Cobb was unable to refute the logic of this. He lapsed into a somewhat daunted silence as Quincannon went on to explain and demonstrate the bell-ringing trick.
“Next we have the table-tipping and levitation. Vargas accomplished this phenomenon with but one hand and one foot, the right lower extremity having been freed with the aid of the upper left.” Quincannon had removed the Egyptian talisman ring from the medium’s finger; he held it up, released the fingernail catch to reveal the hook within. “He attached this hook to a small eye screwed beneath the table, after which he gave a sharp upward jerk. The table legs on his end were lifted off the carpet just far enough for him to slip the toe of his shoe under one of them, thus creating a ‘human clamp’ which gave him full control of the table. By lifting with his ring and elevating his toe while the heel remained on the carpet, he was able to make the table tilt, rock, gyrate at will.”
Sabina added, “And when he was ready for the table to appear to levitate, he simply unhooked his ring and thrust upward with his foot, withdrawing it immediately afterward. The illusion of the table seeming to float under our hands for a second or two before it fell was enhanced by both the circumstances and the darkness.”
Buckley, with some bitterness: “Seems so blasted obvious when explained.”
“Such flummery always is, Mr. Buckley. It’s the trappings and manipulation that make it mystifying. The so-called spirit lights is another example.” Sabina placed the stoppered glass bottle on the table and described where she’d found it and what it contained. “Mix white phosphorous with any fatty oil, and the result is a bottle filled with hidden light. As long as the bottle remains stoppered the phosphorous gives off no glow, but as soon as the cork is removed and air is permitted to reach the phosphorous, a faint unearthly shine results. Wave the bottle in the air and the light seems to dart about. Replace the stopper and the light fades away as the air inside is used up.”
“The little winking lights were more of the same, I suppose?”
“Not quite,” Quincannon said “Match-heads were their source. Hold a match-head between the moistened forefinger and thumb of each hand, wiggle the forefinger enough to expose and then once more quickly conceal the match-head, and you have flitting fireflies.”
Grace Cobb asked, “The guitar that seemed to dance and play itself — how was that done?”
Quincannon fetched the guitar, brought it back to the table.
Beside it he set the reaching rod from Vargas’s sleeve. The rod was only a few inches in length when closed, but when he opened out each of its sections after the fashion of a telescope, it extended the full length of the table and beyond — more than six feet overall. “Vargas extended this rod in his left hand,” he said, “inserted it in the hole in the neck of the instrument, raised and slowly turned the guitar this way and that to create the illusion of air-dancing. As for the music...”
He reached into the hole under the strings, gave a quick twist. The weird strumming they had heard during the séance began to emanate from within.
Mrs. Cobb: “A music box!”
“A one-tune music box, to be precise, affixed to the wood inside with gum adhesive.”
Buckley: “The hand that touched Mrs. Cobb’s cheek? The manifestations? The spirit writing on the slate?”
“All part and parcel of the same flummery,” Quincannon told him. Again he went to the sideboard, where he pressed the hidden release to raise its top. From inside he took out the two stuffed and wax-coated rubber gloves, held them up for the others to view.
“These are the ghostly fingers that touched Mrs. Cobb and my neck as well. The smoothness of the paraffin gives them the feel of human flesh. One ‘hand’ has been treated with luminous paint; it was kept covered under this” — he showed them the black cloth — “until the time came to reveal it as a glowing disembodied entity.”
He lifted out the silk drapery and theatrical mask. “The mask has been treated in the same way. The combination of these two items was used to create the manifestation alleged to be Philip Cobb.”
He raised the fine white netting. “Likewise made phosphorescent and draped over the head to create the manifestation purported to be the Buckleys’ daughter.”
“But... I heard Bernice speak,” Margaret Buckley said weakly. “It was her voice, I’m sure it was...”
Her husband took her hand in both of his. “No, Margaret, it wasn’t. You only imagined it to be.”
“An imitation of a child’s voice,” Quincannon said, “just as the other voice was an imitation of a man’s deep articulation.”
He picked up the two slates which bore the “spirit message” under his false signatures. “ ‘I Angkar destroyed the evil one.’ Vargas’s murderer wrote those words, in sequence on one slate and upside down and backwards on the other to heighten the illusion of spirit writing. Before the murder was done, in anticipation of it.”
“Who?” Buckley demanded. “Name the person, Quincannon.”
“Professor Vargas’s accomplice, of course.”
“Accomplice?”
“Certainly. No one individual, no matter how skilled in supernatural fakery, could have arranged and carried out all the tricks we were subjected to, even if he hadn’t been roped to his chair. Someone else had to direct the reaching rod to the guitar and then turn the spring on the music box. Someone else had to jangle the tambourine, make the wailing noises, carry the phosphorous bottle to different parts of the room and up onto the love seat there so as to make the light seem to float near the ceiling. Someone else had to manipulate the waxed gloves, don the mask and drapery and netting, imitate the spirit voices.”
“Annabelle? Are you saying it was Annabelle?”
“None other.”
They all stared at the pale, silent woman at the head of the table. Her expression remained frozen, but her gaze burned with a zealot’s fire.
Dr. Cobb said, “But she wasn’t in the room with us...”
“Ah, but she was, Doctor. At first I believed her to have been in another part of the house not because of the locked door but because of the way in which the lights dimmed and extinguished to begin the séance. It seemed she must have turned the gas off at a prearranged time. Not so. Some type of automatic timing mechanism was used for that purpose. Annabelle, you see, was already present here before the rest of us entered and Vargas locked the door.”
“Before, you say?”
“She disappeared from the parlor, you’ll recall, as soon as she announced that all was in readiness. While Vargas detained us with his call for ‘donations,’ Annabelle slipped into this room and hid herself.”
“Where? There are no hiding places... unless you expect us to believe she crawled up inside the fireplace chimney.”
“Not there, no. Nor are there any secret closets or passages or any other such hocus-pocus. She was hidden—”
“— in the same place as her spirit props,” Sabina interrupted, “within the sideboard.” Her testy glance at Quincannon said he’d hogged center stage long enough; she wasn’t above a bit of a flare for the dramatic herself, he thought fondly. “The interior is hollow, and she is both tiny and enough of a contortionist to fold her body into such a short, narrow space. The catch that releases the hinged top can be operated from within as well. Once the room was in total darkness and Vargas began invoking the spirits, she climbed out to commence her preparations. Under her robe, I’ll warrant, is an all-black, close-fitting garment. Black gloves and a mask of some sort to cover her white face completed the costume. And her familiarity with the room allowed her to move about in silence.”