It was Madame Mathilda now who was interrupting with emphatic headshakes. Somehow she couldn’t find the voice which had been so rampant only recently.
“You are wrong, commissioner,” continued Cranston, patiently. “These are obviously material objects which can be traced to a natural source. The twig for instance has been broken from a lilac tree quite recently; we may discover that the dagger belongs in some museum.
“True the medium may claim that they were brought here by spirit forces” - Cranston was glancing at Madame Mathilda, who halted her head shake and began to nod - “which certain scientists might decide to be evidence of some fourth dimensional activities. Outright skeptics might class the whole matter as a fraud, but it was not the sort that you came here to uncover, commissioner. You hoped to witness a materialization, but you saw none.”
Before Weston could reply, another person entered the argument. This was another of the medium’s clients, a gray-haired woman whose very vigor belied the term elderly. She was the person who had gasped the strange words when the medium talked of seeing a figure on a rock.
“Perhaps you have heard of me, commissioner.” The woman spoke with a hauteur that suited her tall and somewhat portly stature. “I am Sylvia Selmore, one of the very people whose affairs you are trying to protect by meddling into them!”
Weston acknowledged the introduction with a bow. He had often heard of Sylvia Selmore, former lecturer, writer, champion of peace and reform, as well as being generally eccentric and wealthy enough to continue so.
“There was a materialization,” Miss Selmore insisted. “I witnessed it along with the medium!”
At that, Madame Mathilda sank back with an unhappy gasp that called for more spirits of ammonia. To give the medium air, Cranston tugged away the blackout curtain covering the courtyard window, then opened the window itself. The darkness of the court was complete, with no trace of that distant light which had blinked the curious signal.
Yet at that moment, Cranston wouldn’t have wanted the blinks to recur.
Thanks to the darkness, Cranston was viewing something closer and better. The blackness of the window pane gave it the quality of a mirror in which he observed Madame Mathilda. All eyes had turned toward Cranston, therefore the medium relaxed in unguarded style.