"Mrs. Savage of Knightsbridge. You called on her yesterday. I am sorry to say that there has been a misunderstanding, and our client is in a position of some difficulty. She gave me your name, and, after thinking the matter over very carefully, I felt that you were the person who could be of most service to her. Mrs. Savage assured me that you would do anything in your power to help her, so I need not apologize for troubling you at this rather unseasonable hour."
The voice paused, and Barbara found herself trembling. It was not blackmail to tell her that she would do anything in her power to help some one but the tone could be so confident as to be menacing. Barbara had never been brought into contact with solicitors; she knew from books that it was prudent and legitimate to refer them to one's own solicitors, but it would argue an uneasy conscience to be so summary before she had given Mr. Morton time to explain himself.
"What has happened?" she asked.
"Some malicious person has been writing letters to the Home Office," explained Mr. Morton, "and the long and the short of it is that it's necessary for us to produce evidence as to character. If you would be kind enough——"
"But I don't know her," Barbara protested. "I've only met her twice."
"That does not matter. One of the charges against our client is that she trades on the credulity of ignorant people who have been made unbalanced by the war and that, when she has got these same ignorant people into her grasp, she extorts money from them. You and I know that such a charge is grotesquely untrue. Our client had devoted her whole life to the study of what I may conveniently call 'the occult'; she has never advertised or solicited business—her peculiar powers have made that unnecessary—and those who have consulted her, so far from being credulous or ignorant people, are drawn to her by a common interest in a study which, though still in its infancy, is capable of almost infinite development." Barbara fancied that Mr. Morton must be reading aloud the draft of the defence which he had prepared for Mrs. Savage. "We feel that the Home Office will take a different view of the case, when confronted with a few of the people whom the anonymous informant is good enough to call ignorant and credulous. I am therefore collecting a few statements from some of the very many people who consulted our client. I shall be glad to know that you will allow me to call on you and suggest to you the general form in which these statements are being drawn."
Barbara was vaguely relieved to find that Mrs. Savage was once more on the defensive and that the solicitor with the ominous voice was asking favours rather than uttering threats. She would have liked to help, if it had been possible; a year before she would undoubtedly have responded; but now she dreaded the publicity of a newspaper report, and there would be a scene with her father to which she felt wholly unequal. The common sense of the world, too, would only rank her with the credulous ignorant.
"You can get other people who know her better, surely?" Barbara suggested.
"I want to get every one I can," answered Mr. Morton. "Your name, if I may say so, will carry a great deal of weight. We wish to show the Home Office the kind of people who went to our client."