No sooner were they settled than a fumbling sound began in the middle of the table, and the pencil was twice lifted and dropped. Following this the leaves of the writing-pad rustled as though being thumbed by boyish hands.
Kate shivered and cried out: "This is uncanny! Morton, are you doing this?"
"Do you feel any motion in your thread?" asked Weissmann, in a quiet voice.
Again they sat in silence, and after some minutes the fumbling began again and the horn was heard scraping slowly about, as if being lifted with effort only to fall back with a clang.
Three sharp raps replied--an angry "yes"--and then, with a petulant swing, the instrument apparently left the table and floated upon the air. In deep amazement Morton listened for some movement, some sound from Viola, but there was none, not a breath, not a rustle of motion where she sat, and the silk thread was tight and calm. "She has nothing to do with _that_," he said, beneath his breath.
Kate called excitedly, "Oh! It touched me."
Morton spoke out sharply: "Where is Mr. Clarke?"
"What idiotic business!" he exclaimed, mystified, nevertheless.
The horn dropped to the middle of the table, but was immediately swept into the air again as if by a new and more vigorous hand, and a voice heavily mixed with air, but a man's voice unmistakably, spoke directly to Morton, sternly, contemptuously.
"We meet you on your own level. You asked for material tests, and now conditions being as you have made them--proceed. What would you have us do?"
"I am Donald McLeod--grandfather to the psychic."
At this moment Morton became seized of the most vivid realization of the physical characteristics of the man back of the voice. In some mysterious way, through some hitherto unknown sense, he was aware of a long, rugged face, with bleak and knobby brow. The lips were thin, the mouth wide, the dark-gray eyes contemptuous. "It is all an inner delusion caused by some resemblance of this voice to that of some one I have known," he said to himself; but a shiver ran over him as he questioned the old man. "If you are the grandfather of the psychic," he said, "I would like to ask you if you think it fair to a young girl to use her against her will for such foolery as this?"