nkins," he said; "I'm up to it."

"You understand," I said, "you're to write strictly on Callan's lines.
Don't insert any information from extraneous sources. And make it as
slashing as you like--on those lines."

He grunted in acquiescence. I left him lying on the sofa, drinking the
coffee. I had tenderly arranged the lights for him as Fox had arranged
them the night before. As I went out to get my dinner I was comfortably
aware of him, holding the slips close to his muddled eyes and
philosophically damning the nature of things.

When I returned, Soane, from his sofa, said something that I did not
catch--something about Callan and his article.

"Oh, for God's sake," I answered, "don't worry me. Have some more coffee
and stick to Cal's line of argument. That's what Fox said. I'm not
responsible."

"Deuced queer," Soane muttered. He began to scribble with a pencil. From
the tone of his voice I knew that he had reached the precise stage at
which something brilliant--the real thing of its kind--might be
expected.

Very late Soane finished his leader. He looked up as he wrote the last
word.

"I've got it written," he said. "But ... I say, what the deuce is up?
It's like being a tall clock with the mainspring breaking, this."

I rang the bell for someone to take the copy down.

"Your metaphor's too much for me, Soane," I said.

"It's appropriate all the way along," he maintained, "if you call me a
mainspring. I've been wound up and wound up to write old de Mersch and
his Greenland up--and it's been a tight wind, these days, I tell you.
Then all of a sudden ..."

A boy appeared and carried off the copy.

"All of a sudden," Soane resumed, "something gives--I suppose
something's given--and there's a whirr-rr-rr and the hands fly backwards
and old de Mersch and Greenland bump to the bottom, like the weights."

The boom of the great presses was rattling the window frames. Soane got
up and walked toward one of the cupboards.

"Dry work," he said; "but the simile's just, isn't it?"

I gave one swift step toward the bell-button beside the desk. The proof
of Callan's article, from which Soane had been writing, lay a crumpled
white streamer on the brown wood of Fox's desk. I made toward it. As I
stretched out my hand the solution slipped into my mind, coming with no
more noise than that of a bullet; impinging with all the shock and
remaining with all the pain. I had remembered the morning, over there in
Paris, when