Gliding his hand into his pocket, the superintendent extracted a roll of banknotes.
"This insignificant sum is not intended as payment for your labor but only as a reimbursement for expenses incidental to the mechanical part of your task. In two weeks I shall expect the manuscript, may I not?"
An authoritative gesture dismissed the Professor, who retired in an absorbed mental condition, for already he had begun framing his initiatory address on entering the Academy. Lecazes glanced, at the clock. The hands indicated twenty-five minutes of three.
"Volpetti has doubtless arrived," he said to himself and then rising, he took up the package of papers which had recently been collected and pressed a finger upon a hidden spring back of his chair, whereupon one of the panels swung open, revealing a dark, narrow passageway, at the farther end of which there was an iron shutter. Entering, he touched this lightly with his knuckles and no sooner had it rolled upward than a man's voice hoarsely whispered from the opened room:
"I am here, Excellency."
The chamber which the baron entered was furnished in mahogany, the walls painted to match, and the floor was covered with a cheap carpet. It lacked windows and was ventilated only by the stovepipe. A lantern was suspended from the ceiling and he quickly turned it upon the individual who had announced himself.
"Lower the shutter," ordered the baron, and the man obeyed, closing the chamber's only exit.
"Now bring cup and salver."
The man took from the cupboard a deep bronze cup with handles representing two sirens of protruding bosom. Unstopping a bottle, he emptied its contents into the cup and then, striking a flint, ignited a taper which he applied to the liquid. He then placed the cup on the stove. A blue flame arose, and in it the baron lighted, one by one, the documents he had just been handling at his desk. He watched the burning sheets as they turned to black crumpled shapes and then to shapeless ashes upon the metal salver. The odor from the burning seals was wafted to his face and a slight shiver came over him. He was enjoying his power of obliterating history, cunningly causing past happenings to seem as though they had not been. Feeling relieved at the destruction of the papers, he said amiably to Volpetti:
"When you are again here, 'twill be because that has been accomplished."