her. She seemed very much
impressed, and in the end she came to a specific inquiry."

"Go on," said Saton.

"The specific inquiry was briefly this," the man continued. "She gave
herself away the moment she opened her mouth. She behaved, in fact,
like a farmer's daughter asking questions of a gipsy girl. She showed
us the photograph of a man, whom we also recognised, and wanted to
know the usual sort of rubbish--whether he was really fond of her,
whether he would be true to her if she married him."

"Married him?" Saton repeated.

"She posed as a widow," the other man reminded him.

"What was the reply?"

"Violet was clever," the man remarked, with a slow smile. "She saw at
once that this was a case where something might be done. She asked for
three days, and for a letter from the man. She said that it was a case
in which a sight of his handwriting, and a close study of it, would
help them to give an absolutely truthful answer."

"She agreed?" Saton asked.

The other nodded, and produced a letter from his pocket.

"She handed one over at once," he said. "It isn't particularly
compromising, perhaps, but it's full of the usual sort of rot. She's
coming for it on Tuesday."

Saton smiled as he thrust it into his pocketbook.

"I will put this into Dorrington's hands at once," he said. "This has
been very well managed, Huntley. I will have a liqueur, and you shall
have some more beer."

"Don't mind if I do," Mr. Huntley assented cheerfully. "It's thirsty
weather."

They summoned a waiter, and Saton lit a cigarette.

"You've been amongst the big pots to-night," Huntley remarked, looking
at him.

Saton nodded.

"I have been keeping our end up," he said, "in the legitimate branch
of our profession. You needn't grin like that," he added, a little
irritably. "There is a legitimate side, and a very wonderful side,
only a brain like yours is not capable of assimilating it. You should
have heard my paper to-night upon self-directed mesmeric waves."

The man shook his head, and laughed complacently.

"It's not in my way," he answered. "Our business is good enough as it
is."

"You are a fool," Saton said, a little contemptuously. "You can't see
that but for the legitimate side there would be no business at all.
Unless there was a glimmer of truth at the bottom of the well, unless
there existed somewhere a prototype, Madame Helga, and Omega, and
Naomi might sit in their empty temples from morning till night. Peo