“Can you type without seeing?”
“I shall be back in a quarter of an hour,” said he—and he went out without answering.
“Oh, if Cardaillac is going to take it up,” said one of the guests, “we shall have a merry time.”
However, when the lights were turned up, the faces seemed sterner than one would have expected. Mariotte was quite pale.
Cardaillac came back in a very short time—an astonishingly short time, one might have said. He sat down in front of the table facing his “Durand” machine, and darkness was once more established. Suddenly the table declared: “No need of others.... Put your feet on mine ... type.”
One heard the tapping of the fingers on the keys.
“It’s extraordinary!” exclaimed the typist-medium, “It’s extraordinary! My hands are writing of their own accord.”
“What bosh!” whispered Mariotte.
“I swear they are, I swear it,” said Cardaillac.