Hilary Pierce had risen to his feet with the restless action that went best with his alert figure. “Yes,� he said; “I suppose we can all three of us say we have lived for adventures, or had some curious ones anyhow. And to tell you the truth, the adventure feeling has come on me very strong this very minute. I’ve got the detective fever about that parson of yours. I should like to get at the meaning of that letter, as if it were a cipher about buried treasure.�
Then he added more gravely: “And if, as I gather, your clerical friend is really a friend worth having, I do seriously advise you to keep an eye on him just now. Writing letters upside-down is all very well, and I shouldn’t be alarmed about that. Lots of people think they’ve explained things in previous letters they never wrote. I don’t think it matters who Snowdrop is, or what sort of children or animals he chooses to be fond of. That’s all being eccentric in the good old English fashion, like poetical tinkers and mad squires. You’re both of you eccentric in that sort of way, and it’s one of the things I like about you. But just because I naturally knock about more among the new people, I see something of the new eccentricities. And believe me, they’re not half so nice as the old ones. I’m a student of scientific aviation, which is a new thing itself, and I like it. But there’s a sort of spiritual aviation that I don’t like at all.�
“Sorry,� observed Crane. “Really no notion of what you’re talking about.�
“Of course you haven’t,� answered Pierce with engaging candour; “that’s another thing I like about you. But I don’t like the way your clerical friend talks about new visions and larger religions and light and liberty from the East. I’ve heard a good many people talk like that, and they were mountebanks or the dupes of mountebanks. And I’ll tell you another thing. It’s a long shot even with the long bow we used to talk about. It’s a pretty wild guess even in this rather wild business. But I have a creepy sort of feeling that if you went down to his house and private parlour to see Snowdrop, you’d be surprised at what you saw.�
“What should we see?� asked the Colonel, staring.
“You’d see nothing at all,� replied the young man.
“What on earth do you mean?�
“I mean,� replied Pierce, “that you’d find Mr. White talking to somebody who didn’t seem to be there.�
Hilary Pierce, fired by his detective fever, made a good many more inquiries about the Rev. Wilding White, both of his two old friends and elsewhere.