“I do not sell my gifts; I bestow them freely.  If your friend—­your anonymous friend—­desires to behold the cosmic wonders that are wrought through my hands, I am glad to show them to him.  Fortunately, as often happens when it is necessary to convince and confound a sceptic (for that your friend is a sceptic I feel instinctively), I chance to have no engagements at all this evening.”  He ran his hand through his fine, long hair reflectively.  “Yes, I go,” he continued, as if addressing some unknown presence that hovered about the ceiling; “I go; come with me!” Then he put on his broad sombrero, with its crimson ribbon, wrapped a cloak round his shoulders, lighted a cigarette, and strode forth by my side towards the Hôtel des Anglais.

He talked little by the way, and that little in curt sentences.  He seemed buried in deep thought; indeed, when we reached the door and I turned in, he walked a step or two farther on, as if not noticing to what place I had brought him.  Then he drew himself up short, and gazed around him for a moment.  “Ha, the Anglais,” he said—­and I may mention in passing that his English, in spite of a slight southern accent, was idiomatic and excellent.  “It is here, then; it is here!” He was addressing once more the unseen presence.

I smiled to think that these childish devices were intended to deceive Sir Charles Vandrift.  Not quite the sort of man (as the City of London knows) to be taken in by hocus-pocus.  And all this, I saw, was the cheapest and most commonplace conjurer’s patter.

We went upstairs to our rooms.  Charles had gathered together a few friends to watch the performance.  The Seer entered, wrapt in thought.  He was in evening dress, but a red sash round his waist gave a touch of picturesqueness and a dash of colour.  He paused for a moment in the middle of the salon, without letting his eyes rest on anybody or anything.  Then he walked straight up to Charles, and held out his dark hand.

“Good-evening,” he said.  “You are the host.  My soul’s sight tells me so.”

“Good shot,” Sir Charles answered.  “These fellows have to be quick-witted, you know, Mrs. Mackenzie, or they’d never get on at it.”

The Seer gazed about him, and smiled blankly at a person or two whose faces he seemed to recognise from a previous existence.  Then Charles began to ask him a few simple questions, not about himself, but about me, just to test him.  He answered most of them with surprising correctness.  “His name?  His name begins with an S I think:—­You call him Seymour.”  He paused long between each clause, as if the facts were revealed to him slowly.  “Seymour—­Wilbraham—­Earl of Strafford.  No, not Earl of Strafford!  Seymour Wilbraham Wentworth.  There seems to be some connection in somebody’s mind now present between Wentworth and Strafford.  I am not English.  I do not know what it means.  But they are somehow the same name, Wentworth and Strafford.”