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me
from the other side. I think some of the less evolved members may feel I’m
getting more than my fair share.’
    Ewart
said, ‘You are the most dominant personality in the room, Marlene. It stands to
reason.’
    ‘Stands
to reason,’ Patrick said, ‘Marlene.’
    ‘Well,
I’ll stay outside at our next séance. I definitely felt a hostile aura after
Patrick returned to us during our last session. These people feel: you pay your
money — pittance that it is — and you take your choice.’
    ‘Not
everyone feels that way,’ Ewart said.
    ‘Whom
can we trust and respect?’
    Ewart
mentioned a few of the more docile and regular attenders, Marlene eliminated
half of them, and it was thus that the Interior Spiral, their secret group,
came to be formed within the Wider Infinity.
    ‘We
must keep the ramifications pure,’ Marlene stated, ‘we must exert a concealed
influence on the less evolved brethren and the crackpots and snobs who keep
creeping in.’
     
    On the Saturday night
before Patrick’s appearance before the magistrates was anticipated, when Freda
Flower had put down her cup, the company trod reverently into the Sanctuary of
Light. Patrick ignored the widow, Freda Flower, exaltedly, as enemies do in
church; but she glanced at him nervously. Marlene did not herself join them;
this was now her habit on most evenings, since her presence so invariably
attracted all the spiritual attentions available to the company.
    Tim led
the way and acted as usher, placing about twenty people with the conviction of
extreme tact, the results of which, however, did not satisfy all. Some, who
were placed so that they had an imperfect view of the medium’s chair were
restive, but nothing like a scene occurred in this velvet-hung dark sanctuary
of light.
    This
room had previously been a dining room in one wall of which was a service
recess opening to the kitchen. The curtains that covered this recess were
arranged to part imperceptibly at a point which admitted of Marlene’s watching
the proceedings from the kitchen, which she felt was only her due. And there
she stood, in the dark, watching Tim’s arrangements in the dim green-lit séance
room.
    She was
furious when she saw Tim, as it were with the height of aplomb, place Freda
Flower, the beastly widow who had gone to the police about Patrick, in the
place of honour directly facing the medium.
    All
were seated except Tim who, before sitting down in the humblest position from
the visual point of view, took off his glasses, wiped them, replaced them
slowly and, with an elegant lightning sweep of the same handkerchief, dusted
the chair on which he was to sit, at the same time replacing his handkerchief
in his pocket. He then sat, joining tentative hands with his neighbour, as the
others had done. Marlene, from her place behind the recess, watched her nephew
closely and by an access of intuition despaired of Tim’s becoming even
teachable as to the seriousness of the Circle, far less a member of the
Interior Spiral.
    It was
then she noticed once more the newcomer, seated in his massive bulk, beside
Freda Flower, and in fact he was whispering something to Freda Flower. Marlene
realised it was Freda who had brought him to the Circle and felt deeply
apprehensive.
    All
hands were joined. The green light shone dimly. Ewart said, ‘We will now have
two minutes’ silent prayer.’
    Heads were
bowed. Before Marlene had taken over the Circle this silence had been followed
by a hymn to the tune of ‘She’ll be coming down the mountain’ and which went as
follows,
     
    We shall meet them all again by and by,
    By and by.
     
    Marlene
had found that this hymn was unaccountably not ease-making to the
schoolmasters and clergymen and more educated members, and on reflection even
herself decided that she did not in fact want to meet the whole of her
acquaintance again by and by. And so, after trying several other hymns which,
for reasons of association, seemed unsuitable to various members,