voice. He 
 is a born adventurer. 
 
 He came out into the passage and quickly 
 locked the door behind him. 
 
 "Now, friend Horace," he said, "if you have 
 anything but toothpicks for matches, we will look 
 for the overcoat, and then we will go upstairs." 
 
 "Suppose he wakens and raises an alarm?" 
 
 "We ll be out of luck. That s all." 
 
 As we had anticipated, there was no overcoat 
 in the library, and after listening a moment at 
 the kitchen door, we ascended a rear staircase 
 to the upper floor. I had, it will be remembered, 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 135 
 
 fallen from a chair on a table in the dressing 
 room, and had left them thus overturned when I 
 charged the third floor. The room, however, was 
 now in perfect order, and when I held my candle 
 to the ceiling, I perceived that the bullet hole had 
 again been repaired, and this time with such skill 
 that I could not even locate it. 
 
 "We are up against some one cleverer than we 
 are, Sperry," I acknowledged. 
 
 "And who has more to lose than we have to 
 gain," he aded cheerfully. "Don t worry about 
 that, Horace. You re a married man and I m 
 not. If a woman wanted to hide some letters 
 from her husband, and chose a curtain for a re 
 ceptacle, what room would she hide them in. 
 Not in his dressing-room, eh?" 
 
 He took the candle and led the way to Elinor 
 Wells s bedroom. Here, however, the draperies 
 were down, and we would have been at a loss, had 
 I not remembered my wife s custom of folding 
 draperies when we close the house, and placing 
 them under the dusting sheets which cover the 
 various beds. 
 
 Our inspection of the curtains was hurried, 
 and broken by various excursions on my part to 
 listen for the watchman. But he remained quiet 
 below, and finally we found what we were looking 
 
136 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 for. In the lining of one of the curtains, near 
 the bottom, a long, ragged cut had been made. 
 
 "Cut in a hurry, with curved scissors/ was 
 Sperry s comment. "Probably manicure scis 
 
 sors." 
 
 The result was a sort of pocket in the curtain, 
 concealed on the chintz side, which was the side 
 which would hang toward the room. 
 
 "Probably," he said, "the curtain would have 
 been better. It would have stayed anyhow. 
 Whereas the bag " He was flushed with tri 
 umph. "How in the world would Hawkins know 
 that?" he demanded. "You can talk all you like. 
 She s told us things that no one ever told her." 
 
 Before examining the floor in the hall I went 
 downstairs and listened outside the kitchen door. 
 The watchman was stirring inside the room, and 
 groaning occasionally. Sperry, however, when 
 I told him, remained cool and in his exultant 
 mood, and I saw that he meant to vindicate Miss 
 Jeremy if he flung me into jail and the newspapers 
 while doing it. 
 
 "We ll have a go at the floors under the carpets 
 now," he said. "If he gets noisy, you can go 
 down with the fire-tongs. I understand you are 
 an expert with them." 
 
 The dressing-room had a large rug, like the 
 nursery above it, and turning back the carpet was 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 137 
 
 a simple matter. There had been a stain be 
 neath where the dead man s head had lain, but 
 it had been scrubbed and scraped away. The 
 boards were white for an area- of a square foot 
 or so. 
 
 Sperry eyed the spot with indifference. "Not 
 essential," he said. Shows good housekeeping. 
 That s all. The point is, are there other spots?" 
 
 And, after a time, we found what we were 
 after. The upper hall was carpeted, and my pen 
 knife came into requisition to lift the tacks. They 
 came up rather easily, as if but recently put in. 
 That, indeed, proved to be the case. 
 
 Just outside the dressing-room door the boards 
 for an area of two square feet or more beneath 
 the carpet had been scraped and scrubbed. With 
 the lifting of the carpet came, too, a strong odor, 
 as of ammonia. But the stain of blood had ab 
 solutely disappeared. 
 
 Sperry, kneeling on the floor with the candle 
 held close, examined the wood. "Not only 
 scrubbed," he said, "but scraped down, probably 
 with a floor-scraper. It s pretty clear, Horace. 
 The poor devil fell here. There was a struggle, 
 and he went down. He lay there for a while, too, 
 until some plan was thought out. A man does 
 not usually kill himself in a hallway. It s a sort 
 of solitary deed. He fell here, and was dragged 
 
138 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 into the room. The angle of the bullet in the 
 ceiling would probably show it came from here, 
 too, and went through the doorway." 
 
 We were startled at that moment by a loud 
 banging below. Sperry leaped to his feet and 
 caught up his hat. 
 
 "The watchman," he said. "We d better get 
 out. He ll have all the neighbors in at that rate." 
 
 He was still hammering on the door as we went 
 down the rear stairs, and Sperry stood outside 
 the door and to one side. 
 
 "Keep out of range,, Horace," he cautioned 
 me. And to the watchman: 
 
 "Now, George, we will put the key under the 
 door, and in ten minutes you may come out. 
 Don t come sooner. I ve warned you." 
 
 By the faint light from outside I could see him 
 stooping, not in front of the door, but behind it. 
 And it was well he did, for the moment the key 
 was on the other side, a shot zipped through one 
 of the lower panels. I had not expected it, and 
 it set me to shivering. 
 
 "No more of that, George," said Sperry calmly 
 and cheerfully. "This is a quiet neighborhood, 
 and we don t like shooting. What is more, my 
 friend here is very expert with his own particular 
 weapon, and at any moment he may go to the fire 
 place in the library and " 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 139 
 
 I have no idea why Sperry chose to be face 
 tious at that time, and my resentment rises as I 
 record it. For when we reached the yard we 
 heard the officer running along the alley-way, 
 calling as he ran. 
 
 "The fence., quick," Sperry said. 
 
 I am not very good at fences, as a rule, but I 
 leaped that one like a cat, and came down in a 
 barrel of waste-paper on the other side. Getting 
 me out was a breathless matter, finally accom 
 plished by turning the barrel over so that I could 
 crawl out. We could hear the excited voices of 
 the two men beyond the fence, and we ran. I 
 was better than Sperry at that. I ran like a rab 
 bit. I never even felt my legs. And Sperry 
 pounded on behind me. 
 
 We heard, behind us, one of the men climbing 
 the fence. But in jumping down he seemed to 
 have struck the side of the overturned barrel. 
 Probably it rolled and threw him, for that part 
 of my mind which was not intent on flight heard 
 him fall, and curse loudly. 
 
 "Go to it," Sperry panted behind me. "Roll 
 over and break your neck." 
 
 This, I need hardly explain, was meant for our 
 pursuer. 
 
 We turned a corner and were out on one of the 
 main thoroughfares. Instantly, so innate is cun- 
 
140 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 ning to the human brain,, we fell to walking se 
 dately. 
 
 It was as well that we did, for we had not gone 
 a half block before we saw our policeman again, 
 lumbering toward us and blowing a whistle as 
 he ran. 
 
 "Stop and get this street-car/ Sperry directed 
 me. "And don t breathe so hard." 
 
 The policeman stared at us fixedly, stopping to 
 do so, but all he saw was two well-dressed and 
 professional-looking men, one of them rather 
 elderly who was hailing a street-car. I had the 
 presence of mind to draw my watch and consult it. 
 
 "Just in good time/ I said distinctly, and we 
 mounted the car step. Sperry remained on the 
 platform and lighted a cigar. This gave him a 
 chance to look back. 
 
 "Rather narrow squeak, that/ he observed, as 
 he came in and sat down beside me. "Your gray 
 hairs probably saved us." 
 
 I was quite numb from the waist down, from 
 my tumble and from running, and it was some 
 time before I could breathe quietly. Suddenly 
 Sperry fell to laughing. 
 
 "I wish you could have seen yourself in that 
 barrel, and crawling out," he said. 
 
 We reached Mrs. Dane s,, to find that Miss 
 Jeremy had already arrived, looking rather pale, 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 141 
 
 as I had noticed she always did before a seance. 
 Her color had faded, and her eyes seemed sunken 
 in her head. 
 
 "Not ill, are you?" Sperry asked her, as he 
 took her hand. 
 
 "Not at all. But I am anxious. I always am. 
 These things do not come for the calling." 
 
 "This is the last time. You have promised." 
 
 "Yes. The last time." 
 
 It appeared that Herbert Robinson had been 
 reading, during his convalescence, a considerable 
 amount of psychic literature, and that we were 
 to hold this third and final sitting under test con 
 ditions. As before, the room had been stripped 
 of furniture, and the cloth and rod which formed 
 the low screen behind Miss Jeremy s chair were 
 not of her own providing, but Herbert s. 
 
 He had also provided, for some reason or other, 
 eight small glass cups, into which he placed the 
 legs of the two tables, and in a business-like man 
 ner he set out on the large stand a piece of white 
 paper, a pencil, and a spool of black thread. It 
 is characteristic of Miss Jeremy, and of her own 
 ignorance of the methods employed in profes- 
 
142 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 sional seances,, that she was as much interested 
 and puzzled as we were. 
 
 When he had completed his preparations, Her 
 bert made a brief speech. 
 
 "Members of the Neighborhood Club," he said 
 impressively, "we have agreed among ourselves 
 that this is to be our last meeting for the purpose 
 that is before us. I have felt, therefore, that in 
 justice to the medium this final seance should 
 leave us with every conviction of its genuineness. 
 Whatever phenomena occur, the medium must be, 
 as she has been, above suspicion. For the replies 
 of her control/ no particular precaution seems 
 necessary, or possible. But the first seance 
 divided itself into two parts: an early period 
 when, so far as we could observe, the medium 
 was at least partly conscious,, possibly fully so, 
 when physical demonstrations occurred. And a 
 second, or trance period, during which we re 
 ceived replies to questions. It is for the physical 
 phenomena that I am about to take certain pre 
 cautions." 
 
 "Are you going to tie me?" Miss Jeremy asked. 
 
 "Do you object?" 
 
 "Not at all. But with what ?" 
 
 "With silk thread," Herbert said, smilingly. 
 
 She held out her wrists at once, but Herbert 
 placed her in her chair, and proceeded to wrap 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 143 
 
 her, chair and all, in a strong network of fine 
 threads, drawn sufficiently taut to snap with any 
 movement. 
 
 He finished by placing her feet on the sheet of 
 paper, and outlining their position there with a 
 pencil line. 
 
 The proceedings were saved from absurdity 
 by what we all felt was the extreme gravity of the 
 situation. There were present in the room Mrs. 
 Dane, the Robinsons, Sperry, my wife and my 
 self. Clara, Mrs. Dane s secretary, had begged 
 off on the plea of nervousness from the earlier 
 and physical portion of the seance, and was to 
 remain outside in the hall until the trance com 
 menced. 
 
 Sperry objected to this, as movement in the cir 
 cle during the trance had, in the first seance, in 
 duced fretful uneasiness in the medium. But 
 Clara,, appealed to, begged to be allowed to remain 
 outside until she was required, and showed such 
 unmistakable nervousness that we finally agreed. 
 
 "Would a slight noise disturb her?" Mrs. Dane 
 asked. 
 
 Miss Jeremy thought not, if the circle remained 
 unbroken, and Mrs. Dane considered. 
 
 "Bring me my stick from the hall, Horace/* 
 she said. "And tell Clara I ll rap on the floor 
 with it when 1 want her." 
 
144 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 I found a stick in the rack outside and brought 
 it in. The lights were still on in the chandelier 
 overhead, and as I gave the stick to Mrs. Dane 
 I heard Sperry speaking sharply behind me. 
 
 "Where did you get that stick?" he demanded. 
 
 "In the hall. I " 
 
 "I never saw it before," said Mrs. Dane. "Per 
 haps it is Herbert s." 
 
 But I caught Sperry s eye. We had both rec 
 ognized it. It was Arthur Wells s, the one which 
 Sperry had taken from his room, and which, in 
 turn, had been taken from Sperry s library. 
 
 Sperry was watching me with a sort of cynical 
 amusement. 
 
 "You re an absent-minded beggar., Horace," 
 he said. 
 
 "You didn t, by any chance,, stop here on your 
 way back from my place the other night, did 
 you?" 
 
 "I did. But I didn t bring that thing." 
 
 "Look here, Horace," he said, more gently, 
 "you come in and see me some day soon. You re 
 not as fit as you ought to be." 
 
 I confess to a sort of helpless indignation that 
 was far from the composure the occasion re 
 quired. But the others, I believe, were fully con 
 vinced that no human agency had operated to 
 bring the stick into Mrs. Dane s house, a belief 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 145 
 
 that prepared them for anything that might 
 occur. 
 
 A number of things occurred almost as soon as 
 the lights were out, interrupting a train of 
 thought in which I saw myself in the first stages 
 of mental decay, and carrying about the streets 
 not only fire-tongs and walking-sticks, but other 
 portable property belonging to my friends. 
 
 Perhaps my excitement had a bad effect on the 
 medium. She was uneasy and complained that 
 the threads that bound her arms were tight. She 
 was distinctly fretful. But after a time she set 
 tled down in her chair. Her figure, a deeper 
 shadow in the semi-darkness of the room, seemed 
 sagged seemed, in some indefinable way, small 
 er. But there was none of the stertorous breath 
 ing that preceded trance. 
 
 Then, suddenly, a bell that Sperry had placed 
 on the stand beyond the black curtain commenced 
 to ring. It rang at first gently, then violently. 
 It made a hideous clamor. I had a curious sense 
 that it was ringing up in the air, near the top of 
 the curtain. It was a relief to have it thrown 
 to the ground, its racket silenced. 
 
 Quite without warning, immediately after, my 
 chair twisted under me. "I am being turned 
 around, * I said., in a low tone. "It as if some 
 thing has taken hold of the back of the chair, and 
 
146 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 is twisting it. It has stopped now/ I had been 
 turned fully a quarter round. 
 
 For fiv minutes, by the luminous dial of my 
 watch on the table before me, nothing further 
 occurred, except that the black curtain appeared 
 to swell, as in a wind. 
 
 "There is something behind it/ Alice Robinson 
 said, in a terrorized tone. "Something behind it, 
 moving." 
 
 "It is not possible/ Herbert assured her. 
 "Nothing, that is there is only one door, and it 
 is closed. I have examined the walls and floor 
 carefully." 
 
 At the end of five minutes something soft and 
 fragrant fell on to the table near me. I had not 
 noticed Herbert when he placed the flowers from 
 Mrs. Dane s table on the stand, and I was more 
 startled than the others. Then the glass prisms 
 in the chandelier over our heads clinked together, 
 as if they had been swept by a finger. More of 
 the flowers came. We were pelted with them. 
 And into the quiet that followed there came a 
 light, fine but steady tattoo on the table in our 
 midst. Then at last silence, and the medium in 
 deep trance, and Mrs. Dane rapping on the floor 
 for Clara. 
 
 When Clara came in, Mrs. Dane told her to 
 switch on the lights. Miss Jeremy had dropped 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 147 
 
 in her chair until the silk across her chest was held 
 taut. But investigation showed that none of the 
 threads were broken and that her evening slippers 
 still fitted into the outline on the paper beneath 
 them. Without getting up, Sperry reached to 
 the stand behind Miss Jeremy, and brought into 
 view a piece of sculptor s clay he had placed 
 there. The handle of the bell was now jammed 
 into the mass. He had only time to show it to 
 us when the medium began to speak. 
 
 I find, on re-reading the earlier part of this 
 record, that I have omitted mention of Miss 
 Jeremy s "control." So suddenly had we jumped, 
 that first evening, into the trail that led us to 
 the Wells case, that beyond the rather raucous 
 "good-evening/ and possibly the extraneous mat 
 ter referring to Mother Goose and so on, we had 
 been saved the usual preliminary patter of the 
 average control. 
 
 On this night, however, we were obliged to sit 
 impatiently through a rambling discourse, given 
 in a half-belligerent manner, on the deterioration 
 of moral standards. Re-reading Clara s notes, I 
 find that the subject matter is without originality 
 and the diction inferior. But the lecture ceased 
 abruptly, and the time for questions had come. 
 
 "Now," Herbert said, "we want you to go back 
 
148 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 to the house where you saw the dead man on the 
 floor. You know his name, don t you?" 
 
 There was a pause. "Yes. Of course I do. 
 A. L. Wells." 
 
 Arthur had been known to most of us by his 
 Christian name, but the initials were correct. 
 
 "How do you know it is an L?" 
 
 "On letters/ was the laconic answer. Then: 
 "Letters, letters, who has the letters ?" 
 
 "Do you know whose cane this is?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Will you tell us?" 
 
 Up to that time the replies had come easily and 
 quickly. But beginning with the cane question, 
 the medium was in difficulties. She moved un 
 easily, and spoke irritably. The replies were 
 slow and grudging. Foreign subjects were in 
 troduced, as now. 
 
 "Horace s wife certainly bullies him," said the 
 voice. "He s afraid of her. And the fire-tongs 
 the fire-tongs the fire-tongs !" 
 
 "Whose cane is this?" Herbert repeated. 
 
 "Mr. Ellingham s." 
 
 This created a profound sensation. 
 
 "How do you know that?" 
 
 "He carried it at the seashore. He wrote in 
 the sand with it." 
 
 "What did he write?" 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 149 
 
 "Ten o clock." 
 
 "He wrote ten o clock in the sand, and the 
 waves came and washed it away?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Horace," said my wife, leaning forward, "why 
 not ask her about that stock of mine? If it is 
 going down, I ought to sell, oughtn t I ?" 
 
 Herbert eyed her with some exasperation. 
 
 "We are here to make a serious investigation," 
 he said. "If the members of the club will keep 
 their attention on what we are doing, we may 
 get somewhere. Now," to the medium, "the man 
 is dead, and the revolver is beside him. Did he 
 kill himself?" 
 
 "No. He attacked her when he found the 
 letters." 
 
 "And she shot him?" 
 
 "I can t tell you that." 
 
 "Try very hard. It is important." 
 
 "I don t know," was the fretful reply. "She 
 may have. She hated him. I don t know. She 
 says she did." 
 
 "She says she killed him?" 
 
 But there was no reply to this, although Her 
 bert repeated it several times. 
 
 Instead, the voice of the "control" began to 
 recite a verse of poetry a cheap, sentimental bit 
 
150 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 of trash. It was maddening, under the circum 
 stances. 
 
 "Do you know where the letters are?" 
 
 "Hawkins has them." 
 
 "They were not hidden in the curtain?" This 
 was Sperry. 
 
 "No. The police might have searched the 
 
 room." 
 
 "Where were these letters?" 
 
 There was no direct reply to this, but instead : 
 
 "He found them when he was looking for his 
 razorstrop. They were in the top of a closet. 
 His revolver was there, too. He went back and 
 got it. It was terrible." 
 
 There was a profound silence, followed by a 
 slight exclamation from Sperry as he leaped to 
 his feet. The screen at the end of the room, 
 which cut off the light fiom Clara s candle, was 
 toppling. The next instant it fell, and we saw 
 Clara sprawled over her table, in a dead faint. 
 
 XI 
 
 In this,, the final chapter of the record of these 
 seances, I shall give, as briefly as possible, the 
 events of the day following the third sitting. I 
 shall explain the mystery of Arthur Wells s death, 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 151 
 
 and I shall give the solution arrived at by the 
 Neighborhood Club as to the strange communica 
 tions from the medium, Miss Jeremy, now 
 Sperry s wife. 
 
 But there are some things I cannot explain. 
 Do our spirits live on, on this earth plane, now 
 and then obedient to the wills of those yet living? 
 Is death, then, only a gateway into higher space, 
 from which, through the open door of a "sen 
 sitive" mind, we may be brought back on occasion 
 to commit the inadequate absurdities of the phys 
 ical seance? 
 
 Or is Sperry right, and do certain individuals 
 manifest powers of a purely physical nature, but 
 powers which Sperry characterizes as the sur 
 vival of some long-lost development by which at 
 one time we knew how to liberate a forgotten 
 form of energy? 
 
 Who can say? We do not know. We have 
 had to accept these things as they have been ac 
 cepted through the ages, and give them either a 
 spiritual or a purely natural explanation, as our 
 minds happen to be adventurous or analytic in 
 type. 
 
 But outside of the purely physical phenomena 
 of those seances, we are provided with an ex 
 planation which satisfies the Neighborhood Club, 
 even if it fails to satisfy the convinced spiritist. 
 
152 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 We have been accused merely of substituting one 
 mystery for another, but I reply by saying that 
 the mystery we substitute is not a mystery, but 
 an acknowledged fact. 
 
 On Tuesday morning I wakened after an un 
 easy night. I knew certain things, knew them 
 definitely in the clear light of morning. Hawkins 
 had the letters that Arthur Wells had found; that 
 was one thing. I had not taken Ellingham s 
 stick to Mrs. Dane s house; that was another. I 
 had not done it. I had placed it on the table and 
 had not touched it again. 
 
 But those were immaterial, compared with one 
 outstanding fact. Any supernatural solution 
 would imply full knowledge by whatever power 
 had controlled the medium. And there was not 
 full knowledge. There was., on the contrary, a 
 definite place beyond which the medium could 
 not go. 
 
 She did not know who had killed Arthur Wells. 
 
 To my surprise, Sperry and Herbert Robinson 
 came together to see me that morning at my 
 office. Sperry, like myself, was pale and tired, 
 but Herbert was restless and talkative, for all the 
 world like a terrier on the scent of a rat. 
 
 They had brought a newspaper account of an 
 attempt by burglars to rob the Wells house, and 
 the usual police formula that arrests were ex- 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 153 
 
 pected to be made that day. There was a dia 
 gram of the house, and a picture of the kitchen 
 door, with an arrow indicating the bullet-hole. 
 
 "Hawkins will be here soon," Sperry said, 
 rather casually, after I had read the clipping. 
 
 "Here?" 
 
 "Yes. He is bringing a letter from Miss 
 Jeremy. The letter is merely a blind. We want 
 to see him." 
 
 Herbert was examining the door of my office. 
 He set the spring lock. "He may try to bolt/ 
 he explained. "We re in this pretty deep, you 
 know." 
 
 "How about a record of what he says?" Sperry 
 asked. 
 
 I pressed a button, and Miss Joyce came in. 
 "Take the testimony of the man who is coming 
 in, Miss Joyce.," I directed. "Take everything 
 we say, any of us. Can you tell the different 
 voices ?" 
 
 She thought she could, and took up her position 
 in the next room, with the door partly open. 
 
 I can still see Hawkins as Sperry let him in 
 a tall, cadaverous man of good manners and an 
 English accent, a superior servant. He was cool 
 but rather resentful. I judged that he consid 
 ered carrying letters as in no way a part of his 
 work, and that he was careful of his dignity. 
 
154 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "Miss Jeremy sent this,, sir/ he said. 
 
 Then his eyes took in Sperry and Herbert, and 
 he drew himself up. 
 
 "I see," he said. "It wasn t the letter, then?" 
 
 "Not entirely. We want to have a talk with 
 you, Hawkins." 
 
 "Very well, sir." But his eyes went from one 
 to the other of us. 
 
 "You were in the employ of Mr. Wells. We 
 know that. Also we saw you there the night he 
 died, but some time after his death. What time 
 did you get in that night?" 
 
 "About midnight. I am not certain." 
 
 "Who told you of what had happened?" 
 
 "I told you that before. I met the detectives 
 going out." 
 
 "Exactly. Now, Hawkins,, you had come in, 
 locked the door, and placed the key outside for 
 the other servants ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "How do you expect us to believe that ?" Sperry 
 demanded irritably. "There was only one key. 
 Could you lock yourself in and then place the key 
 outside?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," he replied impassively. "By open 
 ing the kitchen window, I could reach out and 
 hang it on the nail." 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 155 
 
 "You were out of the house, then,, at the time 
 Mr. Wells died ?" 
 
 "I can prove it by as many witnesses as you 
 wish to call." 
 
 "Now, about these letters, Hawkins," Sperry 
 said. "The letters in the bag. Have you still 
 got them?" 
 
 He half rose we had given him a chair facing 
 the light and then sat down again. "What let 
 ters?" 
 
 "Don t beat about the bush. We know you 
 have the letters. And we want them." 
 
 "I don t intend to give them up, sir." 
 
 "Will you tell us how you got them?" 
 
 He hesitated. "If you do not know already, 
 I do not care to say." 
 
 I placed the letter to A 31 before him. "You 
 wrote this, I think?" I said. 
 
 He was genuinely startled. More than that, 
 indeed, for his face twitched. "Suppose I did?" 
 he said, "I m not admitting it." 
 
 "Will you tell us for whom it was meant?" 
 
 "You know a great deal already, gentlemen. 
 Why not find that out from where you learned the 
 rest?" 
 
 "You know, then, where we learned what we 
 know?" 
 
 "That s easy," he said bitterly. "She s told 
 
156 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 you enough, I daresay. She doesn t know it all, 
 of course. Any more than I do," he added. 
 
 "Will you give us the letters?" 
 
 "I haven t said I have them. I haven t ad 
 mitted I wrote that one on the desk. Suppose 
 I have them, I ll not give them up except to the 
 District Attorney/ 
 
 "By she do you refer to Miss Jeremy?" I 
 asked. 
 
 He stared at me, and then smiled faintly. 
 
 "You know who I mean." 
 
 We tried to assure him that we were not, in 
 a sense, seeking to involve him in the situation, 
 and I even went so far as to state our position, 
 briefly : 
 
 "I d better explain, Hawkins. We are not 
 doing police work. But, owing to a chain of cir 
 cumstances, we have learned that Mr. Wells did 
 not kill himself. He was murdered, or at least 
 shot., by some one else. It may not have been 
 deliberate. Owing to what we have learned,, cer 
 tain people are under suspicion. We want to 
 clear things up for our own satisfaction." 
 
 "Then why is some one taking down what I say 
 in the next room?" 
 
 He could only have guessed it, but he saw that 
 he was right, by our faces. He smiled bitterly. 
 "Go on," he said. "Take it down. It can t hurt 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 157 
 
 anybody. I don t know who did it, and that s 
 God s truth." 
 
 And,, after long wrangling, that was as far as 
 we got. 
 
 He suspected who had done it, but he did not 
 know. He absolutely refused to surrender the 
 letters in his possession, and a sense of delicacy, 
 I think, kept us all from pressing the question of 
 the A 31 matter. 
 
 That s a personal affair," he said. "I ve had 
 a good bit of trouble. I m thinking now of going 
 back to England." 
 
 And, as I say, we did not insist. 
 
 When he had gone, there seemed to be noth 
 ing to say. He had left the same impression on 
 all of us, I think of trouble, but not of crime. 
 Of a man fairly driven; of wretchedness that 
 was almost despair. He still had the letters. 
 He had, after all, as much right to them as we 
 had,, which was, actually, no right at all. And, 
 whatever it was, he still had his secret. 
 
 Herbert was almost childishly crestfallen. 
 Sperry s attitude was more philosophical. 
 
 "A woman, of course," he said. "The A 31 
 letter shows it. He tried to get her back, per 
 haps, by holding the letters over her head. And 
 it hasn t worked out. Poor devil! Only who 
 is the woman?" 
 
158 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 It was that night, the fifteenth day after the 
 crime, that the solution came. Came, as a matter 
 of fact, to my door. 
 
 I was in the library, reading, or trying to read, 
 a rather abstruse book on psychic phenomena. 
 My wife, I recall, had just asked me to change a 
 banjo record for "The End of a Pleasant Day," 
 when the bell rang. 
 
 In our modest establishment the maids retire 
 early, and it is my custom, on those rare occa 
 sions when the bell rings after nine o clock, to 
 answer the door myself. 
 
 .To my surprise, it was Sperry, accompanied by 
 two ladies, one of them heavily veiled. It was 
 not until I had ushered them into the reception 
 room and lighted the gas that I saw who they 
 were. It was Elinor Wells, in deep mourning, 
 and Clara, Mrs. Dane s companion and secretary. 
 
 I am afraid I was rather excited,, for I took 
 Sperry s hat from him, and placed it on the head 
 of a marble bust which I had given my wife on 
 our last anniversary, and Sperry says that I drew 
 a smoking-stand up beside Elinor Wells with 
 great care. I do not know. It has, however, 
 passed into history in the Club, where every now 
 and then for some time Herbert offered one of 
 the ladies a cigar, with my compliments. 
 
 My wife, I believe, was advancing along the 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 159 
 
 corridor when Sperry closed the door. As she 
 had only had time to see that a woman was in 
 the room, she was naturally resentful, and retired 
 to the upper floor, where I found her considerably 
 upset, some time later. 
 
 While I am quite sure that I was not thinking 
 clearly at the opening of the interview, I know 
 that I was puzzled at the presence of Mrs. Dane s 
 secretary, but I doubtless accepted it as having 
 some connection with Clara s notes. And 
 Sperry, at the beginning, made no comment on 
 her at all. 
 
 "Mrs. Wells suggested that we come here, Hor 
 ace/ he began. "We may need a legal mind on 
 this. I m not sure, or rather I think it unlikely. 
 But just in case suppose you tell him, Elinor/ 
 
 I have no record of the story Elinor Wells told 
 that night in our little reception-room,, with Clara 
 sitting in a corner, grave and white. It was frag 
 mentary, inco-ordinate. But I got it all at last. 
 
 Charlie Ellingham had killed Arthur Wells, 
 but in a struggle. In parts the story was sordid 
 enough. She did not spare herself, or her mo 
 tives. She had wanted luxury, and Arthur had 
 not succeeded as he had promised. They were 
 in debt, and living beyond their means. But even 
 that, she hastened to add, would not have mat- 
 
160 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 tered, had he not been brutal with her. He had 
 made her life very wretched. 
 
 But on the subject of Charlie Ellingham she 
 was emphatic. She knew that there had been 
 talk, but there had been no real basis for it. She 
 had turned to him for comfort, and he gave her 
 love. She didn t know where he was now, and 
 didn t greatly care, but she would like to recover 
 and destroy some letters he had written her. 
 
 She was looking crushed and ill, and she told 
 her story inco-ordinately and nervously. Reduced 
 to its elements,, it was as follows : 
 
 On the night of Arthur Wells s death they were 
 dressing for a ball. She had made a private ar 
 rangement with Ellingham to plead a headache 
 at the last moment and let Arthur go alone. But 
 he had been so insistent that she had been forced 
 to go, after all. She had sent the governess, 
 Suzanne Gautier, out to telephone Ellingham not 
 to come, but he was not at his house, and the mes 
 sage was left with his valet. As it turned out, he 
 had already started. 
 
 Elinor was dressed, all but her ball-gown, and 
 had put on a negligee, to wait for the governess 
 to return and help her. Arthur was in his dress 
 ing-room, and she heard him grumbling about 
 having no blades for his safety razor. 
 
 He got out a case of razors and searched for 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 161 
 
 the strop. When she remembered where the 
 strop was, it was too late. The letters had been 
 beside it., and he was coming toward her, with 
 them in his hand. 
 
 She was terrified. He had read only one, but 
 that was enough. He muttered something and 
 turned away. She saw his face as he went to 
 ward where the revolver had been hidden from 
 the children, and she screamed. 
 
 Charlie Ellingham heard her. The door had 
 been left unlocked by the governess, and he was 
 in the lower hall. He ran up and the two men 
 grappled. The first shot was fired by Arthur. 
 It struck the ceiling. The second she was doubt 
 ful about. She thought the revolver was still in 
 Arthur s hand. It was all horrible. He went 
 dow r n like a stone, in the hallway outside the door. 
 
 They were nearly mad, the two of them. They 
 had dragged the body in, and then faced each 
 other. Ellingham was for calling the police at 
 once and surrendering, but she had kept him away 
 from the telephone. She maintained, and I 
 think it very possible, that her whole thought 
 was for the children, and the effect on their after 
 lives of such a scandal. And, after all, nothing 
 could help the man on the floor. 
 
 It was while they were trying to formulate 
 some concerted plan that they heard footsteps 
 
162 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 below, and, thinking it was Mademoiselle Gautier, 
 she drove Ellingham into the rear of the house, 
 from which later he managed to escape. But it 
 was Clara who was coming up the stairs. 
 
 "She had been our first governess for the chil 
 dren/ Elinor said, "and she often came in. She 
 had made a birthday smock for Buddy, and she 
 had it in her hand. She almost fainted. I 
 couldn t tell her about Charlie Ellingham. I 
 couldn t. I told her we had been struggling, and 
 that I was afraid I had shot him. She is quick. 
 She knew just what to do. We worked fast. 
 She said a suicide would not have fired one shot 
 into the ceiling, and she fixed that. It was terri 
 ble. And all the time he lay there, with his eyes 
 half open " 
 
 The letters,, it seems, were all over the place. 
 Elinor thought of the curtain, cut a receptacle 
 for them, but she was afraid of the police. 
 Finally she gave them to Clara, who was to take 
 them away and burn them. 
 
 They did everything they could think of, all the 
 time listening for Suzanne Gautier s return ; filled 
 the second empty chamber of the revolver, 
 dragged the body out of the hall and washed the 
 carpet, and called Doctor Sperry, knowing that 
 he was at Mrs. Dane s and could not come. 
 
 Clara had only a little time, and with the letters 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 163 
 
 in her handbag she started down the stairs. 
 There she heard some one, possibly Ellingham, on 
 the back stairs, and in her haste, she fell, hurting 
 her knee, and she must have dropped the hand 
 bag at that time. They knew now that Hawkins 
 had found it later on. But for a few days they 
 didn t know, and hence the advertisement. 
 
 "I think we would better explain Hawkins," 
 Sperry said. "Hawkins was married to Miss 
 Clara here, some years ago, while she was with 
 Mrs. Wells. They had kept it a secret, and re 
 cently she has broken with him." 
 
 "He was infatuated with another woman," 
 Clara said briefly. "That s a personal matter. 
 It has nothing to do with this case." 
 
 "It explains Hawkins s letter." 
 
 "It doesn t explain how that medium knew 
 everything that happened/ Clara put in, excit 
 edly. "She knew it all, even the library paste! 
 I can tell you, Mr. Johnson, I was close to fainting 
 a dozen times before I finally did it." 
 
 "Did you know of our seances?" I asked Mrs. 
 Wells. 
 
 "Yes. I may as well tell you that I haven t 
 been in Florida. How could I? The children 
 are there, but I " 
 
 "Did you tell Charlie Ellingham about them ?" 
 
 "After the second one I warned him, and I 
 
164 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 think he went to the house. One bullet was 
 somewhere in the ceiling, or in the floor of the 
 nursery. I thought it ought to be found. I 
 don t know whether he found it or not. I ve been 
 afraid to see him." 
 
 She sat, clasping and unclasping her hands in 
 her lap. She was a proud woman, and surrender 
 had come hard. The struggle was marked in her 
 face. She looked as though she had not slept for 
 days. 
 
 "You think I am frightened," she said slowly. 
 "And I am, terribly frightened. But not about 
 discovery. That has come, and cannot be 
 helped." 
 
 "Then why?" 
 
 "How does this woman, this medium, know 
 these things?" Her voice rose, with an unex 
 pected hysterical catch. "It is superhuman. I 
 am almost mad." 
 
 "We re going to get to the bottom of this," 
 Sperry said soothingly. "Be sure that it is not 
 what you think it is, Elinor. There s a simple 
 explanation, and I think I ve got it. What about 
 the stick that was taken from my library ?" 
 
 "Will you tell me how you came to have it, 
 doctor?" 
 
 "Yes. I took it from the lower hall the night 
 the night it happened." 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 165 
 
 "It was Charlie Ellingham s. He had left it 
 there. We had to have it, doctor. Alone it 
 might not mean much, but with the other things 
 you knew tell them, Clara/ 
 
 "I stole it from your office/ Clara said, look 
 ing straight ahead. "We had to have it. I 
 knew at the second sitting that it was his/ 
 
 "When did you take it?" 
 
 "On Monday morning, I went for Mrs. Dane s 
 medicine, and you had promised her a book. Do 
 you remember ? I told your man, and he allowed 
 me to go up to the library. It was there, on the 
 table. I had expected to have to search for it, 
 but it was lying out, I fastened it to my belt, 
 under my long coat/ 
 
 "And placed it in the rack at Mrs. Dane s?" 
 Sperry was watching her intently, with the same 
 sort of grim intentness he wears when examining 
 a chest. 
 
 "I put it in the closet in my room. I meant to 
 get rid of it, when I had a little time. I don t 
 know how it got downstairs, but I think " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "We are house-cleaning. A housemaid was 
 washing closets. I suppose she found it and, 
 thinking it was one of Mrs. Dane s, took it down 
 stairs. That is, unless " It was clear that, 
 
166 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 like Elinor, she had a supernatural explanation in 
 her mind. She looked gaunt and haggard. 
 
 "Mr. Ellingham was anxious to get it," she fin 
 ished. "He had taken Mr. Johnson s overcoat 
 by mistake one night when you were both in the 
 house, and the notes were in it. He saw that 
 the stick was important." 
 
 "Clara/ Sperry asked, "did you see, the day 
 you advertised for your bag, another similar ad 
 vertisement?" 
 
 "I saw it. It frightened me." 
 
 "You have no idea who inserted it?" 
 
 "None whatever." 
 
 "Did you ever see Miss Jeremy before the first 
 sitting? Or hear of her?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "Or between the seances?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Elinor rose and drew her veil down. "We 
 must go," she said. "Surely now you will cease 
 these terrible investigations. I cannot stand 
 much more. I am going mad." 
 
 "There will be no more seances," Sperry said 
 gravely. 
 
 "What are you going to do?" She turned to 
 me, I daresay because I represented what to her 
 was her supreme dread, the law. 
 
 "My dear girl," I said, "we are not going to 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 167 
 
 do anything. The Neighborhood Club has been 
 doing a little amateur research work, which is 
 now over. That is all." 
 
 Sperry took them away in his car, but he 
 turned on the door-step., "Wait downstairs for 
 me/ he said, "I am coming back/ 
 
 I remained in the library until he returned, un 
 easily pacing the floor. 
 
 For where were we, after all ? We had had the 
 medium s story elaborated and confirmed, but the 
 fact remained that, step by step, through her un 
 known "control" the Neighborhood Club had 
 followed a tragedy from its beginning, or almost 
 its beginning, to its end. 
 
 Was everything on which I had built my life 
 to go? Its philosophy, its science, even its the 
 ology, before the revelations of a young woman 
 who knew hardly the rudiments of the very things 
 she was destroying? 
 
 Was death, then, not peace and an awakening 
 to new things, but a wretched and dissociated 
 clutching after the old? A wrench which only 
 loosened but did not break our earthly ties ? 
 
 It was well that Sperry came back when he 
 did, bringing with him a breath of fresh night 
 air and stalwart sanity. He found me still pac 
 ing the room. 
 
 "The thing I want to know," I said fretfully, 
 
168 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "is where this leaves us? Where are we? For 
 God s sake, where are we?" 
 
 "First of all," he said, "have you anything to 
 drink? Not for me. For yourself. You look 
 sick." 
 
 "We do not keep intoxicants in the house." 
 
 "Oh, piffle," he said. "Where is it, Horace?" 
 
 "I have a little gin." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 I drew a chair before the book-shelves, which 
 in our old-fashioned house reach almost to the 
 ceiling, and, withdrawing a volume of Josephus, 
 I brought down the bottle. 
 
 "Now and then,, when I have had a bad day," 
 I explained, "I find that it makes me sleep." 
 
 He poured out some and I drank it, being care 
 ful to rinse the glass afterward. 
 
 "Well," said Sperry, when he had lighted a 
 cigar. "So you want to know where we are?" 
 
 "I would like to save something out of the 
 wreck." 
 
 "That s easy. Horace, you should be a heart 
 specialist, and I should have taken the law. It s 
 as plain as the alphabet." He took his notes of 
 the sittings from his pocket. "I m going to read 
 a few things. Keep what is left of your mind 
 on them. This is the first sitting. 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 169 
 
 " The knee hurts. It is very bad. Arnica 
 will take the pain out/ 
 
 " I want to go out. I want air. If I could 
 only go to sleep and forget it. The drawing- 
 room furniture is scattered all over the house. 
 
 "Now the second sitting: 
 
 " It is writing. (The stick.) "It is writing, 
 but the water washed it away. All of it, not a 
 trace/ If only the pocketbook were not lost. 
 Car-tickets and letters. It will be terrible if the 
 letters are found/ Hawkins may have it. The 
 curtain was much safer/ That part s safe 
 enough, unless it made a hole in the floor above/ 
 
 "Oh, if you re going to read a lot of irrelevant 
 material " 
 
 "Irrelevant nothing ! Wake up, Horace ! But 
 remember this. I m not explaining the physical 
 phenomena. We ll never do that. It wasn t ex 
 traordinary, as such things go. Our little 
 medium in a trance condition has read poor 
 Clara s mind. It s all here, all that Clara knew 
 and nothing that she didn t know. A mind- 
 reader, friend Horace. And Heaven help me 
 when I marry her!" 
 
 ******* 
 
 As I have said, the Neighborhood Club ended 
 its investigations with this conclusion,, which I 
 believe is properly reached. It is only fair to 
 
170 SIGHT UNSEEN __ 
 
 state that there are those among us who have ac 
 cepted that theory in the Wells case, but who 
 have preferred to consider that behind both it 
 and the physical phenomena of the seances there 
 was an intelligence which directed both, an intel 
 ligence not of this world as we know it. Both 
 Herbert and Alice Robinson are now pronounced 
 spiritualists, although Miss Jeremy, now Mrs. 
 Sperry, has definitely abandoned all investigative 
 work. 
 
 Personally, I have evolved no theory. It 
 seems beyond dispute that certain individuals can 
 read minds, and that these same, or other so-called 
 "sensitives," are capable of liberating a form of 
 invisible energy which, however, they turn to no 
 further account than the useless ringing of bells, 
 moving of small tables, and flinging about of 
 divers objects. 
 
 To me, I admit, the solution of the Wells case 
 as one of mind-reading is more satisfactory than 
 explanatory. For mental waves remain a mys 
 tery, acknowledged, as is electricity, but of a 
 nature yet unrevealed. Thoughts are things. 
 That is all we know. 
 
 Mrs. Dane, I believe, had suspected the solu 
 tion from the start. 
 
 The Neighborhood Club has recently dis 
 banded. We tried other things, but we had been 
 
SIGHT UNSEEN 171 
 
 spoiled. Our Kipling winter was a failure. We 
 read a play or two, with Sperry s wife reading 
 the heroine, and the rest of us taking other parts. 
 She has a lovely voice, has Mrs. Sperry. But 
 it was all stale and unprofitable, after the Wells 
 affair. With Herbert on a lecture tour on spirit 
 realism, and Mrs. Dane at a sanatorium for the 
 winter, we have now given it up, and my wife and 
 I spend our Monday evenings at home. 
 
 After dinner I read, or, as lately, I have been 
 making this record of the Wells case from our 
 notes. My wife is still fond of the phonograph, 
 and even now, as I make this last entry and com 
 plete my narrative, she is waiting for me to 
 change the record. I will be frank. I hate the 
 phonograph. I hope it will be destroyed, or 
 stolen. I am thinking very seriously of having 
 it stolen. 
 
 "Horace," says my wife, "whatever would we 
 do without the phonograph? I wish you would 
 put it in the burglar-insurance policy. I am al 
 ways afraid it will be stolen." 
 
 Even here, you see! Truly thoughts are 
 things. 
 
THE, CONFESSION 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 1AM not a susceptible woman. I am objective 
 rather than subjective, and a fairly full ex 
 perience of life has taught me that most of my 
 impressions are from within out rather than the 
 other way about. For instance, obsession at one 
 time a few years ago of a shadowy figure on my 
 right, just beyond the field of vision, was later 
 exposed as the result of a defect in my glasses. 
 In the same way Maggie, my old servant, was 
 during one entire summer haunted by church- 
 bells and considered it a personal summons to 
 eternity until it was shown to be in her inner ear. 
 Yet the Benton house undeniably made me un 
 comfortable. Perhaps it was because it had re 
 mained unchanged for so long. The old horse 
 hair chairs, with their shiny mahogany frames, 
 showed by the slightly worn places in the carpet 
 before them that they had not deviated an inch 
 from their position for many years. The carpets 
 carpets that reached to the very baseboards 
 and gave under one s feet with the yielding of 
 heavy padding beneath were bright under beds 
 
 175 
 
176 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 and wardrobes, while in the centers of the rooms 
 they had faded into the softness of old tapestry. 
 
 Maggie, I remember, on our arrival moved a 
 chair from the wall in the library, and immediate 
 ly put it back again, with a glance to see if I had 
 observed her. 
 
 "It s nice and clean, Miss Agnes," she said. 
 "A I kind of feel that a little dirt would make 
 it more homelike." 
 
 "I m sure I don t see why," I replied, rather 
 sharply, "I ve lived in a tolerably clean house 
 most of my life." 
 
 Maggie, however, was digging a heel into the 
 padded carpet. She had chosen a sunny place 
 for the experiment, and a small cloud of dust rose 
 like smoke. 
 
 "Germs!" she said. "]ust what I expected. 
 We d better bring the vacuum cleaner out from 
 the city, Miss Agnes. Them carpets haven t been 
 lifted for years." 
 
 But I paid little attention to her. To Maggie 
 any particle of matter not otherwise classified is 
 a germ, and the prospect of finding dust in that 
 immaculate house was sufficiently thrilling to 
 tide over the strangeness of our first few hours 
 in it. 
 
 Once a year I rent a house in the country. 
 When my nephew and niece were children, I did 
 
THE CONFESSION 177 
 
 it to take them out of the city during school vaca 
 tions. Later, when they grew up, it was to be 
 near the country club. But now, with the chil 
 dren married and new families coming along, we 
 were more concerned with dairies than with clubs, 
 and I inquired more carefully about the neigh 
 borhood cows than about the neighborhood golf- 
 links. I had really selected the house at Benton 
 Station because there was a most alluring pas 
 ture, with a brook running through it, and vio 
 lets over the banks. It seemed to me that no cow 
 with a conscience could live in those surround 
 ings and give colicky milk. 
 
 Then, the house was cheap. Unbelievably 
 cheap. I suspected sewerage at once, but it 
 seemed to be in the best possible order. Indeed, 
 new plumbing had been put in, and extra bath 
 rooms installed. As old Miss Emily Benton lived 
 there alone, with only an old couple to look after 
 her, it looked odd to see three bathrooms, two 
 of them new, on the second floor. Big tubs and 
 showers, although little old Miss Emily could 
 have bathed in the washbowl and have had room 
 to spare. 
 
 I faced the agent downstairs in the parlor, 
 after I had gone over the house. Miss Emily 
 Benton had not appeared and I took it she was 
 away. 
 
178 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "Why all those bathrooms?" I demanded. 
 "Does she use them in rotation?" 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "She wished to rent the house, Miss Blakiston. 
 The old-fashioned plumbing " 
 
 "But she is giving the house away/ I ex 
 claimed. "Those bathrooms have cost much more 
 than she will get out of it. You and I know that 
 the price is absurd." 
 
 He smiled at that. "If you wish to pay more, 
 you may, of course. She is a fine woman, Miss 
 Blakiston, but you can never measure a Benton 
 with any yard-stick but their own. The truth 
 is that she wants the house off her hands this 
 summer. I don t know why. It s a good house, 
 and she has lived here all her life. But my in 
 structions, I ll tell you frankly, are to rent it, if 
 I have to give it away." 
 
 With which absurd sentence we went out the 
 front door, and I saw the pasture, which decided 
 me. 
 
 In view of the fact that I had taken the house 
 for my grandnieces and nephews, it was annoying 
 to find, by the end of June, that I should have to 
 live in it by myself. Willie s boy was having his 
 teeth straightened, and must make daily visits to 
 the dentist, and Jack went to California and took 
 Gertrude and the boys with him. 
 
THE CONFESSION 179 
 
 The first curious thing happened then. I wrote 
 to the agent, saying that I would not use the 
 house, but enclosing a check for its rental, as I 
 had signed the lease. To my surprise, I received 
 in reply a note from Miss Emily herself, very 
 carefully written on thin note-paper. 
 
 Although it was years since I had seen her, the 
 exquisite neatness of the letter, its careful para 
 graphing, its margins so accurate as to give the 
 impression that she had drawn a faint margin 
 line with a lead pencil and then erased it all 
 these were as indicative of Emily Benton as 
 well, as the letter was not. 
 
 As well as I can explain it, the letter was im 
 pulsive, almost urgent. Yet the little old lady I 
 remembered was neither of these things. "My 
 dear Miss Blakiston," she wrote. "But I do hope 
 you will use the house. It was because I wanted 
 to be certain that it would be occupied this sum 
 mer that I asked so low a rent for it. 
 
 "You may call it a whim if you like, but there 
 are reasons why I wish the house to have a sum 
 mer tenant. It has, for one thing, never been 
 empty since it was built. It was my father s 
 pride, and his father s before him, that the doors 
 were never locked, even at night. Of course I 
 can not ask a tenant to continue this old custom, 
 but I can ask you to reconsider your decision. 
 
180 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "Will you forgive me for saying that you are 
 so exactly the person I should like to see in the 
 house that I feel I can not give you up? So 
 strongly do I feel this that I would, if I dared, en 
 close your check and beg you to use the house rent 
 free. Faithfully yours, Emily Benton." 
 
 Gracefully worded and carefully written as the 
 letter was, I seemed to feel behind it some stress 
 of feeling, an excitement perhaps, totally out of 
 proportion to its contents. Years before I had 
 met Miss Emily, even then a frail little old lady, 
 her small figure stiffly erect, her eyes cold, her 
 whole bearing one of reserve. The Bentons, for 
 all their open doors, were known in that part of 
 the country as "proud." I can remember, too, 
 how when I was a young girl my mother had re 
 garded the rare invitations to have tea and tiny 
 cakes in the Benton parlor as commands, no less, 
 and had taken the long carriage-ride from the 
 city with complacency. And now Miss Emily, 
 last of the family, had begged me to take the 
 house. 
 
 In the end, as has been shown, I agreed. The 
 glamor of the past had perhaps something to 
 do with it. But I have come to a time of life 
 when, failing intimate interests of my own, my 
 neighbors interests are mine by adoption. To be 
 frank, I came because I was curious. Why, aside 
 
THE CONFESSION 181 
 
 from a money consideration, was the Benton 
 house to be occupied by an alien household? It 
 was opposed to every tradition of the family as 
 I had heard of it. 
 
 I knew something of the family history: the 
 Reverend Thaddeus Benton, rector of Saint Bar 
 tholomew, who had forsaken the frame rectory 
 near the church to build himself the substantial 
 home now being offered me; Miss Emily, his 
 daughter, who must now, I computed, be nearly 
 seventy; and a son whom I recalled faintly as 
 hardly bearing out the Benton traditions of solid 
 ity and rectitude. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Benton, I recalled, had 
 taken the stand that his house was his own, and 
 having moved his family into it, had thereafter, 
 save on great occasions, received the congrega 
 tion individually or en masse, in his study at the 
 church. A patriarchal old man, benevolent yet 
 austere, who once, according to a story I had 
 heard in my girlhood, had horsewhipped one of 
 his vestrymen for trifling with the affections of a 
 young married woman in the village! 
 
 There was a gap of thirty years in my knowl 
 edge of the family. I had, indeed, forgotten its 
 very existence, when by the chance of a news 
 paper advertisement I found myself involved 
 
182 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 vitally in its affairs, playing providence, indeed, 
 and both fearing and hating my role. 
 
 Looking back, there are a number of things 
 that appear rather curious. Why, for instance, 
 did Maggie, my old servant, develop such a dis 
 like for the place? It had nothing to do with 
 the house. She had not seen it when she first re 
 fused to go. But her reluctance was evident 
 from the beginning. 
 
 "I ve just got a feeling about it, Miss Agnes," 
 she said. "I can t explain it, any more than I can 
 explain a cold in the head. But it s there." 
 
 At first I was inclined to blame Maggie s "feel 
 ing" on her knowledge that the house was cheap. 
 She knew it, as she has, I am sure, read all my 
 letters for years. She has a distrust of a bar 
 gain. But later I came to believe that there was 
 something more to Maggie s distrust as though 
 perhaps a wave of uneasiness, spreading from 
 some unknown source, had engulfed her. 
 
 Indeed, looking back over the two months I 
 spent in the Benton house, I am inclined to go 
 even further. If thoughts carry, as I am sure 
 they do, then emotions carry. Fear, hope, cour 
 age, despair if the intention of writing a letter 
 to an absent friend can spread itself half-way 
 across the earth, so that as you write the friend 
 writes also, and your letters cross, how much 
 
THE CONFESSION 183 
 
 more should big emotions carry? I have had 
 sweep over me such waves of gladness, such gusts 
 of despair, as have shaken me. Yet with no cause 
 for either. They are gone in a moment. Just for 
 an instant, I have caught and made my own 
 another s joy or grief. 
 
 The only inexplicable part of this narrative is 
 that Maggie, neither a psychic nor a sensitive 
 type, caught the terror, as I came to call it, be 
 fore I did. Perhaps it may be explainable by the 
 fact that her mental processes are comparatively 
 simple, her mind an empty slate that shows every 
 mark made on it. 
 
 In a way, this is a study in fear. 
 
 Maggie s resentment continued through my 
 decision to use the house, through the packing, 
 through the very moving itself. It took the form 
 of a sort of watchful waiting, although at the 
 time we neither of us realized it, and of dislike 
 of the house and its surroundings. It extended 
 itself to the very garden, where she gathered flow 
 ers for the table with a ruthlessness that was al 
 most vicious. And, as July went on, and Miss 
 Emily made her occasional visits, as tiny, as 
 delicate as herself, I had a curious conclusion 
 forced on me. Miss Emily returned her antago 
 nism. I was slow to credit it. What secret and 
 even unacknowledged opposition could there be 
 
184 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 between my downright Maggie and this little old 
 aristocrat with her frail hands and the soft rustle 
 of silk about her? 
 
 In Miss Emily, it took the form of how 
 strange a word to use in connection with her ! 
 of furtive watchfulness. I felt that Maggie s en 
 trance, with nothing more momentous than the 
 tea-tray, set her upright in her chair, put an edge 
 to her soft voice, and absorbed her. She was 
 still attentive to what I said. She agreed or dis 
 sented. But back of it all, with her eyes on me, 
 she was watching Maggie. 
 
 With Maggie the antagonism took no such sub 
 tle form. It showed itself in the second best in 
 stead of the best china, and a tendency to weak 
 tea, when Miss Emily took hers very strong. 
 And such was the effect of their mutual watch 
 fulness and suspicion, such perhaps was the in 
 fluence of the staid old house on me, after a time 
 even that fact, of the strong tea, began to strike 
 me as incongruous. Miss Emily was so consist 
 ent, so consistently frail and dainty and so well, 
 unspotted seems to be the word and so gentle, 
 yet as time went on I began to feel that she hated 
 Maggie with a real hatred. And there was the 
 strong tea ! 
 
 Indeed, it was not quite normal, nor was I. 
 For by that time the middle of July it was be- 
 
THE CONFESSION 185 
 
 fore I figured out as much as I have set down in 
 five minutes by that time I was not certain 
 about the house. It was difficult to say just what 
 I felt about the house. Willie, who came down 
 over a Sunday early in the summer, possibly 
 voiced it when he came down to his breakfast 
 there. 
 
 "How did you sleep?" I asked. 
 
 "Not very well." He picked up his coffee-cup, 
 and smiled over it rather sheepishly. "To tell 
 the truth, I got to thinking about things the fur 
 niture and all that/ he said vaguely. "How 
 many people have sat in the chairs and seen 
 themselves in the mirror and died in the bed, and 
 so on." 
 
 Maggie, who was bringing in the toast, gave a 
 sort of low moan, which she turned into a cough. 
 
 "There have been twenty-three deaths in it in 
 the last forty years, Mr. Willie," she volunteered. 
 "That s according to the gardener. And more 
 than half died in that room of yours." 
 
 "Put down that toast before you drop it, Mag 
 gie/ I said. "You re shaking all over. And 
 go out and shut the door/ 
 
 "Very well/ she said, with a meekness behind 
 which she was both indignant and frightened. 
 "But there is one word I might mention before I 
 go, and that is cats!" 
 
186 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "Cats!" said Willie, as she slammed the door. 
 
 "I think it is only one cat," I observed mildly. 
 "It belongs to Miss Emily, I fancy. It manages 
 to be in a lot of places nearly simultaneously, and 
 Maggie swears it is a dozen." 
 
 Willie is not subtle. He is a practical young 
 man with a growing family, and a tendency the 
 last year or two to flesh. But he ate his break 
 fast thoughtfully. 
 
 "Don t you think it s rather isolated?" he asked 
 finally. "Just you three women here?" I had 
 taken Delia, the cook, along. 
 
 "We have a telephone/ I said, rather loftily. 
 
 "Although " I checked myself. Maggie, I 
 
 felt sure, was listening in the pantry, and I in 
 tended to give her wild fancies no encourage 
 ment. To utter a thing is, to Maggie, to give it 
 life. By the mere use of the spoken word it 
 ceases to be supposition and becomes fact. 
 
 As a matter of fact, my uneasiness about the 
 house resolved itself into an uneasiness about 
 the telephone. It seems less absurd now than 
 it did then. But I remember what Willie said 
 about it that morning on our way to the church. 
 
 "It rings at night, Willie," I said. "And when 
 I go there is no one there." 
 
 "So do all telephones," he replied briskly. "It s 
 their greatest weakness." 
 
THE CONFESSION 187 
 
 "Once or twice we have found the thing on the 
 floor in the morning. It couldn t blow over or 
 knock itself down/ 
 
 "Probably the cat," he said, with the patient 
 air of a man arguing with an unreasonable 
 woman. "Of course," he added we were pass 
 ing the churchyard then, dominated by what the 
 village called the Benton "mosolem" "there s a 
 chance that those dead-and-gone Bentons resent 
 anything as modern as a telephone. It might be 
 interesting to see what they would do to a vic- 
 trola. 
 
 "I m going to tell you something, Willie," I 
 said. "I am afraid of the telephone." 
 
 He was completely incredulous. I felt rather 
 ridiculous, standing there in the sunlight of that 
 summer Sabbath and making my confession. 
 But I did it. 
 
 "I am afraid of it," I repeated. "I m desper 
 ately sure you will never understand. Because I 
 don t. I can hardly force myself tc go to it. I 
 hate the very back corner of the hall where it 
 stands, I " 
 
 I saw his expression then, and I stopped, furi 
 ous with myself. Why had I said it? But more 
 important still, why did I feel it? I had not put 
 it into words before, I had not expected to say 
 
188 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 it then. But the moment I said it I knew it was 
 true. I had developed an idee fixe. 
 
 "I have to go downstairs at night and answer 
 it," I added, rather feebly. "It s on my nerves, 
 I think." 
 
 "I should think it is" he said, with a note of 
 wonder in his voice. "It doesn t sound like you. 
 A telephone!" But just at the church door he 
 stopped me, a hand on my arm. 
 
 "Look here," he said, "don t you suppose it s 
 because you re so dependent on the telephone? 
 You know that if anything goes wrong with it, 
 you re cut off, in a way. And there s another 
 point you get all your news over it, good and 
 bad." He had difficulty, I think, in finding the 
 words he wanted. "It s it s vital," he said. 
 "So you attach too much importance to it, and it 
 gets to be an obsession." 
 
 "Very likely," I assented. "The whole thing 
 is idiotic, anyhow." 
 
 But was it idiotic? 
 
 I am endeavoring to set things down as they 
 seemed to me at the time, not in the light of sub 
 sequent events. For, if this narrative has any 
 interest at all, it is a psychological one. I have 
 said that it is a study in fear, but perhaps it would 
 be more accurate to say that it is a study of the 
 mental reaction of crime, of its effects on differ- 
 
THE CONFESSION 189 
 
 ent minds, more or less remotely connected 
 with it. 
 
 That my analysis of my impressions in the 
 church that morning are not colored by subse 
 quent events is proved by the fact that under 
 cover of that date, July i6th, I made the follow 
 ing entry: 
 
 "Why do Maggie and Miss Benton distrust 
 each other?" 
 
 I realized it even then, although I did not con 
 sider it serious, as is evidenced by the fact that 
 I follow it with a recipe for fruit gelatin, copied 
 from the newspaper. 
 
 It was a calm and sunny Sunday morning. The 
 church windows were wide open, and a butterfly 
 came in and set the choir boys to giggling. At 
 the end of my pew a stained-glass window to 
 Carlo Benton the name came like an echo from 
 the forgotten past sent a shower of colored 
 light over Willie, turned my blue silk to most un- 
 spinsterly hues, and threw a sort of summer 
 radiance over Miss Emily herself, in the seat 
 ahead. 
 
 She sat quite alone, impeccably neat, even to 
 her profile. She was so orderly, so well balanced, 
 one stitch of her hand-sewed organdy collar was 
 so clearly identical with every other, her very 
 seams, if you can understand it, ran so exactly 
 
190 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 where they should, that she set me to pulling my 
 self straight. I am rather casual as to seams. 
 
 After a time I began to have a curious feeling 
 about her. Her head was toward the rector, 
 standing in a sort of white nimbus of sunlight, 
 but I felt that Miss Emily s entire attention was 
 on our pew, immediately behind her. I find I can 
 not put it into words, unless it was that her back 
 settled into more rigid lines. I glanced along 
 the pew. Willie s face wore a calm and slightly 
 somnolent expression. But Maggie, in her far 
 end she is very high church and always attends 
 Maggie s eyes were glued almost fiercely to 
 Miss Emily s back. And just then Miss Emily 
 herself stirred, glanced up at the window, and 
 turning slightly, returned Maggie s glance with 
 one almost as malevolent. I have hesitated over 
 that word. It seems strong now, but at the time 
 it was the one that came into my mind. 
 
 When it was over, it was hard to believe that 
 it had happened. And even now, with everything 
 else clear, I do not pretend to explain Maggie s 
 attitude. She knew, in some strange way. But 
 she did not know that she knew which sounds 
 like nonsense and is as near as I can come to 
 getting it down in words. 
 
 Willie left that night, the i6th, and we settled 
 down to quiet days, and, for a time, to undis- 
 
THE CONFESSION 191 
 
 turbed nights. But on the following Wednesday, 
 by my journal, the telephone commenced to bother 
 me again. Generally speaking, it rang rather 
 early, between eleven o clock and midnight. But 
 on the following Saturday night I find I have 
 recorded the hour as 2 a. m. 
 
 In every instance the experience was identical. 
 The telephone never rang the second time. When 
 I went downstairs to answer it I did not always 
 go there was the buzzing of the wire, and there 
 was nothing else. It was on the twenty-fourth 
 that I had the telephone inspected and reported in 
 normal condition, and it is possibly significant 
 that for three days afterward my record shows 
 not a single disturbance. 
 
 But I do not regard the strange calls over the 
 telephone as so important as my attitude to them. 
 The plain truth is that my fear of the calls ex 
 tended itself in a few days to cover the instru 
 ment, and more than that, to the part of the 
 house it stood in. Maggie never had this, nor did 
 she recognize it in me. Her fear was a perfectly 
 simple although uncomfortable one, centering 
 around the bedrooms where, in each bed, she 
 nightly saw dead and gone Bentons laid out in all 
 the decorum of the best linen. 
 
 On more than one evening she came to the 
 library door, with an expression of mentally look- 
 
192 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 ing over her shoulder, and some such dialogue 
 would follow: 
 
 "D you mind if I turn the bed down now, Miss 
 Agnes?" 
 
 "It s very early." 
 
 "S almost eight." When she is nervous she 
 cuts verbal corners. 
 
 "You know perfectly well that I dislike having 
 the beds disturbed until nine o clock, Maggie." 
 
 "I m going out." 
 
 "You said that last night, but you didn t go." 
 
 Silence. 
 
 "Now, see here, Maggie, I want you to over 
 come this feeling of " I hesitated "of fear. 
 When you have really seen or heard something, 
 it will be time enough to be nervous." 
 
 "Humph!" said Maggie on one of these oc 
 casions, and edged into the room. It was grow 
 ing dusk. "It will be too late then, Miss Agnes. 
 And another thing. You re a brave woman. I 
 don t know as I ve seen a braver. But I notice 
 you keep away from the telephone after dark." 
 
 The general outcome of these conversations 
 was that, to avoid argument, I permitted the 
 preparation of my room for the night at an ear 
 lier and yet earlier hour, until at last it was done 
 the moment I was dressed for dinner. 
 
 It is clear to me now that two entirely different 
 
THE CONFESSION 193 
 
 sorts of fear actuated us. For by that time I 
 had to acknowledge that there was fear in the 
 house. Even Delia, the cook, had absorbed some 
 of Maggie s terror; possibly traceable to some 
 early impressions of death which connected them 
 selves with a four-post bedstead. 
 
 Of the two sorts of fear, Delia s and Maggie s 
 symptoms were subjective. Mine, I still feel, 
 were objective. 
 
 It was not long before the beginning of August, 
 and during a lull in the telephone matter, that I 
 began to suspect that the house was being visited 
 at night. 
 
 There was nothing I could point to with any 
 certainty as having been disturbed at first. It 
 was a matter of a book misplaced on the table, 
 of my sewing-basket open when I always leave 
 it closed, of a burnt match on the floor, whereas 
 it is one of my orderly habits never to leave burnt 
 matches around. And at last the burnt match 
 became a sort of clue, for I suspected that it had 
 been used to light one of the candles that sat 
 in holders of every sort, on the top of the library 
 shelves. 
 
 I tried getting up at night and peering over the 
 banisters, but without result. And I was never 
 sure as to articles that they had been moved. I 
 
194 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 remained in that doubting and suspicious half 
 way ground that is worse than certainty. And 
 there was the matter of motive. I could not get 
 away from that. What possible purpose could an 
 intruder have, for instance, in opening my sew 
 ing-basket or moving the dictionary two inches 
 on the center table? 
 
 Yet the feeling persisted, and on the second of 
 August I find this entry in my journal : 
 
 Right-hand brass, eight inches; left-hand brass, 
 seven inches ; carved-wood Italian five and 
 three quarter inches each; old glass on mantel 
 piece seven inches. And below this, dated the 
 third: Last night, between midnight and day 
 light, the candle in the glass holder on the right 
 side of the mantel was burned down one and one- 
 half inches. 
 
 I should, no doubt, have set a watch on my 
 nightly visitor after making this discovery and 
 one that was apparently connected with it 
 nothing less than Delia s report that there were 
 candle-droppings over the border of the library 
 carpet. But I have admitted that this is a study 
 in fear, and a part of it is my own. 
 
 I was afraid. I was afraid of the night visitor, 
 but, more than that, I was afraid of the fear. 
 It had become a real thing by that time, some 
 thing that lurked in the lower back hall waiting 
 
THE CONFESSION 195 
 
 to catch me by the throat, to stop my breath, to 
 paralyze me so I could not escape. I never went 
 beyond that point. 
 
 Yet I am not a cowardly woman. I have lived 
 alone too long" for that. I have closed too many 
 houses at night and gone upstairs in the dark to 
 be afraid of darkness. And even now I can not, 
 looking back, admit that I was afraid of the dark 
 ness there, although I resorted to the weak ex 
 pedient of leaving a short length of candle to 
 burn itself out in the hall when I went up to bed. 
 
 I have seen one of Willie s boys waken up at 
 night screaming with a terror he could not de 
 scribe. Well, it was much like that with me, ex 
 cept that I was awake and horribly ashamed of 
 myself. 
 
 On the fourth of August I find in my journal 
 the single word "flour." It recalls both my own 
 cowardice at that time, and an experiment I made. 
 The telephone had not bothered us for several 
 nights, and I began to suspect a connection of this 
 sort : when the telephone rang, there was no night 
 visitor, and vice versa. I was not certain. 
 
 Delia was setting bread that night in the 
 kitchen, and Maggie was reading a ghost story 
 from the evening paper. There was a fine sift 
 ing of flour over the table, and it gave me my 
 idea. When I went up to bed that night, I left a 
 
196 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 powdering of flour here and there on the lower 
 floor, at the door into the library, a patch by the 
 table, and going back rather uneasily one near 
 the telephone. 
 
 I was up and downstairs before Maggie the 
 next morning. The patches showed trampling. 
 In the doorway they were almost obliterated, as 
 by the trailing of a garment over them, but by 
 the fireplace there were two prints quite distinct. 
 I knew when I saw them that I had expected the 
 marks of Miss Emily s tiny foot, although I had 
 not admitted it before. But these were not Miss 
 Emily s. They were large, flat, substantial, and 
 one showed a curious marking around the edge 
 
 that It was my own ! The marking was the 
 
 knitted side of my bedroom slipper. I had, so 
 far as I could tell, gone downstairs, in the night, 
 investigated the candles, possibly in darkness, 
 and gone back to bed again. 
 
 The effect of the discovery on me was well 
 undermining. In all the uneasiness of the past 
 few weeks I had at least had full confidence in 
 myself. And now that was gone. I began to 
 wonder how much of the things that had troubled 
 me were real, and how many I had made for 
 myself. 
 
 To tell the truth, by that time the tension was 
 almost unbearable. My nerves were going, and 
 
THE CONFESSION 197 
 
 there was no reason for it. I kept telling myself 
 that. In the mirror I looked white and anxious, 
 and I had a sense of approaching trouble. I 
 caught Maggie watching me, too, and on the 
 seventh I find in my journal the words: "Insan 
 ity is often only a formless terror." 
 
 On the Sunday morning following that I found 
 three burnt matches in the library fireplace, and 
 one of the candles in the brass holders was al 
 most gone. I sat most of the day in that room, 
 wondering what would happen to me if I lost my 
 mind. I knew that Maggie was watching me, 
 and I made one of those absurd hypotheses to 
 myself that we all do at times. If any of the 
 family came, I would know that she had sent for 
 them, and that I was really deranged! It had 
 been a long day, with a steady summer rain that 
 had not cooled the earth, but only set it steaming. 
 The air was like hot vapor, and my hair clung 
 to my moist forehead. At about four o clock 
 Maggie started chasing a fly with a folded news 
 paper. She followed it about the lower floor 
 from room to room, making little harsh noises 
 in her throat when she missed it. The sound of 
 the soft thud of the paper on walls and furni 
 ture seemed suddenly more than I could bear. 
 
 "For heaven s sake !" I cried. "Stop that noise, 
 
198 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 Maggie." I felt as though my eyes were start 
 ing from my head. 
 
 "It s a fly/ she said doggedly, and aimed an 
 other blow at it. "If I don t kill it, we ll have a 
 million. There, it s on the mantel now. I 
 never " 
 
 I felt that if she raised the paper club once 
 more I should scream. So I got up quickly and 
 caught her wrist. She was so astonished that 
 she let the paper drop, and there we stood, star 
 ing at each other. I can still see the way her 
 mouth hung open. 
 
 "Don t !" I said. And my voice sounded thick 
 even to my own ears. "Maggie I can t stand 
 it!" 
 
 "My God, Miss Agnes ! 
 
 Her tone brought me up sharply. I released 
 her arm. 
 
 "I I m just nervous, Maggie," I said, and 
 sat down. I was trembling violently. 
 
 I was sane. I knew it then as I know it now. 
 But I was not rational. Perhaps to most of us 
 come now and then times when they realize that 
 some act, or some thought, is not balanced, as 
 though, for a moment or an hour, the control 
 was gone from the brain. Or and I think this 
 was the feeling I had that some other control 
 was in charge. Not the Agnes Blakiston I knew, 
 
THE CONFESSION 199 
 
 but another Agnes Blakiston, perhaps, was exert 
 ing a temporary dominance, a hectic, craven, and 
 hateful control. 
 
 That is the only outburst I recall. Possibly 
 Maggie may have others stored away. She has 
 a tenacious memory. Certainly it was my nearest 
 approach to violence. But it had the effect of 
 making me set a watch on myself. 
 
 Possibly it was coincidence. Probably, how 
 ever, Maggie had communicated with Willie. 
 But two days later young Martin Sprague, Freda 
 Sprague s son, stopped his car in the drive and 
 came in. He is a nerve specialist, and very good, 
 although I can remember when he came down 
 in his night drawers to one of his mother s din 
 ner-parties. 
 
 "Thought I would just run in and see you," 
 he said. "Mother told me you were here. By 
 George, Miss Agnes, you look younger than 
 
 ever." 
 
 "Who told you to come, Martie?" I asked. 
 
 "Told me? I don t have to be told to visit an 
 old friend." 
 
 Well, he asked himself to lunch, and looked 
 over the house, and decided to ask Miss Emily 
 if she would sell an old Japanese cabinet inlaid 
 with mother of pearl that I would not have had 
 as a gift. And, in the end, I told him my trouble, 
 
200 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 of the fear that seemed to center around the 
 telephone, and the sleep-walking. 
 
 He listened carefully. 
 
 "Ever get any bad news over the telephone ?" 
 he asked. 
 
 One way and another, I said I had had plenty 
 of it. He went over me thoroughly, and was 
 inclined to find my experience with the flour 
 rather amusing than otherwise. "It s rather 
 good, that," he said. "Setting a trap to catch 
 yourself. You d better have Maggie sleep in 
 your room for a while. Well, it s all pretty plain, 
 Miss Agnes. We bury some things as deep as 
 possible, especially if we don t want to remember 
 that they ever happened. But the mind s a queer 
 thing. It holds on pretty hard, and burying is 
 not destroying. Then we get tired or nervous 
 maybe just holding the thing down and pretend 
 ing it is not there makes us nervous and up it 
 pops, like the ghost of a buried body, and raises 
 hell. You don t mind that, do you?" he added 
 anxiously. "It s exactly what those things do 
 
 raise." 
 
 "But," I demanded irritably, "who rings the 
 telephone at night? I daresay you don t con 
 tend that I go out at night and call the house, 
 and then come back and answer the call, do 
 
 you?" 
 
THE CONFESSION 201 
 
 He looked at me with a maddening smile. 
 
 "Are you sure it really rings?" he asked. 
 
 And so bad was my nervous condition by that 
 time, so undermined was my self-confidence, that 
 I was not certain! And this in face of the fact 
 that it invariably roused Maggie as well as my 
 self. 
 
 On the eleventh of August Miss Emily came 
 to tea. The date does not matter, but by fol 
 lowing the chronology of my journal I find I 
 can keep my narrative in proper sequence. 
 
 I had felt better that day. So far as I could 
 determine, I had not walked in my sleep again, 
 and there was about Maggie an air of cheerful 
 ness and relief which showed that my condition 
 was more nearly normal than it had been for some 
 time. The fear of the telephone and of the back 
 hall was leaving me, too. Perhaps Martin 
 Sprague s matter-of-fact explanation had helped 
 me. But my own theory had always been the 
 one I recorded at the beginning of this narra 
 tive that I caught and well, registered is a 
 good word that I registered an overwhelming 
 fear from some unknown source. 
 
 I spied Miss Emily as she got out of the hack 
 that day, a cool little figure clad in a thin black 
 silk dress, with the sheerest possible white collars 
 and cuffs. Her small bonnet with its crepe veil 
 
202 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 was faced with white, and her carefully crimped 
 gray hair showed a wavy border beneath it. Mr. 
 Staley, the station hackman, helped her out of the 
 surrey, and handed her the knitting-bag without 
 which she was seldom seen. It was two weeks 
 since she had been there, and she came slowly up 
 the walk, looking from side to side at the peren 
 nial borders, then in full August bloom. 
 
 She smiled when she saw me in the doorway, 
 and said, with the little anxious pucker between 
 her eyes that was so childish, "Don t you think 
 peonies are better cut down at this time of year ?" 
 She took a folded handkerchief from her bag and 
 dabbed at her face, where there was no sign of 
 dust to mar its old freshness. "It gives the lilies 
 a better chance, my dear/ 
 
 I led her into the house, and she produced a 
 gay bit of knitting, a baby afghan, by the signs. 
 She smiled at me over it. 
 
 "I am always one baby behind," she explained 
 and fell to work rapidly. She had lovely hands, 
 and I suspected them of being her one vanity. 
 
 Maggie was serving tea with her usual grudg 
 ing reluctance, and I noticed then that when she 
 was in the room Miss Emily said little or nothing. 
 I thought it probable that she did not approve of 
 conversing before servants, and would have let 
 
THE CONFESSION 203 
 
 it go at that, had I not, as I held out Miss Emily s 
 cup, caught her looking at Maggie. I had a 
 swift impression of antagonism again, of alert 
 ness and something more. When Maggie went 
 out, Miss Emily turned to me. 
 
 "She is very capable, I fancy/ 
 
 "Very. Entirely too capable." 
 
 "She looks sharp," said Miss Emily. It was 
 a long time since I had heard the word so used, 
 but it was very apt. Maggie was indeed sharp. 
 But Miss Emily launched into a general disser 
 tation on servants, and Maggie s sharpness was 
 forgotten. 
 
 It -vvas, I think, when she was about to go that 
 I asked her about the telephone. 
 
 "Telephone?" she inquired. "Why, no. It has 
 always done very well. Of course, after a heavy 
 snow in the winter, sometimes " 
 
 She had a fashion of leaving her sentences un 
 finished. They trailed off, without any abrupt 
 break. 
 
 "It rings at night." 
 
 "Rings?" 
 
 "I am called frequently and when I get to the 
 phone, there is no one there." 
 
 Some of my irritation doubtless got into my 
 voice, for Miss Emily suddenly drew away and 
 stared at me. 
 
204 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "But that is very strange. I " 
 
 She had gone pale. I saw that now. And quite 
 suddenly she dropped her knitting-bag. When 
 I restored it to her, she was very calm and poised, 
 but her color had not come back. 
 
 "It has always been very satisfactory," she 
 said. "I don t know that it ever " 
 
 She considered, and began again. "Why not 
 just ignore it? If some one is playing a malicious 
 trick on you, the only thing is to ignore it." 
 
 Her hands were shaking, although her voice 
 was quiet. I saw that when she tried to tie the 
 ribbons of the bag. And I wondered at this, in 
 so gentle a soul there was a hint of anger in her 
 tones. There was an edge to her voice. 
 
 That she could be angry was a surprise. And 
 I found that she could also be obstinate. For we 
 came to an impasse over the telephone in the next 
 few minutes, and over something so absurd that 
 I was non-plussed. It was over her unqualified 
 refusal to allow me to install a branch wire to 
 my bedroom. 
 
 "But," I expostulated, "when one thinks of the 
 convenience, and " 
 
 "I am sorry." Her voice had a note of final 
 ity. "I daresay I am old-fashioned, but I do 
 not like changes. I shall have to ask you not to 
 interfere with the telephone." 
 
THE CONFESSION 205 
 
 I could hardly credit my senses. Her tone was 
 one of reproof, plus decision. It convicted me of 
 an indiscretion. If I had asked to take the roof 
 off and replace it with silk umbrellas, it might 
 have been justified. But to a request to move the 
 telephone ! 
 
 "Of course, if you feel that way about it," I 
 said, "I shall not touch it." 
 
 I dropped the subject, a trifle ruffled, I confess, 
 and went upstairs to fetch a box in which Miss 
 Emily was to carry away some flowers from the 
 garden. 
 
 It was when I was coming down the staircase 
 that I saw Maggie. She had carried the hall 
 candlesticks, newly polished, to their places on the 
 table, and was standing, a hand on each one, star 
 ing into the old Washington mirror in front of 
 her. From where she was she must have had a 
 full view of Miss Emily in the library. And 
 Maggie was bristling. It was the only word 
 for it. 
 
 She was still there when Miss Emily had gone, 
 blowing on the mirror and polishing it. And I 
 took her to task for her unfriendly attitude to 
 the little old lady. 
 
 "You practically threw her muffins at her," I 
 said. "And I must speak again about the 
 cups " 
 
206 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "What does she come snooping around for, 
 anyhow?" she broke in. "Aren t we paying for 
 her house? Didn t she get down on her bended 
 knees and beg us to take it ?" 
 
 "Is that any reason why we should be un 
 civil?" 
 
 "What I want to know is this/ Maggie said 
 truculently. "What right has she to come back, 
 and spy on us? For that s what she s doing, 
 Miss Agnes. Do you know what she was at 
 when I looked in at her? She was running a 
 finger along the baseboard to see if it was clean ! 
 And what s more, I caught her at it once before, 
 in the back hall, when she was pretending to tele 
 phone for the station hack." 
 
 It was that day, I think, that I put fresh candles 
 in all the holders downstairs. I had made a reso 
 lution like this, to renew the candles, and to 
 lock myself in my room and throw the key 
 over the transom to Maggie. If, in the morn 
 ings that followed,, the candles had been used, 
 it would prove that Martin Sprague was wrong, 
 that even foot-prints could lie, and that some 
 one was investigating the lower floor at night. 
 For while my reason told me that I had been 
 the intruder, my intuition continued to insist 
 that my sleepwalking was a result, not a cause. 
 In a word, I had gone downstairs, because I knew 
 
THE CONFESSION 207 
 
 that there had been and might be again, a night 
 visitor. 
 
 Yet, there was something of comedy in that 
 night s precautions, after all. 
 
 At ten-thirty I was undressed, and Maggie 
 had, with rebellion in every line of her, locked me 
 in. I could hear her, afterwards running along 
 the hall to her own room and slamming the door. 
 Then, a moment later, the telephone rang. 
 
 It was too early, I reasoned, for the night calls. 
 It might be anything, a telegram at the station, 
 Willie s boy run over by an automobile, Ger 
 trude s children ill. A dozen possibilities ran 
 through my mind. 
 
 And Maggie would not let me out ! 
 
 "You re not going downstairs," she called, 
 from a safe distance. 
 
 "Maggie!" I cried, sharply. And banged at 
 the door. The telephone was ringing steadily. 
 "Come here at once." 
 
 "Miss Agnes," she beseeched, "you go to bed 
 and don t listen. There ll be nothing there, for 
 all your trouble," she said, in a quavering voice. 
 "It s nothing human that rings that bell." 
 
 Finally, however, she freed me, and I went 
 down the stairs. I had carried down a lamp, 
 and my nerves were vibrating to the rhythm of 
 the bell s shrill summons. But, strangely enough, 
 
208 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 the fear had left me. I find, as always, that it is 
 difficult to put into words. I did not relish the 
 excursion to the lower floor. I resented the jar 
 ring sound of the bell. But the terror was gone. 
 
 I went back to the telephone. Something that 
 was living and moving was there. I saw its eyes, 
 lower than mine, reflecting the lamp like twin 
 lights. I was frightened, but still it was not the 
 fear. The twin lights leaped forward and 
 proved to be the eyes of Miss Emily s cat, which 
 had been sleeping on the stand ! 
 
 I answered the telephone. To my surprise it 
 was Miss Emily herself, a quiet and very digni 
 fied voice which apologized for disturbing me at 
 that hour, and went on : 
 
 "I feel that I was very abrupt this afternoon, 
 Miss Blakiston. My excuse is that I have al 
 ways feared change. I have lived in a rut too 
 long, I m afraid. But of course, if you feel you 
 would like to move the telephone, or put in an 
 upstairs instrument, you may do as you like." 
 
 She seemed, having got me there, unwilling to 
 ring off. I got a curious effect of reluctance over 
 the telephone, and there was one phrase that she 
 repeated several times. 
 
 "I do not want to influence you. I want you 
 to do just what you think best." 
 
THE CONFESSION 209 
 
 The fear was entirely gone by the time she 
 rang off. I felt, instead, a sort of relaxation that 
 was most comforting. The rear hall, a cul-de-sac 
 of nervousness in the daytime and of horror at 
 night, was suddenly transformed by the light of 
 my lamp into a warm and cheerful refuge from 
 the darkness of the lower floor. The purring of 
 the cat, comfortably settled on the telephone- 
 stand, was as cheering as the singing of a kettle 
 on a stove. On the rack near me my garden hat 
 and an old Paisley shawl made a grotesque hu 
 man effigy. 
 
 I sat back in the low wicker chair and surveyed 
 the hallway. Why not, I considered, do away 
 now with the fear of it? If I could conquer it 
 like this at midnight, I need never succumb again 
 to it in the light. 
 
 The cat leaped to the stand beside me and 
 stood there, waiting. He was an intelligent ani 
 mal, and I am like a good many spinsters. I am 
 not more fond of cats than other people, but I 
 understand them better. And it seemed to me 
 that he and I were going through some familiar 
 program, of which a part had been neglected. 
 The cat neither sat nor lay, but stood there, wait 
 ing. 
 
 So at last I fetched the shawl from the rack and 
 made him a bed on the stand. It was what he had 
 
210 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 been waiting for. I saw that at once. He walked 
 onto it, turned around once, lay down, and closed 
 his eyes. 
 
 I took up my vigil. I had been the victim of 
 a fear I was determined to conquer. The house 
 was quiet. Maggie had retired shriveled to bed. 
 The cat slept on the shawl. 
 
 And then I felt the fear returning. It welled 
 up through my tranquillity like a flood, and swept 
 me with it. I wanted to shriek. I was afraid to 
 shriek. I longed to escape. I dared not move. 
 There had been no sound, no motion. Things 
 were as they had been. 
 
 It may have been one minute or five that I 
 sat there. I do not know. I only know that I 
 sat with fixed eyes, not even blinking, for fear 
 of even for a second shutting out the sane and 
 visible world about me. A sense of deadness 
 commenced in my hands and worked up my arms. 
 My chest seemed flattened. 
 
 Then the telephone bell rang. 
 
 The cat leaped to his feet. Somehow I reached 
 forward and took down the receiver. 
 
 "Who is it?" I cried, in a voice that was thin, 
 I knew, and unnatural. 
 
 The telephone is not a perfect medium. It 
 loses much that we wish to register but, also, it 
 registers much that we may wish to lose. There- 
 
THE CONFESSION 211 
 
 fore when I say that I distinctly heard a gasp, 
 followed by heavy difficult breathing, over the 
 telephone, I must beg for credence. It is true. 
 Some one at the other end of the line was strug 
 gling for breath. 
 
 Then there was complete silence. I realized, 
 after a moment, that the circuit had been stealth 
 ily cut, and that my conviction was verified by 
 Central s demand, a moment later, of what num 
 ber I wanted. I was, at first, unable to answer 
 her. When I did speak, my voice was shaken. 
 
 "What number, please?" she repeated, in a 
 bored tone. There is nothing in all the world so 
 bored as the voice of a small town telephone- 
 operator. 
 
 "You called," I said. 
 
 "Beg y pardon. Must have been a mistake," 
 she replied glibly, and cut me off. 
 
 ii 
 
 It may be said, and with truth, that so far I 
 have recorded little but subjective terror, possibly 
 easily explained by my occupancy of an isolated 
 house, plus a few unimportant incidents, capable 
 of various interpretations. But the fear was, 
 and is today as I look back, a real thing. As real 
 
212 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 and as difficult to describe as a chill, for in 
 stance. A severe mental chill it was, indeed. 
 
 I went upstairs finally to a restless night, and 
 rose early, after only an hour or so of sleep. One 
 thing I was determined on to find out, if pos 
 sible, the connection between the terror and the 
 telephone. I breakfasted early, and was dressing 
 to go to the village when I had a visitor, no other 
 than Miss Emily herself. She looked fluttered 
 and perturbed at the unceremonious hour of her 
 visit she was the soul of convention and ex 
 plained, between breaths as it were, that she had 
 come to apologize for the day before. She had 
 hardly slept. I must forgive her. She had been 
 very nervous since her brother s death, and small 
 things upset her. 
 
 How much of what I say of Miss Emily de 
 pends on my later knowledge, I wonder? Did I 
 notice then that she was watching me furtively, 
 or is it only on looking back that I recall it? I 
 do recall it the hall door open and a vista of 
 smiling garden beyond, and silhouetted against 
 the sunshine, Miss Emily s frail figure and 
 searching, slightly uplifted face. There was 
 something in her eyes that I had not seen before 
 a sort of exaltation. She was not, that morn 
 ing, the Miss Emily who ran a finger along her 
 baseboards to see if we dusted them. 
 
THE CONFESSION 213 
 
 She had walked out, and it had exhausted her. 
 She breathed in little gasps. 
 
 "I think," she said at last, "that I must tele 
 phone for Mr. Staley, I am never very strong in 
 hot weather." 
 
 "Please let me call him for you, Miss Emily/ 
 
 I am not a young woman, and she was at least 
 sixty-five. But, because she was so small and 
 frail, I felt almost a motherly anxiety for her that 
 morning. 
 
 "I think I should like to do it, if you don t mind. 
 We are old friends. He always comes promptly 
 when I call him." 
 
 She went back alone, and I waited in the door 
 way. When she came out, she was smiling, and 
 there was more color in her face. 
 
 "He is coming at once. He is always very 
 thoughtful for me." 
 
 Now, without any warning, something thai 
 had been seething since her breathless arrival 
 took shape in my mind, and became suspicion. 
 What if it had been Miss Emily who had called 
 me the second time to the telephone, and having 
 established the connection, had waited, breathing 
 hard for what? 
 
 It was fantastic, incredible in the light of that 
 brilliant summer day. I looked at her, dainty and 
 exquisite as ever, her ruchings fresh and white, 
 
214 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 her very face indicative of decorum and order, 
 her wistful old mouth still rather like a child s, 
 her eyes, always slightly upturned because of her 
 diminutive height, so that she had habitually a 
 look of adoration. 
 
 "One of earth s saints," the rector had said to 
 me on Sunday morning. "A good woman, Miss 
 Blakiston, and a sacrifice to an unworthy fam- 
 ily." 
 
 Suspicion is like the rain. It falls on the just 
 and on the unjust. And that morning I began to 
 suspect Miss Emily. I had no idea of what. 
 
 On my mentioning an errand in the village she 
 promptly offered to take me with her in the Sta- 
 ley hack. She had completely altered in man 
 ner. The strain was gone. In her soft low voice, 
 as we made our way to the road, she told me the 
 stories of some of the garden flowers. 
 
 "The climbing rose over the arch, my dear," 
 she said, "my mother brought from England on 
 her wedding journey. People have taken cuttings 
 from it again and again, but the cuttings never 
 thrive. A bad winter, and they are gone. But 
 this one has lived. Of course now and then it 
 freezes down." 
 
 She chattered on, and my suspicions grew 
 more and more shadowy. They would have gone, 
 
THE CONFESSION 215 
 
 I think, had not Maggie called me back with a 
 grocery list. 
 
 "A sack of flour," she said, "and some green 
 vegetables, and Miss Agnes, that woman was 
 down on her knees beside the telephone! and 
 bluing for the laundry, and I guess that s all." 
 
 The telephone! It was always the telephone. 
 We drove on down the lane, eyed somnolently by 
 spotted cows and incurious sheep, and all the way 
 Miss Emily talked. She was almost garrulous. 
 She asked the hackman about his family and 
 stopped the vehicle to pick up a pedler, overbur 
 dened with his pack. I watched her with amaze 
 ment. Evidently this was Mr. Staley s Miss 
 Emily. But it was not mine. 
 
 But I saw mine, too, that morning. It was 
 when I asked the hackman to put me down at the 
 little telephone building. I thought she put her 
 hand to her throat, although the next moment she 
 was only adjusting the ruchingr at her neck. 
 
 "You you have decided to have the second 
 telephone put in, then?" 
 
 I hesitated. She so obviously did not want it 
 installed. And was I to submit meekly to the 
 fear again, without another effort to vanquish 
 it? 
 
 "I think not, dear Miss Emily," I said at last, 
 smiling at her drawn face. "Why should I dis- 
 
216 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 turb your lovely old house and its established 
 order?" 
 
 "But I want you to do just what you think 
 best," she protested. She had put her hands to 
 gether. It was almost a supplication. 
 
 As to the strange night calls, there was little 
 to be learned. The night operator was in bed. 
 The manager made a note of my complaint, and 
 promised an investigation, which, having had ex 
 perience with telephone investigations, I felt 
 would lead nowhere. I left the building, with my 
 grocery list in my hand. 
 
 The hack was gone, of course. But I may 
 have imagined it I thought I saw Miss Emily 
 peering at me from behind the bonnets and hats 
 in the milliner s window. 
 
 I did not investigate. The thing was enough 
 on my nerves as it was. 
 
 Maggie served me my luncheon in a sort of 
 strained silence. She observed once, as she 
 brought me my tea, that she was giving me notice 
 and intended leaving on the afternoon train. She 
 had, she stated, holding out the sugar-bowl to me 
 at arm s length, stood a great deal in the way of 
 irregular hours from me, seeing as I would read 
 myself to sleep, and let the light burn all night, 
 although very fussy about the gas-bills. But she 
 had reached the end of her tether, and you could 
 
THE CONFESSION 217 
 
 grate a lemon on her most anywhere, she was that 
 covered with goose-flesh. 
 
 "Goose-flesh about what ?" I demanded. "And 
 either throw the sugar to me or come closer. * 
 
 "I don t know about what," she said sullenly. 
 Tm just scared." 
 
 And for once Maggie and I were in complete 
 harmony. I, too, was "just scared." 
 
 We were, however, both of us much nearer a 
 solution of our troubles than we had any idea 
 of. I say solution, although it but substituted 
 one mystery for another. It gave tangibility to 
 the intangible, indeed, but I can not see that our 
 situation was any better. I, for one, found my 
 self in the position of having a problem to solve, 
 and no formula to solve it with. 
 
 The afternoon was quiet. Maggie and the 
 cook were in the throes of jelly-making, and I had 
 picked up a narrative history of the county, writ 
 ten most pedantically, although with here and 
 there a touch of heavy lightness, by Miss Emily s 
 father, the Reverend Samuel Thaddeus Benton. 
 
 On the fly-leaf she had inscribed, "Written by 
 my dear father during the last year of his life, 
 and published after his death by the parish to 
 which he had given so much of his noble life." 
 
 The book left me cold, but the inscription 
 warmed me. Whatever feeling I might have had 
 
218 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 about Miss Emily died of that inscription. A de 
 voted and self-sacrificing daughter, a woman 
 both loving and beloved, that was the Miss 
 Emily of the dedication to "Fifty years in Boli 
 var County/ 
 
 In the middle of the afternoon Maggie ap 
 peared, with a saucer and a teaspoon. In the 
 saucer she had poured a little of the jelly to test 
 it, and she was blowing on it when she entered, 
 I put down my book. 
 
 "Well!" I said. "Don t tell me you re not 
 dressed yet. You ve just got about time for the 
 afternoon train." 
 
 She gave me an imploring glance over the 
 saucer. 
 
 "You might just take a look at this, Miss 
 Agnes," she said. "It jells around the edges, but 
 in the middle " 
 
 "I ll send your trunk tomorrow," I said, "and 
 you d better let Delia make the jelly alone. You 
 haven t much time, and she says she makes good 
 jelly." 
 
 She raised anguished eyes to mine. 
 
 "Miss Agnes," she said, "that woman s never 
 made a glass of jelly in her life before. She 
 didn t even know about putting a silver spoon in 
 the tumblers to keep em from breaking." 
 
 I picked up "Bolivar County" and opened it, 
 
THE CONFESSION 219 
 
 but I could see that the hands holding the saucer 
 were shaking. 
 
 "I m not going, Miss Agnes," said Maggie. 
 (I had, of course, known she would not. The sur 
 prising thing to me is that she never learns this 
 fact, although she gives me notice quite regu 
 larly. She always thinks that she is really going, 
 until the last.) "Of course you can let that 
 woman make the jelly, if you want. It s your 
 fruit and sugar. But I m not going to desert you 
 in your hour of need." 
 
 "What do I need?" I demanded. "Jelly?" 
 
 But he was past sarcasm. She placed the 
 saucer on a table and rolled her stained hands in 
 her apron. 
 
 "That woman," she said, "what was she doing 
 under the telephone stand?" 
 
 She almost immediately burst into tears, and 
 it was some time before I caught what she feared. 
 For she was more concrete than I. And she 
 knew now what she was afraid of. It was either 
 a bomb or fire. 
 
 "Mark my w r ords, Miss Agnes," she said, 
 "she s going to destroy the place. What made 
 her set out and rent it for almost nothing if she 
 isn t? And I know who rings the telephone at 
 night. It s her." 
 
220 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "What on earth for ?" I demanded as ungram- 
 matical and hardly less uneasy than Maggie. 
 
 "She wakes us up, so we can get out in time. 
 She s a preacher s daughter. More than likely 
 she draws the line at bloodshed. That s one rea 
 son. Maybe there s another. What if by press 
 ing a button somewhere and ringing that bell, it 
 sets of! a bomb somewhere?" 
 
 "It never has," I observed dryly. 
 
 But however absurd Maggie s logic might be, 
 she was firm in her major premise. Miss Emily 
 had been on her hands and knees by the tele 
 phone-stand, and had, on seeing Maggie, observed 
 that she had dropped the money for the hack- 
 man out of her glove. 
 
 "Which I don t believe. Her gloves were on 
 the stand. If you ll come back, Miss Agnes, I ll 
 show you how she was." 
 
 We made rather an absurd procession, Maggie 
 leading with the saucer, I following, and the cat, 
 appearing from nowhere as usual, bringing up 
 the rear. Maggie placed the jelly on the stand, 
 and dropped on her hands and knees, crawling 
 under the stand, a confused huddle of gingham 
 apron, jelly-stains, and suspicion. 
 
 "She had her head down like this," she said, 
 in rather a smothered voice. "I m her, and you re 
 me. And I says: If it s rolled off somewhere 
 
THE CONFESSION 221 
 
 I ll find it next time I sweep, and give it back 
 to you. Well, what d you think of that! Here 
 it is!" 
 
 My attention had by this time been caught by 
 the jelly, now unmistakably solidifying in the 
 center. I moved to the kitchen door to tell Delia 
 to take it off the fire. When I returned, Maggie 
 was digging under the telephone battery-box with 
 a hair-pin and muttering to herself. 
 
 "Darnation!" she said, "it s gone under!" 
 "If you do get it," I reminded her, "it belongs 
 to Miss Emily." 
 
 There is a curious strain of cupidity in Maggie. 
 I have never been able to understand it. With 
 her own money she is as free as air. But let her 
 see a chance for illegitimate gain, of finding a 
 penny on the street, of not paying her fare on the 
 cars, of passing a bad quarter, and she is filled 
 with an unholy joy. And so today. The jelly 
 was forgotten. Terror was gone. All that ex 
 isted for Maggie was a twenty-five-cent piece un 
 der a battery-box. 
 
 Suddenly she wailed: "It s gone, Miss Agnes. 
 It s clear under!" 
 
 "Good heavens, Maggie ! What difference does 
 it make?" 
 
222 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "W you mind if I got the ice-pick and un 
 screwed the box?" 
 
 My menage is always notoriously short of 
 tools. 
 
 I forbade it at once, and ordered her back to 
 the kitchen, and after a final squint along the car 
 pet, head flat, she dragged herself out and to her 
 feet. 
 
 "I ll get the jelly off," she said, "and then 
 maybe a hat pin ll reach it. I can see the edge 
 of it." 
 
 A loud crack from the kitchen announced that 
 cook had forgotten the silver spoon, and took 
 Maggie off on a jump. I went back to the library 
 and "Bolivar County," and, I must confess, to a 
 nap in my chair. 
 
 I was roused by the feeling that some one was 
 staring at me. My eyes focused first on the ice 
 pick, then, as I slowly raised them, on Maggie s 
 face, set in hard and uncompromising lines. 
 
 "I d thank you to come with me," she said 
 stiffly. 
 
 "Come where?" 
 
 "To the telephone." 
 
 I groaned inwardly. But, because submission 
 to Maggie s tyranny has become a firm habit 
 with me, I rose. I saw then that she held a dingy 
 quarter in one hand. 
 
THE CONFESSION 223 
 
 Without a word she turned and stalked ahead 
 of me into the hall. It is curious, looking back 
 and remembering that she had then no knowl 
 edge of the significance of things, to remember 
 how hard and inexorable her back was. Viewed 
 through the light of what followed, I have never 
 been able to visualize Maggie moving down the 
 hall. It has always been a menacing figure, 
 rather shadowy than real. And the hall itself 
 takes on grotesque proportions, becomes inordi 
 nately long, an infinity of hall, fading away into 
 time and distance. 
 
 Yet it was only a moment, of course, until I 
 stood by the telephone. Maggie had been at work. 
 The wooden box which covered the battery-jars 
 had been removed, and lay^on its side. The bat 
 tery-jars were uncovered, giving an effect of 
 mystery unveiled, a sort of shamelessness, of de 
 stroyed illusion. 
 
 Maggie pointed. "There s a paper under one 
 of the jars," she said. "I haven t touched it, but 
 I know well enough what it is." 
 
 I have not questioned Maggie on this point, but 
 I am convinced that she expected to find a sort 
 of final summons, of death s visiting-card, for 
 one or the other of us. 
 
 The paper was there, a small folded scrap, par 
 tially concealed under a jar. 
 
224 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "Them prints was there, too/ Maggie said, 
 non-committally. 
 
 The box had accumulated the flucculent float 
 ing particles of months, possibly years lint from 
 the hall carpet giving it a reddish tinge. And in 
 this light and evanescent deposit, fluttered by a 
 breath, fingers had moved, searched, I am 
 tempted to say groped, although the word seems 
 absurd for anything so small. The imprint of 
 Maggie s coin and of her attempts at salvage 
 were at the edge and quite distinct from the 
 others. 
 
 I lifted the jar and picked up the paper. It 
 was folded and refolded until it was not much 
 larger than a thumb-nail, a rather stiff paper 
 crossed with faint blue lines. I am not sure that 
 I would have opened it it had been so plainly 
 in hiding, and was so obviously not my affair 
 had not Maggie suddenly gasped and implored 
 me not to look at it. I immediately determined 
 to examine it. 
 
 Yet, after I had read it twice, it had hardly 
 made an impression on my mind. There are some 
 things so incredible that the brain automatically 
 rejects them. I looked at the paper. I read it 
 with my eyes. But I did not grasp it. 
 
 It was not note paper. It was apparently torn 
 from a tablet of glazed and ruled paper just 
 
THE CONFESSION 225 
 
 such paper, for instance, as Maggie soaks in 
 brandy and places on top of her jelly before tying 
 it up. It had been raggedly torn. The scrap 
 was the full width of the sheet, but only three 
 inches or so deep. It was undated, and this is 
 what it said: 
 
 "To Whom it may concern : On the 3Oth day 
 of May, 1911, I killed a woman (here) in this 
 house. I hope you will not find this until I am 
 
 dead. 
 
 (Signed) EMILY BENTON." 
 
 Maggie had read the confession over my shoul 
 der, and I felt her body grow rigid. As for my 
 self, my first sensation \vas one of acute discom 
 fort that we should have exposed the confession 
 to the light of day. Neither of us, I am sure, had 
 really grasped it. Maggie put a trembling hand 
 on my arm. 
 
 "The brass of her," she said, in a thin, terri 
 fied voice. "And sitting in church like the rest 
 of us. Oh, my God, Miss Agnes, put it back !" 
 
 I whirled on her, in a fury that was only an 
 outlet for my own shock. 
 
 "Once for all, Maggie," I said, "I ll ask you 
 to wait until you are spoken to. And if I hear 
 that you have so much as mentioned this piece 
 of paper, out you go and never come back." 
 
226 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 But she was beyond apprehension. She was 
 literal, too. She saw, not Miss Emily unbeliev 
 ably associated with a crime, but the crime itself. 
 
 "Who d you suppose it was, Miss Agnes?" 
 
 "I don t believe it at all. ome one has placed 
 it there to hurt Miss Emily." 
 
 "It s her writing/ said Maggie doggedly. 
 
 After a time I got rid of her, and sat down to 
 think in the library. Rather I sat down to rea 
 son with myself. 
 
 For every atom of my brain was clamoring that 
 this thing was true, that my little Miss Emily, 
 exquisite and fine as she was, had done the thing 
 she claimed to have done. It was her own writ 
 ing, thin, faintly shaded, as neat and as erect as 
 herself. But even that I would not accept, until 
 I had compared it with such bits of hers as I 
 possessed, the note begging me to take the house, 
 the inscription on the fly-leaf of "Fifty Years 
 in Bolivar County." 
 
 And here was something I could not quite un 
 derstand. The writing was all of the same or 
 der, but while the confession and the inscription 
 in the book were similar, letter for letter, in the 
 note to me there were differences, a change in the 
 "t" in Benton, a fuller and blacker stroke, a va 
 riation in the terminals of the letters -it is hard 
 to particularize. 
 
THE CONFESSION 227 
 
 I spent the remainder of the day in the library, 
 going out for dinner, of course, but returning to 
 my refuge again immediately after. Only in the 
 library am I safe from Maggie. By virtue of 
 her responsibility for my wardrobe, she virtu 
 ally shares my bedroom, but her respect for books 
 she never reads makes her regard a library as at 
 least semi-holy ground. She dusts books with 
 more caution than china, and her respect for a 
 family Bible is greater than her respect for me. 
 
 I spent the evening there, Miss Emily s cat on 
 the divan, and the mysterious confession lying 
 before me under the lamp. At night the varia 
 tion between it and her note to me concerning 
 the house seemed more pronounced. The note 
 looked more like a clumsy imitation of Miss 
 Emily s own hand. Or perhaps this is nearer 
 as if, after writing in a certain way for sixty 
 years, she had tried to change her style. 
 
 All my logic ended in one conclusion. She 
 must have known the confession was there. 
 Therefore the chances were that she had placed 
 it there. But it was not so simple as that. 
 
 Both crime and confession indicated a degree 
 of impulse that Miss Emily did not possess. I 
 have entirely failed with my picture of Miss 
 Emily if the word violence can be associated with 
 her in any way. Miss Emily was a temple, clean- 
 
228 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 swept, cold, and empty. She never acted on im 
 pulse. Every action, almost every word, seemed 
 the result of thought and deliberation. 
 
 Yet, if I could believe my eyes, five years be 
 fore she had killed a woman in this very house. 
 Possibly in the very room in which I was then 
 sitting. 
 
 I find, on looking back, that the terror must 
 have left me that day. It had, for so many weeks, 
 been so much a part of my daily life that I would 
 have missed it had it not been for this new and 
 engrossing interest. I remember that the long 
 French windows of the library reflected the room 
 like mirrors against the darkness outside, and 
 that once I thought I saw a shadowy movement 
 in one of them, as though a figure moved behind 
 me. But when I turned sharply there was no one 
 there, and Maggie proved to be, as usual after 
 nine o clock, shut away upstairs. 
 
 I was not terrified. And indeed the fear never 
 returned. In all the course of my investigations, 
 I was never again a victim of the unreasoning 
 fright of those earlier days. 
 
 My difficulty was that I was asked to believe 
 the unbelievable. It was impossible to recon 
 struct in that quiet house a scene of violence. It 
 was equally impossible, in view, for instance, of 
 that calm and filial inscription in the history of 
 
THE CONFESSION 229 
 
 Bolivar County, to connect Miss Emily with it. 
 She had killed a woman, forsooth ! Miss Emily, 
 of the baby afghans, of the weary peddler, of 
 that quiet seat in the church. 
 
 Yet I knew now that Miss Emily knew of the 
 confession; knew, at least, of something con 
 cealed in that corner of the rear hall which housed 
 the telephone. Had she by chance an enemy who 
 would have done this thing? But to suspect Miss 
 Emily of an enemy was as absurd as to suspect 
 her of a crime. 
 
 I was completely at a loss when I put out the 
 lights and prepared to close the house. As I 
 glanced back along the hall, I could not help won 
 dering if the telephone, having given up its 
 secret, would continue its nocturnal alarms. As 
 I stood there, I heard the low growl of thunder 
 and the patter of rain against the windows. 
 Partly out of loneliness, partly out of bravado, I 
 went back to the telephone and tried to call Willie. 
 But the line was out of order. 
 
 I slept badly. Shortly after I returned I heard 
 a door slamming repeatedly, which I knew meant 
 an open window somewhere. I got up and went 
 into the hall. There was a cold air coming from 
 somewhere below. But as I stood there it ceased. 
 The door above stopped slamming, and silence 
 reigned again. 
 
230 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 Maggie roused me early. The morning sun 
 light was just creeping into the room, and the air 
 was still cool with the night and fresh-washed by 
 the storm. 
 
 "Miss Agnes/ she demanded, standing over 
 me, "did you let the cat out last night?" 
 
 "I brought him in before I went to bed." 
 
 "Humph!" said Maggie. "And did I or did I 
 not wash the doorstep yesterday?" 
 
 "You ought to know. You said you did." 
 
 "Miss Agnes," Maggie said, "that woman was 
 in this house last night. You can see her foot 
 prints as plain as day on the doorstep. And 
 what s more, she stole the cat and let out your 
 mother s Paisley shawl." 
 
 Which statements, corrected, proved to be true. 
 My old Paisley shawl was gone from the hall- 
 rack, and unquestionably the cat had been on the 
 back doorstep that morning along with the milk 
 bottles. Moreover, one of my fresh candles had 
 been lighted, but had burned for only a moment 
 or two. 
 
 That day I had a second visit from young Mar 
 tin Sprague. The telephone was in working or 
 der again, having unaccountably recovered, and 
 I was using it when he came. He watched me 
 quizzically from a position by the newelpost, as I 
 rang off. 
 
THE CONFESSION 231 
 
 "I was calling Miss Emily Benton," I ex- 
 plajned, "but she is ill." 
 
 "Still troubled with telephobia?" 
 
 "I have other things to worry me, Martin/ I 
 said gravely, and let him into the library. 
 
 There I made a clean breast of everything I 
 omitted nothing. The fear, the strange ringing 
 of the telephone bell; the gasping breathing over 
 it the night before ; Miss Emily s visit to it. And, 
 at last, the discovery. 
 
 He took the paper when I offered it to him, 
 and examined it carefully by a window. Then 
 he stood looking out and whistling reflectively. 
 At last he turned back to the room. 
 
 "It s an unusual story," he said. "But if you ll 
 give me a little time I ll explain it to you. In 
 the first place, let go of the material things for a 
 moment, and let s deal with minds and emotions. 
 You re a sensitive person, Miss Agnes. You 
 catch a lot of impressions that pass most people 
 by. And, first of all, you ve been catching fright 
 from two sources." 
 
 "Two sources?" 
 
 "Two. Maggie is one. She hates the country. 
 She is afraid of old houses. And she sees in this 
 house only the ghosts of people who have died 
 here/ 
 
232 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "I pay no attention to Maggie s fears." 
 
 "You only think that. But to go further you 
 have been receiving waves of apprehension from 
 another source from the little lady, Miss 
 Emily." 
 
 "Then you think " 
 
 "Hold on," he said smiling. "I think she wrote 
 that confession. Yes. As a matter of fact, I m 
 quite sure she did. And she has established a 
 system of espionage on you by means of the tele 
 phone. If you had discovered the confession, she 
 knew that there would be a change in your voice, 
 in your manner. If you answered very quickly, 
 as though you had been near the instrument, per 
 haps in the very act of discovering the paper 
 don t you get it ? And can t you see how her ter 
 ror affected you even over the wire? Don t you 
 think that, if thought can travel untold distances, 
 fear can? Of course." 
 
 "But, Martin!" I exclaimed. "Little Miss 
 Emily a murderess." 
 
 He threw up his hands. 
 
 "Certainly not," he said. "You re a shrewd 
 woman, Miss Agnes. Do you know that a cer 
 tain type of woman frequently confesses to a 
 crime she never committed, or had any chance of 
 committing? Look at the police records con 
 fessions of women as to crimes they could only 
 
THE CONFESSION 233 
 
 have heard of through the newspapers! I would 
 like to wager that if we had the newspapers of 
 that date that came into this house, we would find 
 a particularly atrocious and mysterious murder 
 being featured the murder of a woman." 
 
 "You do not know her," I maintained doggedly. 
 And drew, as best I could, a sketch of Miss 
 Emily, while he listened attentively. 
 
 "A pure neurasthenic type," was his com 
 ment. "Older than usual, but that is accountable 
 by the sheltered life she has led. The little Miss 
 Emily is still at heart a girl. And a hysterical 
 girl." 
 
 "She has had enough trouble to develop her." 
 
 "Trouble! Has she ever had a genuine emo 
 tion? Look at this house. She nursed an old 
 father in it, a bedridden mother, a paretic 
 brother, when she should have been having chil 
 dren. Don t you see it, Miss Agnes? All her 
 emotions have had to be mental. Failing them 
 outside, she provided them for herself. This" 
 he tapped the paper in his hand "this is one." 
 
 I had heard of people confessing to crimes the> 
 had never committed, and at the time Martin 
 Sprague at least partly convinced me. He was 
 so sure of himself. And when, that afternoon, 
 he telephoned me from the city to say that he 
 
234 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 was mailing out some old newspapers, I knew 
 quite well what he had found. 
 
 "I ve thought of something else, Miss Agnes/ 
 he said. "If you ll look it up you will probably 
 find that the little lady had had either a shock 
 sometime before that, or a long pull of nursing. 
 Something, anyhow, to set her nervous system 
 to going in the wrong direction." 
 
 Late that afternoon, as it happened, I was en 
 abled to learn something of this from a visiting 
 neighbor, and once again I was forced to ac 
 knowledge that he might be right. 
 
 The neighbors had not been overcordial. I had 
 gathered, from the first, the impression that the 
 members of the Reverend Samuel Thaddeus Ben- 
 ton s congregation did not fancy an interloper 
 among the sacred relics of the historian of Boli 
 var County. And I had a corroboration of that 
 impression from my visitor of that afternoon, a 
 Mrs. Graves. 
 
 "I ve been slow in coming, Miss Blakiston," 
 she said, seating herself primly. "I don t sup 
 pose you can understand, but this has always been 
 the Benton place, and it seems strange to us to 
 see new faces here." 
 
 I replied, with some asperity, that I Had not 
 been anxious to take the house, but that Miss 
 
THE CONFESSION 235 
 
 Emily had been so insistent that I had finally 
 done so. 
 
 It seemed to me that she flashed a quick glance 
 at me. 
 
 "She is quite the most loved person in the val 
 ley/ 1 she said. "And she loves the place. It is 
 I cannot imagine why she rented the house. She 
 is far from comfortable where she is." 
 
 After a time I gathered that she suspected 
 financial stringency as the cause, and I tried to 
 set her mind at rest. 
 
 "It cannot be money," I said. "The rent is 
 absurdly low. The agent wished her to ask more, 
 but she refused." 
 
 She sat silent for a time, pulling at the fingers 
 of her white silk gloves. And when she spoke 
 again it was of the garden. But before she left 
 she returned to Miss Emily. 
 
 "She has had a hard life, in a way," she said. 
 "It is only five years since she buried her brother, 
 and her father not long before that. She has 
 broken a great deal since then. Not that the 
 brother " 
 
 "I understand he was a great care." 
 
 Mrs. Graves looked about the room, its shelves 
 piled high with the ecclesiastical library of the 
 late clergyman. 
 
 "It was not only that," she said. "When he 
 
236 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 was all right, he was an atheist. Imagine, in 
 this house ! He had the most terrible books, Miss 
 Blakiston. And, of course, when a man believes 
 there is no hereafter, he is apt to lead a wicked 
 life. There is nothing to hold him back." 
 
 Her mind was on Miss Emily and her prob 
 lems. She moved abstractedly toward the door. 
 
 "In this very hall/ she said, "I helped Miss 
 Emily to pack all his books into a box, and we sent 
 for Mr. Staley the hackman at the station, you 
 know and he dumped the whole thing into the 
 river. We went away with him, and how she 
 cheered up when it was done!" 
 
 Martin Sprague s newspapers arrived the next 
 morning. They bore a date of two days before 
 the date of the confession, and contained, rather 
 triumphantly outlined in blue pencil, full details 
 of the murder of a young woman by some un 
 known assassin. It had been a grisly crime, and 
 the paper was filled with details of a most sensa 
 tional sort. 
 
 Had I been asked, I would have said that Miss 
 Emily s clear, slightly upturned eyes had never 
 glanced beyond the merest headlines of such jour 
 nalistic reports. But in a letter Martin Sprague 
 set forth a precisely opposite view. 
 
 "You will probably find," he wrote, "that the 
 little lady is pretty well fed up on such stuff. The 
 
THE CONFESSION 237 
 
 calmer and more placid the daily life, the more 
 apt is the secret inner one, in such a circum 
 scribed existence, to be a thriller! You might 
 look over the books in the house. There is a his 
 toric case where a young girl swore she had 
 tossed her little brother to a den of lions (al 
 though there were no lions near, and little brother 
 was subsequently found asleep in the attic) after 
 reading Fox s Book of Martyrs. Probably the 
 old gentleman has this joke book in his library." 
 
 I put down his letter and glanced around the 
 room. Was he right, after all? Did women, ra 
 tional, truthful, devout women, ever act in this 
 strange manner? And if it was true, was it not 
 in its own way as mysterious as everything else? 
 
 I was, for a time that day, strongly influenced 
 by Martin Sprague s conviction. It was, for one 
 thing, easier to believe than that Emily Benton 
 had committed a crime. And, as if to lend color 
 to his assertion, the sunlight, falling onto the 
 dreary bookshelves, picked out and illuminated 
 dull gilt letters on the brown back of a volume. 
 It was Fox s Book of Martyrs ! 
 
 If I may analyze my sensations at that time, 
 they divided themselves into three parts. The 
 first was fear. That seems to have given away to 
 curiosity, and that at a later period, to an intense 
 anxiety. Of the three, I have no excuse for the 
 
238 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 second, save the one I gave myself at the time 
 that Miss Emily could not possibly have done the 
 thing she claimed to have done, and that I must 
 prove her innocence to myself. 
 
 With regard to Martin Sprague s theory, I was 
 divided. I wanted him to be right. I wanted 
 him to be wrong. No picture I could visualize of 
 little old Miss Emily conceivably fitted the type 
 he had drawn. On the other hand, nothing about 
 her could possibly confirm the confession as an 
 actual one. 
 
 The scrap of paper became, for the time, my 
 universe. Did I close my eyes,, I saw it side by 
 side with the inscription in "Fifty years of my 
 Bolivar County/ and letter for letter, in the same 
 hand. Did the sun shine, I had it in the light, 
 examining it, reading it. To such a point did it 
 obsess me that I refused to allow Maggie to use a 
 tablet of glazed paper she had found in the 
 kitchen table drawer to tie up the jelly-glasses. It 
 seemed, somehow, horrible to me. 
 
 At that time I had no thought of going back 
 five years and trying to trace the accuracy or 
 falsehood of the confession. I should not have 
 known how to go about it. Had such a crime been 
 committed, how to discover it at this late day? 
 Whom in all her sheltered life, could Miss Emily 
 
THE CONFESSION 239 
 
 have murdered? In her small world, who could 
 have fallen out and left no sign? 
 
 It was impossible, and I knew it. And yet 
 
 Miss Emily was ill. The news came through 
 the grocery boy, who came out every day on a 
 bicycle, and teased the cat and carried away all 
 the pears as fast as they ripened. Maggie brought 
 me the information at luncheon. 
 
 "She s sick," she said. 
 
 There was only one person in both our minds 
 those days. 
 
 "Do you mean really ill, or only " 
 
 "The boy says she s breaking up. If you ask 
 me, she caught cold the night she broke in here 
 and took your Paisley shawl. And if you ask 
 my advice, Miss Agnes, you ll get it back again 
 before the heirs step in and claim it. They don t 
 make them shawls nowadays, and she s as like 
 as not to will it to somebody if you don t go after 
 it." 
 
 "Maggie," I said quietly, "how do you know 
 she has that shawl ?" 
 
 "How did I know that paper was in the tele 
 phone-box?" she countered. 
 
 And, indeed, by that time Maggie had con 
 vinced herself that she had known all along there 
 was something in the telephone battery-box. 
 
 "I ve a sort of second siefht, Miss Agnes," she 
 
240 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 added. And, with a shrewdness I found later 
 was partially correct : "She was snooping around 
 to see if you d found that paper, and it came on 
 to rain; so she took the shawl. I should say/ 
 said Maggie, lowering her voice, "that as like 
 as not she s been in this house every night since 
 
 we came." 
 
 Late that afternoon I cut some of the roses 
 from the arch for Miss Emily, and wrapping 
 them against the sun, carried them to the village. 
 At the last I hesitated. It was so much like pry^ 
 ing. I turned aside at the church intending to 
 leave them there for the altar. But I could find 
 no one in the parish house, and no vessel to hold 
 them. 
 
 It was late afternoon. I opened a door and 
 stepped into the old church. I knelt for a mo 
 ment, and then sat back and surveyed the quiet 
 building. It occurred to me that here one could 
 obtain a real conception of the Benton family, 
 and of Miss Emily. The church had been the 
 realest thing in their lives. It had dominated 
 them, obsessed them. When the Reverend Sam 
 uel Thaddeus died, they had built him, not a 
 monument, but a parish house. When Carlo 
 Benton died (however did such an ungodly name 
 come to belong to a Benton?) Miss Emily ac- 
 
THE CONFESSION 241 
 
 cording to the story, had done without fresh 
 mourning and built him a window. 
 
 I looked at the window. It was extremely ugly, 
 and very devout. And under it was the dead 
 man s name and two dates, 1860 and 1911. 
 
 So Carlo Benton had died the year Miss Emily 
 claimed to have done a murder ! Another proof, 
 I reflected that Martin Sprague would say. He 
 had been on her hands for a long time, both well 
 and ill. Small wonder if little Miss Emily had 
 fallen to imagining things, or to confessing them. 
 
 I looked at the memorial window once more, 
 and I could almost visualize her gathering up the 
 dead man s hateful books, and getting them as 
 quickly as possible out of the house. Quite pos 
 sibly there were unmentionable volumes among 
 them de Maupassant, perhaps Boccaccio. I had 
 a distinct picture, too, of Mrs. Graves, lips primly 
 set, assisting her \vith hands that fairly itched 
 with the righteousness of her actions. 
 
 I still held the roses, and as I left the church 
 I decided to lay them on some grave in the church 
 yard. I thought it quite likely that roses from 
 the same arch had been frequently used for that 
 purpose. Some very young grave, I said to my 
 self, and found one soon enough, a bit of a rec 
 tangle of fresh earth, and a jarful of pansies on 
 
242 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 it. It lay in the shadow of the Benton mauso 
 leum. 
 
 That was how I found that Carlo Benton had 
 died on the 27th of May, 1911. 
 
 I cannot claim that the fact at the time had any 
 significance for me, or that I saw in it any 
 thing more than another verification of Martin 
 Sprague s solution. But it enabled me to recon 
 struct the Benton household at the date that had 
 grown so significant. The 3Oth would have prob 
 ably been the day after the funeral. Perhaps the 
 nurse was still there. He had had a nurse for 
 months, according to Mrs. Graves. And there 
 would have been the airing that follows long ill 
 ness and death, the opened windows, the packing 
 up or giving away of clothing, the pauses and 
 silences, the sense of strangeness and quiet, the 
 lowered voices. And there would have been, too, 
 that remorseless jpacking for destruction of the 
 dead atheist s books. 
 
 And some time, during that day or the night 
 that followed, little Miss Emily claimed to have 
 committed her crime. 
 
 I went home thoughtfully. At the gate I turned 
 and looked back. The Benton Mausoleum was 
 warm in the sunset, and the rose sprays lay, like 
 outstretched arms, across the tiny grave. 
 
THE CONFESSION 243 
 
 Maggie is amazingly efficient. I am efficient 
 myself, I trust, but I modify it with intelligence. 
 It is not to me a vital matter, for instance, if three 
 dozen glasses of jelly sit on a kitchen table a day 
 or two after they are prepared for retirement to 
 the fruit cellar. I rather like to see them, mar 
 shaled in their neat rows, capped with sealing- 
 wax and paper, and armed with labels. But Mag 
 gie has neither sentiment nor imagination. Jelly 
 to her is an institution, not an inspiration. It is 
 subject to certain rules and rites, of which not 
 the least is the formal interment in the fruit 
 closet. 
 
 Therefore, after much protesting that night, 1 
 agreed to visit the fruit cellar, and select a spot 
 for the temporary entombing of thirty-six jelly 
 tumblers, which would have been thirty-seven 
 had Delia known the efficacy of a silver spoon. I 
 can recall vividly the mental shift from the con 
 fession to that domestic excursion, my own impa 
 tience, Maggie s grim determination, and the cu 
 rious denouement of that visit. 
 
 in 
 
 I had the very slightest acquaintance with the 
 basement of the Benton house. I knew it was 
 dry and orderly, and with that my interest in 
 
244 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 it ceased. It was not cemented, but its hard 
 clay floor was almost as solid as macadam. In 
 one end was built a high potato-bin. In an 
 other corner two or three old pews from the 
 church, evidently long discarded and showing 
 weather-stains, as though they had once served 
 as garden benches, were up-ended against the 
 whitewashed wall. The fruit-closet, built in of 
 lumber, occupied one entire end, and was virtual 
 ly a room, with a door and no windows. 
 
 Maggie had, she said, found it locked and had 
 had an itinerant locksmith fit a key to it. 
 
 "It s all scrubbed and ready," she said. "I 
 found that preserved melon-rind you had for 
 lunch in a corner. Twouldn t of kept much 
 longer, so I took it up and opened it. She s prob 
 ably got all sorts of stuff spoiling in the locked 
 part. Some folks re like that." 
 
 Most of the shelves were open, but now, hold 
 ing the lamp high, I saw that a closet with a door 
 occupied one end. The door was padlocked. At 
 the time I was interested, but I was, as I remem 
 ber, much more occupied with Maggie s sense of 
 meum and tuum, which I considered deficient, 
 and of a small lecture on other people s melon- 
 rinds, which I delivered as she sullenly put away 
 the jelly. 
 
 But that night, after I had gone to bed, the 
 
THE CONFESSION 245 
 
 memory of that padlock became strangely in 
 sistent. There was nothing psychic about the 
 feeling I had. It was perfectly obvious and 
 simple. The house held, or had held, a secret. 
 Yet it was, above stairs, as open as the day. 
 There was no corner into which I might not peer, 
 except Why was that portion of the fruit-closet 
 locked? 
 
 At two o clock, finding myself unable to sleep, 
 I got up and put on my dressing-gown and slip 
 pers. I had refused to repeat the experiment of 
 being locked in. Then, with a candle and a box 
 of matches, I went downstairs. I had, as I have 
 said, no longer any terror of the lower floor. The 
 cat lay as usual on the table in the back hall. I 
 saw his eyes watching me with their curious un 
 blinking stare, as intelligent as two brass but 
 tons. He rose as my light approached, and I 
 made a bed for him of a cushion from a chair, 
 failing my Paisley shawl. 
 
 It was after that that I had the curious sense 
 of being led. It was as though I knew that some 
 thing awaited my discovery, and that my sole 
 volition was whether I should make that discov 
 ery or not. It was there, waiting. 
 
 I have no explanation for this. And it is quite 
 possible that I might have had it, to find at the 
 
246 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 end nothing more significant than root-beer, for 
 instance, or bulbs for the winter garden. 
 
 And indeed, at first sight, what awaited me in 
 the locked closet amounted to anti-climax. For 
 when I had broken the rusty padlock open with a 
 hatchet, and had opened doors with nervous fin 
 gers, nothing more startling appeared than a 
 number of books. The shelves were piled high 
 with them, a motley crew of all colors, but dark 
 shades predominating. 
 
 I went back to bed, sheepishly enough, and 
 wrapped my chilled feet in an extra blanket. 
 Maggie came to the door about the time I was 
 dozing off and said she had heard hammering 
 downstairs in the cellar some time ago, but she 
 had refused to waken me until the burglars had 
 gone. 
 
 "If it was burglars/ she added, "you re that 
 up-and-ready, Miss Agnes, that I knew if I 
 waked you you d be downstairs after them. 
 What s a bit of silver to a human life?" 
 
 I got her away at last, and she went, muttering 
 something about digging up the cellar floor and 
 finding an uneasy spirit. Then I fell asleep. 
 
 I had taken cold that night, and the following 
 morning I spent in bed. At noon Maggie came 
 upstairs, holding at arm s length a book. She 
 
THE CONFESSION 247 
 
 kept her face averted, and gave me a slanting and 
 outraged glance. 
 
 "This is a nice place we ve come to," she said, 
 acidly. "Murder in the telephone and anti-Christ 
 in the fruit cellar !" 
 
 "Why, Maggie," I expostulated. 
 
 "If these books stay, I go, and that s flat, Miss 
 Agnes," was her ipse dixit. She dropped the book 
 on the bed and stalked out, pausing at the door 
 only to throw back, "If this is a clergyman s 
 house, I guess I d be better out of the church." 
 
 I took up the book. It was well-worn, and in 
 the front, in a heavy masculine hand, the owner 
 had written his name written it large, a bit de 
 fiantly, perhaps. It had taken both courage and 
 conviction to bring such a book into that devout 
 household. 
 
 I am not quick, mentally, especially when it 
 comes to logical thought. I daresay I am in 
 tuitive rather than logical. It was not by any 
 process of reasoning at all, I fancy, that it sud 
 denly seemed strange that there should be books 
 locked away in the cellar. Yet it was strange. 
 For that had been a bookish household. Books 
 were its stock in trade, one may say. Such as 
 I had borrowed from the library had been care 
 fully tended. Torn leaves were neatly repaired. 
 The reference books were alphabetically ar- 
 
248 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 ranged. And, looking back on my visit to the 
 cellar, I recalled now as inconsistent the disorder 
 of those basement shelves. 
 
 I did not reach the truth until, that afternoon, 
 I made a second visit to the cellar. Mrs. Graves 
 had been mistaken. If not all Carlo Benton s 
 proscribed books were hidden there, at least a 
 large portion of his library was piled, in some 
 thing like confusion, on the shelves. Yet she 
 maintained that they had searched the house, and 
 she herself had been present when the books were 
 packed and taken away to the river. 
 
 That afternoon I returned Mrs. Graves s visit. 
 She was at home, and in a sort of flurried neat 
 ness that convinced me she had seen me from 
 far up the road. That conviction was increased 
 by the amazing promptness with which a tea- 
 tray followed my entrance. I had given her tea 
 the day she came to see me, and she was not to 
 be outdone. Indeed, I somehow gained the im 
 pression that tray and teapot, and even little 
 cakes, had been waiting, day by day, for my an 
 ticipated visit. 
 
 It was not hard to set her talking of Carlo Ben- 
 ton and his wickedness. She rose to the bait like 
 a hungry fish. Yet I gathered that, beyond his 
 religious views or lack of them, she knew nothing. 
 But on the matter of the books she was firm. 
 
THE CONFESSION 249 
 
 "After the box was ready/* she said, "we went 
 to every room and searched it. Miss Emily was 
 set on clearing out every trace. At the last min 
 ute I found one called The Fallacy of Christian 
 ity slipped down behind the dresser in his room, 
 and we put that in." 
 
 It was "The Fallacy of Christianity" that 
 Maggie had brought me that morning. 
 
 "It is a most interesting story," I observed. 
 "What delicious tea, Mrs. Graves ! And then you 
 fastened up the box and saw it thrown into the 
 river. It was quite a ceremony." 
 
 "My dear," Mrs. Graves said solemnly, "it 
 was not a ceremony. It was a rite a signifi 
 cant rite." 
 
 How can I reconcile the thoughts I had that 
 afternoon with my later visit to Miss Emily? 
 The little upper room in the village, dominated 
 and almost filled by an old-fashioned bed, and 
 Miss Emily, frail and delicate and beautifully 
 neat, propped with pillows and holding a fine 
 handkerchief, as fresh as the flutings of her small 
 cap, in her hand. On a small stand beside the 
 bed were her Bible, her spectacles, and her quaint 
 old-fashioned gold watch. 
 
 And Miss Emily herself? She was altered, 
 shockingly altered. A certain tenseness had 
 gone, a tenseness that had seemed to uphold her 
 
250 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 frail body and carry her about. Only her eyes 
 seemed greatly alive, and before I left they, too, 
 had ceased their searching of mine and looked 
 weary and old. 
 
 And, at the end of my short visit, I had reluc 
 tantly reached this conclusion : either Miss Emily 
 had done the thing she confessed to doing, in 
 credible as it might appear, or she thought she 
 had done it ; and the thing was killing her. 
 
 She knew I had found the confession. I knew 
 that. It was written large over her. What she 
 had expected me to do God only knows. To stand 
 up and denounce her? To summon the law? I 
 do not know. 
 
 She said an extrordinary thing, when at last 
 I rose to go. I believe now that it was to give me 
 my chance to speak. Probably she found the 
 suspense intolerable. But I could not do it. I 
 was too surprised, too perplexed, too well, 
 afraid of hurting her. I had the feeling, I know, 
 that I must protect her. And that feeling never 
 left me until the end. 
 
 "I think you must know, my dear/ she said, 
 from her pillows, "that I have your Paisley 
 shawl." 
 
 I was breathless. "I thought that, perhaps" 
 I stumbled. 
 
 "It was raining that night," she said in her 
 
THE CONFESSION 251 
 
 soft, delicate voice. "I have had it dried and 
 pressed. It is not hurt. I thought you would 
 not mind," she concluded. 
 
 "It does not matter at all not in the least," I 
 said unhappily. 
 
 I am quite sure now that she meant me to speak 
 then. I can recall the way she fixed her eyes on 
 me, serene and expectant. She was waiting. But 
 to save my life I could not. And she did not. 
 Had she gone as far as she had the strength to 
 go? Or was this again one of those curious pacts 
 of hers if I spoke or was silent, it was to be? 
 
 I do not know. 
 
 I do know that we were both silent and that at 
 last, with a quick breath, she reached out and 
 thumped on the floor with a cane that stood be 
 side the bed until a girl came running up from 
 below stairs. 
 
 "Get the shawl, Fanny, dear," said Miss Emily, 
 "and wrap it up for Miss Blakiston." 
 
 I wanted desperately, while the girl left the 
 room to obey, to say something helpful, some 
 thing reassuring. But I could not. My voice 
 failed me. And Miss Emily did not give me an 
 other opportunity. She thanked me rather for 
 mally for the flowers I had brought from her 
 garden, and let me go at last with the parcel 
 
252 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 under my arm, without further reference to it. 
 The situation was incredible. 
 
 Somehow I had the feeling that Miss Emily 
 would never reopen the subject again. She had 
 given me my chance, at who knows what cost, 
 and I had not taken it. There had been some 
 thing in her good-by I can not find words for it, 
 but it was perhaps a finality, an effect of a 
 closed door that I felt without being able to 
 analyze. 
 
 I walked back to the house, refusing the offices 
 of Mr. Staley, who met me on the road. I 
 needed to think. But thinking took me nowhere. 
 Only one conclusion stood out as a result of a 
 mile and a half of mental struggle. Something 
 must be done. Miss Emily ought to be helped. 
 She was under a strain that was killing her. 
 
 But to help I should know the facts. Only, 
 were there any facts to know? Suppose just 
 by way of argument, for I did not believe it 
 that the confession was true; how could I find 
 out anything about it? Five years was a long 
 time. I could not go to the neighbors. They 
 were none too friendly as it was. Besides, the 
 secret, if there was one,, was not mine, but was 
 Miss Emily s. 
 
 I reached home at last, and smuggled the shawl 
 into the house. I had no intention of explain- 
 
THE CONFESSION 253 
 
 ing its return to Maggie. Yet, small as it was in 
 its way, it offered a problem at once. For Maggie 
 has a penetrating eye and an inquiring nature. I 
 finally decided to take the bull by the horns and 
 hang it in its accustomed place in the hall, where 
 Maggie, finding it at nine o clock that evening, 
 set up such a series of shrieks and exclamations 
 as surpassed even her own record. 
 
 I knitted that evening. It has been my custom 
 for years to knit bedroom-slippers for an old 
 ladies home in which I am interested. Because I 
 can work at them with my eyes shut, through 
 long practise, I find the work soothing. So that 
 evening I knitted at Eliza Klinordlinger s fifth 
 annual right slipper, and tried to develop a course 
 of action. 
 
 I began with a major premise to regard the 
 confession as a real one, until it was proved 
 otherwise. Granted, then, that my little old Miss 
 Emily had killed a woman. 
 
 ist Who was the woman? 
 
 2nd Where is the body? 
 
 3rd What was the reason for the crime? 
 
 Question two I had a tentative answer for. 
 However horrible and incredible it seemed, it was 
 at least possible that Miss Emily had substituted 
 the body for the books, and that what Mrs. 
 Graves described as a rite had indeed been one. 
 
254 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 But that brought up a picture I could not face. 
 
 And yet 
 
 I called up the local physician, a Doctor Lin- 
 gard, that night and asked him about Miss 
 Emily s condition. He was quite frank with me. 
 
 "It s just a breaking up," he said. "It has 
 come early, because she has had a trying life, and 
 more responsibility than she should have had/ 
 
 "I have been wondering if a change of scene 
 would not be a good thing/ I suggested. But he 
 was almost scornful. 
 
 "Change !" he said. "I ve been after her to get 
 away for years. She won t leave. I don t believe 
 she has been twelve miles away in thirty years." 
 
 "I suppc se her brother was a great care," I 
 observed. 
 
 It seemed to me that the doctor s hearty voice 
 was a trifle less frank when he replied. But when 
 I rang off I told myself that I, too, was becoming 
 neurasthenic and suspicious. I had, however, 
 learned what I had wanted to know. Miss Emily 
 had had no life outside Bolivar County. The 
 place to look for her story was here, in the im 
 mediate vicinity. 
 
 That night I made a second visit to the base 
 ment. It seemed to me, with those chaotic 
 shelves before me, that something of the haste 
 and terror of a night five years before came back 
 
THE CONFESSION 255 
 
 to me, a night when, confronted by the necessity 
 for concealing a crime, the box upstairs had been 
 hurriedly unpacked, its contents hidden here and 
 locked away, and some other content, inert and 
 heavy, had taken the place of the books. 
 
 Miss Emily in her high bed, her Bible and spec 
 tacles on the stand beside her, her starched pil 
 lows, her soft and highbred voice? Or another 
 Miss Emily, panting and terror-stricken, carry 
 ing down her armfuls of forbidden books, her 
 slight figure bent under their weight, her ears 
 open for sounds from the silent house ? Or that 
 third Miss Emily, Martin Sprague s, a strange 
 wild creature, neither sane nor insane, building 
 a crime out of the fabric of a nightmare? Which 
 was the real Emily Benton? 
 
 Or was there another contingency that I had 
 not thought of? Had some secret enemy of Miss 
 Emily s, some hysterical girl from the parish, 
 suffering under a fancied slight, or some dis 
 missed and revengeful servant, taken this strange 
 method of retaliation, done it and then warned 
 the little old lady that her house contained such 
 a paper? I confess that this last thought took 
 hold on me. It offered a way out that I clutched 
 at. 
 
 I had an almost frantic feeling by that time 
 that I must know the truth. Suspense was weigh- 
 
256 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 ing on me. And Maggie, never slow to voice an 
 unpleasant truth, said that night, as she brought 
 the carafe of ice-water to the library, "You re 
 going off the last few days, Miss Agnes." And 
 when I made no reply: "You re sagging around 
 the chin. There s nothing shows age like the 
 chin. If you d rub a little lemon-juice on at night 
 you d tighten up some." 
 
 I ignored her elaborately, but I knew she was 
 right. Heat and sleepless nights and those early 
 days of fear had told on me. And although I 
 usually disregard Maggie s cosmetic suggestions, 
 culled from the beauty columns of the evening 
 paper, a look in the mirror decided me. I went 
 downstairs for the lemon. At least, I thought it 
 was for the lemon. I am not sure. I have come 
 to be uncertain of my motives. It is distinctly 
 possible that, sub-consciously, I was making for 
 the cellar all the time. I only know that I landed 
 there, with a lemon in my hand, at something 
 after eleven o clock. 
 
 The books were piled in disorder on the shelves. 
 Their five years of burial had not hurt them be 
 yond a slight dampness of the leaves. No hand, 
 I believe, had touched them since they were taken 
 from the box where Mrs. Graves had helped to 
 pack them. Then, if I were shrewd, I should per- 
 
THE CONFESSION 257 
 
 haps gather something- from their very disorder. 
 But, as a matter of fact, I did not. 
 
 I would, quite certainly, have gone away as I 
 came, clueless, had I not attempted to straighten 
 a pile of books, dangerously sagging like my 
 chin ! and threatening a fall. My effort was re 
 warded by a veritable Niagara of books. They 
 poured over the edge, a few first, then more, until 
 I stood, it seemed, knee-deep in a raging sea of 
 atheism. 
 
 Somewhat grimly I set to work to repair the 
 damage, and one by one I picked them up and 
 restored them. I put them in methodically this 
 time, glancing at each title to place the volume 
 upright. Suddenly, out of the darkness of un 
 belief, a title caught my eye and held it, "The 
 Handwriting of God." I knew the book. It had 
 fallen into bad company, but its theology was un 
 impeachable. It did not belong. It 
 
 I opened it. The Reverend Samuel Thaddeus 
 had written his own name in it, in the cramped 
 hand I had grown to know. Evidently its pres 
 ence there was accidental. I turned it over in 
 my hands, and saw that it was closed down on 
 something, on several things, indeed. They 
 proved to be a small black note-book, a pair of 
 spectacles, a woman s handkerchief. 
 
 I stood there looking at them. They might 
 
258 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 mean nothing but the accidental closing of a 
 book, which was mistakenly placed in bad com 
 pany, perhaps by Mrs. Graves. I was inclined 
 to doubt her knowledge of religious literature. 
 Or they might mean something more, something 
 I had feared to find. 
 
 Armed with the volume, and the lemon for 
 gotten where the cook found it the next day and 
 made much of the mystery I went upstairs 
 again. 
 
 Viewed in a strong light, the three articles 
 took on real significance. The spectacles I fan 
 cied were Miss Emily s. They were, to all ap 
 pearances, the duplicates of those on her tidy 
 bedside stand. But the handkerchief was not 
 hers. Even without the scent, which had left it, 
 but clung obstinately to the pages of the book, 
 I knew it was not hers. It was florid, embroid 
 ered, and cheap. And held close to the light, I 
 made out a laundry-mark in ink on the border. 
 The name was either Wright or Knight. 
 
 The note-book was an old one, and covered a 
 period of almost twenty years. It contained dates 
 and cash entries. The entries were nearly all in 
 the Reverend Samuel Thaddeus s hand, but after 
 the date of his death they had been continued in 
 Miss Emily s writing. They varied little, save 
 that the amounts graduallv increased toward the 
 
THE CONFESSION 259 
 
 end, and the dates were further apart. Thus, in 
 1898 there were six entries, aggregating five 
 hundred dollars. In 1902-1903 there were no 
 entries at all, but in 1904 there was a single 
 memorandum of a thousand dollars. The entire 
 amount must have been close to twenty-five thou 
 sand dollars. There was nothing to show whether 
 it was money saved or money spent, money paid 
 out or come in. 
 
 But across the years 1902 and 1903, the Rev 
 erend Thaddeus had written diagonally the word 
 "Australia." There was a certain amount of en 
 lightenment there. Carlo Benton had been in 
 Australia during those years. In his "Fifty Years 
 in Bolivar County," the father had rather naively 
 quoted a letter from Carlo Benton in Melbourne. 
 A record, then, in all probability, of sums paid by 
 this harassed old man to a worthless son. 
 
 Only the handkerchief refused to be accounted 
 for. 
 
 I did not sleep that night. More and more, as 
 I lay wide-eyed through the night, it seemed to 
 me that Miss Emily must be helped, that she 
 was drifting miserably out of life for need of a 
 helping hand. 
 
 Once, toward morning, I dozed off, to waken 
 in a state of terror that I recognized as a return 
 
260 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 of the old fear. But it left me soon, although 
 I lay awake until morning. 
 
 That day I made two resolves to send for 
 Willie and to make a determined effort to see 
 the night telephone-operator. My letter to Willie 
 off, I tried to fill the day until the hour when the 
 night telephone-operator was up and about, late 
 in the afternoon. 
 
 The delay was simplified by the arrival of Mrs. 
 Graves, in white silk gloves and a black cotton 
 umbrella as a sunshade. She had lost her air of 
 being afraid I might patronize her, and explained 
 pantingly that she had come on an errand, not to 
 call. 
 
 "I m at my Christmas presents now," she said, 
 "and I ve fixed on a bedroom set for Miss Emily. 
 I suppose you won t care if I go right up and 
 measure the dresser-top, will you?" 
 
 I took her up, and her sharp eyes roved over 
 the stairs and the upper hall. 
 
 "That s where Carlo died," she said. "It s 
 
 never been used since, unless you " she had 
 
 paused, staring into Miss Emily s deserted bed 
 room. "It s a good thing I came," she said. 
 "The eye s no use to trust to, especially for 
 bureaus." 
 
 She looked around the room. There was, at 
 that moment, something tender about her. She 
 
THE CONFESSION 261 
 
 even lowered her voice and softened it. It took 
 on, almost comically, the refinements of Miss 
 Emily s own speech. 
 
 "Whose photograph is that?" she asked sud 
 denly. "I don t know that I ever saw it before. 
 But it looks familiar, too." 
 
 She reflected before it. It was clear that she 
 felt a sort of resentment at not recognizing the 
 young and smiling woman in the old walnut 
 frame, but a moment later she was measuring 
 the dresser-top, her mind set on Christmas benev 
 olence. 
 
 However, before she went out, she paused near 
 the photograph. 
 
 "It s queer," she said. "I ve been in this room 
 about a thousand times, and I ve never noticed 
 it before. I suppose you can get so accustomed 
 to a thing that you don t notice it." 
 
 As she went out, she turned to me, and I 
 gathered that not only the measurement for a gift 
 had brought her that afternoon. 
 
 "About those books," she said. "I run on a lot 
 when I get to talking. I suppose I shouldn t have 
 mentioned them. But I m sure you ll keep the 
 story to yourself. I ve never even told Air. 
 Graves." 
 
 "Of course I shall," I assured her. "But 
 didn t the hackman see you packing the books?" 
 
262 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "No, indeed. We packed them the afternoon 
 after the funeral, and it was the next day that 
 Staley took them off. He thought it was old bed 
 ding and so on, and he hinted to have it given 
 to him. So Miss Emily and I went along to see 
 it was done right." 
 
 So I discovered that the box had sat overnight 
 in the Benton house. There remained, if I was 
 to help Miss Emily, to discover what had occur 
 red in those dark hours when the books were 
 taken out and something else substituted. 
 
 The total result of my conversation that after 
 noon on the front porch of the small frame house 
 on a side street with the night telephone-operator 
 was additional mystery. 
 
 I was not prepared for it. I had anticipated 
 resentment and possibly insolence. But I had not 
 expected to find fright. Yet the girl was un 
 deniably frightened. I had hardly told her the 
 object of my visit before I realized that she was 
 in a state of almost panic. 
 
 "You can understand how I feel," I said. "I 
 have no desire to report the matter, of course. 
 But some one has been calling the house repeated 
 ly at night, listening until I reply, and then hang 
 ing up the receiver. It is not accidental. It has 
 happened too often." 
 
THE CONFESSION 263 
 
 "I m not supposed to give out information 
 about calls/ 
 
 "But just think a moment.," I went on. "Sup 
 pose some one is planning to rob the house, and 
 using this method of finding out if we are there 
 or not?" 
 
 "I don t remember anything about the calls you 
 are talking about," she parried, without looking 
 at me. "As busy as I am " 
 
 "Nonsense," I put in, "you know perfectly well 
 what I am talking about. How do I know but 
 that it is the intention of some one to lure me 
 downstairs to the telephone and then murder 
 me?" 
 
 "I am sure it is not that," she said. For almost 
 the first time she looked directly at me, and I 
 caught a flash of something not defiance. It 
 was, indeed, rather like reassurance. 
 
 "You see, you know it is not that." I felt all 
 at once that she did know who was calling me at 
 night, and why. And, moreover, that she would 
 not tell. If, as I suspected, it was Miss Emily, 
 this girl must be to some extent in her confi 
 dence. 
 
 "But suppose for a moment that I think I 
 know who is calling me?" I hesitated. She was 
 a pretty girl, with an amiable face, and more than 
 a suggestion of good breeding and intelligence 
 
264 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 about her. I made a quick resolve to appeal 
 to her. "My dear child/ I said, "I want so very 
 much, if I can, to help some one who is in trouble. 
 But before I can help, I must know that I can 
 help, and I must be sure it is necessary. I wonder 
 if you know what I am talking about?" 
 
 "Why don t you go back to the city?" she said 
 suddenly. "Go away and forget all about us 
 here. That would help more than anything." 
 
 "But would it?" I asked gently. "Would my 
 going away help her?" 
 
 To my absolute amazement she began to cry. 
 We had been sitting on a cheap porch seat, side 
 by side, and she turned her back to me and put 
 her head against the arm of the bench. 
 
 "She s going to die !" she said shakily. "She s 
 weaker every day. She is slipping away, and no 
 one does anything." 
 
 But I got nothing more from her. She had un 
 derstood me, it was clear, and when at last she 
 stopped crying, she knew well enough that she 
 had betrayed her understanding. But she would 
 not talk. I felt that she was not unfriendly, and 
 that she w r as uncertain rather than stubborn. In 
 the end I got up, little better off than when I came. 
 
 "I ll give you time to think it over," I said. 
 "Not so much about the telephone calls, because 
 
THE CONFESSION 265 
 
 you ve really answered that. But about Miss 
 Emily. She needs help, and I want to help her. 
 But you tie my hands." 
 
 She had a sort of gift for silence. As I grew 
 later on to know Anne Bullard better, I realized 
 that even more. So now she sat silent, and let 
 me talk. 
 
 "What I want," I said, "is to have Miss Emily 
 know that I am friendly that I am willing to do 
 anything to to show my friendliness. Any 
 thing." 
 
 "You see," she said, with a kind of dogged 
 patience, "it isn t really up to you, or to me either. 
 It s something else." She hesitated. "She s very 
 obstinate," she added. 
 
 When I went away I was aware that her eyes 
 followed me, anxious and thoughtful eyes, with 
 something of Miss Emily s own wide-eyed gaze. 
 
 Willie came late the next evening. I had in 
 deed gone up-stairs to retire when I heard his 
 car in the drive. When I admitted him, he drew 
 me into the library and gave me a good looking 
 over. 
 
 "As I thought !" he said. "Nerves gone, looks 
 gone. I told you Maggie would put a curse on 
 you. What is it?" 
 
 So I told him. The telephone he already knew 
 
266 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 about. The confession he read over twice, and 
 then observed, characteristically, that he would 
 be eternally I think the word is "horn- 
 swoggled." 
 
 When I brought out "The Handwriting of 
 God," following Mrs. Graves s story of the books, 
 he looked thoughtful. And indeed by the end of 
 the recital he was very grave. 
 
 "Sprague is a lunatic," he said, with conviction. 
 "There was a body, and it went into the river in 
 the packing-case. It is distinctly possible that 
 this Knight or Wright woman, who owned 
 the handkerchief, was the victim. However, 
 that s for later on. The plain truth is, that there 
 was a murder, and that Miss Emily is shielding 
 some one else." 
 
 And, after all, that was the only immediate 
 result of Willie s visit a new theory! So that 
 now it stood: there was a crime. There was no 
 crime. Miss Emily had committed it. Miss Emliy 
 had not committed it. Miss Emily had confessed 
 it, but some one else had committed it. 
 
 For a few hours, however, our attention was 
 distracted from Miss Emily and her concerns by 
 the attempted robbery of the house that night. 
 I knew nothing of it until I heard Willie shouting 
 downstairs. I was deeply asleep, relaxed no 
 doubt by the consciousness that at last there was 
 
THE CONFESSION 267 
 
 a man in the house. And, indeed, Maggie slept 
 for the same reason through the entire oc 
 currence. 
 
 "Stop, or I ll fire!" Willie repeated, as I sat 
 up in bed. 
 
 I knew quite well that he had no weapon. 
 There was not one in the house. But the next 
 moment there was a loud report, either a door 
 slamming or a pistol-shot, and I ran to the head 
 of the stairs. 
 
 There was no light below, but a current of cool 
 night air came up the staircase. And suddenly 
 I realized that there was complete silence in the 
 house. 
 
 "Willie!" I cried out, in an agony of fright. 
 But he did not reply. And then, suddenly, the 
 telephone rang. 
 
 I did not answer it. I know now why it rang, 
 that there was real anxiety behind its summons. 
 But I hardly heard it then. I was convinced that 
 Willie had been shot. 
 
 I must have gone noiselessly down the stairs, 
 and at the foot I ran directly into Willie. He 
 was standing there, only a deeper shadow in the 
 blackness, and I had placed my hand over his, as 
 it lay on the newel-post, before he knew I was 
 on the staircase. He wheeled sharply, and I 
 
268 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 felt, to my surprise, that he held a revolver in 
 his hand. 
 
 "Willie! What is it?" I said in a low tone. 
 
 " Sh," he whispered. "Don t move or 
 speak." 
 
 We listened, standing together. There were 
 undoubtedly sounds outside, some one moving 
 about, a hand on a window-catch, and finally not 
 particularly cautious steps at the front door. It 
 swung open. I could hear it creak as it moved 
 slowly on its hinges. 
 
 I put a hand out to steady myself by the com 
 fort of Willie s presence before me, between me 
 and that softly-opening door. But Willie was 
 moving forward, crouched down, I fancied, and 
 the memory of that revolver terrified me. 
 
 "Don t shoot him, Willie!" I almost shrieked. 
 
 "Shoot whom?" said Willie s cool voice, just 
 inside the door. 
 
 I knew then, and I went sick all over. Some 
 where in the hall between us crouched the man I 
 had taken for Willie, crouched with a revolver 
 in his right hand. The door was still open, I 
 knew, and I could hear Willie fumbling on the 
 hall-stand for matches. I called out something 
 incoherent about not striking a light ; but Willie, 
 whistling softly to show how cool he was, struck 
 
THE CONFESSION 269 
 
 a match. It was followed instantly by a report, 
 and I closed my eyes. 
 
 When I opened them, Willie was standing un 
 hurt, staring- over the burning match at the door, 
 which was closed, and I knew that the report had 
 been but the bang of the heavy door. 
 
 "What in blazes slammed that door?" he said. 
 
 "The burglar, or whatever he is," I said, my 
 voice trembling in spite of me. "He was here, in 
 front of me. I laid my hand on his. He had a 
 revolver in it. When you opened the door, he 
 slipped out past you." 
 
 Willie muttered something, and went toward 
 the door. A moment later I was alone again, and 
 the telephone was ringing. I felt my way back 
 along the hall. I touched the cat, which had been 
 sleeping on the telephone-stand. He merely 
 turned over. 
 
 I have tried, in living that night over again, to 
 record things as they impressed me. For, after 
 all, this is a narrative of motive rather than of 
 incidents, of emotions as against deeds. But at 
 the time, the brief conversation over the telephone 
 seemed to me both horrible and unnatural. 
 
 From a great distance a woman s voice said, 
 "Is anything wrong there?" 
 
 That was the first question, and I felt quite 
 sure that it was the Bullard girl s voice. That 
 
270 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 is, looking back from the safety of the next day, 
 I so decided. At the time I had no thought what 
 ever. 
 
 "There is nothing wrong," I replied. I do not 
 know why I said it. Sorely there was enough 
 wrong, with Willie chasing an armed intruder 
 through the garden. 
 
 I thought the connection had been cut, for 
 there was a buzzing on the wire. But a second 
 or so later there came an entirely different voice, 
 one I had never heard before, a plaintive voice, 
 full, I thought, of tears. 
 
 "Oh, please," said this voice, "go out and look 
 in your garden, or along the road. Please 
 quickly!" 
 
 "You will have to explain," I said impatiently. 
 "Of course we will go and look, but who is it, 
 and why " 
 
 I was cut off there, definitely, and I could not 
 get "central s" attention again. 
 
 Willie s voice from the veranda boomed 
 through the lower floor. "This is I," he called, 
 "No boiling water, please. I am coming in." 
 
 He went into the library and lighted a lamp. 
 He was smiling when I entered, a reassuring 
 smile, but rather a sheepish one, too. 
 
 "To think of letting him get by like that!" he 
 said. "The cheapest kind of a trick. He had 
 
THE CONFESSION 271 
 
 slammed the door before to make me think he had 
 gone out, and all the time he was inside. And 
 you why didn t you scream?" 
 
 "I thought it was you," I told him. 
 
 The library was in chaos. Letters were lying 
 about, papers, books. The drawer of the large 
 desk-table in the center of the room had been 
 drawn out and searched. "The History of Boli 
 var County," for instance, was lying on the floor, 
 face down, in a most ignoble position. In one 
 place books had been taken from a recess by the 
 fireplace, revealing a small wall cupboard be 
 hind. I had never known of the hiding-place, but 
 a glance into it revealed only a bottle of red ink 
 and the manuscript of a sermon on missions. 
 
 Standing in the disorder of the room, I told 
 Willie about the telephone-message. He listened 
 attentively, and at first skeptically. 
 
 "Probably a ruse to get us out of the house, but 
 coming a trifle late to be useful," was his com 
 ment. But I had read distress in the second voice, 
 and said so. At last he went to the telephone. 
 
 "I ll verify it," he explained. "If some one is 
 really anxious, I ll get the car and take a scout 
 around." 
 
 But he received no satisfaction from the Bui- 
 lard girl, who, he reported, listened stoically and 
 then said she was sorry, but she did not remember 
 
272 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 who had called. On his reminding her that she 
 must have a record, she countered with the flat 
 statement that there had been no call for us that 
 night. 
 
 Willie looked thoughtful when he returned to 
 the library. "There s a queer story back of all 
 this/ he said. "I think I ll get the car and scout 
 around." 
 
 "He is armed, Willie," I protested. 
 
 "He doesn t want to shoot me, or he could have 
 done it," was his answer. "I ll just take a look 
 around, and come back to report." 
 
 It was half-past three by the time he was ready 
 to go. He was, as he observed, rather sketchily 
 clad, but the night was warm. I saw him off, 
 and locked the door behind him. Then I went 
 into the library to wait and to put things to rights 
 while I waited. 
 
 The dawn is early in August, and although it 
 was not more than half-past four when Willie 
 came back, it was about daylight by that time. I 
 went to the door and watched him bring the car 
 to ,a standstill. He shook his head when he 
 saw me. 
 
 "Absolutely nothing," he said. "It was a ruse 
 to get me out of the house, of course. I ve run 
 the whole way between here and town twice." 
 
THE CONFESSION 273 
 
 "But that could not have taken an hour/ I 
 protested. 
 
 "No," he said. "I met the doctor what s his 
 name? the local M. D. anyhow footing it out 
 of the village to a case, and I took him to his des 
 tination. He has a car, it seems, but it s out of 
 order. Interesting old chap," he added, as I led 
 the way into the house. "Didn t know me from 
 Adam, but opened up when he found who I was." 
 
 I had prepared the coffee machine and carried 
 the tray to the library. While I lighted the lamp, 
 he stood, whistling softly, and thoughtfully. At 
 last he said: 
 
 "Look here, Aunt Agnes, I think I m a good 
 bit of a fool, but some time this morning I wish 
 you would call up Thomas Jenkins, on the Elm- 
 burg road, and find out if any one is sick there." 
 
 But when I stared at him, he only laughed 
 sheepishly. "You can see how your suspicious 
 disposition has undermined and ruined my once 
 trusting nature," he scoffed. 
 
 He took his coffee, and then, stripping off his 
 ulster, departed for bed. I stopped to put away 
 the coffee machine, and with Maggie in mind, to 
 hang up his motor-coat. It was then that the 
 flashlight fell out. I picked it up. It was shaped 
 like a revolver. 
 
274 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 I stopped in Willie s room on my way to my 
 own, and held it out to him. 
 
 "Where did you get that?" I asked. 
 
 "Good heavens !" he said, raising himself on 
 his elbow. "It belongs to the doctor. He gave 
 it to me to examine the fan belt. I must have 
 dropped it into my pocket." 
 
 And still I was nowhere. Suppose I had 
 touched this flashlight at the foot of the stairs 
 and mistaken it for a revolver. Suppose that the 
 doctor, making his way toward the village and 
 finding himself pursued, had faced about and 
 pretended to be leaving it? Grant, in a word, 
 that Doctor Lingard himself had been our night 
 visitor what then ? Why had he done it ? What 
 of the telephone-call, urging me to search the 
 road? Did some one realize what was happen 
 ing, and take this method of warning us and 
 sending us after the fugitive? 
 
 I knew the Thomas Jenkins farm on the Elms- 
 burg road. I had, indeed, bought vegetables and 
 eggs from Mr. Jenkins himself. That morning, 
 as early as I dared, I called the Jenkins farm. 
 Mr. Jenkins himself would bring me three dozen 
 eggs that day. They were a little torn up out 
 there, as Mrs. Jenkins had borne a small daughter 
 at seven A. M. 
 
THE CONFESSION 275 
 
 When I told Willie, he was evidently relieved. 
 
 "I m glad of it," he said heartily. "The doc 
 tor s a fine old chap, and I d hate to think he was 
 mixed up in any shady business." 
 
 He was insistent, that day, that I give up the 
 house. He said it was not safe, and I was in 
 clined to agree with him. But although I did not 
 tell him of it, I had even more strongly than 
 ever the impression that something must be done 
 to help Miss Emily, and that I was the one who 
 must do it. 
 
 Yet, in the broad light of day, with the sun 
 shine pouring into the rooms, I was compelled to 
 confess that Willie s theory was more than up 
 held by the facts. First of all was the character 
 of Miss Emily as I read it, sternly conscientious, 
 proud, and yet gentle. Second, there was the 
 connection of the Bullard girl with the case. 
 And third, there was the invader of the night be 
 fore, an unknown quantity where so much seemed 
 known, where a situation involving Miss Emily 
 alone seemed to call for no one else. 
 
 \Villie put the matter flatly to me as he stood 
 in the hall, drawing on his driving gloves. 
 
 "Do you want to follow it up?" he asked. 
 "Isn t it better to let it go? After all, you have 
 only rented the house. You haven t taken over 
 its history, or any responsibility but the rent/ 
 
276 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 "I think Miss Emily needs to be helped," I 
 said, rather feebly. 
 
 "Let her friends help her. She has plenty of 
 them. Besides, isn t it rather a queer way to 
 help her, to try to fasten a murder on her?" 
 
 I could not explain what I felt so strongly 
 that Miss Emily could only be helped by being 
 hurt, that whatever she was concealing, the long 
 concealment was killing her. That I felt in her 
 it is always difficult to put what I felt about Miss 
 Emily into words that she both hoped for and 
 dreaded desperately the light of the truth. 
 
 But if I was hardly practical when it came to 
 Miss Emily, I was rational enough in other 
 things. It is with no small pride but without 
 exultation, for in the end it cost too much that 
 I point to the solution of one issue as my own. 
 
 With Willie gone, Maggie and I settled down 
 to the quiet tenure of our days. She informed 
 me, on the morning after that eventful night, 
 that she had not closed an eye after one o clock! 
 She came into the library and asked me if I 
 could order her some sleeping-powders. 
 
 "Fiddlesticks !" I said sharply. "You slept all 
 night. I was up and around the house, and you 
 never knew it." 
 
 "Honest to heaven, Miss Agnes, I never slep 
 
THE CONFESSION 277 
 
 at all. I heard a horse gallopin , like it was run- 
 nin off, and it waked me for good/ 
 
 And after a time I felt that, however mistaken 
 Maggie had been about her night s sleep, she was 
 possibly correct about the horse. 
 
 "He started to run about the stable some 
 where," she said. "You can smile if you want. 
 That s the heaven s truth. And he came down 
 the drive on the jump and out onto the road." 
 
 "We can go and look for hoof-marks/ I 
 said, and rose. But Maggie only shook her head. 
 
 "It was no real horse, Miss Agnes," she said. 
 "You ll find nothing. Anyhow, I ve been and 
 looked. There s not a mark." 
 
 But Maggie was wrong. I found hoof-prints 
 in plenty in the turf beside the drive, and a track 
 of them through the lettuce-bed in the garden. 
 More than that, behind the stable I found where 
 a horse had been tied and had broken away. A 
 piece of worn strap still hung there. It was suf 
 ficiently clear, then, that whoever had broken into 
 the house had come on horseback and left afoot. 
 But many people in the neighborhood used horses. 
 The clue, if clue it can be called, got me nowhere. 
 
 IV 
 
 For several days things remained in statu quo. 
 Our lives went on evenly. The telephone was 
 
278 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 at our service, without any of its past vagaries. 
 Maggie s eyes ceased to look as if they were 
 being pushed out from behind, and I ceased to 
 waken at night and listen for untoward signs. 
 
 Willie telephoned daily. He was frankly un 
 easy about my remaining there. "You know 
 something that somebody resents your knowing," 
 he said, a day or two after the night visitor. "It 
 may become very uncomfortable for you/ 
 
 And, after a day or two, I began to feel that 
 it was being made uncomfortable for me. I am 
 a social being; I like people. In the city my 
 neighborly instincts have died of a sort of brick- 
 wall apathy, but in the country it comes to life 
 again. The instinct of gregariousness is as old 
 as the first hamlets, I daresay, when prehistoric 
 man ceased to live in trees, and banded together 
 for protection from the wild beasts that walked 
 the earth. 
 
 The village became unfriendly. It was almost 
 a matter of a night. One day the postmistress 
 leaned on the shelf at her window and chatted 
 with me. The next she passed out my letters 
 with hardly a glance. Mrs. Graves did not see 
 me at early communion on Sunday morning. The 
 hackman was busy when I called him. It was 
 intangible, a matter of omission, not commission. 
 The doctor s wife, who had asked me to tea, 
 
THE CONFESSION 279 
 
 called up and regretted that she must go to the 
 city that day. 
 
 I sat down then and took stock of things. Did 
 the village believe that Miss Emily must be saved 
 from me? Did the village know the story I was 
 trying to learn, and was it determined I should 
 never find out the truth? And, if this were so, 
 was the village right or was I ? They would save 
 Miss Emily by concealment, while I felt that con 
 cealment had failed, and that only the truth would 
 do. Did the village know, or only suspect? Or 
 was it not the village at all, but one or two people 
 who were determined to drive me away? 
 
 My theories were rudely disturbed shortly after 
 that by a visit from Martin Sprague. I fancied 
 that Willie had sent him, but he evaded my ques 
 tion. 
 
 Td like another look at that slip of paper," 
 he said. "Where do you keep it, by the way?" 
 
 "In a safe place," I replied non-committally, 
 and he laughed. The truth was that I had taken 
 out the removable inner sole of a slipper and had 
 placed it underneath, an excellent hiding-place, 
 but one I did not care to confide to him. When 
 I had brought it downstairs, he read it over 
 again carefully, and then sat back with it in his 
 hand. 
 
 "Now tell me about everything," he said. 
 
280 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 I did, while he listened attentively. Afterward 
 we walked back to the barn, and I showed him 
 the piece of broken halter still tied there. 
 
 He surveyed it without comment, but on the 
 way back to the house he said: "If the village 
 is lined up as you say it is, I suppose it is useless 
 to interview the harness-maker. He has prob 
 ably repaired that strap, or sold a new one, to 
 
 whoever It would be a nice clue to follow 
 
 up." 
 
 "I am not doing detective work," I said shortly. 
 "I am trying to help some one who is dying of 
 anxiety and terror." 
 
 He nodded. "I get you," he said. But his 
 tone was not flippant. "The fact is, of course, 
 that the early theory won t hold. There has 
 been a crime, and the little old lady did not com 
 mit it. But suppose you find out who did it. 
 How is that going to help her?" 
 
 "I don t know, Martin," I said, in a sort of 
 desperation. "But I have the most curious feel 
 ing that she is depending on me. The way she 
 spoke the day I saw her, and her eyes and every 
 thing; I know you think it nonsense," I finished 
 lamely. 
 
 "I think you d better give up the place and go 
 back to town," he said. But I saw that he 
 
THE CONFESSION 281 
 
 watched me carefully, and when, at last he got up 
 to go, he put a hand on my shoulder. 
 
 "I think you are right, after all," he said. 
 "There are a good many things that can t be rea 
 soned out with any logic we have, but that are 
 true, nevertheless. We call it intuition, but it s 
 really subconscious intelligence. Stay, by all 
 means, if you feel you should." 
 
 In the doorway he said: "Remember this, 
 Miss Agnes. Both a crime of violence and a con 
 fession like the one in your hand are the products 
 of impulse. They are not, either of them, pre 
 meditated. They are not the work, then, of a 
 calculating or cautious nature. Look for a big, 
 emotional type." 
 
 It was a day or two after that that I made my 
 visit to Miss Emily. I had stopped once before, 
 to be told with an air of finality that the invalid 
 was asleep. On this occasion I took with me a 
 basket of fruit. I had half expected a refusal, 
 but I was admitted. 
 
 The Bullard girl was with Miss Emily. She 
 had, I think, been kneeling beside the bed, and 
 her eyes were red and swollen. But Miss Emily 
 herself was as cool, as dainty and starched and 
 fragile as ever. More so, I thought. She was 
 
282 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 thinner, and although it was a warm Augiist day, 
 a white silk shawl was wrapped around her shoul 
 ders and fastened with an amethyst brooch. In 
 my clasp her thin hand felt hot and dry. 
 
 "I have been waiting for you/ she said simply. 
 
 She looked at Anne Bullard, and the message 
 in her eyes was plain enough. But the girl ig 
 nored it. She stood across the bed from me and 
 eyed me steadily. 
 
 "My dear/ said Miss Emily, in her high-bred 
 voice, "if you have anything to do, Miss Blakis- 
 ton will sit with me for a little while." 
 
 "I have nothing to do/ said the girl doggedly. 
 Perhaps this is not the word. She had more the 
 look of endurance and supreme patience. There 
 was no sharpness about her, although there was 
 vigilance. 
 
 Miss Emily sighed, and I saw her eyes seek 
 the Bible beside her. But she only said gently: 
 "Then sit down, dear. You can work at my knit 
 ting if you like. My hands get very tired." 
 
 She asked me questions about the house and 
 the garden. The raspberries were usually quite 
 good, and she was rather celebrated for her let 
 tuces. If I had more than I needed, would I mind 
 if Mr. Staley took a few in to the doctor, who 
 was fond of them. 
 
THE CONFESSION 283 
 
 The mention of Doctor Lingard took me back 
 to the night of the burglary. I wondered if to 
 tell Miss Emily would unduly agitate her. I 
 think I would not have told her, but I caught the 
 girl s eye, across the bed, raised from her knit 
 ting and fixed on me with a peculiar intensity. 
 Suddenly it seemed to me that Miss Emily was 
 surrounded by a conspiracy of silence, and it 
 roused my antagonism. 
 
 There are plenty of lettuces," I said, "al 
 though a few were trampled by a runaway horse 
 the other night. It is rather a curious story." 
 
 So I told her of our night visitor. I told it 
 humorously, lightly, touching on my own horror 
 at finding I had been standing with my hand on 
 the burglar s shoulder. But I was sorry for my 
 impulse immediately, for I saw Miss Emily s body 
 grow rigid, and her hands twist together. She 
 did not look at me. She stared fixedly at the 
 girl. Their eyes met. 
 
 It was as if Miss Emily asked a question which 
 the girl refused to answer. It was as certain 
 as though it had been a matter of words instead 
 of glances. It was over in a moment. Miss 
 Bullard went back to her knitting, but Miss Emily 
 lay still. 
 
 "I think I should not have told you," I apolo 
 gized. "I thought it might interest you. Of 
 
284 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 course nothing whatever was taken, and no dam 
 age done except to the lettuces." 
 
 "Anne," said Miss Emily, "will you bring me 
 some fresh water ?" 
 
 The girl rose reluctantly, but she did not go 
 farther than the top of the staircase, just beyond 
 the door. We heard her calling to some one be 
 low, in her clear young voice, to bring the water, 
 and the next moment she was back in the room. 
 But Miss Emily had had the opportunity for 
 one sentence. 
 
 "I know now/ she said quietly, "that you have 
 found it." 
 
 Anne Bullard was watching from the door 
 way, and it seemed to me, having got so far, I 
 could not retreat. I must go on. 
 
 "Miss Bullard," I said. "I would like to have 
 just a short conversation with Miss Emily. It is 
 about a private matter. I am sure you will not 
 mind if I ask you " 
 
 "I shall not go out." 
 
 "Anne!" said Miss Emily sharply. 
 
 The girl was dogged enough by that time. 
 Both dogged and frightened, I felt. But she 
 stood her ground. 
 
 "She is not to be worried about anything," she 
 insisted. "And she s not supposed to have vis 
 itors. That s the doctor s orders." 
 
THE CONFESSION 285 
 
 I felt outraged and indignant, but against the 
 stone wall of the girl s presence and her distrust 
 I was helpless. I got up, with as much dignity 
 as I could muster. 
 
 "I should have been told that downstairs." 
 
 The woman s a fool," said Anne Bullard, with 
 a sort of suppressed fierceness. She stood aside 
 as, having said good-by to Miss Emily, I went 
 out, and I felt that she hardly breathed until I 
 had got safely to the street. 
 
 Looking back, I feel that Emily Benton died at 
 the nancls of her friends. For she died, indeed, 
 died in the act of trying to tell me what they had 
 determined she should never tell. Died of kind 
 ness and misunderstanding. Died repressed, as 
 she had lived repressed. Yet, I think, died calmly 
 and bravely. 
 
 I had made no further attempt to see her, 
 and Maggie and I had taken up again the quiet 
 course of our lives. The telephone did not ring 
 of nights. The cat came and went, spending as 
 I had learned, its days with Miss Emily and its 
 nights with us. I have wondered since how many 
 nights Miss Emily had spent in the low chair in 
 that back hall, where the confession lay hidden, 
 that the cat should feel it could sleep nowhere 
 else. 
 
 The days went by, warm days and cooler ones, 
 
286 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 but rarely rainy ones. The dust from the road 
 settled thick over flowers and shrubbery. The 
 lettuces wilted, and those that stood up in the sun 
 were strong and bitter. By the end of August 
 we were gasping in a hot dryness that cracked 
 the skin and made any but cold food impossible. 
 
 Miss Emily lay through it all in her hot upper 
 room in the village, and my attempt, through 
 Doctor Lingard, to coax her back to the house 
 by offering to leave it brought only a negative. 
 
 "It would be better for her, you understand/ 
 the doctor said, over the telephone. "But she is 
 very determined, and she insists on remaining 
 where she is." 
 
 And I believe this was the truth. They would 
 surely have been glad to get rid of me, these 
 friends of Miss Emily s. 
 
 I have wondered since what they thought of 
 me, Anne Bullard and the doctor, to have feared 
 me as they did. I look in the mirror, and I see a 
 middle-aged woman, with a determined nose, 
 slightly inquisitive, and what I trust is a humor 
 ous mouth, for it has no other virtues. But they 
 feared me. Perhaps long looking for a danger 
 affects the mental vision. Anyhow, by the doc 
 tor s order, I was not allowed to call and see Miss 
 Emily again. 
 
 Then, one night, the heat suddenly lifted. One 
 
THE CONFESSION 287 
 
 moment I was sitting on the veranda, lifeless and 
 inert, and the next a cool wind, with a hint of 
 rain, had set the shutters to banging and the cur 
 tains to flowing, like flags of truce, from the win 
 dows. The air was life, energy. I felt revivified. 
 
 And something of the same sort must have hap 
 pened to Miss Emily. She must have sat up 
 among her pillows, her face fanned with the elec 
 tric breeze, and made her determination to see 
 me. Anne Bullard was at work, and she was free 
 from observation. 
 
 It must have been nine o clock when she left 
 the house, a shaken little figure in black, not as 
 neat as usual, but hooked and buttoned, for all 
 that, with no one will ever know what agony of 
 old hands. 
 
 She was two hours and a half getting to the 
 house, and the rain came at ten o clock. By half 
 after eleven, when the doorbell rang, she was a 
 sodden mass of wet garments, and her teeth were 
 chattering when I led her into the library. 
 
 She could not talk. The thing she had come 
 to say was totally beyond her. I put her to bed 
 in her own room. And two days later she died. 
 
 I had made no protest when Anne Bullard pre 
 sented herself at the door the morning after Miss 
 Emily arrived, and, walking into the house, took 
 sleepless charge of the sick room. And I made 
 
288 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 no reference save once to the reason for the trag 
 edy. That was the night Miss Emily died. 
 
 Anne Bullard had called to me that she feared 
 there was a change, and I went into the sick 
 room. There was a change, and I could only 
 shake my head. She burst out at me then. 
 
 "If only you had never taken this house !" she 
 said. "You people with money, you think there 
 is nothing you can not have. You came, and now 
 look!" 
 
 "Anne," I said with a bitterness I could not 
 conceal, "Miss Emily is not young, and I think 
 she is ready to go. But she has been killed by her 
 friends. I wanted to help, but they would not 
 allow me to." 
 
 Toward morning there was nothing more to 
 be done, and we sat together, listening to the 
 stertorous breathing from the bed. Maggie, who 
 had been up all night, had given me notice at 
 three in the morning, and was upstairs packing 
 her trunk. 
 
 I went into my room, and brought back Miss 
 Emily s confession. 
 
 "Isn t it time/ I said, "to tell me about this? 
 I ought to know, I think, before she goes. If it 
 is not true, you owe it to her, I think." But she 
 shook her head. 
 
THE CONFESSION 289 
 
 I looked at the confession, and from it to Miss 
 Emily s pinched old face. 
 
 "To whom it may concern : On the 3Oth day 
 of May, 1911, I killed a woman here in this 
 house. I hope you will not find this until I am 
 
 dead< (Signed) EMILY BENTON." 
 
 Anne was watching me. I went to the mantel 
 and got a match, and then, standing near the 
 bed, I lighted it and touched it to the paper. It 
 burned slowly, a thin blue semicircle of fire that 
 ate its way slowly across until there was but the 
 corner I held. I dropped it into the fireplace and 
 watched it turn to black ash. 
 
 I may have fancied it I am always fancying 
 things about Miss Emily but I will always think 
 that she knew. She drew a longer, quieter 
 breath, and her eyes, fixed and staring, closed. 
 I think she died in the first sleep she had had in 
 twenty-four hours. 
 
 I had expected Anne Bullard to show emotion, 
 for no one could doubt her attachment to Miss 
 Emily. But she only stood stoically by the bed 
 for a moment and then, turning swiftly, went to 
 the wall opposite and took down from the wall 
 the walnut- framed photograph Mrs. Graves had 
 commented on. 
 
 Anne Bullard stood with the picture in her 
 
290 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 hand, looking at it. And suddenly she broke into 
 sobs. It was stormy weeping, and I got the im 
 pression that she wept, not for Miss Emily, but 
 for many other things as though the piled-up 
 grief of years had broken out at last. 
 
 She took the photograph away, and I never saw 
 it again. 
 
 Miss Emily was buried from her home. I ob 
 literated myself, and her friends, who were, I 
 felt, her murderers, came in and took charge. 
 They paid me the tribute of much politeness, but 
 no cordiality, and I think they felt toward me as 
 I felt toward them. They blamed me with the 
 whole affair. 
 
 She left her property all to Anne Bullard, to 
 the astonished rage of the congregation, which 
 had expected the return of its dimes and quarters, 
 no doubt, in the shape of a new altar, or perhaps 
 an organ. 
 
 "Not a cent to keep up the mausoleum or any 
 thing," Mrs. Graves confided to me. "And noth 
 ing to the church. All to that telephone-girl, 
 who comes from no one knows where! It s 
 enough to make her father turn over in his grave. 
 It has set people talking, I can tell you/ 
 
 Maggie s mental state during the days preced 
 ing the funeral was curious. She coupled the 
 
THE CONFESSION 291 
 
 most meticulous care as to the preparations for 
 the ceremony, and a sort of loving gentleness 
 when she decked Miss Emily s small old frame 
 for its last rites, with suspicion and hatred of 
 Miss Emily living. And this suspicion she held 
 also against Anne Bullard. 
 
 Yet she did not want to leave the house. I do 
 not know just what she expected to find. We 
 were cleaning up preparatory to going back to the 
 city, and I felt that at least a part of Maggie s en 
 thusiasm for corners was due to a hope of locating 
 more concealed papers. She was rather less than 
 polite to the Bullard girl, who was staying on at 
 my invitation because the village was now fla 
 grantly unfriendly and suspicious of her. And 
 for some strange reason, the fact that Miss 
 Emily s cat followed Anne everywhere convinced 
 Maggie that her suspicions were justified. 
 
 "It s like this, Miss Agnes," she said one morn 
 ing, leaning on the handle of a floor brush. "She 
 had some power over the old lady, and that s how 
 she got the property. And I am saying nothing, 
 but she s no Christian, that girl. To see her and 
 that cat going out night after night, both snoop 
 ing along on their tiptoes it ain t normal." 
 
 I had several visits from Martin Sprague since 
 Miss Emily s death, and after a time I realized 
 
292 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 that he was interested in Anne. She was quite 
 attractive in her mourning clothes, and there was 
 something about her, not in feature, but in neat 
 ness and in the way her things had of, well, stay 
 ing in place, that reminded me of Miss Emily her 
 self. It was rather surprising, too, to see the way 
 she fitted into her new surroundings and circum 
 stances. 
 
 But I did not approve of Martin s attraction 
 to her. She had volunteered no information 
 about herself, she apparently had no people. She 
 was a lady, I felt, although, with the exception of 
 her new mourning, her clothing was shabby and 
 her linen even coarse. 
 
 She held the key to the confession. I knew 
 that. And I had no more hope of getting it from 
 her than I had from the cat. So I prepared to 
 go back to the city, with the mystery unsolved. 
 It seemed a pity, when I had got so far with it. 
 I had reconstructed a situation out of such bricks 
 as I had,, the books in the cellar, Mrs. Graves s 
 story of the river, the confession, possibly the 
 note-book and the handkerchief. I had even 
 some material left over in the form of the night 
 intruder, who may or may not have been the doc 
 tor. And then, having got so far, I had had to 
 stop for lack of other bricks. 
 
THE CONFESSION 293 
 
 A day or two before I went back to the city, 
 Maggie came to me with a folded handkerchief 
 in her hand. 
 
 "Is that yours?" she asked. 
 
 I disclaimed it. It was not very fine, and 
 looked rather yellow. 
 
 "S got a name on it," Maggie volunteered. 
 "Wright, I think it is. Tain t hers, unless she s 
 picked it up somewhere. It s just come out of 
 the wash." 
 
 Maggie s eyes were snapping with suspicion. 
 "There ain t any Wrights around here, Miss Ag 
 nes," she said. "I sh d say she s here under a 
 false name. Wright s likely hers." 
 
 In tracing the mystery of the confession, I find 
 that three apparently disconnected discoveries 
 paved the way to its solution. Of these the hand 
 kerchief came first. 
 
 I was inclined to think that in some manner 
 the handkerchief I had found in the book in the 
 cellar had got into the wash. But it was where 
 I had placed it for safety, in the wall-closet in 
 the library. I brought it out and compared the 
 two. They were unlike, save in the one regard. 
 The name "Wright" was clear enough on the one 
 Maggie had found. With it as a guide, the other 
 name was easily seen to be the same. Moreover, 
 both had been marked by the same hand. 
 
294 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 Yet, on Anne Bullard being shown the one 
 Maggie had found, she disclaimed it. "Don t you 
 think some one dropped it at the funeral?" she 
 asked. 
 
 But I thought, as I turned away, that she took 
 a step toward me. When I stopped, however, 
 and faced about, she was intent on something 
 outside the window. 
 
 And so it went. I got nowhere. And now, by 
 way of complication, I. felt my sympathy for 
 Anne s loneliness turning to genuine interest. 
 She was so stoical, so repressed, and so lonely. 
 And she was tremendously proud. Her pride 
 was vaguely reminiscent of Miss Emily s. She 
 bore her ostracism almost fiercely, yet there were 
 times when I felt her eyes on me, singularly gen 
 tle and appealing. Yet she volunteered nothing 
 about herself. 
 
 I intended to finish the history of Bolivar 
 County before I left. I dislike not finishing a 
 book. Besides, this one fascinated me the smug 
 complacence and almost loud virtue of the au 
 thor, his satisfaction in Bolivar County, and his 
 small hits at the world outside, his patronage to 
 those not of it. And always, when I began to 
 read, I turned to the inscription in Miss Emily s 
 hand, the hand of the confession and I won 
 dered if she had really believed it all. 
 
THE CONFESSION 295 
 
 So on this day I found the name Bullard in 
 the book. It had belonged to the Reverend Sam 
 uel Thaddeus s grandmother, and he distinctly 
 stated that she was the last of her line. He in 
 ferred, indeed, that since the line was to end, it 
 had chosen a fitting finish in his immediate pro 
 genitor. 
 
 That night, at dinner, I said, "Anne, are there 
 any Bullards in this neighborhood now?" 
 
 "I have never heard of any. But I have not 
 been here long." 
 
 "It is not a common name," I persisted. 
 
 But she received my statement in silence. She 
 had, as I have said, rather a gift for silence. 
 
 That afternoon I was wandering about the 
 garden snipping faded roses with Miss Emily s 
 garden shears, when I saw Maggie coming 
 swiftly toward me. When she caught my eye, 
 she beckoned to me. "Walk quiet, Miss Agnes," 
 she said, "and don t say I didn t warn you. She s 
 in the library." 
 
 So, feeling hatefully like a spy, I went quietly 
 over the lawn toward the library windows. They 
 were long ones, to the floor, and at first I made 
 out nothing. Then I saw Anne. She was on her 
 knees, following the border of the carpet with 
 fingers that examined it, inch by inch. 
 
 She turned, as if she felt our eyes on her, and 
 
296 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 saw us. I shall never forget her face. She 
 looked stricken. I turned away. There was 
 something in her eyes that made me think of Miss 
 Emily, lying among her pillows and waiting for 
 me to say the thing she was dreading to hear. 
 
 I sent Maggie away with a gesture. There 
 was something in her pursed lips that threatened 
 danger. For I felt then as if I had always known 
 it and only just realized I knew it, that some 
 where in that room lay the answer to all ques 
 tions; lay Miss Emily s secret. And I did not 
 wish to learn it. It was better to go on wonder 
 ing, to question and doubt and decide and decide 
 again. I was, I think, in a state of nervous terror 
 by that time, terror and apprehension. 
 
 While Miss Emily lived, I had hoped to help. 
 But now it seemed too hatefully like accusing 
 when she could not defend herself. And there is 
 another element that I am bound to acknowledge. 
 There was an element of jealousy of Anne Bui- 
 lard. Both of us had tried to help Miss Emily. 
 She had foiled my attempt in her own endeavor, 
 a mistaken endeavor, I felt. But there was now 
 to be no blemish on my efforts. I would no longer 
 pry or question or watch. It was too late. 
 
 In a curious fashion, each of us wished, I think, 
 to prove the quality of her tenderness for the 
 
THE CONFESSION 297 
 
 little old lady who was gone beyond all human 
 tenderness. 
 
 So that evening, after dinner, I faced Anne in 
 the library. 
 
 "Why not let things be as they are, Anne ?" I 
 asked. "It can do no good. Whatever it is, and 
 I do not know, why not let things rest?" 
 
 "Some one may find it," she replied. "Some 
 one who does not care, as I as we care." 
 
 "Are you sure there is something?" 
 
 "She told me, near the last. I only don t know- 
 just where it is." 
 
 "And if you find it?" 
 
 "It is a letter. I shall burn it without reading. 
 Although," she drew a long breath, "I know 
 what it contains." 
 
 "If in any way it comes into my hands," I 
 assured her, "I shall let you know. And I shall 
 not read it." 
 
 She looked thoughtful rather than grateful. 
 
 "I hardly know," she said. "I think she would 
 want you to read it if it came to you. It ex 
 plains so much. And it was a part of her plan. 
 You know, of course, that she had a plan. It 
 was a sort of arrangement" she hesitated "it 
 was a sort of pact she made with God, if you 
 know what I mean." 
 
 That night Maggie found the letter. 
 
298 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 I had gone upstairs, and Anne was, I think, 
 already asleep. I heard what sounded like dis 
 tant hammering, and I went to the door. Some 
 one was in the library below. The light was 
 shining out into the hall, and my discovery of 
 that was followed almost immediately by the 
 faint splintering of wood. Rather outraged than 
 alarmed, I went back for my dressing-gown, and 
 as I left the room, I confronted Maggie in the 
 hallway. She had an envelope in one hand, and 
 a hatchet in the other. 
 
 "I found it," she said briefly. 
 
 She held it out, and I took it. On the out 
 side, in Miss Emily s writing, it said, "To whom 
 it may concern/ It was sealed. 
 
 I turned it over in my hand, while Maggie 
 talked. 
 
 "When I saw that girl crawling around," she 
 said, "seems to me I remembered all at once see 
 ing Miss Emily, that day I found her, running 
 her finger along the baseboard. Says I to myself, 
 there s something more hidden, and she don t 
 know where it is. But I do. So I lifted the base 
 board, and this was behind it." 
 
 Anne heard her from her room, and she went 
 out soon afterward. I heard her going down 
 the stairs and called to her. But she did not 
 
THE CONFESSION 299 
 
 answer. I closed the door on Maggie and stood 
 in my room, staring at the envelope. 
 
 I have wondered since whether Miss Emily, 
 had she lived, would have put the responsibility 
 on Providence for the discovery of her pitiful 
 story. So many of us blame the remorseless 
 hand of destiny for what is so manifestly our 
 own doing. It was her own anxiety, surely, that 
 led to the discovery in each instance, yet I am 
 certain that old Emily Benton died, convinced 
 that a higher hand than any on earth had directed 
 the discovery of the confession. 
 
 Miss Emily has been dead for more than a year 
 now. To publish the letter can do her no harm. 
 In a way, too, I feel, it may be the fulfilment of 
 that strange pact she made. For just as discovery 
 was the thing she most dreaded, so she felt that 
 by paying her penalty here she would be saved 
 something beyond that sort of spiritual book 
 keeping which most of us call religion. 
 
 Anne Sprague she is married now to Martin 
 has, I think, some of Miss Emily s feeling about 
 it, although she denies it. But I am sure that in 
 consenting to the recording of Miss Emily s story, 
 she feels that she is doing what that gentle fatal 
 ist would call following the hand of Providence. 
 
 I read the letter that night in the library, \vhere 
 
300 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 the light was good. It was a narrative, not a 
 letter, strictly speaking. It began abruptly. 
 
 "I must set down this thing as it happened. I 
 shall write it fully, because I must get it off my 
 mind. I find that I am always composing it, 
 and that my lips move when I walk along the 
 street or even when I am sitting in church. How 
 terrible if I should some day speak it aloud. My 
 great-grandmother was a Catholic. She was a 
 Bullard. Perhaps it is from her that I have this 
 overwhelming impulse to confession. And lately 
 I have been terrified. I must tell it, or I shall 
 shriek it out some day, in the church, during the 
 Litany. From battle and murder, and from sud 
 den death, Good Lord, deliver us. " 
 
 (There was a space here. When the writing 
 began again, time had elapsed. The ink was 
 different, the writing more controlled.) 
 
 "What a terrible thing hate is. It is a poison. 
 It penetrates the mind and the body and changes 
 everything. I, who once thought I could hate no 
 one, now find that hate is my daily life, my get 
 ting up and lying down, my sleep, my waking. 
 
 4 From hatred, envy, and malice, and all un- 
 charitableness, Good Lord, deliver us. 
 
 "Must one suffer twice for the same thing? 
 Is it not true that we pay but one penalty ? Surely 
 
THE CONFESSION 301 
 
 we pay either here or beyond, but not both. Oh, 
 not both! 
 
 Will this ever be found? Where shall I hide 
 it? For I have the feeling that I must hide it, 
 not destroy it as the Catholic buries his sin with 
 the priest. My father once said that it is the 
 healthful humiliation of the confessional that is 
 its reason for existing. If humiliation be a 
 virtue " 
 
 I have copied the confession to this point, 
 but I find I can not go on. She was so merciless 
 to herself, so hideously calm, so exact as to dates 
 and hours. She had laid her life on the table 
 and dissected it for the Almighty ! 
 
 I heard the story that night gently told, and 
 somehow I feel that that is the version by which 
 Miss Emily will be judged. 
 
 "If humiliation be a virtue " I read and 
 
 was about to turn the page, when I heard Anne 
 in the hall. She was not alone. I recognized 
 Doctor Lingard s voice. 
 
 Five minutes later I was sitting opposite him, 
 almost knee to knee, and he was telling me how 
 Miss Emily had come to commit her crime. Anne 
 Bullard was there, standing on the hearth rug. 
 She kept her eyes on me, and after a time I 
 realized that these two simple people feared me, 
 
302 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 feared for Miss Emily s gentle memory, feared 
 that I good heaven! would make the thing 
 public. 
 
 "First of all, Miss Blakiston," said the doctor, 
 "one must have known the family to realize the 
 situation its pride in its own uprightness. The 
 virtue of the name, what it stood for in Bolivar 
 County. She was raised on that. A Benton 
 could do no wrong, because a Benton would do 
 no wrong. 
 
 "But there is another side, also. I doubt if 
 any girl was ever raised as Miss Emily was. 
 She well, she knew nothing. At fifty she was 
 as childlike and innocent as she was at ten. She 
 had practically never heard of vice. The ugly 
 things, for her, did not exist. 
 
 "And, all the time, there was a deep and strong 
 nature underneath. She should have married 
 and had children, but there was no one here for 
 her to marry. I," he smiled faintly, "I asked 
 for her myself, and was forbidden the house for 
 years as a result. 
 
 "You have heard of the brother? But of 
 course you have. I know you have found the 
 books. Such an existence as the family life here 
 was bound to have its reactions. Carlo was a 
 reaction. Twenty-five years ago he ran away 
 with a girl from the village. He did not marry 
 
THE CONFESSION 303 
 
 her. I believe he was willing at one time, but his 
 father opposed it violently. It would have been 
 to recognize a thing he refused to recognize." 
 He turned suddenly to Anne. "Don t you think 
 this is going to be painful ?" he asked. 
 
 "Why? I know it all." 
 
 "Very well. This girl the one Carlo ran 
 away with determined to make the family pay 
 for that refusal. She made them actually pay, 
 year by year. Emily knew about it. She had 
 to pinch to make the payments. The father sat 
 in a sort of detached position, in the center of 
 Bolivar County, and let her bear the brunt of it. 
 I shall never forget the day she learned there was 
 a child. It well, it sickened her. She had not 
 known about those things. And I imagine, if we 
 could know, that that was the beginning of 
 things. 
 
 "And all the time there was the necessity for 
 secrecy. She had never known deceit, and now 
 she was obliged to practice it constantly. She 
 had no one to talk to. Her father, beyond mak 
 ing entries of the amounts paid to the woman in 
 the case, had nothing to do with it. She bore it 
 all, year after year. And it ate, like a cancer. 
 
 "Remember, I never knew. I, who would have 
 done anything for her she never told me. Carlo 
 lived hard and came back to die. The father 
 
304 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 went. She nursed them both. I came every day, 
 and I never suspected. Only, now and then, I 
 wondered about her. She looked burned. I 
 don t know any other word. 
 
 "Then, the night after Carlo had been buried, 
 she telephoned for me. It was eleven o clock, 
 She met me, out there in the hall, and she said, 
 John, I have killed somebody/ 
 
 "I thought she was out of her mind. But she 
 opened the door, and " 
 
 He turned and glanced at Anne. 
 
 "Please!" she said. 
 
 "It was Anne s mother. You have guessed it 
 about Anne by now, of course. It seems that the 
 funeral had taken the money for the payment that 
 was due, and there had been a threat of exposure. 
 And Emily had reached the breaking-point. I 
 believe what she said that she had no intention 
 even of striking her. You can t take the act itself. 
 You have to take twenty-five years into account. 
 Anyhow, she picked up a chair and knocked the 
 woman down. And it killed her." He ran his 
 fingers through his heavy hair. "It should not 
 have killed her," he reflected. "There must have 
 been some other weakness, heart or something. 
 I don t know. But it was a heavy chair. I don t 
 see how Emily " 
 
 His voice trailed off. 
 
THE CONFESSION 305 
 
 "There we were," he said, with a long breath. 
 "Poor Emily, and the other poor soul, neither of 
 them fundamentally at fault, both victims." 
 
 "I know about the books," I put in hastily. I 
 could not have him going over that again. 
 
 "You knew that, too !" He gazed at me. 
 
 "Poor Emily," he said. "She tried to atone. 
 She brought Anne here, and told her the whole 
 story. It was a bad time all round. But at 
 last Anne saw the light. The only one who would 
 not see the light was Emily. And at last she 
 hit on this confession idea. I suspected it when 
 she rented the house. When I accused her of it, 
 she said: "I have given it to Providence to de 
 cide. If the confession is found, I shall know I 
 am to suffer. And I shall not lift a hand to save 
 myself." 
 
 So it went through the hours. Her fear, which 
 I still think was the terror that communicated 
 itself to me; the various clues, which she, poor 
 victim, had overlooked; the articles laid care 
 lessly in the book she had been reading and acci 
 dentally hidden with her brother s forbidden lit 
 erature; the books themselves, with all of five 
 years to destroy them, and left untouched; her 
 own anxiety about the confession in the tele 
 phone-box, which led to our finding it; her es 
 pionage of the house by means of the telephone; 
 
306 SIGHT UNSEEN 
 
 the doctor s night visit in search of the confes 
 sion; the daily penance for five years of the dead 
 woman s photograph in her room all of these 
 and her occasional weakenings, poor soul, when 
 she tried to change her handwriting against dis 
 covery, and refused to allow the second telephone 
 to be installed. 
 
 How clear it was ! How, in a way, inevitable ! 
 And, too, how really best for her it had turned 
 out. For she had made a pact, and she died be 
 lieving that discovery here had come, and would 
 take the place of punishment beyond. 
 
 Martin Sprague came the next day. I was in 
 the library alone, and he was with Anne in the 
 garden, when Maggie came into the room with a 
 saucer of crab-apple jelly. 
 
 "I wish you d look at this," she said. "If it s 
 
 cooked too much, it gets tough and " She 
 
 straightened suddenly and stood staring out 
 through a window. 
 
 Td thank you to look out and see the goings- 
 on in our garden," she said sharply. "In broad 
 daylight, too. I " 
 
 But I did not hear what else Maggie had to 
 say. I glanced out, and Martin had raised the 
 girl s face to his and was kissing her, gently and 
 very tenderly. 
 
THE CONFESSION 307 
 
 And then and again, as with fear, it is 
 hard to put into words I felt come over me such 
 a wave of contentment and happiness as made me 
 close my eyes with the sheer relief and joy of it. 
 All was well. The past was past, and out of its 
 mistakes had come a beautiful thing-. And, like 
 the fear, this joy was not mine. It came to me. 
 I picked it up a thought without words. 
 
 Sometimes I think about it, and I wonder did 
 little Miss Emily know? 
 
 THE END 
 

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