' Is it not so?"
I had now just breath enough to offer my apologies. He accepted
them, but coldly, and re-addressed himself to Soames.
"I am a man of business," he said, "and always I would put things
through 'right now,' as they say in the States. You are a poet. Les
affaires--you detest them. So be it. But with me you will deal, eh?
What you have said just now gives me furiously to hope."
Soames had not moved except to light a fresh cigarette. He sat
crouched forward, with his elbows squared on the table, and his head just
above the level of his hands, staring up at the devil.
"Go on," he nodded. I had no remnant of laughter in me now.
"It will be the more pleasant, our little deal," the devil went on,
"because you are--I mistake not?--a diabolist."
"A Catholic diabolist," said Soames.
The devil accepted the reservation genially.
"You wish," he resumed, "to visit now--this afternoon as-ever-is
--the reading-room of the British Museum, yes? But of a hundred years
hence, yes? Parfaitement. Time--an illusion. Past and
future--they are as ever present as the present, or at any rate only what
you call 'just round the corner.' I switch you on to any date. I project
you--pouf! You wish to be in the reading-room just as it will be
on the afternoon of June 3, 1997? You wish to find yourself standing in
that room, just past the swing-doors, this very minute, yes? And to stay
there till closing-time? Am I right?"
Soames nodded.
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