Betton anxiously stroked his silken ankle. "You do it beautifully, too beautifully. I mean what I say: the work"s not worthy of you. I"m ashamed to ask you--"
"Oh, hang shame," Vyse interrupted. "Do you know why I said I shouldn"t have time to dress to-night? Because I haven"t any evening clothes. As a matter of fact, I haven"t much but the clothes I stand in. One thing after another"s gone against me; all the infernal ingenuities of chance.
It"s been a slow Chinese torture, the kind where they keep you alive to have more fun killing you." He straightened himself with a sudden blush.
"Oh, I"m all right now--getting on capitally. But I"m still walking rather a narrow plank; and if I do your work well enough--if I take your idea--"
Betton stared into the fire without answering. He knew next to nothing of Vyse"s history, of the mischance or mis-management that had brought him, with his brains and his training, to so unlikely a pa.s.s. But a pang of compunction shot through him as he remembered the ma.n.u.script of "The Lifted Lamp" gathering dust on his table for half a year.
"Not that it would have made any earthly difference--since he"s evidently never been able to get the thing published." But this reflection did not wholly console Betton, and he found it impossible, at the moment, to tell Vyse that his services were not needed.
III
DURING the ensuing weeks the letters grew fewer and fewer, and Betton foresaw the approach of the fatal day when his secretary, in common decency, would have to say: "I can"t draw my pay for doing nothing."
What a triumph for Vyse!
The thought was intolerable, and Betton cursed his weakness in not having dismissed the fellow before such a possibility arose.
"If I tell him I"ve no use for him now, he"ll see straight through it, of course;--and then, hang it, he looks so poor!"
This consideration came after the other, but Betton, in rearranging them, put it first, because he thought it looked better there, and also because he immediately perceived its value in justifying a plan of action that was beginning to take shape in his mind.
"Poor devil, I"m d.a.m.ned if I don"t do it for him!" said Betton, sitting down at his desk.
Three or four days later he sent word to Vyse that he didn"t care to go over the letters any longer, and that they would once more be carried directly to the library.
The next time he lounged in, on his way to his morning ride, he found his secretary"s pen in active motion.
"A lot to-day," Vyse told him cheerfully.
His tone irritated Betton: it had the inane optimism of the physician rea.s.suring a discouraged patient.
"Oh, Lord--I thought it was almost over," groaned the novelist.
"No: they"ve just got their second wind. Here"s one from a Chicago publisher--never heard the name--offering you thirty per cent. on your next novel, with an advance royalty of twenty thousand. And here"s a chap who wants to syndicate it for a bunch of Sunday papers: big offer, too. That"s from Ann Arbor. And this--oh, _this_ one"s funny!"
He held up a small scented sheet to Betton, who made no movement to receive it.
"Funny? Why"s it funny?" he growled.
"Well, it"s from a girl--a lady--and she thinks she"s the only person who understands "Abundance"--has the clue to it. Says she"s never seen a book so misrepresented by the critics--"
"Ha, ha! That _is_ good!" Betton agreed with too loud a laugh.
"This one"s from a lady, too--married woman. Says she"s misunderstood, and would like to correspond."
"Oh, Lord," said Betton.--"What are you looking at?" he added sharply, as Vyse continued to bend his blinking gaze on the letters.
"I was only thinking I"d never seen such short letters from women.
Neither one fills the first page."
"Well, what of that?" queried Betton.
Vyse reflected. "I"d like to meet a woman like that," he said wearily; and Betton laughed again.
The letters continued to pour in, and there could be no farther question of dispensing with Vyse"s services. But one morning, about three weeks later, the latter asked for a word with his employer, and Betton, on entering the library, found his secretary with half a dozen doc.u.ments spread out before him.
"What"s up?" queried Betton, with a touch of impatience.
Vyse was attentively scanning the outspread letters.
"I don"t know: can"t make out." His voice had a faint note of embarra.s.sment. "Do you remember a note signed _Hester Macklin_ that came three or four weeks ago? Married--misunderstood--Western army post--wanted to correspond?"
Betton seemed to grope among his memories; then he a.s.sented vaguely.
"A short note," Vyse went on: "the whole story in half a page. The shortness struck me so much--and the directness--that I wrote her: wrote in my own name, I mean."
"In your own name?" Betton stood amazed; then he broke into a groan.
"Good Lord, Vyse--you"re incorrigible!"
The secretary pulled his thin moustache with a nervous laugh. "If you mean I"m an a.s.s, you"re right. Look here." He held out an envelope stamped with the words: "Dead Letter Office." "My effusion has come back to me marked "unknown." There"s no such person at the address she gave you."
Betton seemed for an instant to share his secretary"s embarra.s.sment; then he burst into an uproarious laugh.
"Hoax, was it? That"s rough on you, old fellow!"
Vyse shrugged his shoulders. "Yes; but the interesting question is--why on earth didn"t _your_ answer come back, too?"
"My answer?"
"The official one--the one I wrote in your name. If she"s unknown, what"s become of _that?_"
Betton stared at him with eyes wrinkled by amus.e.m.e.nt. "Perhaps she hadn"t disappeared then."
Vyse disregarded the conjecture. "Look here--I believe _all_ these letters are a hoax," he broke out.
Betton stared at him with a face that turned slowly red and angry. "What are you talking about? All what letters?"
"These I"ve spread out here: I"ve been comparing them. And I believe they"re all written by one man."
Burton"s redness turned to a purple that made his ruddy moustache seem pale. "What the devil are you driving at?" he asked.
"Well, just look at it," Vyse persisted, still bent above the letters.
"I"ve been studying them carefully--those that have come within the last two or three weeks--and there"s a queer likeness in the writing of some of them. The _g_"s are all like corkscrews. And the same phrases keep recurring--the Ann Arbor news-agent uses the same expressions as the President of the Girls" College at Euphorbia, Maine."
Betton laughed. "Aren"t the critics always groaning over the shrinkage of the national vocabulary? Of course we all use the same expressions."