Tarrant was silent. He began to drum again on the desk, and the dull red of anger still coloured his pale skin. "My dear fellow, you've had plenty of opportunities to complain to me of our contract, and it never seems to have occurred to you to do so till that pirate Lambart came along. Even then, if you'd come straight to me and stated your case frankly, I don't say … But I'm not in the habit of letting my contributors be bribed away behind my back, and neither are Dreck and Saltzer. You signed a contract with us, and that contract holds."

"Why do you want it to hold?"

Tarrant continued his nervous drumming. "That's our own business."

"Well, if you won't answer, I'll answer for you. It's because I've given you one success at a bargain, and you feel you may miss another if you set me free. And it pays you to hang on to me on that chance."

Tarrant's lips moved slowly before his answer became audible. "Yes—I suppose that's the view certain people might take… . It's one that doesn't enter into our way of doing business. Besides, before knowing whether the chance you speak of was worth gambling on, as you assert, I should have had to see the book you're at work on now; it doesn't always happen that beginners follow up a first success with a second. Rather the other way round."

"Then why won't you let me go?"

Tarrant, instead of replying, lit another cigarette, puffed at it for a moment, and then said: "By the way, is your manuscript here?"

"Yes."

"I should like to have a look at it … only for an hour or two. So far I haven't much idea of what it's about."

Vance pulled the manuscript out of his pocket. "If you don't like it, will you let me off?" he repeated doggedly.

"No, certainly not. I shall ask you to make an effort to give us something more satisfactory, as I have every right to."

There was another pause. The air between the two men seemed to Vance to become suddenly rarefied, as if nothing intervened to deflect the swift currents of their antagonism.

"You won't like it," Vance insisted with white lips.

"I daresay not. No doubt you've seen to that."

The sneer struck Vance like a blow. He felt powerless with wrath and humiliation.

"It's no use your reading it anyhow," he exclaimed, no longer knowing what he was saying. He leaned across the desk, snatched up the pages, and tore them to bits before Tarrant's astonished eyes. He could not stop tearing—it seemed as if the bits would never be small enough to ensure the complete annihilation of his work.