“I’m sure it will. By the way, I brought you the new edition of Cave’s prison dialogues.” He pulled a small booklet from his back pocket and handed it to me. “Thank you.” I took the booklet: dialogues between Cave and Iris Mortimer. I had never before heard of this particular work. “Is this a recent discovery?” I asked. “Recent? Why no. It’s the newest edition but of course the text goes right back to the early days when Cave was in prison.” “Oh, yes, in California.” “Sure; it was the beginning of the persecutions. Well, I’ve got to be on my way.” He got heavily to his feet and arranged the bandana about his head. “Somebody stole my hat. Persecuting _me_, I’ll bet my bottom dollar ... little ways. Well, I’m prepared for them. They can’t stop us. Sooner or later the whole world will be Cavite.” “Amen,” I said. “What?” He looked at me with shock. “I’m an old man,” I said hastily. “You must recall I was brought up in the old Christianity. Such expressions still linger on, you know.” “It’s a good thing there’s no Squad of Belief in Luxor,” said Butler cheerily. “They’d have you up for indoctrination in a second.” “I doubt if it’d be worth their trouble. Soon I shall be withdrawing from the world altogether.” “I suppose so. You haven’t thought of taking Cavesway have you?” “Of course, many times, but since my health has been good I’ve been in no great hurry to leave my contemplation of those hills.” I pointed to the western window. “Now I should hesitate to die until the very last moment, out of curiosity. I’m eager to learn, to help as much as possible in your work here.” “Well, that of course is good news but should you ever want to take his way let me know. We have some marvellous methods now, extremely pleasant to take and, as he said, 'It’s not death which is hard but dying.’ We’ve finally made dying simply swell.” “Will wonders never cease?” “In that department, never! It is the firm basis of our truth. Now I must be off.” “Is your colleague due here soon?” “Haven’t heard recently. I don’t suppose the plans have been changed, though. You’ll like him.” “I’m sure I shall.” 2 And so John Cave’s period in jail was now known as the time of persecution, with a pious prison dialogue attributed to Iris. Before I returned to my work of recollection, I glanced at the dialogue whose style was enough like Iris’s to have been her work. But of course her style was not one which could ever have been called inimitable since it was based on the most insistent of twentieth-century advertising techniques. I assumed the book was the work of others, of those anonymous counterfeiters who had created, according to a list of publications on the back of the booklet, a wealth of Cavite doctrine.