“I quite get your point. But I’m still on the solid ground.”
“Solid!” cried Mervin. “Good Lord! But the paper goes to press to-day and I must get down to the printer. With a circulation of ten thousand or so we do things modestly, you know—not like you plutocrats of the daily press. I am practically the staff.”
“You said you had a warning.”
“Yes, yes, I wanted to give you a warning.” Mervin’s thin, eager face became intensely serious. “If you have any ingrained religious or other prejudices which may cause you to turn down this subject after you have investigated it, then don’t investigate at all—for it is dangerous.”
“What do you mean—dangerous?”
“They don’t mind honest doubt, or honest criticism, but if they are badly treated they are dangerous.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Ah, who are they? I wonder. Guides, controls, psychic entities of some kind. Who the agents of vengeance—or I should say justice—are, is really not essential. The point is that they exist.”
“Oh, rot, Mervin!”
“Don’t be too sure of that.”