The direct incentive came from Sir Roland Skoyle himself. He had secured a wonderful new medium, whose magnetic finger had a specialized faculty for resting upon certain people of importance--people who had been of importance, that is to say--in high circles of diplomacy; and amongst them some who had been largely instrumental in bringing the world into the condition in which it now found itself. Among these--the war-makers and peace-makers of the immediate past--it was natural, war being over, that the latter should be in special request, where the problem of diplomacy was to construct a peace satisfactory to that vast body of public opinion which had ceased to be blood-thirsty on a large scale, but whose instinct for retributive justice to be dealt out to the wicked by a court of their accusers had become correspondingly active. Sir Roland Skoyle, anxious to impress the Prime Minister with the value of his discovery, had the happy thought of employing Mr. Trimblerigg as his go-between. And Mr. Trimblerigg having heard a certain name, august and revered, breathed into his ear, together with the gist of a recent communication that had come direct, was not averse from attending a séance in such select and exalted company. He had an open mind and plenty of curiosity, and the idea of sharing with the Prime Minister a secret so compromising that no one else must know of it, strongly attracted him. And so the sitting was arranged. And there in a darkened room the four of them sat,--Sir Roland, the medium, Mr. Trimblerigg, and the Prime Minister. The medium was small and dark, and middle-aged; she had bright eyes under a straight fringe and she spoke with a twang. There was no doubt which side of the water she had come from. Until the previous year, except for a few days after her birth, her home had been the United States. The actual place of her birth was important; it helped to account for her powers; Sir Roland having recently discovered that the best mediums were people of mixed origin, born on the high seas. This particular medium, having been born in the mid-Atlantic, was Irish-American. The theory of sea-born commerce with the world of spirits I leave to Sir Roland Skoyle and his fellow experts. My own reason for referring back to birth and parentage is merely that when the medium had entered into her trance she no longer spoke that rich broth of a language formed from two which was natural to her; but acquired an accent and a mode of delivery entirely different; the accent having in it a faint touch of the Teutonic, the delivery formal, well-bred, and courtly; even when the speech was colloquial there was about it a touch of dignity. And while she so spoke, in a manly voice, the little woman sat with an air like one enthroned.