table went off under
Lewisham's nose like a cracker.

"You see?" said Chaffery, putting his hands under the tail of his
coat. The whole room seemed snapping its fingers at Lewisham for a
space.

"Very well, and now take the other side. Take the severest test I ever
tried. Two respectable professors of physics--not Newtons, you
understand, but good, worthy, self-important professors of physics--a
lady anxious to prove there's a life beyond the grave, a journalist
who wants stuff to write--a person, that is, who gets his living by
these researches just as I do--undertook to test me. Test _me_!... Of
course they had their other work to do, professing physics, professing
religion, organising research, and so forth. At the outside they don't
think an hour a day about it, and most of them had never cheated
anybody in their existence, and couldn't, for example, travel without
a ticket for a three-mile journey and not get caught, to save their
lives.... Well--you see the odds?"

He paused. Lewisham appeared involved in some interior struggle.

"You know," explained Chaffery, "it was quite an accident you got
me--quite. The thing slipped out of my mouth. Or your friend with, the
flat voice wouldn't have had a chance. Not a chance."

Lewisham spoke like a man who is lifting a weight. "All _this_, you
know, is off the question. I'm not disputing your ability. But the
thing is ... it isn't right."

"We're coming to that," said Chaffery.

"It's evident we look at things in a different light."

"That's it. That's just what we've got to discuss. Exactly!"

"Cheating is cheating. You can't get away from that. That's simple
enough."

"Wait till I've done with it," said Chaffery with a certain zest. "Of
course it's imperative you should understand my position. It isn't as
though I hadn't one. Ever since I read your letter I've been thinking
over that. Really!--a justification! In a way you might almost say I
had a mission. A sort of prophet. You really don't see the beginning
of it yet."

"Oh, but hang it!" protested Lewisham.

"Ah! you're young, you're crude. My dear young man, you're only at the
beginning of things. You really must concede a certain possibility of
wider views to a man more than twice your age. But here's supper. For
a little while at any rate we'll call a truce."

Ethel had come in again bearing an additional chair, and Mrs. Chaffery
appeared behind her, crowning the preparations with a jug of small
b