The sitters were scattered about the room all in spots where they had fled for safety. Overturned chairs bore witness to their mad scramble from the seance circle.
The medium, his sallow face now a reddish purple, was struggling with the ropes that bound him. Amazing though these sights were, they could not compare with the sight in the center of the room. There lay the body of Herbert Harvey, face upward — the handle of a dagger projecting from a spot above the heart!
The man was dead — slain by that mysterious dagger, which no longer shone with phosphorescent light!
While astounded eyes gazed upon the horrible sight, fascinated by the pool of blood that gushed from the slain form, a weird, uncanny echo sounded from an unknown spot.
It was the last response of the strange mockery that had preceded this frightful scene! No one knew from whence it came. In the midst of that eerie sound, the medium's bulging eyes swept everywhere. His struggle stopped as he sought the source of those jeering tones.
He could see no one laughing. Only wild, white faces were in view. They were faces of the startled sitters. As before, these people were obsessed by fear.
From face to face, the medium glared, forgetful of the dead man on the floor, seeking only that hawklike visage that he feared.
But the search was in vain. The man with the firm, unyielding eyes was gone. All that remained to tell of his strange presence was the memory of a weird, sardonic laugh. A laugh so horrible that no one could believe had come from human lips.
It was like the laugh of a ghost. A mockery so grotesque that only a being from another world could utter it. An unearthly tone that even the cringing, faking medium believed had come from spirit lips. Like the laugh of a ghost it had come; like a ghost, it had returned. A man had vanished with it, as though he, too, belonged in some unknown realm of the universe.
Yet that laugh, ghostly though it had seemed, had come from human lips.