Gratrix paused and gazed into the fireplace.
"That would be some time just before eleven," he said reflectively.
"Just before eleven?" I shot the question suddenly. "That's the time the tap starts to drip!"
My friend nodded his head slowly and continued:
"She hadn't time to fill the glass before Goldstone had her by the throat! . . . You know the rest. . . . A policeman heard her scream and forced an entry. . . . But it was too late!"
He finished speaking, and bent to poke the dying fire into a last despairing flame. I gazed at him half doubtfully.
"Then you think—?" I began.
"I believe," he said deliberately, "that the spirit of the dead woman is seeking to complete the action which the mind conceived but the body was unable to carry out."
"You mean that the thought uppermost in the woman's mind when death overtook her was to obtain water, and that the spirit will not rest in peace until this thought becomes translated into action?"
"Yes." he said: and then stopped short, listening intently.
I had heard the sound also, and knew that the hour had come. Glancing quickly at the clock, I saw that it was a quarter to eleven, and as the drip, drip, drip slowly became louder I felt something of that fear of the previous night returning.
Gratrix rose sharply and flung his half-consumed cigarette into the fireplace, a strange, far-off look in his eyes.
"Come," he said quietly, and I followed him, not without some misgivings, to the bath-room.
As he pushed open the door my eyes instinctively sought out the tap, and I saw that it was slowly turning. . . turning.
For an instant my friend watched in silence; then suddenly he crossed to the basin and taking a glass from the shelf above, held it under the tap which now was running swiftly.
Wonderingly I watched him, shivering a little as I felt an icy wave pass by me. But Gratrix did not appear to notice anything, and placing the glass, now full, on the basin, he came quickly to my side.
"Watch," he said simply.
Together we gazed at that glass of water: and then with a shock I realized that it was moving! Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, it began to float upward as though raised by an invisible hand. Fascinated, horrified, I watched its upward course, and I think I would have rushed forward had not my companion held me back with a warning arm.
Higher the glass went, and that invisible hand began to tilt it so that it seemed as if the contents must be spilled to the floor. No drop fell, however. Instead, I saw the water slowly disappearing, vanishing into the air until the last drop was gone.
I felt my head throbbing; my heart began to race. I could stand it no longer, and with a cry I flung aside my friend's restraining hand and darted wildly forward. With a loud crash, the window burst open, and as I fell back before the fierceness of that inrush of air, the glass, freed from the invisible power, tumbled to the floor where it shattered in a hundred fragments.
With an effort I calmed myself and turned to Gratrix, who still was standing with his back against the wall, a vacant look in his eyes and a faint smile of understanding and relief on his lips.
"What—what was it?" I stammered. "What, does it mean?"
Quietly he answered as he turned toward me:
"It means. . . . that the unexpressed thought has become an actuality. The spirit will trouble you no more!"
My friend the plumber came, as he had promised, to see how his job had gone on.
"Well, sir," he said "I dare bet as how that tap ain't dripping now eh?"
I smiled thoughtfully,
"No," I replied slowly; "it doesn't drip. . . . now!"
"I thought as how I'd fix it!" he exclaimed with professional pride. "What I don't know about taps ain't worth wastin' breath on!"
A Mysterious Picture
IN THE late summer of 1922 there was displayed in Shreveport, La., a phenomenon that no one could explain and that is yet an unsolved mystery. It was a clearly recognizable picture—in appearance very like a photographic negative—of one Mrs. Dortlon, as she lay dead in a room of a country home where she died December 14, 1921, near Campti, La.
The picture is outlined on the mirror of a dresser that was in the room where she lay, and shows the head, face and part of the bust quite plainly, as also some of the cot and its drapery that constituted her bier, and something, not very distinct, but from its mass and location, apparently a bunch of flowers that had been placed in her hand. Strangely, the picture is perpendicular on the mirror to the horizontal position of her body. The likeness did not develop until some months after her demise. It was in July that her niece was one day quite startled by its appearance. Many visitors went to view the discovery at the home, and it was later put on exhibition in Shreveport, its genuineness being established beyond question, no process of erasure having any effect upon it, while every cause at all plausible was advanced to account for it. Persons of all classes were among the observers, but unless the occurrence, at the time and place of her death, of an electrical storm, as was recalled by people of that community, was in some way a factor, the origin of this most remarkable picture could not be determined.
