AN EERY MESSAGE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1485, 10 October 1918, Page 33

AN EERY MESSAGE.

The eeriness of “The Thirteenth Chair,” which opens in Auckland at the end of the month, may be imagined from the following outline of the plot:—Spencer Lee has been stabbed to death in his chambers — by whom no one knows. But his friend Edward Wales and Inspector Donohue know that .just before the crime Lee was visited by a woman whsoe mission was to secure some compromising letters. Roscoe Crosby, a millionaire, is entertaining the friends of his son Will, who is to be married to Helen O’Neill. He is congratulated by all save Wales. By the grace of his hostess, Wales has arranged a diversion for the guests in the form of a spiritualistic seance with Rosalie la Grange (Miss Wycherly) as the medium. Seven women and six men sit down in the conventional circle. Rosalie, after creating a sensation by break-

_ing the circle by a hoary old device, IJasks to be tied hand and foot to her ur chair. Then from the Egyptian darkness in which the thirteen sit there comes the groans of the medium. After that silence. Next the eerie voice of “Laughing Eyes,” the ghostly child messenger to the medium from the Other Places. “He wants Ned. . . . Ned.” “Who is it?” “Spencer wants Ned. . . . Why in hell doesn’t Ned answer?” “What is it?” “He says letters . . . pain in the back. . . . Oh, it hurts so. ..” “Are you trying to tell me who killed you? . . . Who killed you! . . . The name! . . . Quick, the name! . . . Ah, God my back!” “Lights, son!” The voice is that of Roscoe Crosby, and Will obeys on the instant. Into the midst of the broken

circle there topples from the thirteenth chair the lifeless form of what had been Edward Wales. On the point of discovering the name of his friend’s assassin, he, too, has been stricken down in the same manner. The one who killed Lee is amongst those of the twelve left—now with a second victim. The tragedy does not nearly conclude the thrills, which continue to the end of the play.