The Devil knew what I was looking at.

“I’ll say this for you,” said he, “you certainly know how to ask.”

“It is for the College, after all,” I replied.

He sighed. “Very well,” said he; “but you must understand that I have only half that commodity you ask for—Ultimate Wisdom—in my possession. You shall have it for the College, and it is a considerable gift. When you’ll get the other half I can’t say.”

“I can,” I replied; “I shall expect it promptly the very first time you go home for Christmas.”

He laughed for the last time, folded his splendid wings, and disappeared.

I made my way reflectively toward my study, to make a note of yet one more day when—perhaps until the end of time—we shall display our banner, and ring twenty-one strokes of the Catharine bell. Once again, under circumstances I could not have foreseen or prevented, the College had been visited by—not precisely a ghost, for he was plainly of an order of being vastly more energetic and powerful than our own—but by a spirit of the highest distinction. I sighed for the egalitarians who would confine us to ghosts drawn from the petit bourgeoisie. The dance, I observed, was over, and our Christmas celebrations were well begun.

“I see you have guests,” said the youngest of the Fellows, when we met last week at High Table. As he said it I thought he winked.

I made no answer, but I was conscious of turning pale.

“I noticed them in your guest-room a couple of times last week when I was at breakfast,” he persisted.

Of course he would have noticed them. He is an almost professionally observant young man. When he goes back to New Zealand I hope he puts his gift at the disposal of the Secret Service.

The design of this College is such that when the Fellows are taking their leisurely breakfast in the private dining-room they can look directly into the windows of my guest-chamber. Guests have often complained about it. Two or three ladies have used a disagreeable term: ogling. But the guests who are there now I had hoped—trusting, unworldly creature that I am—to keep from the eyes of the College, and if they have been seen it must be taken as evidence that whatever influence I once had over them is now dispelled. I long ago accepted the fact that this College is haunted, but until recently it has been my determination to keep apparitions out of my own Lodging. But I know now that I have been cruelly betrayed by what, in justice to myself, I must call the nobility and overflowing compassion of my own nature.

It all began this autumn, on the thirty-first of October. To be more accurate, it was a few minutes after midnight, and was therefore the first of November. The date and time are important, for of course the Eve of All Hallows, when evil spirits roam the earth, extends only until midnight, after which it is succeeded by All Hallows itself—All Saints’ Day, in fact. I was lying in bed reading an appropriate book—the Bardo Thödol. For those of you whose Tibetan may have grown rusty I should explain that it is the great Tibetan Book of the Dead, a kind of guide book to the adventures of the spirit after it leaves this world. I had just reached the description of the Chonyid State, which is full of blood-drinking, brain-pulping and bone-gnawing by the Lord of Death, and as I read, I munched an apple. Then I became aware of a rattling at the College gate.

This happens often when the Porter has gone off duty and I have retired for the night. I frequently vow that never again will I get up and put on a dressing-gown and slippers and traipse out into the cold to see who it is. But I always do so. It is the compassion I have already spoken of as amounting almost to a weakness in my character that makes me do it. The rattler is often some girl who assures me that she simply must get back a paper that is being marked by one of the Teaching Fellows in the College. Or it may be that some young man has ordered a pizza and is too utterly fatigued by his studies to go down to the gate and get it for himself. It would be heartless to disregard such pathetic evidences of what it is now fashionable to call the Human Condition. So up I got and down I traipsed.

The night was cold and wet and dark, and as I peered through the gate—for of course I was on the inside—I could just make out the form of a girl, who seemed to have a bicycle with her.

“Make haste to open gate,” she said in a peremptory voice and with a marked foreign accent. “I vant to see priest at vonce.”

“If you want a priest, young woman, you had better try Trinity,” said I.

“Pfui for Trinity,” she snapped, insofar as an expression like ‘Pfui’ may be snapped. “Is here the Massey College, no? I vant Massey College priest. Be very quick, please.”

I was a prey to conflicting emotions. Who was this undeniably handsome, rudely demanding girl? And whom could she mean by the Massey College priest? Our Chaplain lives out. Could it be our Hall Don? A priest undoubtedly but—was he leading a double life? Or was this girl a bait to lure him forth on an errand of mercy, so that he might be destroyed? I would defend him.

“We have no priest here,” said I, and turned away. But I was frozen to the spot by the girl’s compelling cry.

“Babs!” she shouted; “show this rude porter what you have!”

Who could Babs be? Suddenly, there she was, right behind the other, with what I thought was another bicycle. But oh! (I hate using these old-fashioned and high-flown expressions, but there are no others that properly express my emotions at this instant) as I looked I became transfixed, nay, rooted to the spot. For what Babs had—and it seemed to make it worse that Babs was no less a beauty than the other, with splendid red hair instead of black—was a cannon, and it was pointed straight at the College gates! Babs looked as if she meant business, for she had a flaming linstock in her hand, dangerously close to the touch-hole of the cannon.

“Now,” said the dark girl, drawing a huge sword—a horrible two-handed weapon—from the folds of her cloak, “will you open the gate, or will Babs blow it off its hinges, as she very well knows how to do?”

Here was student power as even our President has never encountered it! But my mind worked with lightning swiftness. All that I had ever read of von Clausewitz came back to me in a flash: “If the enemy’s attack cannot be resisted, lure him forward, and then attack his rear.” I would admit these girls, then, and with a sudden rearward sally I would shove them and their cannon into the pool. I flung open the gate.

“Enter, ladies,” said I, with false geniality, “and welcome to Massey College, home of chivalry and courtesy.”

But they did not rush forward as I had hoped. Babs, who really looked a rather jolly girl, turned and waved her linstock in what seemed to be a signal, and the other one—the dark one who spoke English so clumsily—cried aloud in unimpeachable Latin, “Adeste, fideles!”

Suddenly the whole of Devonshire Place was filled with a turbulent rabble that I, still under the delusion that these were students, took to be the New Left Caucus in more than their usual extravagance of dress. Half-naked, hairy men, dirty girls whose hair blew wildly in the wind, girls carrying roses, lilies and flowers I could not identify, men carrying objects which I took to be the abortive creations of ill-mastered handicrafts, people with every sort of flag and banner—you never saw such a gang. They rushed the gate, and I was forced to retreat before them, shouting “Stop! Wait!” as loudly as I could.

You may imagine how relieved I was to hear another voice, unmistakably English, crying “Stop! Wait!” as well. Suddenly, right through the middle of the crowd rode a man in full armour, on a splendid horse; it is true he had a naked girl, not very effectively wrapped in his cloak, clasped in one arm, but in these permissive days such things are not unknown in our university, and whoever he was, he brought with him an atmosphere of trustworthiness that contrasted very favourably with the hostile spirit of Babs and her friend. He looked down at me, and I knew at once I was in the presence of an officer of Staff rank.