e bit, for that matter. He wasn't unruly,
nor disobedient. There wasn't time. It was an impulse, and he acted upon
it like lightning. I am astounded now at the swiftness with which it
took place. Inside the first second we were over the edge and falling.

"It was deliberate--deliberate suicide. And attempted murder. It was a
trap. I was the victim. He had me, and he threw himself over with me.
Yet he did not hate me. He loved me... as much as it is possible for a
horse to love. I am confounded. I cannot understand it any more than you
can understand Dolly's behavior yesterday."

"But horses go insane, Chris," Lute said. "You know that. It's merely
coincidence that two horses in two days should have spells under you."

"That's the only explanation," he answered, starting off with her. "But
why am I wanted urgently?"

"Planchette."

"Oh, I remember. It will be a new experience to me. Somehow I missed it
when it was all the rage long ago."

"So did all of us," Lute replied, "except Mrs. Grantly. It is her
favorite phantom, it seems."

"A weird little thing," he remarked. "Bundle of nerves and black
eyes. I'll wager she doesn't weigh ninety pounds, and most of that's
magnetism."

"Positively uncanny... at times." Lute shivered involuntarily. "She
gives me the creeps."

"Contact of the healthy with the morbid," he explained dryly. "You will
notice it is the healthy that always has the creeps. The morbid never
has the creeps. It gives the creeps. That's its function. Where did you
people pick her up, anyway?"

"I don't know--yes, I do, too. Aunt Mildred met her in Boston, I
think--oh, I don't know. At any rate, Mrs. Grantly came to California,
and of course had to visit Aunt Mildred. You know the open house we
keep."

They halted where a passageway between two great redwood trunks gave
entrance to the dining room. Above, through lacing boughs, could be seen
the stars. Candles lighted the tree-columned space. About the table,
examining the Planchette contrivance, were four persons. Chris's gaze
roved over them, and he was aware of a guilty sorrow-pang as he paused
for a moment on Lute's Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert, mellow with ripe
middle age and genial with the gentle buffets life had dealt them. He
passed amusedly over the black-eyed, frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and
halted on the fourth person, a portly, massive-headed man, whose gray
temples belied the youthful solidity of his face.

"Who's that?" Chris whi