“The danger?”
“Yes, Mr. Baxter. Of course there’s plenty of fraud and trickery; we all know that. But it’s the part that’s not fraud that’s—May I ask what medium you go to?”
“I know Mr. Vincent. And I’ve been to some public séances, too.”
The old man looked at him with sudden interest, but said nothing.
“You think he’s not honest?” said Laurie, with cool offensiveness.
“Oh, yes; he’s perfectly honest,” said the other deliberately. “I’ll trouble you for the sugar, Mr. Morton.”
Laurie was determined not to begin the subject again. He felt that he was being patronized and lectured, and did not like it. And once again the suspicion crossed his mind that this was an arranged meeting. It was so very neat—two days before the séance—the entry of Morton—his own seat occupied. Yet he did not feel quite courageous enough to challenge either of them. He ate his cheese deliberately and waited, listening to the talk between the two on quite irrelevant subjects, and presently determined on a bit of bravado.
“May I look at the Daily Mirror, Mr. Cathcart?” he asked.
“There is no doubt of his guilt,” the old man said, as he handed the paper across (the two were deep in a law case now). “I said so to Markham a dozen times—” and so on.
But there was no more word of Spiritualism. Laurie propped the paper before him as he finished his cheese, and waited for coffee, and read with unseeing eyes. He was resenting as hard as he could the abruptness of the opening and closing of the subject, and the complete disregard now shown to him. He drank his coffee, still leisurely, and lit a cigarette; and still the two talked.
He stood up at last and reached down his hat and stick. The old man looked up.
“You are going, Mr. Baxter? … Good day. … Well then; and as I was waiting in court—”
Laurie passed out indignantly, and went down the stairs.
So that was Mr. Cathcart … Well, he was thankful he hadn’t written to him, after all. He was not his kind in the least.
II
The moment he passed out of the door the old man stopped his fluent talking and waited, looking after the boy. Then he turned again to his friend.
“I’m a blundering idiot,” he said.
Mr. Morton sniffed.
“I’ve put him against me now—Lord knows how; but I’ve done it; and he won’t listen to me.”
“Gad!” said Mr. Morton; “what funny people you all are! And you really meant what you said?”
“Every word,” said the old man cheerfully. … “Well; our little plot’s over.”
“Why don’t you ask him to come and see you?”
“First,” said the old man, with the same unruffled cheerfulness, “he wouldn’t have come. We’ve muddled it. We’d much better have been straightforward. Secondly, he thinks me an old fool—as you do, only more so. No; we must set to work some other way now. … Tell me about Miss Deronnais: I showed you her letter?”
The other nodded, helping himself to cheese.
“I told her that I was at her service, of course; and I haven’t heard again. Sensible girl?”
“Very sensible, I should say.”
“Sort of girl that wouldn’t scream or faint in a crisis?”
“Exactly the opposite, I should say. But I’ve hardly seen her, you know.”
“Well, well. … And the mother?”
“No good at all,” said Mr. Morton.
“Then the girl’s the sheet anchor. … In love with him, do you know?”
“Lord! How d’you expect me to know that?”
The old man pondered in silence, seeming to assimilate the situation.
“He’s in a devil of a mess,” he said, with abrupt cheerfulness. “That man Vincent—”
“Well?”
“He’s the most dangerous of the lot. Just because he’s honest.”
“Good God!” broke in the other again suddenly. “Do all Catholics believe this rubbish?”
“My dear friend, of course they don’t. Not one in a thousand. I wish they did. That’s what’s the matter. But they laugh at it—laugh at it!” … His voice cracked into shrill falsetto. … “Laugh at hellfire. … Is Sunday the day, did you say?”
“He told me the twenty-fifth.”
“And at that woman’s in Queen’s Gate, I suppose?”
“Expect so. He didn’t say. Or I forget.”
“I heard they were at their games there again,” said Mr. Cathcart with meditative geniality. “I’d like to blow up the stinking hole.”
Mr. Morton chuckled audibly.
“You’re the youngest man of your years I’ve ever come across,” he said. “No wonder you believe all that stuff. When are you going to grow up, Cathcart?”
The old man paid no attention at all.
“Well—that plot’s over,” he said again. “Now for Miss Deronnais. But we can’t stop this Sunday affair; that’s certain. Did he tell you anything about it? Materialization? Automatic—”
“Lord, I don’t know all that jargon. …”
“My dear Morton, for a lawyer, you’re the worst witness I’ve ever—Well, I’m off. No more to be done today.”
The other sat on a few minutes over his pipe.
It seemed to him quite amazing that a sensible man like Cathcart could take such rubbish seriously. In every other department of life the solicitor was an eminently shrewd and sane man, with, moreover, a youthful kind of brisk humor that is perhaps the surest symptom of sanity that it is possible to have.
He had seen him in court for years past under every sort of circumstance, and if it had been required of him to select a character with which superstition and morbid humbug could have had nothing in common, he would have laid his hand upon the senior partner of Cathcart and Cathcart. Yet here was this sane man, taking this fantastic nonsense as if there were really something in it. He had first heard him speak of the subject at a small bachelor dinner party of four in the rooms of a mutual friend; and, as he had listened, he had had the same sensation as one would have upon hearing a Cabinet minister, let us say, discussing stump-cricket with enthusiasm. Cathcart had said all kinds of things when once he was started—all with that air of businesslike briskness that was so characteristic of him and so disconcerting
