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 hell-fire.... 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 in such a connection. If he had apologized for it as an amiable weakness, if he had been in the least shamefaced or deprecatory, it would have been another matter; one would have forgiven it as one forgives any little exceptional eccentricity. But to hear him speak of materialization as of a process as normal (though unusual) as the production of radium, and of planchette as of wireless telegraphy—as established, indubitable facts, though out of the range of common experience—this had amazed this very practical man. Cathcart had hinted too of other things—things which he would not amplify—of a still more disconcertingly impossible nature—matters which Morton had scarcely thought had been credible even to the darkest medievalists; and all this with that same sharp, sane humor that lent an air of reality to all that he said.
For romantic young asses like Laurie Baxter such things were not so hopelessly incongruous, though obviously they were bad for him; they were all part of the wild credulousness of a religious youth; but for Cathcart, aged sixty-two, a solicitor in good practice, with a wife and two grown-up daughters, and a reputation for exceptionally sound shrewdness—! But it must be remembered he was a Catholic!
So Mr. James Morton sat in the "Cock" and pondered. He was not sorry he had tried to take steps to choke off this young fool, and he was just a little sorry that so far they had failed. He had written to Miss Deronnais in an impulse, after an unusually feverish outburst from the boy; and she, he had learnt later, had written to Mr. Cathcart. The rest had been of the other's devising.
Well, it had failed so far. Perhaps next week things would be better.
He paid his bill, left two pence for the waiter, and went out. He had a case that afternoon.