“Most emphatically not.”

“How extraordinary!  And how, if I may ask, do you fill the terrible vacuum in your life that such a denial must create?”

“I have never been conscious of such a vacuum.  I was a sceptic from my youth up.  No doubt those who were nurtured in superstition, when reason at last conquers and they break away, may experience a temporary blank; but the wonders of nature and the achievements of man and the demands of the suffering world—­these should be enough to fill any blank for a reasonable creature.”

“If such are your opinions, you will fail here,” declared the clergyman positively.

“Why do you feel so sure of that?”

“Because you are faced with facts that have no material explanation.  They are supernatural, or supernormal, if you prefer the word.”

“‘One world at a time,’ is a very good motto in my judgment,” replied Hardcastle.  “We will exhaust the possibilities of this world first, sir.”

“They have already been exhausted.  Only a simple, straightforward question awaits your reply.  Do you believe in another world or do you not?”

“In the endless punishment or the endless happiness of men and women after they are dead?”

“If you like to confuse the issue in that way you are at liberty, of course, to do so.  As a Christian, I cannot demur.  The problem for the rationalist is this:  How does he ignore the deeply rooted and universal conviction that there is a life to come?  Is such a sanguine assurance planted in the mind of even the lowest savage for nothing?  Where did the aborigines win that expectation?”

“My answer embraces the whole question from my own point of view,” replied Hardcastle.  “The savages got their idea of dual personality from phenomena of nature which they were unable to explain—­from their dreams, from their own shadows on the earth and reflections in water, from the stroke of the lightning and the crash of the thunder, from the echo of their own voices, thrown back to them from crags and cliffs.  These things created their superstitions.  Ignorance bred terror, and terror bred gods and demons—­first out of the forces of nature.  That is the appalling mental legacy handed down in varying shapes to all the children of men.  We labor under them to this day.”

“You would dare to say our most sacred verities have sprung from the dreams of savages?”

Hardcastle smiled.

“It is true.  And dreams, we further know, are often the result of indigestion.  Early man didn’t understand the art of cookery, and therefore no doubt his stomach had a great deal to put up with.  We have to thank his bear steaks and wolf chops for a great deal of our cherished nonsense, no doubt.”

Sir Walter, marking the clergyman’s flashing eyes, changed the subject, and Septimus May, who observed his concern, restrained a bitter answer.  But he despaired of the detective from that moment, and proposed to himself a future assault on such detested modern opinions when opportunity occurred.