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I’m a hopeless subject, you know, and calculated to break up any séance. I haven’t got enough soul—too solidly tied to earth. But I never mind offering myself as a victim.”
    He laughed and passed into his bedroom, leaving me wondering how the professor had so signally failed with the man who was his special choice. He had obtained Goodeve’s consent, so there was no need of pressure from me, but clearly he had not made any sort of convert of him.
    At dinner we all tried to behave as if nothing special was afoot, and I think we succeeded. George Lamington had never had so good an audience for his dreary tales. He was full of racing reminiscences, the point of which was the preternatural cunning with which he had outwitted sundry rivals who had tried to beguile him. I never knew anyone whose talk was so choked with adipose tissue, but he generally managed to wallow towards some kind of point, which he and Evelyn found dramatic . . . During most of the meal I talked to his wife. She could be intelligent enough when she chose, and had a vigorous interest in foreign affairs, for she was an Ambassador’s daughter. When I first knew her she had affected a foreign accent, and professed to be more at home in Paris and Vienna than in London. Now she was English of the English, and her former tastes appeared only in intermittent attempts to get George appointed to a Dominion governorship, where he would most certainly have been a failure. For the present, however, the drums and trumpets did not sound for her. The recent addition to the Lamington fortunes had plunged her deep in the upholstery of life. She was full of plans for doing up their place in Suffolk, and, as I am as ignorant as a coal-heaver about bric-à-brac, I could only listen respectfully. She had the mannerism of the very rich, whose grievance is not against the price of things, but the inadequacy of the supply.
    The professor’s health appeared to have improved, or it may have been satisfaction with his initial success, for he was almost loquacious. He seemed to have acute hearing, for he would catch fragments of conversation far down the table, and send his great voice booming towards the speaker in some innocent interrogation. As I have said, his English was excellent, but his knowledge of English life seemed to be on the level of a South Sea islander. He was very inquisitive, and asked questions about racing and horses which gave Evelyn a chance to display his humour. Among the younger people he was a great success. Pamela Brune, who sat next to him, lost in his company her slight air of petulance and discontent, and became once again the delightful child I had known. I was obliged to admit that the Flambard party had improved since yesterday, for certain of its members seemed to have shaken off their listlessness.
    While youth was dancing or skylarking on the terrace, and the rest were set solidly to bridge, we met in the upper chamber in the Essex wing, which had been given me as a sitting room. At first, while we waited for the professor, we were a little self-conscious. Tavanger and Mayot, especially, looked rather like embarrassed elders at a children’s party. But I noticed that no one—not even Reggie Daker—tried to be funny about the business.
    The professor’s coming turned us into a most practical assembly. Without a word of further explanation he gave us our marching orders. He appeared to assume that we were all ready to surrender ourselves to his directions.
    The paper chosen was
The Times
. For the next three days we were to keep our minds glued to that newssheet, and he was very explicit about the way in which we were to do it.
    First of all, we were to have it as much as possible before our eyes, so that its physical form became as familiar to each of us as our razors and cigarette cases. We started, of course, with a considerable degree of knowledge, for we were all accustomed to look at it every