“What! one of those spirit-rapping people?” And Archie’s hair almost stood on end as he asked the question.
“They don’t rap now—not the best of them, that is. That was the old way, and seems to have been given up.”
“But what do you suppose she did?”
“How did she know that the money was in your waistcoat-pocket, now? How did she know that I came from Warwickshire? And then she had a way of going about the room as though she could have raised herself off her feet in a moment if she had chosen. And then her swearing, and the rest of it—so unlike any other woman, you know.”
“But do you think she could have made Julia hate me?”
“Ah, I can’t tell that. There are such lots of things going on nowadays that a fellow can understand nothing about! But I’ve no doubt of this—if you were to tie her up with ropes ever so, I don’t in the least doubt but what she’d get out.”
Archie was awestruck, and made two or three strokes after this; but then he plucked up his courage and asked a question—
“Where do you suppose they get it from, Doodles?”
“That’s just the question.”
“Is it from—the devil, do you think?” said Archie, whispering the name of the Evil One in a very low voice.
“Well, yes; I suppose that’s most likely.”
“Because they don’t seem to do a great deal of harm with it after all. As for my money, she would have had that anyway, for I intended to give it to her.”
“There are people who think,” said Doodles, “that the spirits don’t come from anywhere, but are always floating about.”
“And then one person catches them, and another doesn’t?” asked Archie.
“They tell me that it depends upon what the mediums or medias eat and drink,” said Doodles, “and upon what sort of minds they have. They must be cleverish people, I fancy, or the spirits wouldn’t come to them.”
“But you never hear of any swell being a medium. Why don’t the spirits go to a prime minister or some of those fellows? Only think what a help they’d be.”
“If they come from the devil,” suggested Doodles, “he wouldn’t let them do any real good.”
“I’ve heard a deal about them,” said Archie, “and it seems to me that the mediums are always poor people, and that they come from nobody knows where. The Spy is a clever woman I daresay—”
“There isn’t much doubt about that,” said the admiring Doodles.
“But you can’t say she’s respectable, you know. If I was a spirit I wouldn’t go to a woman who wore such dirty stockings as she had on.”
“That’s nonsense, Clavvy. What does a spirit care about a woman’s stockings?”
“But why don’t they ever go to the wise people? that’s what I want to know.” And as he asked the question boldly he struck his ball sharply, and, lo, the three balls rolled vanquished into three different pockets. “I don’t believe about it,” said Archie, as he readjusted the score. “The devil can’t do such things as that or there’d be an end of everything; and as to spirits in the air, why should there be more spirits now than there were four-and-twenty years ago?”
“That’s all very well, old fellow,” said Doodles, “but you and I ain’t clever enough to understand everything.” Then that subject was dropped, and Doodles went back for a while to the perils of Jack Stuart’s yacht.
After the lunch, which was in fact Archie’s early dinner, Doodles was going to leave his friend, but Archie insisted that his brother captain should walk with him up to Berkeley Square, and see the last of him into his cab. Doodles had suggested that Sir Hugh would be there, and that Sir Hugh was not always disposed to welcome his brother’s friends to his own house after the most comfortable modes of friendship; but Archie explained that on such an occasion as this there need be no fear on that head; he and his brother were going away together, and there was a certain feeling of jollity about the trip which would divest Sir Hugh of his roughness. “And besides,” said Archie, “as you will be there to see me off, he’ll know that you’re not going to stay yourself.” Convinced by this, Doodles consented to walk up to Berkeley Square.
Sir Hugh had spent the greatest part of this day at home, immersed among his guns and rods, and their various appurtenances. He also had breakfasted at his club, but had ordered his luncheon to be prepared for him at home. He had arranged to leave Berkeley Square at four, and had directed that his lamb chops should be brought to him exactly at three. He was himself a little late in coming downstairs, and it was ten minutes past the hour when he desired that the chops might be put on the table, saying that he himself would be in the drawing-room in time to meet them. He was a man solicitous about his lamb chops, and careful that the asparagus should be hot; solicitous also as to that bottle of Lafitte by which those comestibles were to be accompanied and which was, of its own nature, too good to be shared with his brother Archie. But as he was on the landing, by the drawing-room door, descending quickly, conscious that in obedience to his orders the chops had been already served, he was met by a servant who, with disturbed face and quick voice, told him that there was a lady waiting for him in the hall.
“D⸺ it!” said Sir Hugh.
“She has just come, Sir Hugh, and says that she specially wants to see you.”
“Why the devil did you let her in?”
“She walked in when the door was opened, Sir Hugh, and I couldn’t help it. She seemed to be a lady, Sir Hugh, and I didn’t like not to let her inside the door.”
“What’s the lady’s name?” asked the master.
“It’s a foreign name, Sir Hugh. She said she
