She had gone.
Dixon Hubbard walked over to the couch. I glanced at Lady Helen. She was biting her lower lip—and holding her breath. I stole across the room on tip-toe and sat down beside her.
"I see," said Navarro, after the proper interval, "a woman. She is young and very beautiful. (Oh! artful Navarro.) Her mind is deeply troubled. The person she cares most for despises her. On that account she is wretchedly unhappy, although she permits no one to suspect it. She is not far away. She——"
But Hubbard had dropped the medium's hand like hot potatoes.
"It is your turn, Captain Weldon," he said, with a poor attempt at jocularity. "Step forward and have the secret of your life laid bare."
He gave his wife a scorching glance and sauntered out of the room.
"How much did you pay Navarro for that last?" I whispered in Lady Helen's ear.
She gave me a radiant smile. "Nothing to call me beautiful," she whispered back.
Weldon had taken the medium's hands. Immediately he did so, Navarro heaved a portentous sigh. I watched his face very narrowly, and somewhat to my surprise I observed it to turn to a horrid, fishy, whitish-yellow colour. Presently his eyelids slightly opened, disclosing the whites. The eyes were fixed upwards rigidly. He looked simply monstrous. For the first time I doubted his mala fides. There were many signs of cataleptic trance about him. I stole over to the foot of the couch and inserted a pin into the calf of his leg. Not a muscle twitched. Evidently he had hypnotised himself. I tried the other leg, with an equal result. I became furious. It seemed just possible that the fellow had some esoteric faculty after all. Science, of course, scouts the phenomena of clairvoyancy, but in my younger days I had witnessed so many experiments with hypnotised subjects in Paris that I had ever since kept an open mind on the question. This time we waited for quite a while for the medium to begin his manifestations. Perhaps ten minutes passed and he was still silent. But by that time I felt convinced of his unconsciousness. "Ask him some question, Weldon," I said quietly. "He is not shamming, I believe. In my opinion he is in hypnotic sleep and cannot act as his own Barnum."
Weldon laughed, but before he could adopt my hint Miss Ottley glided to the couch and standing at the head of it put her fingers lightly on the medium's eyes.