Dinner was served in the Du Telles’ private room. Channing dined with them—the man who had informed Jane of Leslie’s whereabouts—a young, clean shaven man, member of the Shanghai Jockey Club and practically head of the great silk firm of Channing, Matheson & Co.
At dessert Jane asked Leslie’s permission to tell of Campanula’s finding. Leslie at first demurred. No one knew anything about it except the far-away folk in Nikko and the secretive Japanese police. It seemed scarcely fair to Campanula to give the tale away, but at last he consented, for George du Telle had eaten and drunk himself into a state of torpor. He was staring at a pineapple before him with a flushed face, from which protruded a great cigar, and as for Channing he was off to Shanghai next day. So Jane told the story, and Channing listened.
“Well, what do you think?” said Jane when she had finished her tale.
“I never think about these matters,” said Channing, “I simply accept them. My dear lady, were you to live a long time in the East you would come to believe in things that Western people would rank as nursery tales. The Tokyo fire-walkers can walk barefoot over a bed of live charcoal as thick as a mattress. I have seen them. How do they do it? I don’t know.
“It is very curious how the Western people, Christians, and so forth, treat the unknown. They look upon it as the unknowable. The Easterns don’t. I had a missionary man in at my office the other day over at Shanghai subscription hunting. I gave him what he wanted, and then, without scarcely saying ‘Thank you,’ he asked me did I believe in God. I asked him did he believe in the devil. He said ‘Yes.’ I asked him did he believe in devils, and he said ‘No.’ I asked him did he believe in the Bible. He said ‘Yes.’ Then I recalled to his mind the story of the Gadarene swine, and his reply was that times are changed since then. Then I suppose, I said, all the devils are dead? He walked away in a huff—with my check in his pocket, though.
“Now the juggler man”—turning to Leslie—“may have been chivied to death by devils just as the Gadarene swine were chased into the sea—who knows?
“Of course it may have been that his madness, if he were mad, took an acute turn, who knows? But I have lived a good time in the East, and I am very well assured of this, that there are men here hand in glove with evil. I have seen things done in China, and for money too, that could not possibly have been done by trickery, and could not, I think, have been done by permission of the powers of Good. I’m not what you call a Christian, and what’s more, I think the Christian religion has done a great deal of harm—not to speak of other what you call ‘religions’—Am I wearying you, Mrs. du Telle?”
“Not in the least; please go on.”
“In this way. It has robbed us of our terror of evil. It paints a vague devil that no man really believes in. Now take that much-read book, ‘The Sorrows of Satan,’ where the Devil sits down and plays the piano and sings a song.”
“I thought it was a guitar he played,” said Jane.