The Thirteenth Chair
by Bayard Veiller

The Thirteenth Chair is a detective play that applies to melodrama the methods of detective fiction.

On the night of a dinner at the home of Roscoe Cosby one of the guests, Edward Wales, invites a celebrated medium to give a séance in which to trap his friend's killer.

He invites 13 suspects, and one of them uses the cover of darkness to kill again.

The play was made into a movie by the same title in 1929.