laugh that speaks the vacant mind." Is it not so?'

I had now just breath enough to offer my apologies. He
accepted them, but coldly, and re-addressed himself to Soames.

`I am a man of business,' he said, `and always I would put
things through "right now," as they say in the States. You are a
poet. Les affaires--you detest them. So be it. But with me you
will deal, eh? What you have said just now gives me furiously
to hope.'

Soames had not moved, except to light a fresh cigarette. He sat
crouched forward, with his elbows squared on the table, and his
head just above the level of his hands, staring up at the Devil.
`Go on,' he nodded. I had no remnant of laughter in me now.

`It will be the more pleasant, our little deal,' the Devil went on,
`because you are--I mistake not?--a Diabolist.'

`A Catholic Diabolist,' said Soames.

The Devil accepted the reservation genially. `You wish,' he
resumed, `to visit now--this afternoon as-ever-is--the reading-
room of the British Museum, yes? but of a hundred years hence,
yes? Parfaitement. Time--an illusion. Past and future--they are
as ever-present as the present, or at any rate only what you call
"just-round-the-corner." I switch you on to any date. I project
you--pouf! You wish to be in the reading-room just as it will be
on the afternoon of June 3, 1997? You wish to find yourself
standing in that room, just past the swing-doors, this very