The enclosure seemed to extend all the way across the side of the room. Farther along, lying on the floor and standing against the wall, were contrivances of which at first he could make nothing—poles, pieces of tin, and—were those masks, heaped in the corner? From a row of pegs hung long robes—white and black.
The truth flashed into Orme’s mind. He was in Madame Alia’s ghost-closet!
CHAPTER XII
POWER OF DARKNESS
To Orme the next half-hour was very long. He seated himself upon the floor of the closet and ate the sandwich which the clairvoyant had brought him. Occasionally he could hear her moving about the apartment.
“Poor charlatan!” he thought. “She is herself a ‘good sort.’ I suppose she excuses the sham of her profession on the ground that it deceives many persons into happiness.”
He struck another match and looked again at the ghostly paraphernalia about him. Near him hung a black robe with a large hood. He crushed one of the folds in his hands and was surprised to discover how thin it was and into how small space it could be compressed. Not far away stood several pairs of large slippers of soft black felt. The white robes were also of thinnest gossamer—flimsy stuff that swayed like smoke when he breathed toward it.
By the light of a third match he looked more carefully at the other apparatus. There was a large pair of angel-wings, of the conventional shape. The assortment of masks was sufficiently varied for the representation of many types of men and women of different ages.