The Devil, who can see through walls, gently shepherded his pupil into the little room next the library where the overflow of books was kept. That door, with horrid smile, the old conspirator opened; and there, indeed, he found the youth, looking miserably enough out of the window with his hands in his trousers pockets. He had slunk into that inhospitable fireless den in order to be free for a while from the terrors of high society.
"Ah, Mr. McTaggart, Mr. McTaggart, Mr. McTaggart!" carolled the scientist—and as he said it he opened his arms wide in a most genial gesture. "I've been looking for you everywhere!" There slyly wagging a knotted forefinger, "And I wonder if you can guess why? Eh? Why? Guess why!" Which words said, and smiling still broader, he repeated them once more three times, as was his wont, and then added: "I wonder whether you can guess why, Mr. McTaggart, whether you can guess why ... whether you can guess why?"
The Devil was now so happy that he could hardly refrain from manifesting himself, which would have been fatal. He whisked all round the room, jeering at McTaggart.
Poor young Mr. McTaggart! He had been all night and all that morning a most unhappy man. He exaggerated in his own mind the suspicions under which he lay. He was too innocent to believe that he shared it with such exalted beings as the lord and the Professor, of whom—though he had never heard his name—he was assured the fame to be European, and who, anyhow, was connected by blood with a cabinet minister.
The lad imagined himself watched by a thousand eyes. He dared not take his leave, and yet he was in hell during those hours he passed at Paulings. He would have been unhappy anyhow, for it was not his world; but to be within all that set and at the same time a marked criminal—for that is what he felt himself to be—was almost intolerable. How he had sprung up when the learned Ancient approached him, with those seeming kindly eyes! Ah! had McTaggart enjoyed a few more years of human experience he would have seen in those eyes such a mixture of cunning and evil joy as might have put him on his guard. But no; he thought that in his loneliness he had found a friend. Who knew?—perhaps a supporter.
The Professor's plan was simple, but McTaggart was simpler still.
Sudden interest in the game of Billiards upon the
part of the Professor of Crystallography
to the University.
"Mr. McTaggart," said the Ancient, with horrible geniality, "I hear that you are astonishing at billiards.... Billiards, billiards, yes, billiards.... Billiards. The Home Secretary was telling me, Humphrey, I mean, my cousin, my cousin Humphrey ... the Home Secretary, yes ... the Home Secretary was telling me that you were astonishing at billiards. Now you know"—and here he went so far as to make a step sideways and seize the young man by the arm—"it is the one thing I can watch for hours ... billiards ... good billiards.... I have gone into the mechanics of the thing"—he was lying freely, and gambling, rightly, on the idea that his companion could not distinguish between Crystallography and any other science—"and it fascinates me ... fascinates me ... oh! fascinates me. I wonder whether—" and in a fashion which would have been crude to any other man, but to the lonely McTaggart was heavenly kindness, he urged with linked arm and long sidling crablike step towards the billiard-room.