“Certainly, if I possibly can.”

“And your address?”

Malling stopped and, smiling, pointed to the number outside a house.

“You live here?”

Mr. Harding took a small book and a pencil from his pocket and noted down the address.

“Good-by,” he said.  “I live in Onslow Gardens—­Number 89.”

“Thank you.  Good-by.”

The two men shook hands.  Then Mr. Harding went on his way toward South Kensington, while Malling inserted his latch-key into the door of Number 7b, Cadogan Square.

II

Evelyn Malling was well accustomed to meeting with strange people and making investigations into strange occurrences.  He was not easily surprised, nor was he easily puzzled.  By nature more skeptical than credulous, he had a cool brain, and he was seldom, if ever, the victim of his imagination.  But on the evening of the day in question he found himself continually dwelling, and with a curiously heated mind, upon the encounter of that afternoon.  Mr. Harding’s manner in the latter part of their walk together had—­he scarcely knew why—­profoundly impressed him.  He longed to see the clergyman again.  He longed, almost more ardently, to pay a visit to Henry Chichester.  Although the instinct of caution, which had perhaps been developed in him by his work among mediums, cranks of various kinds, and charlatans, had prevented him from letting the rector know that he had been struck by the change in the senior curate, that change had greatly astonished him.  Yet was it really so very marked?  He had noticed it before his attention had been drawn to it.  That he knew.  But was he not now, perhaps, exaggerating its character, “suggestioned” as it were by the obvious turmoil of Mr. Harding?  He wondered, and was disturbed by his wonderment.  Two or three times he got up, with the intention of jumping into a cab, and going to Westminster to find out if Professor Stepton was in town.  But he only got as far as the hall.  Then something seemed to check him.  He told himself that he was in no fit condition to meet the sharp eyes of the man of science, who delighted in his somewhat frigid attitude of mind toward all supposed supernormal manifestations, and he returned to his study and tried to occupy himself with a book.

On the occasion of his last return, just as he was about to sit down, his eyes chanced to fall on an almanac framed in silver which stood on his writing-table.  He took it up and stared at it.  May 8, Friday—­May 9, Saturday—­May 10, Sunday.  It was May 9.  He put the almanac back on the table with a sudden sense of relief.  For he had come to a decision.

To-morrow he would attend morning service at St. Joseph’s.

Malling was not a regular church-goer.  He belonged to the Stepton breed.  But he was an earnest man and no scoffer, and some of his best friends were priests and clergymen.  Nevertheless it was in a rather unusual go-to-meeting frame of mind that he got into a tail-coat and top hat, and set forth in a hansom to St. Joseph’s the next morning.