After perhaps twenty minutes, during which planchette did not move, I left the paper—a roll of blank wall-paper, called lining-paper, which I found years ago to offer the most continuous and satisfactory surface for use with planchette—spread over the table, and went into another room, intending to return later. But I forgot it, and only when I was putting things in order for the night did I re-enter that room and remember my promise to Mrs. Gaylord. I decided to make one more attempt, that I might be able to tell her positively that I had been unsuccessful. All other members of the household were away—Cass at Atlantic City, recuperating from an illness—and I was entirely alone in the apartment.
For some minutes planchette was motionless, but almost immediately I felt the curious sense of vitality, very difficult to describe, that precedes movement. It is like touching something alive and feeling its latent power. Presently it began to move. Unfortunately no exact record of those first messages was kept, and this report of them is taken from my letters to Cass, written immediately after each interview, and from the typewritten record begun a week or ten days afterward, in which was included what I could remember of details not written to him. At first there was little capitalization, but within a few days capitals were used freely. The punctuation throughout has been added, except in cases noted.
_From a letter dated Monday morning, March 4th_:
... Instead of doing the usual loop sort of thing, it made straight runs across the table. I asked, “Are you ready to write?” “Yes.” Then, as nearly as I can remember, it went like this:
“Are you my father?” At this it ran sharply toward me, point first, but for some time did not reply, perhaps because I so hoped it would write “yes.” Eventually, however, it wrote a very clear and uncompromising “No.”
“Can you tell me who you are?” “Yes. Mary.”
“Which Mary? What Mary?” “Mary ...” followed by a character that might have been either K or H, but looked more like K.
“Mary _K._?” “Yes.” Planchette was down at the lower right-hand corner of the table when I asked the last question, and it swung to the center, writing that “yes” very quickly and firmly.