The treasures of the drawers hinted at, Simeon proceeded to exhibit other wonders. He possessed a coin brought from the sacred city of Lhasa and dropped through the ceiling into a closed and sealed box.

"There is no other known to the Western Hemisphere," he said. "The British Museum offered me a thousand pounds for it."

To his mind all these slates, pictures, and flowers were evidences of the interest the great shades had taken in the work of converting Simeon Pratt to the faith, and the messages were intended to steady him in his convictions and to furnish him material with which to bring the world to his view. The man's faith was like to madness--without one ray of humor.

At any other time this astounding museum would have been a most absorbing study to Kate, but she was tingling with desire to get at the young seeress and her mother. "What must they be," she asked herself, "to mix with this kind of idiocy?"

At last, when the favoring pause came, Britt explained to Pratt that Mrs. Rice was the sister of one who had known Viola in the West, and that she very much wished to see the psychic for a moment.

"I think Miss Lambert is engaged," replied Simeon, sulkily; "but I'll see," and he led the way to a small sitting-room on the same floor.

"Stay here and I'll send your card up."

"Tell her a sister of Professor Serviss."

Simeon turned quickly. "Serviss--ain't he one of the men that Clarke talks of having on the committee? Are you his sister?"

Kate bowed. "Yes; my brother met Miss Lambert in the West."

Pratt's face cleared. "Well, well! I will send her right down. Your brother is the kind of man we want to reach," he added, as he went out.

"Now, Dr. Britt," began Kate, firmly, "I want you to keep that boresome old man occupied while I talk with these women. I don't want him putting in his oar."

"I'll do my best," he answered, manfully, "up to the measure of gagging him. I can't agree to order him out of the house."

Kate was on her chair's edge with interest as she heard the rustle of skirts and the murmur of a pleasant voice, and when Viola, flushed, smiling, beautifully gowned, entered the room with outstretched hand, she rose with a spring, carried out of her well-planned reserve by the warmth and charm of the girl's greeting. She closed her gloved palm cordially on the fine hand so confidingly given. "I am glad to know you. My brother has spoken so enthusiastically of you."

Viola's flush deepened. "Has he? I a.s.sure you we speak often of him.

I suppose he is too busy with his wonderful microbes to come and see poor, commonplace creatures like us."

"He _is_ busy, but he only learned of your presence a few days ago."

Viola turned. "Mother, this is Mrs. Rice, Professor Serviss's sister."

Kate liked Mrs. Lambert also, for she was looking remarkably handsome in a black gown of simple pattern. "If these are adventuresses they are very clever in dress," was her inward comment. "I don't wonder Morton was captivated." And she presently said: "Can't you take me to your own room? I want to talk secrets with you."

"Yes, let us do that." Viola turned to her mother. "Let's take Mrs.

Rice to our sitting-room."

Mrs. Lambert a.s.sented timidly, with a quick glance towards Simeon, who was garrulously declaiming to Britt concerning the wonders of another painting by the Swedish cook.

Pratt, seeing the women rise, approached. "Where are you going?" he asked, with a note of impatience in his voice.

"To my room," answered Viola, firmly, and led the way up-stairs in silence; but when they were beyond earshot in the hall above she bitterly exclaimed: "He spies on everything I do. He will hardly let me out of his sight. I am beginning to hate him, he has so little sense of decency."

"Viola!" warned the mother.

"I don't care," retorted the girl, defiantly. "Why do we endure him--we are not dependent on him. He treats us precisely as if he owned us, and I'm tired of it. I wish papa would come on and take us home."

"He may be a bore, but he houses you like royalty," Kate remarked, as she glanced about the suite which Viola and her mother occupied. It formed the entire eastern end of the third floor of the house, and the decorations were Empire throughout, with stately canopied beds and a most luxurious bath-room.

"Oh yes, it's beautiful; but I would rather be this minute in our little log-cabin in the West," answered the girl, with wistful sadness. "Oh, these warm days make me homesick. When I was there I hated it, now I long to get back. I seem five years older--this winter has been terribly long to me."

"Well, now, lock the door," exclaimed Kate, excitedly, "and tell me all about yourself. Start at the very beginning. Dr. Britt has told me something, but I want to know everything. When did you first know you had this power? That's the first question."

Mrs. Lambert began in the tone of one retelling an old story. "Up till the day my little son Walter died, Viola was just like any other girl of her age--healthy and pretty--a very pretty child."

"I can believe it." Kate's eyes dwelt admiringly on the girl.

"My husband and I were good Presbyterians, and I had never given much thought to spirits or spiritualism, but after our little boy died Robert began to study up, and every time we went to the city he'd go to see a psychic, and that troubled me. As a good church-member I thought he ought not to do it, and so one day I said, 'Robert, I think you ought to tell Mr. McLane'--that was our minister--'what you are doing. It isn't right to visit mediums and go to church, too--one or the other ought to be given up.' He said--I remember his exact words: 'I can't live without these messages of comfort from my boy. They say he is going to manifest himself soon--here in our own home.' I remember that was his exact expression, for I wondered what it was to manifest. That very night things began."

Kate's eyes snapped. "What things?"

"Well, Waltie had a little chair that he liked--a little reed rocking-chair--and my husband always kept this chair close by where he sat reading. That night I saw the chair begin to rock all by itself--and yet, some way, it didn't scare me. 'Robert, did you move Waltie's chair?' I asked. 'No,' he said. 'Why?' 'Because it rocked.'

Robert threw down his book and looked at the chair. 'Viola must have moved it,' he said. 'Viola was in her own little chair on the other side of the table,' I said. 'It must have been the cat, then.'

"And then, just while we both looked at it, it began to move again exactly as if Waltie were in it. It creaked, too, as it used to when he rocked."

"I should have been frightened stiff," exclaimed Kate, whose eyes were beginning to widen.

"Nothing that has happened since has given me such a turn. Robert jumped up and felt all about the chair, sure that Viola had tied a string to it--and still she was no child for tricks. Then Robert bent right down over the chair, and it stopped for a moment, and then slid backward under the table, just as our own boy used to do. He loved to play tent. Robert looked up at me as white as the dead. 'It is Waltie, mother; he has come back to us,' he said, and I believed it, too."

In spite of herself, Kate shivered with a keen, complete comprehension of the thrilling joy and terror of that moment, but Viola sat listlessly waiting the end of her mother's explanation. Plainly, it was all a wearisome story to her.

Mrs. Lambert went on: "After that he came every night, and soon the tappings began, and finally we got into communication with my father, who told us to be patient and wait and Waltie would speak to us. Then the power took hold of Viola and frightened her almost into fits."

The girl visibly shuddered and her eyes fell.

"How did it begin?" asked Kate, breathless with interest.

"The first we noticed was that her left arm began to twitch so that she couldn't control it. Then she took to writing with her left hand, exactly like my father's hand-writing. She could write twenty different kinds of writing before she was twelve. These messages were all signed, and all said that she was to be a great medium. Then began the strangest doings. My thimbles would be stolen and hidden, vases would tumble off the mantels, chairs would rock. It was just pandemonium there some nights. They used to break things and pound on the doors; then all of a sudden these doings stopped and Viola went into deathly trances. I shall never forget that first night. We thought she was dead. We couldn't see her breathe, and her hands and feet were like ice."

The girl rose, her face gray and rigid. "Don't mother, don't!" she whispered. "_They are here!_" She shook her head and cried out as if to the air: "No, no, not now! No, no!"

The mother spoke. "She is being entranced. Some one has a message for you, Mrs. Rice?"

For the first time, Kate had a suspicion of both mother and daughter.

This action of the girl seemed a thought too opportune and much too theatric. Now that her splendid eyes were clouded she lost confidence in her, and as she waited she grew cold with a kind of disgust and fear of what was to follow.

The mother gently sided with her daughter against the control, and, taking both her hands, said, quietly: "Not now, father, not now." But in vain. The girl sank back into her chair rigid. "They have something they insist on saying, Mrs. Rice," said Mrs. Lambert, after a silence.

"Is it some one for Mrs. Rice?" Three loud snapping sounds came from the carpet under Viola's feet.

"Good gracious! What is that?" exclaimed Kate, a cold tremor pa.s.sing up her spine.

"It is my father," answered Mrs. Lambert, quite placidly. "Can't you write, father? Be easy on Viola to-day.--He is very anxious to converse with you for some reason, Mrs. Rice."

Again a creeping thrill made Kate's hair rise, and she bit her finger-tip. "Am I dreaming?" she asked herself, as she listened to the mother talking to the air, only to be answered by rappings from the table and thumpings from the chairs. "How absurd, how childish it all is!" she thought.

Even as this thought pa.s.sed through her mind, the room seemed to darken, the air to thicken. The girl's proud young body sank, doubled till she seemed a crone, old and withered and jocose; a sneering laugh came from her drawn lips; her hands, trembling together, hookedly reached towards Kate; the eyes were sunk lidless and gleaming with malice; a voice that was like the croak of a raven sounded forth: "You got my money, Kit--but you didn't get it all." And from the young, distorted lips a disgusting laugh issued, a laugh that froze Kate's blood and stiffened her tongue so that she could not cry out. She gasped and sank back into her chair, while the voice went on: "You know me. I always hated you--you wasted my money--you poisoned my pets--I hated your husband--he cheated me once--you'll get no joy of my money till you pay that debt."

Kate, inert, aghast, sat blindly staring while this vindictive, remorseless voice went on; only when it stopped was she aware of the mother's serene att.i.tude of waiting, of polite regret at being present at a disagreeable scene; then the girl's lips resumed their sweetness, the beautiful hands fell slack upon her knees, the head lifted and, turning, rested peacefully against the cushion of her chair. The table was violently shaken. A small ornament upon it leaped into the air and fell in Kate's lap. She sprang to her feet with a cry of alarm, shaking the thing away as if it were a toad, and was about to flee when Mrs. Lambert's voice struck her into immobility, so unconcerned was it, so utterly matter of fact.