Morton interrupted. "Did you know that the lid was closed?"
"Yes, I laid my hand on it while the keys were drummed."
"Where was Miss Lambert?"
"Apparently at my left, sleeping. It didn't really matter where she was, for the lid was down. When the lights were turned on she was in deep trance--apparently. That one fact of the closed piano being played in that way remains inexplicable."
"Was that all?" cried Kate, in a most disappointed way.
"Oh no. There were marvels to raise your hair, but that was all that I really valued."
Morton answered quickly. "It was enough, if properly conditioned. The theory is--I've been reading up on it--that these spook brethren of ours attack their doubters in different ways. Knowing you to be a man of materialistic and rather methodical habit of mind, the powers essayed a material test. Perhaps it was a mouse?"
"Or the cat?" suggested Kate.
"They must have been musical and of exceptional intelligence, then," put in Britt, "for they played up and down on the key-board at my request, and kept time to 'Yankee Doodle.'"
Kate exulted. "What do you think of that, Morton? If one is true, then all may be true."
Britt went on. "No. Whatever the power was, it was controlled by human intelligence. It answered to my will."
"You were convinced of that." Morton's glance was keen, keener than he knew. "If you admit that one of these manifestations is true you open the door for the witches."
Britt was a little nettled. "All this took place precisely as I relate it, in the dark, of course. But one sense, that of touch, controlled the situation--hearing took the rest."
"It all shows the inadequacy of human evidence. You must not expect any one to believe that such a manifestation took place. It is like the stories we hear of haunted houses. A friend of mine the other day was telling me of a ghost that frequented an Australian bungalow where he was visiting last year. Said he: 'I saw vases thrown from the mantel-piece in broad daylight. I've heard invisible feet tramping all about my chair in a vividly lighted room.' I didn't believe him, of course. The fact is, we don't know our own capacity for being deceived. We are each a microcosm--a summing-up of all our forebears, and in the obscure places of our brains are the cells of cavemen, nooks troubled by shadows and inhabited by strange noises. If you come at me in the right way you can raise a terrifying echo deep in some knot of my brain-cells; but it is only the echo of a far-away cry--it is not even the cry."