But Lypiatt, who had no feeling for the finer shades, coarsely interrupted him. “Look here, Mercaptan,” he said. “I want to have a talk with you.”
“Delighted, I’m sure,” Mr. Mercaptan replied. “And what, may I ask, about?” He knew, of course, perfectly well; and the prospect of the talk disturbed him.
“About this,” said Lypiatt; and he held out what looked like a roll of paper.
Mr. Mercaptan took the roll and opened it out. It was a copy of the Weekly World. “Ah!” said Mr. Mercaptan, in a tone of delighted surprise, “The World. You have read my little article?”
“That was what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Lypiatt.
Mr. Mercaptan modestly laughed. “It hardly deserves it,” he said.
Preserving a calm of expression which was quite unnatural to him, and speaking in a studiedly quiet voice, Lypiatt pronounced with careful deliberation: “It is a disgusting, malicious, ignoble attack on me,” he said.
“Come, come!” protested Mr. Mercaptan. “A critic must be allowed to criticize.”
“But there are limits,” said Lypiatt.
“Oh, I quite agree,” Mr. Mercaptan eagerly conceded. “But, after all, Lypiatt, you can’t pretend that I have come anywhere near those limits. If I had called you a murderer, or even an adulterer—then, I admit, you would have some cause to complain. But I haven’t. There’s nothing like a personality in the whole thing.”