“What?”

“Your two black-coated friends.  You bustle along at such a pace.  Remember, I have made more experiments than you have, and I have never come upon an exactly similar case.  I don’t know whether such a thing can be.  No more do you—­you’ve guessed.  Now, guessing is not at all scientific.  At the same time you’ve proved you can be patient.  If there is anything in this it’s profoundly interesting, of course.”

“Then you advise me—?”

“If in doubt, study Lady Sophia.  Good night.”

As Malling went away into the darkness he heard the professor snapping out to himself, as he stood before his house bareheaded: 

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! Tres bien! But—­reverend gentlemen of St. Joseph’s!  I shall have to look for telergic power in my acquaintance Randall Cantuar, when I want it!  By Jove!”

“If in doubt, study Lady Sophia.”  As Malling thought over these parting words, he realized their wisdom and wondered at his own short-sightedness.

He had sent his cards to Onslow Gardens after the luncheon with the Hardings.  He wished now he had called and asked for Lady Sophia.  But doubtless he would have an opportunity of being with her again.  If she did not offer him one, he would make one for himself.

He longed to see her with Henry Chichester.

During the days that elapsed before “Hornton Street, Wednesday” he considered a certain matter with sedulous care.  His interview with Stepton had not been fruitless.  Stepton always made an effect on his mind.  Casual and jerky though his manner was, obstinate as were his silences at certain moments, fragmentary as was his speech, he had a way of darting at the essential that set him apart from most men.  Malling remembered a horrible thing he had once seen in the Sahara, a running gazelle killed by a falcon.  The falcon, rising high in the blue air, had followed the gazelle, had circled, poised, then shot down and, with miraculous skill, struck into the gazelle’s eye.  Unerringly from above it had chosen out of the vast desert the home for its cruel beak.  Somewhat in similar fashion, so Malling thought, Stepton rose above things, circled, poised, sank, and struck into the heart of the truth unerringly.

Perhaps he was able to do this because he was able to mount, falconwise!

Malling would have given a good deal to have Stepton with him in this affair, despite the professor’s repellent attitude toward the amateur.  Well, if there really was anything in it, if strangeness rose out of the orthodox bosom of St. Joseph’s, if he—­Malling—­found himself walking in thick darkness, he meant to bring Stepton into the matter, whether at Stepton’s desire or against it.  Meanwhile he would see if there was enlightenment in Hornton Street.