Not at first, as I say. At first, no doubt, as he pulled the wires, he thought he was plucking from harpstrings of gold, harmonies which could be heard in Heaven. But his atmosphere affected him; and just when victory brought him spiritual opportunities such as had never been his before, he had a sharp attack of the Old Testament, and his self-righteousness became as the self-righteousness of Moses and the prophets all rolled into one.
It was then, perceiving that a huge and expectant public was waiting for him to give the word, that he sent forth the fiery cross bearing upon it as the battle-cry of peace the double motto ‘Skin the Scapegoat,’—‘Hew Agag.’
Both sounded well, and both caught on, and for a brief while served the occasion: but neither made a success of it. The skinning of the scapegoat lasted for years; but in the process, it became so denuded by mange that when the skin was finally obtained it proved worthless. As for Agag he did not come to be hewn at all, walking delicately; on the contrary he ran and hid himself in a safe place, where, though the hewers pretended that they meant to get at him, they knew they could not. And as a consequence Agag remains unhewn to this day.
And, as a matter of fact, almost from the first, Mr. Trimblerigg, having given his public what it wanted, knew that it would be so.
He also knew that in high places it was willed that it should not be otherwise. And here may be recorded the bit of unwritten history which brought that home to him.
Everybody to whom mediumistic spiritualism makes any appeal has, in these last days, heard of Sir Roland Skoyle, the great protagonist of that artful science, by which in equal proportion the sceptics are confounded, and the credulous are comforted. And that being, up-to-date, its chief apparent use in the world, it is no wonder that a certain diplomatist turned to it when he launched his great peace-making offensive, after the War was over. For diplomacy having to make its account equally with those who are sceptical of its benefits, and those who are credulous, it seemed to his alert and adaptable intelligence that a little spiritualism behind the scenes might give him the aid and insight that he required.
The direct incentive came from Sir Roland Skoyle himself. He had secured a wonderful new medium, whose magnetic finger had a specialized faculty for resting upon certain people of importance—people who had been of importance, that is to say—in high circles of diplomacy; and amongst them some who had been largely instrumental in bringing the world into the condition in which it now found itself. Among these—the war-makers and peace-makers of the immediate past—it was natural, war being over, that the latter should be in special request, where the problem of diplomacy was to construct a peace satisfactory to that vast body of public opinion which had ceased to be blood-thirsty on a large scale, but whose instinct for retributive justice to be dealt out to the wicked by a court of their accusers had become correspondingly active.
Sir Roland Skoyle, anxious to impress the Prime Minister with the value of his discovery, had the happy thought of employing Mr. Trimblerigg as his go-between. And Mr. Trimblerigg having heard a certain name, august and revered, breathed into his ear, together with the gist of a recent communication that had come direct, was not averse from attending a séance in such select and exalted company. He had an open mind and plenty of curiosity, and the idea of sharing with the Prime Minister a secret so compromising that no one else must know of it, strongly attracted him.
And so the sitting was arranged. And there in a darkened room the four of them sat,—Sir Roland, the medium, Mr. Trimblerigg, and the Prime Minister.
The medium was small and dark, and middle-aged; she had bright eyes under a straight fringe and she spoke with a twang. There was no doubt which side of the water she had come from. Until the previous year, except for a few days after her birth, her home had been the United States. The actual place of her birth was important; it helped to account for her powers; Sir Roland having recently discovered that the best mediums were people of mixed origin, born on the high seas. This particular medium, having been born in the mid-Atlantic, was Irish-American.