n to her
bedroom and the opening of the windows, the house remains exactly as it
was."

"We may come with you?" cried Harry Wethermill eagerly.

"Yes, on one condition--that you ask no questions, and answer none
unless I put them to you. Listen, watch, examine--but no interruptions!"

Hanaud's manner had altogether changed. It was now authoritative and
alert. He turned to Ricardo.

"You will swear to what you saw in the garden and to the words you
heard?" he asked. "They are important."

"Yes," said Ricardo.

But he kept silence about that clear picture in his mind which to him
seemed no less important, no less suggestive.

The Assembly Hall at Leamington, a crowded audience chiefly of ladies,
a platform at one end on which a black cabinet stood. A man, erect and
with something of the soldier in his bearing, led forward a girl,
pretty and fair-haired, who wore a black velvet dress with a long,
sweeping train. She moved like one in a dream. Some half-dozen people
from the audience climbed on to the platform, tied thy girl's hands
with tape behind her back, and sealed the tape. She was led to the
cabinet, and in full view of the audience fastened to a bench. Then the
door of the cabinet was closed, the people upon the platform descended
into the body of the hall, and the lights were turned very low. The
audience sat in suspense, and then abruptly in the silence and the
darkness there came the rattle of a tambourine from the empty platform.
Rappings and knockings seemed to flicker round the panels of the hall,
and in the place where the door of the cabinet should be there appeared
a splash of misty whiteness. The whiteness shaped itself dimly into the
figure of a woman, a face dark and Eastern became visible, and a deep
voice spoke in a chant of the Nile and Antony. Then the vision faded,
the tambourines and cymbals rattled again. The lights were turned up,
the door of the cabinet thrown open, and the girl in the black velvet
dress was seen fastened upon the bench within.

It was a spiritualistic performance at which Julius Ricardo had been
present two years ago. The young, fair-haired girl in black velvet, the
medium, was Celia Harland.

That was the picture which was in Ricardo's mind, and Hanaud's
description of Mme. Dauvray made a terrible commentary upon it. "Easily
taken by a new face, generous, and foolishly superstitious, a living
provocation to every rogue." Those were the words, and here was a
beautif