“Not yet,” said the doctor gravely.
We waited breathlessly for the next manifestation. For several minutes the only sounds I could hear were those which drifted through the two open windows, one on each side of the fireplace—the clatter of frogs, the piping of nocturnal insects, the incessant muffled roar of the surf on the beach, and the occasional call of a night bird. Then a heavy poker, which had been leaning against the fireplace, clattered to the tiles, slid across them, and progressed with a queer jerky motion across the rug to the center of the room. It remained there for a moment, then twirled around and came straight toward me, still with the same jerky motion. When it seemed about to strike my feet I drew them up, half-expecting the thing to leap at me.
Despite this singular and, to me, inexplicable phenomenon, Dr. Dorp maintained, unruffled, his look of complete absorption. The girl, however, was manifestly alarmed.
“Be careful, Mr. Evans,” she said tensely. “I’m afraid it may hurt you.”
Somehow I did not want to appear cowardly in the eyes of this girl. The heavy poker which had performed such amazing antics now lay quiescent, and apparently quite harmless, at my feet.
Simulating a calmness which I was far from feeling, I bent over and picked the thing up. I was examining it minutely, half-expecting to find some mechanical attachment which would prove the whole thing a hoax, when it was suddenly and forcibly jerked from my grasp. It thumped to the floor, then spun half around and traveled jerkily back to the fireplace.
“What made you drop it?” asked the doctor. “Wasn’t hot, was it?”
When I told him that it had been jerked from my hands, he seemed surprised.
“Are you sure you didn’t just drop it from—ah—nervousness?”
“Positive.”