“Look here, I’ve got it—the telephone! That lets you talk to a man without seeing his face, without letting him answer if you don’t want him to; you can treat him as if he wasn’t there. I know it sounds a silly dodge, but you see my idea, don’t you?” “I should have thought it would be rather public. Can’t the people at the exchange overhear everything if they want to?” “Yes; I’d forgotten that. I know—the speaking-tube in the steward’s office! I can get the steward to let me have the use of the room for ten minutes in the slack time to-morrow morning. Then I’ll call up to Marryatt and tell him all I want to.” “The trouble about that speaking tube is, it isn’t really made for dialogue. I mean, you have to speak and listen alternately through the same tube.” “All the better. I don’t want any interruptions from him. Now, a game of bezique for Heaven’s sake: my nerves are all anyhow.” Chapter XXII In the Fog “Hullo, Marryatt, is that you?” “Yes; who’s speaking?” “It’s about Brotherhood. You’ll guess before I’ve finished who it is speaking, so I’d better tell you at once; it’s Reeves. I am going to talk to you for about ten minutes through this tube, and you’ll see for yourself as I go along that it’s to your own interest to hear me out to the end. I’ve chosen this way of speaking to you purposely, so as to save you the embarrassment of an interview. But, of course, it’s no good your trying to interrupt, because I shouldn’t hear if you did. “I have managed to trace your movements during this last week pretty exactly, and I’m going to describe them to you, so that you can see how much I know, and how little use it is for you to try and put up any denial. Of course, I may make little mistakes about the details, but I think you’ll find that there is not much wrong. “I can understand you not liking Brotherhood; few of us did. But while the rest of us simply disliked him, you hated him. Whether you hated him before he began giving his atheist lectures I don’t know. I dare say there was a quarrel beforehand and that was what made him give the lectures. Anyhow, when he started trying to undermine the beliefs of your parishioners, your hatred reached such a pitch that you determined to do away with him. I am not going to moralize about all that; I suppose you felt at the time that you were doing God’s work, and you fortified yourself with precedents from the Bible. To you, perhaps, it was like crushing some noxious insect. I’m not going to argue morality.