"I was to take the story with me, to finish it by myself," explained Uvo, with the smile of a budding ambassador.
"Oh, very well," rejoined the Vicar, shutting the door. "Then we must keep each other a minute longer. I happen myself to constitute the final court of appeal in all matters connected with the Parish Magazine. Moreover, Mr. Delavoye, I'm a little curious to see the kind of composition that merits a midnight discussion between my sister and two young men whose acquaintance I myself have had so little opportunity of cultivating."
He dropped into a chair, merely waving to us to do the same; and Delavoye did; but I remained standing, with my eyes on the reader's face, and I saw him begin where Miss Julia had left off and the MS. had fallen open. I could not be mistaken about that; there was the mark of his own boot upon the page; but the Vicar read it without wincing at the passage which his sister had declared her intention of crossing out. His brows took a supercilious lift; his cold eyes may have grown a little harder as they read; and yet once or twice they lightened with a human relish—an icy twinkle—a gleam at least of something I had not thought to see in Mr. Brabazon. Perhaps I did not really see it now. If you look long enough at the Sphinx itself, in the end it will yield some semblance of an answering look. And I never took my eyes from the Vicar's granite features, as typewritten sheet after sheet was turned so softly by his iron hand, that it might have been some doctrinal pamphleteer who claimed his cool attention.
When he had finished he rose very quietly and put the whole MS. behind the grate. Then I remembered that Delavoye also was in the room, and I signalled to him because the Vicar was stooping over the well-laid grate and striking matches. But Delavoye only shook his head, and sat where he was when Mr. Brabazon turned and surveyed us both, with the firewood crackling behind his clerical tails.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Delavoye," said he; "but I think you will agree that this is a case for the exercise of my powers in connection with our little magazine. The stupendous production now perishing in the flames was of course intended as a practical joke at our expense."
"And I never saw it!" cried Uvo, scrambling to his feet. "Of course, if you come to think of it, that's the whole and only explanation—isn't it, Gillon? A little dig at the Delavoyes as well, by the way!"
"Chiefly at us, I imagine," said the Vicar dryly. "I rather suspect that the very style of writing is an attempt at personal caricature. The taste is execrable all through. But that is only to be expected of the anonymous lampooner."
"Was there really no name to it, Mr. Brabazon?"
The question was asked for information, but Uvo's tone was that of righteous disgust.
"No name at all. And one sheet of type-writing is exactly like another. My sister had not read it all herself, I gather?"