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only lasted a few seconds. Those finger marks are puzzling and peculiar, however,” he confessed. He looked around at us.

“Of course, I could see nothing from where I sat, but are all of you here sure that you saw absolutely nothing?”

“Nothing,” came the answer from everybody.

“He seemed to be struggling in the air,” I said. “I saw nothing, but I felt something,” I added.

“Why, what do you mean?” asked the doctor. “I saw you, and you seemed also to be tugging at a piece of thin air . . . it would have looked a little ludicrous and grotesque if it had not palpably been so tragic.”

The white faces of the cast, men and women, crowded around me as I spoke, and I could, out of the corners of my eyes, which were fixed on the doctor’s, see the uncomprehending stare in their faces and the nervous twitching of their muscles.

“Well,” I said, “‘you all saw me pulling at something . . . or seeming to pull at something. The fact is, I really was tugging at something. It seemed to be a hand and wrist—or rather, a hand, wrist and forearm, I think. I know this sounds mad,” I said, “and, to tell the truth, I feel a little mad myself, at this moment as I say this, but that is just the way it was. It felt like flesh and blood to me—and you can see by the effect on poor Arnold there, and the marks on