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rooms, and university laboratories alike all echoed to the sounds of rapping and knocking as spirits with nothing better to do tried to communicate with the living; and stories circulated of even stranger manifestations—ghostly voices, spirit trumpets, and mediums who could exude a mysterious substance called ectoplasm. . ..
    It was a solemn business. Was there life after death? Were phantasms and apparitions really there? Was mankind on the verge of the greatest discovery in history? Many earnest people took it all very seriously, and no one was more earnest than the Streatham and District Spiritualist League, which was meeting in the house of Mrs. Jamieson Wilcox, widow of a most respectable grocer.
    Frederick had been invited by one of the members, a city clerk who was perturbed by some things he'd heard in the course of a stance. The man insisted that

    Frederick should disguise himself; he was embarrassed at spying on his friends, but he'd told Frederick that there were great issues involved, matters of enormous financial, implication, and he dared not ignore it. Frederick readily agreed. He became a scientist for the evening, and Jim went as his assistant.
    "The only thing you have to do," Frederick told Jim, "is listen. Remember every word. Ignore the flying tambourines and the ghostly hands—they're two a penny at a do like this. Just concentrate on what the medium says."
    His hair was slicked down, and a pair of owlish glasses sat oddly on his broken nose. Jim, interested despite himself, carried a small brass-bound box and a battery case, and grumbled all the way to Streatham about the weight.
    By seven o'clock Mrs. Jamieson Wilcox's front parlor was crowded: twelve people packed in like dates, hardly able to move. All the smaller items of furniture had been moved out for the occasion, but that still left a substantial table, a piano, three armchairs, a laden whatnot, and a sideboard on which a black-draped portrait of the late Mr. Jamieson Wilcox was kept company by a solemn pineapple.
    The room was warm, not to say hot. The gaslights in the ornamental brackets were turned up high, and a coal fire burned in the grate. The assembled spiritualists put out a good deal of fleshly heat themselves, fortified by the meat tea they had consumed earlier, and the

    odors of tinned salmon, cold tongue, potted shrimp, beetroot, and blancmange lingered heavily in the air. There was a good deal of brow-mopping and fanning, but no one would have considered for a moment removing a jacket or loosening a tie.
    The meeting proper was due to start at half past seven, and as the time drew near, a stout and commanding gentleman opened his watch and coughed loudly to attract everyone's attention. This was Mr. Freeman Humphries, retired draper and chairman of the league.
    "Ladies and gentlemen!'' he began. "Friends and comrades in the search for truth! Let me begin on your behalf by proposing a vote of thanks to Mrs. Jamieson Wilcox for the substantial and delicious repast we have just enjoyed." There were murmurs of assent. "Next, may I welcome Mrs. Budd, the well-known medium and clairvoyant, whose messages so impressed and consoled us on her last visit." He turned and bowed slightly to a plump, dark woman with a roguish eye, who smiled back at him saucily. He coughed again and shuffled his notes. "And finally I am sure you would all like to make the acquaintance of Dr. Herbert Semple and his associate, of the Royal Institution. I call upon Dr. Semple, then, to explain the purpose of this meeting tonight and to say something about his research."
    This was Frederick's cue. He stood up and looked around the crowded room at the shopkeepers and clerks and their wives, at the pallid young man with the sniff

    and the pallid young woman with the jet necklace, at Mrs. Budd the medium (whose eyes traveled admiringly down his frock-coated form), at Mrs. Jamieson Wilcox, at the pineapple.
    "Thank you, Mr. Humphries,*' he began. "Capital tea,