Tarrant turned back to his private room. His hand on the door he paused to say to Vance: "I don't care for any explanation. But you understand, of course, that if this sort of thing happens again … I can't have … "

"Oh, of course not," Vance stammered, half dazed.

In a few moments Rauch came back, unconcerned, and lighting a cigarette. His eloquent eyes rested again on Vance. "You must have been reading the Russians lately," he said with his soft incisiveness. He nodded and passed on to his desk.

Vance sat down at his, and began to write furiously. But he was merely making meaningless scratches on the paper. These people had of course realized that Hayes was half drunk, and would no doubt think he had been unwilling to fight him at a disadvantage. And on the whole, they would regard this as being to his credit. But Vance knew that the real reason was different: he had refused to fight Hayes because he had read his letter. And that was something he would never be able to explain.

On his desk lay a bundle of galleys—the proofs of "Coleridge Today." He spread them out before him and tried to set to work revising. An hour ago each word, each syllable, would have been subjected to the most searching scrutiny; but now the page danced meaninglessly before him… . Suddenly he laid down his pen. Something of dominating importance had steadied his shaking nerves. What had Eric Rauch meant when he said: "You must have been reading the Russians lately"? Who were "the Russians," and how was it that Vance had never read or even heard of them? At the mere thought, his mind felt firm ground under it again, and Bunty Hayes and his bluster were swept away like chaff on the wind.

"I'll find out who they are before night," Vance resolved, and settled down again to his work.

Part 5

Chapter 1

Tarrant, that evening, got home late and out of humor. His lateness ought in reason to have annoyed his wife, for they were off to Eaglewood the next day for Christmas, and many holiday questions were still unsettled; but she met him with her vague short-sighted smile and the air of one whom nothing in the world can annoy.

At dinner she ascribed his sulkiness and taciturnity to strained nerves and the effort not to betray himself before the maid. The first number of the New Hour—they had accepted Frenside's rechristening—was to appear on the second of January, and the intervening week was a bad time for readjustments. No wonder the editor was on edge.