Like a thread snapped suddenly, the novelist's meditations ceased. On
the wall before him the dragons alighted, the mask awoke. Between them a
canvas was emerging. Dim, shadowy, uncertain, it hesitated, wavered,
advanced.
Then, as it hung unsupported in the air--far too unsupported, he
presently thought--he looked it over.
To apparitions he was accustomed. They were part of his equipment.
Unsummoned, without incantations they came, sent, one might think, by
the muse whom he derided, but more naturally and very simply produced by
the machinery in his brain.
Now, as he examined the canvas, its imprecision diminished, the shadows
passed, the obscurity lifted, the penumbra brightened, outlines defined
themselves, the colouring appeared, a colouring, after the manner of
Rembrandt, composed of darkness in which there is light and which, as
such, reveals.
Jones stood up, turned around and sat down again as gamblers, disquieted
by their luck, will do.
Before him still the picture floated. He disavowed it, disowned it. Yet
there it was, the child of his fancy, the first-born of the morning, the
fruit of his concentrated thought, and as, surprisedly, he considered
it, it took on such semblances of legitimacy, that the disavowals
ceased. Then, slowly disintegrating, its consistence lessened. It was
departing, vaporously as it had come. Jones waved at it, omitting out of
sheer abstraction to say Au revoir, yet omitting also, and through equal
modesty, to say Eureka!
He pressed a button. Instantly, as though sprung from a trap, his
servant appeared.
"Get Mr. Lennox on the telephone."
The minutes lengthened. Finally the servant reappeared.
"Mr. Lennox is not at home, sir. His man says he's gone to Centre
Street. He's been arrested. Mr. Lennox has been arrested. Yes, sir."
Pausing, the servant cocked an ear and added: "They're calling extras,
sir. Would you wish one?"
Circuitously, through the open door, the cat, her tail in the air,
approached and wowed.
Jones leaned over and tickled her in the stomach. The cat hopped up on
him. He put a finger to his forehead, held it there, removed it and
looked at the man.
"In war-time, with the price of everything going up, it is a criminal
waste of money to buy an extra--particularly when you know what isn't in
it."
"Yes, sir."
Jones motioned. "Look through the old newspapers. Among the March issues
there is one that has an article entitled 'The Matter of Ziegler.' Let
me have it."
The cat, now on his shoulder, purred profusely in his ear. Raising a
hand, he tickled her again.
"Mimi-Meow, this Matter of Ziegler may interest us very much and after
we have looked it over, I will attend to our friend von Lennox, who
seems to have become a Hun."