“But Drake and his wife were furious. After the young man wiped off the stains from Jesus’s clothes and from the table cloth as best he could, Drake beckoned to him. He went around to where Drake sat and he leaned over, and I saw Drake whisper to him a few words. The young fellow straightened up; his face was ghastly white. He went out of the room and did not return.

“Mr. and Mrs. Drake were profuse in their apologies. Drake almost cursed the servant. Mrs. Drake spoke of him as a good-for-nothing boor. Drake said, in answer to a question quietly put by Jesus, that he had instantly discharged the young man from his service.

“‘He has been with me only a week,’ Drake said. ‘One of your recommendations, Silvester,’ he added with a short laugh.

“‘One of mine?’ Silvester said, raising his eyebrows and speaking a little high.

“‘Jarvis, your head man, recommended him. Said his mother or sister or someone was a night stair cleaner or something in the hotel, and the family was all right.”

“‘I don’t know a thing about it, of course,’ said Silvester. ‘If Jarvis recommended him, that’s his business. All I know is it’s a job to get competent servants nowadays. They can’t be trusted, and they don’t know a thing. You have to teach them everything.’ Everyone at the table agreed to this and the talk drifted along to servants and their shortcomings.

“Then Drake leaned forward, and I knew his question about the camera and the photographs was coming.

“‘It’s a great thing to have power,’ Drake began in that ponderous fashion of his. ‘I’ve always admired it in anyone. And I know it would gratify the company, and myself, if you could tell us the remarkable secret of the power which you possess to defy the scientific action of sunlight on a sensitized photographic plate. I’m sure it would be especially gratifying to my friend Carter here to know the secret of this power, because he is a newspaperman himself. Of course, you met Carter in Raymond. Indeed, we have discussed together several incidents that occurred there before your coming to the city.’

“It was not difficult to discover in this speech Drake’s real reason for asking Jesus to dinner. He had a curiosity to learn the secret of Jesus’s power, not only for himself, but as a sort of handsome item of entertainment for his friends who had been invited.

“Everyone in New York and all over the country now has heard of Jesus’s remarkable defiance of photography. It seems to be the one thing that has given him the universal awe and respect of the yellow press.”

Carter paused in his narrative and eyed Barnes thoughtfully. “Oh, what is the use, Barnes, of saying anything on that baffling topic? Jesus has never—”