Office Dark Red Magazine,
Boston, September 27.
My dear Mr. Gray,—Can you drop into my office to-morrow about noon? By some odd coincidence I received a story very similar to your “April’s Lady,” and bearing the same title, several days earlier, and should like to talk with you about it.
Very truly yours,
J. Q. Lane.
I was utterly confounded. I racked my brains to discover who could possibly have stolen my story, and even suspected the small black girl who dusted my rooms, although the sooty little morsel did not know one letter from another. The first draft of the story had lain in my desk for some time, it was true, yet that any literary burglar should have forced an entrance and then contented himself with copying this seemed, upon the whole, scarcely probable. I ransacked my memory for some old tale which I might unconsciously have plagiarized, but I could think of nothing; and, moreover, I reflected that the coincidence of names certainly could not be accounted for in this way, even did I recall the germ of my plot.
I presented myself at the office of the “Dark Red” at the hour appointed with a clear conscience, it is true, but with positively no suggestion whatever to offer in regard to the method by which a copy of my story could have reached the editor in advance of my own manuscript.
Mr. Lane received me with the conventionally cordial manner which is as much a part of editorial duties as is the use of the blue pencil, and without much delay came to the business of the call.
“There is something very singular about this affair,” he said, laying out my manuscript, and beside it another which I could see was written in a running feminine hand. “If the stories were a little more alike, I should be sure one was copied from the other; as it is, it is inconceivable that they have not at least a common origin. Where did you get your idea?”
“Why, so far as I know,” I replied in perplexity, “I evolved it from my inner consciousness; but the germ may have been the unconscious recollection of some incident or floating idea. I’ve tried to discover where I did get the fancy, but without a glimmer of success. Who sent you the other version?”