“You’ll never stand the routine, old chap!”
“And what about your own work!”
“What will the Daily Scribbler people say?”
Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t imagine it will last very long,” he answered, “and I shall get a fair amount of time to myself. The work I do on the Daily Scribbler doesn’t amount to anything. It was a chance I simply couldn’t refuse.”
The editor of a well-known London paper leaned back in his chair, and pinched a cigar carefully.
“You’ll probably find the whole thing a sell,” he remarked. “The story, as Lovell told it, sounded dramatic enough, and if the man were to come back to life again, fresh and vigorous, things might happen, provided, of course, that Lovell was right in his suppositions. But ten or twelve years’ solitary confinement, although it mayn’t sound much on paper, is enough to crush all the life and energy out of a man.”
Aynesworth shook his head.
“You haven’t seen him,” he said. “I have!”
“What’s he like, Walter?” another man asked.