I sat up in bed with a jerk.
“What do you mean—do I think they’re parsons? Of course they’re parsons. Why shouldn’t they be parsons?” But I suddenly felt very wide awake.
Jim thoughtfully lit a cigar.
“Quite so—why shouldn’t they be? At the same time”—he paused and blew out a cloud of smoke—“Dick, I suppose I’m a suspicious bird, but this interest—this peculiar interest—in me is strange, to say the least of it. Of course it may be that they regard me as a particularly black soul to be plucked from the burning, in which case I ought to feel duly flattered. On the other hand, let us suppose for a second that they are not parsons. Well, I don’t think I am being unduly conceited if I say that I have a fairly well-known reputation as a tough customer, if trouble occurs.”
By this time all thoughts of sleep had left me.
“What do you mean, Jim?” I demanded.
He answered my question by another.
“Don’t you think, Dick, that that radiograph was just a little too foolish to be quite genuine?”
“Well, it was genuine right enough. Jenkins took it down in front of our eyes.”
“Oh, it was sent; I’m not denying that. And it was sent as he received it, and as we read it. But was it sent by a genuine parson, cruising in a genuine yacht for his health? If so, my opinion of the brains of the church drops below par. But if”—he drew deeply at his cigar—“if, Dick, it was not sent by a genuine parson, but by someone who wished to pose as the driveling idiot curate of fiction, why, my opinion of the brains of the church remains at par.”