As he sat at the breakfast table, Gwen who looked bright and fresh in her neat white blouse and plain navy serge skirt, noticed that he was unusually silent and morose. They were devoted to each other, but at such times when her father, rendered irritable by his studies, betrayed impatience she always remained silent.
“I’ve asked Frank over to luncheon, dad,” she ventured at last to remark.
Whereupon the old man replied in a snappy voice: “I fear I shall not be bade. I’m going along to the Museum, and may be there all day. I have a number of researches to make. Apologise for my absence.”
Gwen promised to do this; but instead, an hour later, she sent her lover a wire, suggesting that, as the Professor would be absent, they should lunch together at Princes’, which idea the young man gladly adopted.
At eleven Professor Griffin, descending from a cab, entered a small office in Oxford Street, the office of a firm of photographers whose specialty is the reproducing of ancient documents for the official publications of the British Museum, the Paleographical Society and similar institutions. To the manager, he produced the carefully preserved scraps of typewriting and manuscript, and ordered photographic reproductions to be made with as great a speed as possible.
The manager examined the charred folios closely, and declared that the work would be useless for reproduction in any journal or magazine.
“I don’t want them for that purpose,” was Griffin’s reply.
“We’ll do them as clearly as possible on whole plates, Professor,” was the man’s reply, “but they will not come out very satisfactorily, I fear.”
“As long as I can decipher them easily is all I care,” replied the older man. “I shall call for the originals at four o’clock.”
“We will have finished with them by that time, sir. I will send them down to the studio at Acton.”