“The perfessor? Sure! I knew’m. ’Twas me give’m the name. He was a Mejum. Naw! Not for money. Too swell for that. But a real-thing Mejum. A big one; one of the kind it comes to, nacheral. Spirit-rappin’s! Somethin’ fierce! My kitchen window is on the air-shaft. So’s his. Many’s the time in the still evenin’s I’ve heard the rap-rap-rappin’ on his window an’ on the wall, but mostly on the window. Blip! out of the dark. It’d make you just hop! And him sittin’ quiet and peaceful in the front room all the time. Yep; my little girl seen him there while I was hearin’ the raps.”
“Did you ask him about them?” inquired Jones.
“Sure! He wouldn’t have it at first. Then he kinder smiled and half owned up. And once I seen him with his materializin’ wand, sittin’ in the room almost dark.”
“His what?”
“Materializin’ wand. Spirit-rod, you know. As tall as himself and all shiny and slick. It was slim and sort o’ knobby like this wood—what’s the name of it, now?—they make fish poles out of. Only the real big-bugs in spiritualism use ’em. They’re dangerous. You wouldn’t caich me touchin’ it or goin’ in there even now. I says to Mrs. Kraus, I says—”
And so the stream of high-pitched, eager talk flowed until the two men escaped from it into the vacant apartment. This was much as Average Jones had seen on his former visit. Only the strange valise was missing. Going to the kitchen, which he opened through intermediate doors on a straight line with the front room, Average Jones inspected the window. The glass was thickly marked with faint, bluish blurs, being, indeed, almost opaque from them in the middle of the upper pane. There was nothing indicative below the window, unless it were a considerable amount of crumbled putty, which he fingered with puzzled curiosity.
In the front room a mass of papers had been half burned. Some of them were local journals, mostly the Evening Register. A few were publications in the Arabic text.
“Oriental newspapers,” remarked Bertram.
Average Jones picked them up and began to fold them. From between two sheets fluttered a very small bit of paper, narrow and half curled, as if from the drying of mucilage. He lifted and read it.
“Here we are again, Bert,” he remarked in his most casual tone. “The quality of this Mercy is strained, all right.”