"What do you mean by test conditions?" asked Britt.
"I mean, sir, that I bought and took these slates to the medium, and held them in my hands while that message was written." There was irritation in his voice. He replaced the drawer. "But here is a painting from Murillo, the great artist. He painted the face of one of the ancients." He laid before his silent auditors another drawer which contained a sheet of card-board on which was a fairly good pastel of an Arab in a burnouse. It had the weak and false drawing which would result in the attempt of an amateur to copy an engraving in color. "This came in broad daylight while I held the clean card-board on my head," explained Simeon.
Britt looked at Kate. "The painter might have stood on his head," he blasphemously whispered.
And so down through that splendid room the host moved, exhibiting letters from Napoleon, flowers from Marie Antoinette, verses from Mary Queen of Scots, together with paternal advice from many others equally eminent in history.
"You keep good company," ventured Kate. "Have you anything from Shakespeare?"
"Certainly; and from Edwin Forrest and Lincoln and Grant."
"Anything from Admiral Kidd?" asked Britt.
Simeon looked at the jokers in silence, not quite sure whether they intended to trap him or not. "No, I save only the words of the most eminent persons in history, outside my own family--I have wonderful testimony from them."
He hesitated, pondering Britt's face, and at last said, "I will show you some materializations," and led the way to some cases filled with pressed flowers. "These are from India and Tibet," he explained.
Kate was getting bored, but Britt seemed fascinated by both Pratt and the exhibit. "To think of one human being possessing a collection like that--painfully amassing it. It's too beautiful!"
"But the girl--ask him to let us see the girl," she urged.
"Don't hurry; he can't be turned aside from his groove."
The treasures of the drawers hinted at, Simeon proceeded to exhibit other wonders. He possessed a coin brought from the sacred city of Lhasa and dropped through the ceiling into a closed and sealed box. "There is no other known to the Western Hemisphere," he said. "The British Museum offered me a thousand pounds for it."