"Well, you are."

"There, you see how easy it is! Practice is everything. Now, about this story, will you----"

"I will not. As you are not an advertiser, I don't mind admitting to you that the paper is going down. You see it comes to the same thing.

We haven't the money as you say, so what's the use of talking?"

Gibberts. .h.i.tched his chair closer to the editor, and placed his hand on the other's knee. He went on earnestly--

"Now is the time to talk, Sh.o.r.ely. In a little while it will be too late. You will have thrown up the _Sponge_. Your great mistake is trying to ride two horses, each facing a different direction. It can't be done, my boy. Make up your mind whether you are going to be a thief or an honest man. That's the first step."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. Go in for a paper that will be entirely stolen property, or for one made up of purely original matter."

"We have a great deal of original matter in the _Sponge_."

"Yes, and that's what I object to. Have it all original, or have it all stolen. Be fish or fowl. At least one hundred men a week see a stolen article in the _Sponge_ which they have read elsewhere. They then believe it is all stolen, and you lose them. That isn't business, so I want to sell you one original tale, which will prove to be the most remarkable story written in England this year."

"Oh, they all are," said Sh.o.r.ely, wearily. "Every story sent to me is a most remarkable story, in the author's opinion."

"Look here, Sh.o.r.ely," cried Gibberts, angrily, "you mustn't talk to me like that. I'm no unknown author, a fact of which you are very well aware. I don't need to peddle my goods."

"Then why do you come here lecturing me?"

"For your own good, Sh.o.r.ely, my boy," said Gibberts, calming down as rapidly as he had flared up. He was a most uncertain man. "For your own good, and if you don't take this story, some one else will. It will make the fortune of the paper that secures it. Now, you read it while I wait. Here it is, typewritten, at one-and-three a thousand words, all to save your blessed eyesight."

Sh.o.r.ely took the ma.n.u.script and lit the gas, for it was getting dark.

Gibberts sat down awhile, but soon began to pace the room, much to Sh.o.r.ely's manifest annoyance. Not content with this, he picked up the poker and noisily stirred the fire. "For Heaven's sake, sit down, Gibberts, and be quiet!" cried Sh.o.r.ely, at last.

Gibberts seized the poker as if it had been a weapon, and glared at the editor.

"I won't sit down, and I will make just as much noise as I want to," he roared. As he stood there defiantly, Sh.o.r.ely saw a gleam of insanity in his eyes.

"Oh, very well, then," said Sh.o.r.ely, continuing to read the story.

For a moment Gibberts stood grasping the poker by the middle, then he flung it with a clatter on the fender, and, sitting down, gazed moodily into the fire, without moving, until Sh.o.r.ely had turned the last page.

"Well," said Gibberts, rousing from his reverie, "what do you think of it?"

"It's a good story, Gibberts. All your stories are good," said the editor, carelessly.

Gibberts started to his feet, and swore.

"Do you mean to say," he thundered, "that you see nothing in that story different from any I or any one else ever wrote? Hang it, Sh.o.r.ely, you wouldn't know a good story if you met it coming up Fleet Street! Can't you see that story is written with a man's heart's blood?"

Sh.o.r.ely stretched out his legs and thrust his hands far down in his trousers' pockets.

"It may have been written as you say, although I thought you called my attention a moment ago to its type-written character."

"Don't be flippant, Sh.o.r.ely," said Gibberts, relapsing again into melancholy. "You don't like the story, then? You didn't see anything unusual in it--purpose, force, pa.s.sion, life, death, nothing?"

"There is death enough at the end. My objection is that there is too much blood and thunder in it. Such a tragedy could never happen. No man could go to a country house and slaughter every one in it. It's absurd."

Gibberts sprang from his seat and began to pace the room excitedly.

Suddenly he stopped before his friend, towering over him, his long ulster making him look taller than he really was.

"Did I ever tell you the tragedy of my life? How the property that would have kept me from want has----"

"Of course you have, Gibberts. Sit down. You've told it to everybody.

To me several times."

"How my cousin cheated me out of----"

"Certainly. Out of land and the woman you loved."

"Oh! I told you that, did I?" said Gibberts, apparently abashed at the other's familiarity with the circ.u.mstances. He sat down, and rested his head in his hands. There was a long silence between the two, which was finally broken by Gibberts saying--

"So you don't care about the story?"

"Oh, I don't say that. I can see it is the story of your own life, with an imaginary and sanguinary ending."

"Oh, you saw that, did you?"

"Yes. How much do you want for it?"

"50."

"What?"

"50, I tell you. Are you deaf? And I want the money now."

"Bless your innocent heart, I can buy a longer story than that from the greatest author living for less than 50. Gibberts, you're crazy."

Gibberts looked up suddenly and inquiringly, as if that thought had never occurred to him before. He seemed rather taken with the idea. It would explain many things which had puzzled both himself and his friends. He meditated upon the matter for a few moments, but at last shook his head.

"No, Sh.o.r.ely," he said, with a sigh. "I'm not insane, though, goodness knows, I've had enough to drive me mad. I don't seem to have the luck of some people. I haven't the talent for going crazy. But to return to the story. You think 50 too much for it. It will make the fortune of the paper that publishes it. Let me see. I had it a moment ago, but the point has escaped my memory. What was it you objected to as unnatural?"

"The tragedy. There is too much wholesale murder at the end."

"Ah! now I have it! Now I recollect!"

Gibberts began energetically to pace the room again, smiting his hands together. His face was in a glow of excitement.

"Yes, I have it now. The tragedy. Granting a murder like that, one man a dead shot, killing all the people in a country house; imagine it actually taking place. Wouldn't all England ring with it?"

"Naturally."

"Of course it would. Now, you listen to me. I'm going to commit that so-called crime. One week after you publish the story, I'm going down to that country house, Channor Chase. It is my house, if there was justice and right in England, and I'm going to slaughter every one in it. I will leave a letter, saying the story in the _Sponge_ is the true story of what led to the tragedy. Your paper in a week will be the most-talked-of journal in England--in the world. It will leap instantaneously into a circulation such as no weekly on earth ever before attained. Look here, Sh.o.r.ely, that story is worth 50,000 rather than 50, and if you don't buy it at once, some one else will. Now, what do you say?"