There was no doubt what Marryatt was at—it seemed a very embarrassing theme he had chosen. He was working up his congregation to derive a lesson from the tragic suddenness of Brotherhood’s end; in the midst of life, he reminded his hearers, they were in death; thence he would proceed to refute Brotherhood’s own arguments of less than a fortnight ago as to the survival of human personality. It was a thoughtful sermon, but on sufficiently obvious lines. “We see around us a great deal of carelessness, a great deal of indifference, a great deal of positive unbelief, and we ask ourselves, do we not? whether after all the lessons we learned at our mother’s knee were not just old wives’ fables, good for us when we were children, but something that manhood would outgrow. We ask ourselves, do we not? whether after all the story of our life will be continued elsewhere, whether after all there is a crown to be gained. And we persuade ourselves, perhaps, or think we have persuaded ourselves, that there is nothing beyond, nothing eternal that we can strive for. Death will be a quiet sleep, to just and to unjust alike, nothing but a sleep. And then the old questioning comes back to us: To sleep—perchance to dream; aye, there’s the rub! For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil Must give us pause And so we see that our difficulties are not so easily disposed of; that it is not so easy for us, after all, to get the better of our alarms. . . .” But Mordaunt Reeves heard no more of the sermon. He was back in his car, on the road to the dormy-house, and as he drove he talked to himself once more: “‘To be or not to be’—well, I’m damned!” Chapter XX Proof at Last Reeves went to sit in Gordon’s room when he got back; his own was apt to be a port of call for stray comers, and he wanted this to be a _tête-à-tête_. “I wish to God,” he started, “that I’d never been dragged into this beastly thing at all.” “Getting a brain-storm over it? Much better take to golf again; there’s no sense in worrying over a problem that won’t be solved.” “I have solved it.” “What!” “I have solved it, and I wish to God I hadn’t. Look here, Gordon, I know who it was who came into my rooms and took out my Shakespeare. It was Marryatt.” “Yes, but you don’t mean——” “It was Marryatt who took out my Shakespeare; he wanted to look up a quotation for his evening sermon. I know what you’ll say—it was somebody else who took the Momerie. But it wasn’t; I’ve been into Marryatt’s room, and I found it there.” “Good Lord! Lying about?” “It was on his table, but entirely covered with papers—I thought, purposely. I didn’t like doing it, but I felt the obvious thing was to look through those papers on Marryatt’s table. Among them was a postcard from Brotherhood, dated a week ago, thanking him for the gift of a copy of Momerie’s _Immortality_.”