"It's no one we know, a lanna. No one at all."
"But he called, 'Reynardine!'"
"You only think so, dark childeen, you trembling there and standing by your mother's grave. A trick your mind played you, machree dheelish. He was no one you know, or nothing to you. Only a strange man was it, a strange bad man."
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
I
It must be for the thousandth time now he was sitting down at the neat table looking out on the little lawn, and trying to get his ideas together, trying to get something new, something startling, that would awaken these hard-boiled men who had control of theaters, magazines, publishing houses to the sense that he was alive, worth while, valuable. If he could only think up a new detective, or—or something.
Any other than he would have given up the game long ago, but he knew he had talent—he would n't go quite so far as to say genius, but great talent. It was no use their turning him down all the time. He was certain they never read the stuff.
He was certain, too, there was some trick, some knack he had n't discovered. Just some little trick. These men of national, international fame—he could see from their faces they had no especial brains, any more than he had.
But just some little trick he could n't get.