MADAME MATHILDA responded well to the aromatic spirits of ammonia. In fact they were the only spirits that had actually appeared in the seance room.
Nevertheless the scene was not without a trace of mystery.
Just before she had passed out with a horrible wail, the medium had shrieked something about objects representing life and death. Those items were on exhibit in the light that now filled the parlor. They were lying in the very middle of the room, the things that Madame Mathilda had named: a sprig of lilac and a dagger.
Commissioner Weston took the case in hand. That was, he took Madame Mathilda in hand, by planting a hard hand upon her shoulder and shaking her to her feet despite the protests of the faithful clients who surrounded their poor medium.
Announcing himself in a tone of final authority, the commissioner started to declare that the medium was under arrest for producing fraudulent materializations, only to find himself interrupted by a timid-looking client who suddenly became vociferous.
“Those aren’t materializations!” the man argued. “They are apports. You have no case against this medium, commissioner.”
The term “apports” rather stumped Weston until Cranston intervened in his calm style.
“This gentleman is right, commissioner,” declared Cranston. “A materialization is the partial or complete production of an actual spirit form. The mere arrival of an object in a seance room is called an apport, particularly when the object is inanimate.”
The distinction didn’t quite satisfy Weston.
“These things were materialized,” stormed the commissioner, gesturing to the knife and the sprig of lilac. “Of course the medium faked it, but she claims the objects came from the spirit land.”
It was Madame Mathilda now who was interrupting with emphatic headshakes. Somehow she couldn’t find the voice which had been so rampant only recently.
“You are wrong, commissioner,” continued Cranston, patiently. “These are obviously material objects which can be traced to a natural source. The twig for instance has been broken from a lilac tree quite recently; we may discover that the dagger belongs in some museum.
“True the medium may claim that they were brought here by spirit forces” - Cranston was glancing at Madame Mathilda, who halted her head shake and began to nod - “which certain scientists might decide to be evidence of some fourth dimensional activities. Outright skeptics might class the whole matter as a fraud, but it was not the sort that you came here to uncover, commissioner. You hoped to witness a materialization, but you saw none.”
Before Weston could reply, another person entered the argument. This was another of the medium’s clients, a gray-haired woman whose very vigor belied the term elderly. She was the person who had gasped the strange words when the medium talked of seeing a figure on a rock.
“Perhaps you have heard of me, commissioner.” The woman spoke with a hauteur that suited her tall and somewhat portly stature. “I am Sylvia Selmore, one of the very people whose affairs you are trying to protect by meddling into them!”
Weston acknowledged the introduction with a bow. He had often heard of Sylvia Selmore, former lecturer, writer, champion of peace and reform, as well as being generally eccentric and wealthy enough to continue so.
“There was a materialization,” Miss Selmore insisted. “I witnessed it along with the medium!”
At that, Madame Mathilda sank back with an unhappy gasp that called for more spirits of ammonia. To give the medium air, Cranston tugged away the blackout curtain covering the courtyard window, then opened the window itself. The darkness of the court was complete, with no trace of that distant light which had blinked the curious signal.
Yet at that moment, Cranston wouldn’t have wanted the blinks to recur.
Thanks to the darkness, Cranston was viewing something closer and better. The blackness of the window pane gave it the quality of a mirror in which he observed Madame Mathilda. All eyes had turned toward Cranston, therefore the medium relaxed in unguarded style.
Reflected by the lights of the room, Mathilda’s face revealed not only the opening of her shrewd eyes, but the satisfied smile that crept across her lips. Sole witness of the medium’s minor triumph, Cranston recognized the reason for it. Madame Mathilda was erroneously assuming that the clue of the dangling curtain now was gone. She didn’t guess that it remained in the memory of the very person who had destroyed it, Lamont Cranston, otherwise The Shadow!
Now attention was back upon Mathilda, so her eyes were closed again. Moaning feebly, the medium began to recuperate in slow, well-rehearsed style. Coming completely from her fake trance, she stared wonderingly at the faces about her, as though to ask what had happened.
Portly Miss Sylvia Selmore rallied to the medium’s aid.
“Poor dear,” expressed Sylvia, referring to Mathilda, “she can’t remember a thing that happened. She was in a trance you know and everything she saw was a clairvoyant phenomenon.”
Angrily, Weston drew himself up to say something, then switched to a brusque-mannered silence, his broad face glowering to a degree that seemed to bristle his short-clipped military mustache.
“She heard things too,” continued Sylvia, “because she is clairaudient. Then the spirit itself controlled her and spoke through the medium’s voice.”
Miss Sylvia nodded as though she knew all about such phenomena, but her theory didn’t help solve the question as to whether or not there had been an actual materialization, the thing that the law wanted to witness.
It was Inspector Joe Cardona, a swarthy, stocky individual who brought up that point. So far Cardona had been a good listener; now he proved himself a good talker. Facing Miss Sylvia, Cardona put a blunt query:
“Tell me, Miss Selmore, you saw these things that the medium talked about, didn’t you?”
“Partly,” acknowledged Sylvia. “I am sure I saw the Canhywllah Cyrth.”
Cardona repeated Sylvia’s pronunciation of a term he never could have spelled.
“Canhywllah Cyrth,” said Joe. “What does it mean?”
“The English call it a corpse candle,” explained Sylvia. “Canhywllah Cyrth is the Welsh term. I am Welsh, you know. My family dates back to early Pennsylvania, shortly after its settlement. The Canhywllah Cyrth is a strange, tiny light that announces the arrival of the Gwrach y Rhibyn.”
Weston gave a despairing gesture at hearing this second name repeated, but Cardona was persistent.
“What is the Gwrach y Rhibyn?”
“A family spirit,” explained Sylvia. “Some call its appearance a bad omen, but not those who understand. More often than not, the Gwrach y Rhibyn brings a fair warning. I didn’t see the Gwrach y Rhibyn, but Madame Mathilda did, which proves she must have materialized somewhere.”
“Who materialized?” put in Weston, briskly. “Madame Mathilda?”
“No,” retorted Sylvia. “The Gwrach y Rhibyn. I have seen her myself, when death threatened the family. She appeared as a hideous old hag -”
“I get it,” interrupted Cardona. “A banshee.”
The comment stiffened Sylvia’s hauteur.
“A banshee indeed!” The portly lady was indignant. “Banshees are wayward creatures that howl around the walls of Irish castles for any and all to see. In Wales our family spirits are more particular. They manifest themselves in ancient halls or beside sylvan pools.”
“That’s what Madame Mathilda saw!” Sylvia was becoming eager now. “She saw my family spirit materialized beside some forest pool. As a token, the Gwrach y Rhibyn sent this” - Sylvia picked up the sprig of lilac from the floor - “But with it there was a warning.” Pausing, the portly lady pointed stiffly at the dagger. “A warning that might mean death,” Sylvia continued. “No wonder the Gwrach y Rhibyn vanished with a wail!”
Sylvia finished that statement with a shudder and in a moment, most members of the group were quaking too. For from outside the house there came a rising wail that at this instant carried everything unearthly in its hideous cry.
Lamont Cranston wasn’t one who shuddered, but he had to press a reassuring hand upon the shoulder of a scared girl who was standing beside him. She was Margo Lane, who accompanied Cranston on many of his milder adventurers. Margo had thought it a lark to attend a spirit seance, but this one hadn’t proven the mild affair she’d anticipated.
In fact, despite Cranston’s steadying clasp, Margo would have let out a wild scream of her own, if she hadn’t suddenly recognized what the wail was - a thing which Cranston had caught upon the instant.
Neither human nor supernatural, the howl was purely a mechanical utterance from the siren of a police car wheeling past the house in the direction of Central Park.
Immediately alert, Weston and Cardona exchanged glances that were promptly answered by the jangle of the telephone. Cardona took the call in official fashion; then hung up and turned to Weston.
“Headquarters,” stated Cardona. “They knew you were here, commissioner. That’s why they called. All available patrol cars have been ordered to Central Park.”
Staring a moment, Weston demanded:
“A murder?”
Shaking his head, Cardona turned to Miss Sylvia.
“This thing you talked about, Miss Selmore,” said Cardona. “The family spook with a Welsh name. You’re sure it isn’t the same thing as a banshee?”
Again, Miss Sylvia exhibited her full dignity.
“Positively not!”
“Then you’re due for an argument, with an officer named Reilly,” announced Cardona. Plucking the lilac sprig from Sylvia’s hand, he added: “Right at the time Madame Mathilda was describing something, Reilly saw it. A beautiful creature over by a pool in Central Park, breaking off a bough from a lilac tree, which is against all regulations.”
Bringing two handkerchiefs from his pockets, Cardona laid the lilac twig in one, then picked up the dagger with the other, to wrap both items together. Then, to make the act official, the inspector furnished this addendum:
“Officer Reilly says the creature was a banshee,” declared Cardona, “and a banshee it is until we find out different!”