ALL was pitch-black in the seance room. That blackness was weird, like an invisible jelly that held all present in gluey imprisonment.
Only the moans of Madame Mathilda filtered through that gloom. Madame Mathilda was the medium and when she moaned, it meant that a materialization was likely to occur.
Hence the sitters in the seance room were tense, with one exception. Lamont Cranston was unperturbed. Cranston liked darkness - the blacker the better. When blackness became absolute, it saved him the inconvenience of wearing the black cloak and slouch hat that ordinarily enabled him to blend with dusk or gloom.
Which, in two words, meant that Lamont Cranston was none other than The Shadow.
Now Madame Mathilda was moaning louder, with accompanying tremolos that produced a ventriloquial effect in the darkness. Gasps sounded here and there among the sitters; they thought they were hearing spirit voices.
Space, direction, sense of proportions, were apt to fade from a person’s mind during a seance held in total darkness, but not in Cranston’s case.
To Cranston, this was just an overstuffed parlor on a side street a few doors east of Central Park. It contained the usual quota of about a dozen clients who came here in hope of witnessing spirit manifestations; plus a few strangers of whom Cranston was one.
The other strangers included Police Commissioner Ralph Weston and Inspector Joe Cardona. Cranston knew their exact location in the darkness, particularly that of Cardona.
Parked on the other side of the medium, Cardona was supposed to grab a ghost if one arrived and Cranston was expected to do the same from his flank. Turning on the lights was to be the province of Commissioner Weston, who was stationed near the door.
Except that there wouldn’t be any ghost to grab. Knowing that fact, Cranston was a trifle bored.
Madame Mathilda dealt in “clairvoyant and clairaudient materializations,” a high sounding definition which caused the commissioner to think a lot was due to happen. The police had received a lot of complaints lately about wealthy people investing large sums in questionable ventures due to spirit guidance. Therefore to grab a phoney ghost in a much advertised medium’s parlor would be a fine starting point toward cracking up a growing racket.
But those terms “clairvoyant and clairaudient” were a hitch that Weston didn’t recognize. They meant simply that Madame Mathilda saw and heard things to which ordinary eyes and ears were not sensitive. All she had to do would be describe spirits and relay what they said; that would satisfy the regular customers and with it disappoint the strangers.
Right now, Madame Mathilda was coming to that phase and Cranston was settling back in his chair hoping it would soon be over, when he saw the glimmer.
It was a dot of light, an uncanny thing that might have come from outer space. It blinked like some strange eye, nervous and untraceable.
Yet not untraceable to Cranston.
Before the seance began, Cranston had taken in every detail of the room. He had noted a loose-hanging corner at the top of an old blackout curtain that Madame Mathilda had drawn across a high window opening into a courtyard. Since the court itself was very dark, that gap had not admitted any light until now.
Only Cranston and the medium could see it, for they were the only two faced in that direction. Cranston studied the phenomenon calmly, analyzing the blinks as something distant from outdoors. The effect upon Madame Mathilda was electrifying.
The medium’s trill-sprinkled moans culminated in a stupendous shriek.
“Canhywllah Cyrth!” she shrilled. “Canhywllah Cyrth!”
Whatever those words mean, they were echoed by another woman’s voice, close by Cranston’s elbow.
“Canhywllah Cyrth!” This woman’s tone was a gasp. “I see it too! It will bring the Gwrach y Rhibyn!”
“She is materializing there upon the rock!” Madame Mathilda was shrieking anew, but her words were coherent. “She has raven tresses and her arms are ivory, she is reaching for the branch of lilac above the crystal pool!”
Apparently this referred to the Gwrach y Rhibyn, whoever she was, for the glimmers of light were no longer twinkling through the corner space of the blackout curtain. Calmly, Cranston waited to hear more. It came.
“In her other hand she holds a dirk!” There was hysteria in the medium’s high-pitched voice. “In one hand life, in the other death! Which is to be, you must ask her, for only she can answer!”
“Yes - yes -” Cranston could hear the words panted by the other woman. “I must ask her -”
“But you must wait!” screamed Madame Mathilda. “She is waving her hands, this woodland spirit, in token of farewell. The vision fades, all but the hands, now they are going into mist, but she is flinging tokens of this visitation. Here they are!”
The medium gurgled that last utterance. Something brushed past Cranston’s face and from the center of the room there came a clatter across the hardwood floor. Then those sounds were drowned by the hard, violent thud of the medium’s body landing on the floor, echoed by the crash of an overturning chair.
Other screams punctured the darkness, voiced by sitters who imagined that they too had seen the singular vision hysterically described by Madame Mathilda.
Strange how a cramped space, pitch-dark, could turn crazed shrieks into reality through the power of suggestion!
Except that Officer Reilly wasn’t cramped, nor was it pitch-dark about him. Just starting his nightly patrol, Reilly had all the open space of Central Park in which to amble and already the moonlight was silvering that vast expanse of green.
It was the moon that attracted Reilly’s notice. It was taking up a whole side street, over there to the east of the park, as if all the traffic lights in Manhattan had been rolled into one big yellow ball and hung there, saying “Caution.”
It wouldn’t have surprised Reilly if the moon had switched to red or green, the way all traffic lights did, after hovering on yellow. For Reilly had a strong dash of imagination and therefore liked to believe that the impossible could happen.
Of course if people told you of something that they’d really seen, that was different. It might be that they were right. For instance, Patrolman Reilly remembered his old aunt who had once sworn that she had seen a banshee. Therefore people found it unwholesome to argue against banshees with Reilly, because it might cast doubt upon his old aunt.
Therefore banshees came into the “seeing is believing” category where Reilly was concerned and that was why Reilly now stood stock-still.
Reilly was staring squarely at a banshee!
Outlined against the moon, the weird creature fitted banshee specifications and more. From above her shoulders streamed flowing long hair; her outstretched arms were sweeping as if her hands were casting curses upon everything within a wide enough range to include Reilly.
She was atop a rock, beyond a shrub-clustered slope that was skirted by a stony path. Below, hidden beyond the rock, lay a sizeable pool that had its outlet under a rustic bridge that Reilly crossed when covering his beat.
The path was the shortest route to the rock and Reilly would have taken it at once, except that his dread of banshees somewhat stilled his urge toward duty; but as Reilly stared, he began to wonder if this creature could be a banshee after all.
According to some authorities, Reilly’s aunt for one, banshees were fearsome hags who wore garments resembling tattered coffin shrouds. This sylvan sprite was slender and shapely, while at this distance and in the uncertain moonlight, her raiment seemed to consist solely of her flowing hair.
What broke the spell was the breaking of the bough. As Reilly stared, he saw the banshee’s arms complete their sweep by grasping the branch of an overhanging tree and breaking it away. That was against the rules of Central Park and banshees were no exception. Furthermore, a physical act by a spirit creature struck Reilly as against the rules governing banshees.
The lithe creature of the rock was snapping a smaller branch from the broken large one when Reilly, duty prevailing, began a dash up by the path which carried him briefly away from where he could see the rock. It was during that trifling interlude that Reilly proved himself a man of determination, unwilling to abandon whatever course he had begun.
For from the crag that overhung the pool, the spot that Reilly could not see, yet could locate by the direction of the sound, there came the certifying token of the banshee, a weird, rising wail that ended in a harrowing scream.
Hardly had the cry ended before the hurrying patrolman was above the slope, blowing his whistle as he arrived. Shouts came from across the pool as persons reached the rustic bridge and pointed excitedly to the overhanging rock in proof that they, too, had heard the unearthly wail.
Then Reilly was stock-still again, still trilling the alarm and beckoning to other persons who appeared along paths well down the flanks of the slope. Cars were stopping on a drive below, even two riders on a distant bridle path halted their quivering horses, as the steeds whinnied terrified answers to the trailing scream.
From further away came the rising siren of a patrol car, responding to Reilly’s call, but it seemed like something from another world. For the world in which Officer Reilly now stood could well be termed unearthly in itself.
Reilly was on the very crag where he had seen the beauteous maiden with the flowing hair; on every side were witnesses who could not only testify that they too had glimpsed the ethereal creature, but were placed where they could cut off all parts of escape.
Yet like the banshee that she represented, the spectral visitant was gone. The only proof that such a creature could have been here was a broken branch from a lilac tree that rustled lightly overhead.
Though Reilly did not notice it at this moment, that lilac branch was not intact. It lacked a twig that had been snapped from it as rudely as the branch itself had been wrested from the tree!