"Here's your whisky," he said suddenly, and was silent while he himself mixed the spirit with the soda. Handing me a glass, he lifted the other in a silent toasting gesture. We drank, and then I repeated, "Warn me, you were saying, sir?"
"Yes." He tightened his wide, intelligent mouth under the feline mustache. "It's this play, Ruthven."
"What about it?"
His plate of tongue and salad was set before him at this juncture. He lifted a morsel on his fork and tasted it.
"This is very good, Mr. Connatt. You should have tried some. Where were we? Oh, yes, about Ruthven. I was quite unreserved in my opinion, wasn't I?"
"So it seemed when you offered to stake your reputation on the manuscript being genuine."
"So I did," he agreed, cutting a slice of tongue into mouthfuls. "And I meant just that. What I saw of the play was Byronic in content, albeit creepy enough to touch even an occultist with a shiver. The handwriting, too, was undoubtedly Byron's. Yet I felt like staking my reputation on something else."
He paused and we each had a sip of whisky. His recourse to the liquor seemed to give him words for what he wished to say.
"It's a paradox, Mr. Connatt, and I am by no means so fond of paradoxes as was my friend, the late Gilbert Chesterton; but, while Byron most certainly wrote Ruthven, he wrote it on paper that was watermarked less than ten years ago."