The Link by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page A

cabinet, the music box plays.
    10:19. A strong breeze comes out of the cabinet, felt by all. “A hand is pinching my fingers,” says the interpreter. “I feel the flesh.” Palladino’s hands and legs and feet are all controlled.
    10:24. Light 5 is turned off. There is no light in the room except for the stenographer’s lamp.
    10:25. Mrs. Humphrey’s chair is dragged from the table, returned.
    10:26. A white arm and hand comes slowly from the cabinet, holding the tambourine. Controllers holding Palladino’s legs and hands.
    10:30. Four raps are heard. The curtains blow out violently. “Something black just came out of the cabinet,” says Dr. Humphrey.
“There is a white face,”
says the interpreter. “We see it,” Carrington says.
    10:34. The curtain blowing out in force. Various hands and faces appear to everybody at the table.
    10:37. The music box, playing, floats from the cabinet and settles on Palladino’s head. She bends her head forward and it falls to the table noisily.
    10:41. The small table comes out of the cabinet and climbs onto the large table; a hand is seen grasping the small table. The small table works its way over to the side of the séance table and goes down between Mrs. Humphrey and Mr. Forbes. It ends up upside down on the floor as they continue holding tightly to the medium.
    10:44. A strong wind sweeps around the room, chilling everyone. The curtains of the cabinet bulge out. A gasp of dismay falls from Mrs. Carrington as she looks at the top of the curtains near the ceiling. The others look, the stenographer crying out.
    A ghastly looking hand is hovering there, part of an arm attached to it. It floats down, settling on Dr. Humphrey’s shoulder, then vanishes. The stenographer cries out again.
    Floating near the top of the curtains is a hideous black masklike thing. The stenographer almost faints. Dr. Humphrey catching her.
    10:57. A white hand comes out of the cabinet and raps seven times on the table. “That means end of the séance,” Carrington says. Seven more loud raps are heard. The chain of hands is broken and the light turned up. Palladino is helped to a chair near the window which is opened to give her air.
    Mr. Forbes opens the cigar case still on the table. There are three cigars inside it. The one he spit out is gone. He sees something missing from the outside of the case.
    “A small silver monogram had been violently torn from the outside of the case,” says Peter’s voice. “It was not found in the room nor ever seen again.”
    SHOCK CUT TO E.C.U. of a knife blade cutting into rare beef, dark blood oozing. Peter’s voice is heard, saying, “This may be rather rare for you.”
    They are having dinner; it is dark outside.
    “Of course the woman cheated if she could,” says Peter, starting on his meal. “In January, 1910 six sittings at Columbia University were disastrous and the headline of the Boston Herald read ‘
Palladino Exposed By Noted Scientists as Expert Trickster’.”
    He frowns. “It is
unthinkable
, however, that intelligent men like Carrington, well posted in the tricks of mediums, making sure that someone on each side of her was veritably clinging to the arms and legs of this elderly Italian lady, would be fooled by such obvious ploys as foot and hand substitution for which they were constantly on the lookout. No, the woman was a genuine; no doubt of it. What it meant, of course, we’ve no idea. But she was genuine.”
    Carol brings in a vegetable plate. “How’s your toothache?” Robert asks. She smiles. “A little better, thank you.” She does not say if she took his suggestion.
    Peter drinks some wine. “No,” he continues. “From New York to Naples, Warsaw to London, the poor woman was investigated, probed, picked over and poked at by more committees than any other medium who ever lived. And many more of them wound up believing in her than disbelieving. Even my old teacher Bellenger thinks she was