They walked on, side by side, to the house in Grosvenor Gardens. Florian let himself in with a latch-key, and rang the bell for his servant. While he waited, he wrote a name on the back of a card, carelessly. “Look here, Barnes,” the butterfly of Society said, as his eminently respectable man-of-all-work entered; “this is Mr Joaquin Holmes,”?—?and he handed him the card?—?“you can read the name there. He comes from America. I particularly desire you to remark Mr Joaquin Holmes’s appearance and features. You may be called upon to identify him.” Then he turned with his bland smile to the discomfited Seer, and observed, in that unfailingly honeyed voice of his, “You must excuse me, Mr Holmes, but as a gentleman from out West, addicted to the frequent use of the six-shooter, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the delicacy of my motives for this little precaution. You can go now, Barnes. A mere matter of form, so that, in case your evidence should be needed in court, you’ll be able to swear to Mr Holmes’s identity, and give evidence that he was here, in my company, this evening.”

Barnes glanced at the card, and retired to the door, discreetly. The Seer flung himself down in an easy-chair with true Western sangfroid. He knew he was detected; but he wasn’t going to give up the game so soon, without seeing how much Florian really understood of his secret and his methods. Meanwhile, Florian produced a couple of pretty little old-fashioned stoneware jugs and some Venetian glasses from a dainty corner cupboard. A siphon stood on a Moorish tray at his side by the carved Bombay black-wood fireplace. “Caledonian or Hibernian?” Florian asked, turning to his visitor, with his most charming smile?—?“I mean, Scotch or Irish?”

“Thanks, Scotch,” the Coloradan answered, relaxing his muscles a little, as he began to enter into the spirit of his entertainer’s humour.

Florian poured it out gracefully, and touched the knob of the siphon. Then he handed it, foaming, still bland as ever, to the hesitating American. “Now, let’s be frank with one another, Mr Holmes,” he said, with cheerful promptitude. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re a very smart man, and I admire your smartness. I lay low to-night, as you justly observed, and I’m game to lie low?—?if you’ll take my terms?—?in future. I’m not going to blow upon you, and I’m not going to stand in the way of your success in life; but I just want to know?—?how did you manage those envelopes?”

“If you think it’s a trick, why, the envelopes would be a long chalk the easiest part of it,” the Seer responded, with a dry little cough. “The real difficulty, of course, would be to read in the dark what folks had written. And that’s the part, I claim, that I do myself by pure force of thought?—?in short, by psychic transference.”

He stared hard at his host. Their eyes met searchingly. It was seldom that Florian did a vulgar or ungraceful thing; but, as Mr Joaquin Holmes uttered those high-sounding words, and looked him straight in the face with great solemnity, Florian gravely winked at him. Then he raised that priceless Venetian glass goblet to his curling lips, took a long pull at the whiskey without speaking a word, and went over to a desk by the big front window. From it he took out a pack of cards, and returned with them in his hand. “Shuffle them,” he said, briefly, to the uneasy Seer, in his own very tone. And the American shuffled them.

Florian picked one out at random, and held it before him, face down, for some seconds in silence. “Now, I can’t do this trick like you,” he said, in a very business-like voice; “but I can do it a little. Only, I’m obliged to feel the card all over with my fingers like this; and I’m often not right as to the names of the suits, though I can generally make a good shot at the pips and numbers. This is a three that I’ve drawn?—?I think, the three of spades; but it may be clubs?—?I don’t feel quite certain.”

He turned it up. Sure enough, it was a three, but of clubs not spades. “I’ll try another,” he said, unabashed. And he drew one and felt it.

“This is a nine of diamonds,” he continued, more confidently, after a moment’s pause. The American took it from him, without turning up its face, drew his forefinger almost imperceptibly over the unexposed side, and answered without hesitation, “Yes; you’re right?—?that’s it?—?the nine of diamonds.”

Florian pulled out a third, and felt it again carefully with the tips of his fingers. “It’s a picture card this time,” he went on: “King, Queen, or Knave of Hearts, I’m not sure which. I’m no good at picture cards. They’re all a blur to me. I can tell them only by the single pips in the corners.”

The Seer took it from him, hardly touching it perceptibly. “That’s not a heart!” he answered in a sharp voice, without a second’s hesitation; “that’s the Jack of Spades! You’re right as to the general shape, but you’ve neglected the handle.”

He turned it up as he spoke. The Knave of Spades indeed it was. Florian corrected him solemnly.

“In good English society,” he murmured, still polite and still inscrutable, “we say Knave, not Jack. Remember that in future. To call it a Jack’s an odious vulgarism. I merely mention this fact because I notice how cleverly you’ve managed to acquire the exact little tricks of accent and manner which are sure to take with an English audience. I should be sorry to think a man of your brains, and a man of your moral character?—?positive or negative?—?should be thought the less of in this town of London for so very unimportant a matter of detail.”

“Thank you,” the Seer responded quietly, with another searching look. “I believe, Mr Florian Wood, we two understand each other. But mind you”?—?and he looked very wise and cunning?—?“I didn’t pass my finger over the cards at Mrs Palmer’s.”

“So I saw,” Florian replied, with unabated good-humour. “But I looked at them close?—?and I noticed they were squeezers. What’s more, I observed you took them always by the left-hand corner (which was the right hand, upside down) whenever they were passed to you. That gave me the clue. I saw you could read, with one touch of your finger, the number and suit marked small in the corner. I recognised how you did it, though I couldn’t come near it myself. Your sense of touch must be something simply exquisite.”

The American’s mouth curled gently at the corners. Those words restored his confidence. He took up a casual book from the table at his side?—?’twas the first edition of Andrew Lang’s “Ballades in Blue China”?—?for Florian, as a man of taste, adored first editions. “Look here,” the Seer said, carelessly. He turned it face downwards and opened it at random. Then, passing one finger almost imperceptibly over the face of a page, he began to read, as fast as the human voice can go, the very first verses he chanced to light upon.

“Ballade of Primitive Man.”

“He lived in a cave by the seas;

He lived upon oysters and foes;

But his list of forbidden degrees

An extensive morality shews.

Geological evidence goes

To prove he had never a pan,

But he shaved with a shell when he chose.

’Twas the manner of Primitive Man.”

He read it like print. Florian leaned back in his chair, clasped his dainty hands on his small breast before him, and stared at the Seer in unaffected astonishment. “I knew you did it that way,” he said, after a pause, nodding his head once or twice; “I felt sure that was the trick of it; but now I see you do it, why, it’s more wonderful, almost, than if it were nothing more than a mere ordinary miracle. Miracles are cheap; but sleight of hand like this?—?well, it’s priceless, priceless!”

“Now, you’re a man of honour,” the Seer said, leaning forward anxiously. “You’ve found me out, fair and square, and I don’t deny it. But you’re not going to round on me and spoil my business, are you? It’s............