50 THE LAND OF MIST
origin of our blonde Anglo-Saxons. Mervin was a small, eager man with a brain of a high order, which might have carried him to the most lucrative heights of his profession had he not determined to sacrifice worldly prospects in order to help what seemed to him to be a great truth. As Malone was eager for knowledge and Mervin was equally keen to impart it, the waiters at the Literary Club found it no easy matter to get them away from the corner-table in the window at which they were wont to lunch. Looking down at the long, grey curve of the Embankment and the noble river with its vista of bridges, the pair would linger over their coffee, smoking cigarettes and discuss¬ ing various sides of this most gigantic and absorbing subject, which seemed already to have disclosed new horizons to the mind of Malone.
There was one warning given by Mervin which aroused impatience amounting almost to anger in Malone’s mind. He had the hereditary Irish objection to coercion and it seemed to him to be appearing once more in an insidious and particularly objectionable form.
“You are going to one of Bolsover’s family seances,” said Mervin. “They are, of course, well known among our people, though few have been actually admitted, so you may consider yourself privileged. He has clearly taken a fancy to you.”
“He thought I wrote fairly about them.”
“Well, it wasn’t much of an article, but still among the dreary, purblind nonsense that assails us, it did show some traces of dignity and balance and sense of proportion.”
Malone waved a deprecating cigarette.
“Bolsover seances and others like them are, of course, things of no moment to the real psychic. They
