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Conversations with strangers were always initiated by some interest in my father’s creations; I knew of none that could be successfully operated in sea-water.
    “I’m afraid,” I said, “that if we’ve met before, the occasion has slipped from my memory.”
    “We haven’t, in fact.” My visitor reached into a pouch next to the coiled tube and extracted a calling card, which he then proffered from his extended hand. “I could scarcely expect you to know anyone as obscure as myself.”
    Whether that was a sly dig at my past notoriety, I could not tell. Examining the card, I saw that it was coated in some translucent wax, presumably to keep it safe of the salt-water from which the gentleman had so obviously arisen. The card read:
Hamuel Stonebrake Senior Vicar
The Mission to the Cetaceans
    Is there anyone whose heart does not sink upon meeting an evangelist? And of course, the obscurer the sect, the more persistent and troublesome such a person was likely to be. What wise street poet was he, whose doggerel stated that nothing frightened him more than religion at his door? Whoever it had been, he had had the right of it. Annoying enough when some traveling proselytizer, demented with godly revelations, turned up at one’s home, where peace and comfort could be restored simply by turning him away; I thought it rude of him to accost me here, where I was so obviously adrift amongst strangers. And if this Stonebrake fellow knew so much about me, as he claimed, couldn’t he have reasonably inferred that before his interruption I had been busily attempting to kill myself?
    “May I?” He gestured toward the room’s single chair. “By all means.” I pulled my jacket, still somewhat moist, from the back of the chair and draped it across the bed. If I had been more charitably disposed toward the man, I would have warned him of the chair’s fragility. He managed to lower himself upon it without incident, the diving garment squelching upon the wood.
    “You are perhaps wondering as to the purpose of my calling upon you. At such a late hour, and in such, I admit—” He smiled and gestured with both hands toward himself. “Unusual circumstances.”
    “Not at all,” I replied. “I imagine that the Lord’s work—which appears to be your business—requires any number of unusual exertions. In this case, however, your efforts are somewhat futile. If you’ve come to ask me for a donation to this—worthy, I’m sure— Mission of yours, I have to inform you that my funds are limited at the moment.”
    “Then it’s well that I did not come to make any such request.” He leaned back in the creaking chair, evidently amused by the description of my finances. “Nor would I have needed to—the Mission is well funded by its benefactors. A certain gentleman named Macduff has been most generous in this regard.”
    “I’m sure he will receive his appropriate reward in the next life. But as I indicated, at the moment I can make no similar investment.”
    “Your inability to do so comes as no surprise, Mr. Dower. Believe me, I know close to the exact shilling the extent of your straitened condition.”
    Perhaps the man did, perhaps he didn’t. I didn’t care to pursue the point. For a dreadful suspicion had seized me. If he had not come here to solicit money—
    “Good Lord.” I stared at him in horror. “Please don’t tell me that you actually come here out of concern for my immortal soul. I hope that I’m not one of these—” I glanced again at the card he had handed me. “These ‘Cetaceans’ to which you minister.”
    My words drew a quick laugh from him. Then he leaned toward me, his elbows on his knees. “Do you know what a Cetacean is?”
    “No more than I care, sir.” I drew myself upright. “I was not churched as a child; I am not versed in Bibles and Testaments and Prophets. My father, who had the sole rearing of me, was of the iconoclastic persuasion. I am aware, through common schooling, that