The policeman stared at us fixedly, stopping to do so, but all he saw was two well-dressed and professional-looking men, one of them rather elderly who was hailing a street-car. I had the presence of mind to draw my watch and consult it.
“Just in good time,” I said distinctly, and we mounted the car step. Sperry remained on the platform and lighted a cigar. This gave him a chance to look back.
“Rather narrow squeak, that,” he observed, as he came in and sat down beside me. “Your gray hairs probably saved us.”
I was quite numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I could breathe quietly. Suddenly Sperry fell to laughing.
“I wish you could have seen yourself in that barrel, and crawling out,” he said.
We reached Mrs. Dane’s, to find that Miss Jeremy had already arrived, looking rather pale, as I had noticed she always did before a seance. Her color had faded, and her eyes seemed sunken in her head.
“Not ill, are you?” Sperry asked her, as he took her hand.
“Not at all. But I am anxious. I always am. These things do not come for the calling.”
“This is the last time. You have promised.”
“Yes. The last time.”