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?" 🔊