As he went away smiling, someone passed him in entering the room. Baird, who was smiling also, changed his expression of courteous appreciation to a smile of greeting, for the man who had entered was Latimer.
He advanced, holding out his hand.
“I am glad you have come,” he began to say. “I wanted at least a word with you before I went on.”
Then his smile died out, leaving blank amazement which a breath’s space later was alarmed questioning. He recalled later how for a second he stood and stared. Latimer’s face was white and damp with sweat. Its lines were drawn and sunken deep. His eyes were fixed on the man before him with something which had a ghastly resemblance to an unsteady smile which was not a smile at all. He looked as if illness—or death—or madness had struck him. He did not seem a sane man, and yet a stillness so deadly was expressed by his whole being that it seemed to fill the small, neat, business-like green-room.
Baird strode towards him and seized him by the shoulder.
“What is it? What is it? What is it?” he cried out.
Latimer’s face did not alter in a line. He fumbled stiffly in his breast-pocket and held out some pieces of yellowed letter-paper—this being done stiffly, too. He spoke in a hoarse whisper. It seemed to search every corner of the room and echo there.
“See!” he said. “These are two letters. A man wrote them to a poor, half-mad child twenty years ago.”
The door opened, and the member of the committee looked in again, radiant with exultation.
“The audience waiting in such breathless silence that you might hear a pin drop. Two thousand of them, if there’s one. Ten minutes to eight.”