jump. If it were proved that it was impossible, the question would properly
arise as to whether a ball had jumped, anyhow.
"Isn't it the dullest thing on earth?" droned Cyril. But, even without what
he had said in the garden, she would have known that he was lying. For all
his nonchalance, he was watching very acutely; for all his bored, faded voice,
she could feel [39] every tone tingling with suppressed excitement. It was
certainly not the seance that interested him; but what was it?
The medium began to moan. She complained of cold; she began to twist
her body about; she dropped her head suddenly on the table in collapse.
Nobody took any particular notice; it was all part of the performance. "Give
me your hands!" she said to Lisa, "I feel you are so sympathetic." As a matter
of fact, the girl's natural warmth of heart had stirred her for a moment. She
reached her hands out. But Simon Iff rose from the table and caught them.
"You may have a hair or a loose thread," he said sharply. "Lights up, please,
Cyril!"
The old mystic proceeded to make a careful examination of Lisa's hands.
But Cyril watching him, divined an ulterior purpose. "I say," he drawled, "I'm
afraid I was in the garden when you examined the Countess. Oughtn't I to
look at her hands if this is to be evidential?" Simon Iff's smile showed him
that he was on the right track. He took the medium's hands, and inspected
them minutely. Of course he found no hairs; he was not looking for them.
"Do you know," he said, "I think we ought to file off these nails. There's such
a lot of room for hairs and things."
The Pasha immediately protested. "I don't think we ought to interfere with
a lady's manicuring," he said indignantly. "Surely we can trust our eyes!"
Cyril Grey had beaten lynxes in the Open Championship; but he only
murmured: "I'm so sorry, Pasha; I can't trust mine. I'm threatened with
tobacco amblyopia."
The imbecility of the remark, as intended, came near to upset the Turk's
temper.
"I've always agreed with Berkeley," he went on, completely changing the
plane of the conversation, [40] while maintaining its original subject, "that
our eyes bear no witness to anything external. I am afraid I'm only wasting
your time, because I don't believe anything I see, in any case."
The Turk was intensely irritated at the magician's insolence. Whenever
Cyril was among strangers, or in any danger, he invariably donned the bomb-
proof armour of British aristocracy. He had been on the "Titanic"; a second