“Sh! sh! Silence!” said Flick, in a voice which caused Belle Shaler to stumble with a smothered cry.
Mr. Cornelius, Miss Quirley, and Schneibel, the last in the charge of O’Leary, who had given his word to restrain his volubility, pressed forward eagerly, while Millie Brewster, at the sight of the coffinlike passage, the green light, and the black-draped curtains, billowing as though with the passage of unseen shapes, gave a scream and fled precipitately. Inga and Dangerfield were likewise absentees.
At the door of the salon, a surprise awaited them. Madame Probasco was still behind the scenes, but in the center of the misty room was no other than Drinkwater, gaunter and taller than ever, in the midst of the death-masks and plastered hands which set against the walls. A great white collar flashed about his neck against the somber hue of his face and his coal-black eyes.
“Madame Probasco will come on as soon as every one is seated,” he said suavely, yet with a queer little break of excitement in his voice. “She particularly wished me to caution you that there must be the most absolute quiet. Any sudden noise might prove almost fatal to her in the intense mental concentration into which she must go for these experiments.”
This revelation of Drinkwater’s connection with the spiritualistic parlors came as a disagreeable introduction. Tootles gazed at O’Leary, rather undecided, with a vague sense of something ominous impending. O’Leary, for a moment, seemed on the point of breaking out into an objection, but before he could take a decision, from the other room the voice of Madame Probasco came floating in, in querulous complaint.
“Too much noise—hush!”
The wavering passed. They grouped themselves in a circle on the chairs which had already been placed. In the center of the room a great armchair was waiting beside a table on which were displayed two gray-and-white elephants and a plaster skull. Drinkwater passed to the door by which they had entered and drew it shut, and going to the window, flung across a second curtain. In the circle the bodies seemed to recede into a mist, leaving only the white faces distinct, faces white as the chalky death-masks that spotted the walls.
“Remember, silence; absolute silence,” said Drinkwater, with his finger on his lips. He took a last precautionary glance and then stepped gingerly and softly to the door of the inner room, knocked three times, and announced,
“Everything is ready!”