"Did it succeed?"
"Yes. The impression was made while Paladino's hands were imprisoned beyond all question, and, what was most singular of all, the hand that made the print smudged the wrists of one of the experimenters, and yet not a particle of black appeared on the fingers of the psychic."
"That ought to have convinced them of her honesty," remarked Fowler, with a note of amusement in his voice, "but it didn't; these scientific folk are so difficult."
"No," I replied, "it didn't convince them, but it jarred them not a little. In their report they admitted this much. They said, 'We do not believe we have the right to explain these things by the aid of insulting assumptions.' (By this they meant to acquit the psychic of fraud.) 'We think, on the contrary, that these experiments have to do with phenomena of an unknown nature, and we confess that we do not know what the conditions are that are required to produce them.'"
"That seems to me like a very mild statement, but I suppose they considered it epoch-making," remarked Fowler.
"From this time forward learned men in Russia, France, and Italy successively sought Paladino out and tried to expose her to the world. Professor Wagner, of the Department of Zoölogy at the University of St. Petersburg, made a study of her in 1893, and found her powers real. A year later M. Siemeradski, correspondent of the Institute, experimented with her in Rome, obtaining, among other miracles, the plucking of the strings of a closed piano under strictly test conditions."
"You had that experience, did you not?" asked Mrs. Cameron.
"Yes, I've had that."
"How do you account for a thing of that sort?"