ernormal incidents."

"Many of them," Sir Lewis said, "were discovered to be fraudulent, I'm
afraid. The great majority, in fact."

"That's what I'd assume," Malone said. He fished in his pockets, found
a cigarette and lit it. Sir Lewis went on chewing at his unlit pipe.
"What we're interested in," Malone said, "is some description of the
various methods by which these frauds were perpetrated."

"Ah," Sir Lewis said. "The tricks of the trade, so to speak?"

"Exactly," Malone said.

"Well, then," Sir Lewis said. "The luminous gauze, for instance, that
passes for ectoplasm; the various methods of table-lifting; control of
the Ouija board--things like that?"

"Not quite that elementary," Malone said. He puffed on the cigarette,
wishing it was a cigar. "We're pretty much up to that kind of thing.
But had it ever occurred to you that many of the methods used by phony
mind-reading acts, for instance, might be used as communication
methods by spies?"

"Why, I believe some have been," Sir Lewis said. "Though I don't know
much about that, of course; there was a case during the First World
War--"

"Exactly," Malone said. He took a deep breath. "It's things like that
we're interested in," he said, and spent the next twenty minutes
slowly approaching his subject. Sir Lewis, apparently fascinated, was
perfectly willing to unbend in any direction, and jotted down notes on
some of Malone's more interesting cases, murmuring: "Most unusual,
most unusual," as he wrote.

The various types of phenomena that the Society had investigated came
into the discussion, and Malone heard quite a lot about the Beyond,
the Great Summerland, Spirit Mediums and the hypothetical existence of
fairies, goblins and elves.

"But, Sir Lewis--" he said.

"I make no claims personally," Sir Lewis said. "But I understand that
there is a large and somewhat vocal group which does make rather
solid-sounding claims in that direction. They say that they have seen
fairies, talked with goblins, danced with the elves."

"They must be very unusual people," Malone said, understating heavily.

"Oh," Sir Lewis said, without a trace of irony, "they certainly are."

Talk like this passed away nearly a half-hour, until Malone finally
felt that it was the right time to introduce some of his real
questions. "Tell me, Sir Lewis," he said. "Have you had many instances
of a single man, or a small group of men, controlling the actions of a
much larger group? And doi