“Turgenev?” I suggested.
“Very likely,” he said wearily. “I can’t remember. All I know is that every one of my stories were cribs. I’d remembered them all, and didn’t remember that I’d remembered. Well, I got back all the stories that hadn’t been published, but there was the very deuce of a row.”
The train was drawing into Aylesbury, and my companion got up and collected his things from the rack. Before he got out, however, he paused to say, “Well, there you are. It was a dreadful experience for me, but if you can make any use of it, professionally, so to speak, you’re welcome to it. Good-day to you.”
I had still four more stations to go, and I sat on, turning over that strange confession in my mind. The man had appeared to be honest, the story sounded true as he told it, yet his phraseology and his accent were not those I should have expected from one of his literary experience.
But what worries me most of all is the vague but horribly persistent impression that somewhere, at some time, I have seen that story of his in print....
AS THE CROW FLIES
IT IS more than twenty years, now, since the late George Wallace came into the offices of Hallows and Rice one afternoon and talked to me about the novel he was writing. He was well known, even then, as journalist, essayist, playwright, and poet, and I welcomed with enthusiasm the suggestion that the firm of publishers for which I was then reader should consider the book when it was written. He told me in the strictest confidence that the title was to be As the Crow Flies, and gave me a hint of the subject he proposed to treat. Both title and subject were, I thought, admirable from every point of view, but he said that he would prefer me to say nothing to the firm about the novel until it was actually written. “Wait until you’ve read it, my dear chap,” he said. “I haven’t told another soul as yet, and I don’t want to, until the thing’s done and off my hands.”
I did not see him again for nearly six months. He was the guest of the evening at a small literary dining club on that occasion, and when I went over and sat down by him, after the speeches, he instantly referred to our last interview by saying, “It’s getting on, but we can’t talk about it here. How’s the business?” I told him that the business, so far as I was concerned, remained in a state of tense expectation for a really firstclass novel. He nodded with an air of satisfaction. “You shall have it,” he said. “If you’ll walk part of the way home with me I’ll tell you something about it.” He lived at Highgate, and my rooms were at Herne Hill, but I was prepared to miss the last train rather than lose that confidence. I was very eager in those days.