"Not to be trusted?" echoed Mallow. "Then she, too, is one of us?"
The doctor looked at him with something approaching a scowl. "Your wisest plan," he said, "is to ask no questions in this place."
"But you forget I am quite uninitiated yet," retorted Mallow. "I don't care about committing myself to a definite course unless I am quite sure what I am about."
"Do you know what the Jesuits do with their pupils?" asked Drabble, irrelevantly.
"Yes, as a rule, they make scoundrels of them."
"Rather say they make machines of them--machines: because they are blindly obedient to those set in authority over them. That is one of their rules. It is one of ours also. Once you join us, you neither think for yourself nor act for yourself, you become a machine."
"And if I transgress?"
"Once you have taken our oaths I don't think you will care to do that," rejoined the doctor, coldly. "If you do--well, I won't answer for the consequences."
"Are you a machine, Drabble?"
"No; I am one having authority. I direct--others execute."