He dropped out of sight of our little world and I had only heard of him casually as having something to do with oil wells in Mexico and had not come into contact with him for years. I was therefore rather surprised to receive a letter from him which showed that he was in London and knew that I was working on research subjects. His letter was couched in rather non-committal terms, and though he was a man whom I had never known well, he expressed an anxiety to meet me again and lay before me certain psychical problems that were puzzling him. I make it an invariable rule never to discuss psychic matters with people who are ignorant or sceptical of them, unless the sceptics are of a class sufficiently educated to be able to appreciate the absolute facts of the phenomena associated with Spiritualism. It is impossible to convince a non-scientific person by facts, as he can never assure himself that the possibility of fraud has been absolutely eliminated. A scientist or an engineer can assure himself fairly easily of the genuineness or otherwise of phenomena provided that he is given every latitude for research. But it is difficult to convince either a clergyman or an ordinary medical man of the reality of any psychic phenomena because he is not mentally trained in the same inexorably logical processes of thought as are the engineers and scientists. Experience has taught me to mistrust the man who approaches with indirect advances to the subject of Spiritualism. I prefer the definite challenge of a critical journalist who demands facts and judges on facts, for it is undoubtedly an axiom that the Seeker after Truth, however sceptical he may be, has no hostile influence in a properly constituted circle. It has ever been a matter of regret to me that the mass of Spiritualists hold the fallacious idea that a sceptical influence can hinder a séance. For it is not the lack of belief or disbelief of the one or few sceptics that weakens the influence. It is the mass belief of the whole circle in the hostile influence of the sceptic that does the harm. After thinking matters over I decided that it might be wrong to prejudice Carthew by his undergraduate views. After all, some years had passed, and if every Oxford man held to the eccentric habits and beliefs of his puppy days the world would be a sorry place. I wrote to him asking him to dine with me at my club during the following week. He had changed so much that when he entered the smoking room I did not recognize him. Tropical sunlight had bronzed and wrinkled his skin, his eyes had the clear hard steel-grey fadedness of the blue iris that comes to men who have gazed long across deserts. Malaria had thinned down his form and his hands were big-veined and tremulous with quinine.