Reflected by the lights of the room, Mathilda’s face revealed not only the opening of her shrewd eyes, but the satisfied smile that crept across her lips. Sole witness of the medium’s minor triumph, Cranston recognized the reason for it. Madame Mathilda was erroneously assuming that the clue of the dangling curtain now was gone. She didn’t guess that it remained in the memory of the very person who had destroyed it, Lamont Cranston, otherwise The Shadow!
Now attention was back upon Mathilda, so her eyes were closed again. Moaning feebly, the medium began to recuperate in slow, well-rehearsed style. Coming completely from her fake trance, she stared wonderingly at the faces about her, as though to ask what had happened.
Portly Miss Sylvia Selmore rallied to the medium’s aid.
“Poor dear,” expressed Sylvia, referring to Mathilda, “she can’t remember a thing that happened. She was in a trance you know and everything she saw was a clairvoyant phenomenon.”
Angrily, Weston drew himself up to say something, then switched to a brusque-mannered silence, his broad face glowering to a degree that seemed to bristle his short-clipped military mustache.
“She heard things too,” continued Sylvia, “because she is clairaudient. Then the spirit itself controlled her and spoke through the medium’s voice.”
Miss Sylvia nodded as though she knew all about such phenomena, but her theory didn’t help solve the question as to whether or not there had been an actual materialization, the thing that the law wanted to witness.
It was Inspector Joe Cardona, a swarthy, stocky individual who brought up that point. So far Cardona had been a good listener; now he proved himself a good talker. Facing Miss Sylvia, Cardona put a blunt query:
“Tell me, Miss Selmore, you saw these things that the medium talked about, didn’t you?”
“Partly,” acknowledged Sylvia. “I am sure I saw the Canhywllah Cyrth.”