“Yes, sir, or it wouldn’t be safe. It’s that wonderful, sir.”
“It is,” I agreed heartily, and cursed—to myself.
She with her tray went down the passage while I went up the second flight, feeling not the shadow of a suspicion of my darling, but the certainty that before the night was past, she would be accused. I hurried past Maryvale’s portal with an aching heart.
Yet such was the settled habit of the week that when I reached my own door, the turmoil of my mind was stilled. This lonely chamber, which had such baneful associations for me a week ago, had become a harbour of refuge. Whatever strife and doom might wait outside, here the ceiling aslope, the candle-bracket askew, the oaken chest, and the narrow window before my table invited me to my work.
I fell to. I wrote steadily. I forgot to be hungry. Once the sound of a gong quivered through the House, but not until long after it had died away did I consider what it meant. Then I set down my pen. Mrs. Belvoir’s séance must be in progress, and Scotland Yard was doubtless there. I must attend.
I secured my invaluable pocket light before setting out. Past Maryvale’s door forbid, down the long stairs, through the corridor of faces—until a murmurous voice reached me from the Hall of the Moth, a voice whose tone I recognized though the words were indistinct. Yes, Mrs. Belvoir was probing beyond the visible.
Softly I opened the door behind the musicians’ stair, tiptoed over the threshold, and stood concealed within. Great curtains shut out the moonlight from the Hall, which was dark indeed, save for the circle of bulbs on the circumference of the chandelier. These, cased by Toby in paper, gave very little illumination, and that of a mysterious tinge. At the other end of the room wavered a lazy fire, composed for the most part of bluish flame.
The people seated around the table, which had been placed not far from the musicians’ stairs, were so vague that I could not tell their attitude toward the proceedings. I observed at once that Mrs. Belvoir was not going to “bring the spirits and all,” not yet, at any rate. For on the table was spread some dark cloth above which I caught the faint glimmer of glass: a crystal sphere. The woman seated deep in her chair before the ball must be the pythoness herself.
Her voice had lapsed when I entered, and a long silence ensued. Then she said: “It’s no use. I’ve lost it again,” and I saw a white arm reach up. Instantly a dazzling light shone above her head, from a special globe connected with the wall-fixture, and Mrs. Belvoir was gazing intently into the crystal ball. I now saw that the sphere was erected on a small tripod with legs of different-coloured metals, and that this structure stood upon a square yellow velvet cloth laid over a cloth of blue. A mouldy, triangular crust of bread was placed underneath the crystal, and some statement I had once heard or read, that “bread possesses a potent protective magic against evil forces,” occurred to me to explain its presence.
Neither Salt nor any stranger was there. Mrs. Belvoir, attired in pale mauve ninon, a heliotrope band above her forehead, and an amethyst pin at her breast, was brooding over the crystal with eyes that widened and narrowed with the phase of her thought. Those pale sapphire eyes were darkened with intensity, and the customary indistinctness of her face—a mermaid-under-water look—was quite gone. Sometimes her hands clasped or slid about the sphere; sometimes her fingers rested on her temples or tapped them gently. Beyond a doubt, she was sincere.