‘It is considered so. Whether it is really nothing better than a superstition you have had an opportunity of judging.’
‘But how can you reconcile it with serious science?’
‘The vortex reconciles everything—even men who are on the point of quarrelling, when the circumstances are favourable.’
‘But if all this is true, there is no reason why you should not know everything—’
‘Not everything. There are cases when it is clear from the first that a question cannot be answered. With better tools, a man might do much more. But one may foretell much, if one will take the trouble. Will you hear more of what I have discovered about you?’
Greif hesitated. His strongly rational bent of mind suggested to him that after all there might be some trickery in the prediction so lately fulfilled, though he was unable to detect it. But if Rex foretold the future Greif felt that he must be influenced, and perhaps made very unhappy by the prophecy, which might in the end prove utterly false. It would be more prudent, he thought, to wait and lay a trap for the pretended astrologer, by asking him at another time to answer a different question, of which it should be certain that he had no previous knowledge. The conclusion was quite in accordance with Greif’s prudent nature, which instinctively distrusted the evidence of its senses beyond a certain point, and desired to prepare its experiments with true German scepticism, leaving nothing to chance and fortifying the conclusion by the purification of the means.
‘Thank you,’ he said at last. ‘I will not hear any more at present.’
‘Which means that you will ask me an unforeseen question one of these days to test my strength,’ observed Rex with a smile.
Greif laughed rather nervously, for the remark expressed exactly what was passing in his mind.
‘I confess, I meant to do so. How did you know what I was thinking?’