Upon lighting the gas we found our victim as before, sitting absolutely as we had left her. The table edge was twenty-four inches from her finger-tips. The place where the cone lay, which we had marked with chalk when it was first drummed upon, was thirty-six inches from one hand and forty inches from the other. But the most inexplicable of all—the tangible, permanent record—was the seven sheets of paper which were lying upon a couch six feet from Mrs. Smiley's left hand. They were all written upon legibly, and pinned together with a black pin, which had been thrust through the writing. "Wilbur" had scrawled his name, Mrs. Fowler's father's name was signed to a message, and there were other signatures unknown to any of us. The pencil was on the carpet, forty inches from Mrs. Smiley's hand. The leaves of paper, at the moment when they were grasped and lifted, were more than forty inches from her finger-tips. How this was done I do not know: but of this I am absolutely sure: the psychic did not remove them from the table by means of her ordinary, material limbs. Barring the failure to disassociate her voice from that of "Wilbur," she had met every demand upon her. Her powers were truly magical. I cannot say I saw the cone move, but I have proven that the psychic did not surreptitiously touch it or fraudulently write upon the papers during this sitting. I cannot swear that Fowler was controlling his wife's hands while the cone was floating (and while I held the psychic's imprisoned hands), but I believe he was. In short, barring the one sense of sight—an all-important one, I admit—these happenings were convincing and fitted in with phenomena which I had secured with other psychics.
Nevertheless, I was not satisfied. I wanted Brierly, or some other fifth person, in the room, in order that both of the psychic's hands could be controlled at the same time that Mrs. Fowler's were secured. So long as a single hand was left free, the doubter would be warranted in questioning our results.
The next two or three sittings were partial failures—so much so that I made no record of them. Possibly, conditions were not strict enough. At any rate, the final and most conclusive sitting came three days later. It was held in Fowler's house. We followed the conditions of the previous sitting very closely—the same room, the same table, the same fastenings as before.
There was present a friend of Fowler's, a young man who was possessed of some psychic power. We will call him Frank. Fowler and I took entire charge of the psychic, and her bonds were even more carefully nailed than before. We began the séance, as before, by putting her to sleep.
Not long after "Maudie" spoke, saying: "Mr. Mitchell wishes the thread fastened to mama's hands in the way Mr. Garland desires."
I fastened a strong thread to each wrist as I had done several times before, passing the ends under the chair-arm in such wise that any movement of the psychic would be plainly and instantly detected. We then returned to our seats, and, though conditions seemed favorable, no marked phenomena took place; the cone was lifted, it is true, but we were used to this now, and accepted it as quite commonplace.
At six o'clock the voice of "Maudie" came: "Please go down to supper. Mr. Mitchell says he will be able to give you what you ask for after you return."
I did not ask to what he referred, but I had in mind the test to prove the voices independent of the psychic's vocal organs, and at the dinner we discussed methods by which this could be made clear.
"If they will let me put my hand over her mouth," I said to Fowler, "I will be satisfied."
"Do you mean that you will believe in spirits?" he smilingly challenged me.