DURING the ensuing weeks the letters grew fewer and fewer, and Betton foresaw the approach of the fatal day when his secretary, in common decency, would have to say: "I can't draw my pay for doing nothing."
What a triumph for Vyse!
The thought was intolerable, and Betton cursed his weakness in not having dismissed the fellow before such a possibility arose.
"If I tell him I've no use for him now, he'll see straight through it, of course;—and then, hang it, he looks so poor!"
This consideration came after the other, but Betton, in rearranging them, put it first, because he thought it looked better there, and also because he immediately perceived its value in justifying a plan of action that was beginning to take shape in his mind.
"Poor devil, I'm damned if I don't do it for him!" said Betton, sitting down at his desk.
Three or four days later he sent word to Vyse that he didn't care to go over the letters any longer, and that they would once more be carried directly to the library.
The next time he lounged in, on his way to his morning ride, he found his secretary's pen in active motion.
"A lot to-day," Vyse told him cheerfully.
His tone irritated Betton: it had the inane optimism of the physician rea**uring a discouraged patient.
"Oh, Lord—I thought it was almost over," groaned the novelist.
"No: they've just got their second wind. Here's one from a Chicago publisher—never heard the name—offering you thirty per cent. on your next novel, with an advance royalty of twenty thousand. And here's a chap who wants to syndicate it for a bunch of Sunday papers: big offer, too. That's from Ann Arbor. And this—oh, this one's funny!"
He held up a small scented sheet to Betton, who made no movement to receive it.
"Funny? Why's it funny?" he growled.
"Well, it's from a girl—a lady—and she thinks she's the only person who understands 'Abundance'—has the clue to it. Says she's never seen a book so misrepresented by the critics—"
"Ha, ha! That is good!" Betton agreed with too loud a laugh.
"This one's from a lady, too—married woman. Says she's misunderstood, and would like to correspond."
"Oh, Lord," said Betton.—"What are you looking at?" he added sharply, as Vyse continued to bend his blinking gaze on the letters.
"I was only thinking I'd never seen such short letters from women. Neither one fills the first page."
"Well, what of that?" queried Betton.
Vyse reflected. "I'd like to meet a woman like that," he said wearily; and Betton laughed again.
The letters continued to pour in, and there could be no farther question of dispensing with Vyse's services. But one morning, about three weeks later, the latter asked for a word with his employer, and Betton, on entering the library, found his secretary with half a dozen documents spread out before him.
"What's up?" queried Betton, with a touch of impatience.
Vyse was attentively scanning the outspread letters.
"I don't know: can't make out." His voice had a faint note of embarra**ment. "Do you remember a note signed Hester Macklin that came three or four weeks ago? Married—misunderstood—Western army post—wanted to correspond?"
Betton seemed to grope among his memories; then he a**ented vaguely.
"A short note," Vyse went on: "the whole story in half a page. The shortness struck me so much—and the directness—that I wrote her: wrote in my own name, I mean."
"In your own name?" Betton stood amazed; then he broke into a groan.
"Good Lord, Vyse—you're incorrigible!"
The secretary pulled his thin moustache with a nervous laugh. "If you mean I'm an a**, you're right. Look here." He held out an envelope stamped with the words: "Dead Letter Office." "My effusion has come back to me marked 'unknown.' There's no such person at the address she gave you."
Betton seemed for an instant to share his secretary's embarra**ment; then he burst into an uproarious laugh.
"Hoax, was it? That's rough on you, old fellow!"
Vyse shrugged his shoulders. "Yes; but the interesting question is—why on earth didn't your answer come back, too?"
"My answer?"
"The official one—the one I wrote in your name. If she's unknown, what's become of that?"
Betton stared at him with eyes wrinkled by amusement. "Perhaps she hadn't disappeared then."
Vyse disregarded the conjecture. "Look here—I believe all these letters are a hoax," he broke out.
Betton stared at him with a face that turned slowly red and angry. "What are you talking about? All what letters?"
"These I've spread out here: I've been comparing them. And I believe they're all written by one man."
Burton's redness turned to a purple that made his ruddy moustache seem pale. "What the devil are you driving at?" he asked.
"Well, just look at it," Vyse persisted, still bent above the letters. "I've been studying them carefully—those that have come within the last two or three weeks—and there's a queer likeness in the writing of some of them. The g's are all like corkscrews. And the same phrases keep recurring—the Ann Arbor news-agent uses the same expressions as the President of the Girls' College at Euphorbia, Maine."
Betton laughed. "Aren't the critics always groaning over the shrinkage of the national vocabulary? Of course we all use the same expressions."
"Yes," said Vyse obstinately. "But how about using the same g's?"
Betton laughed again, but Vyse continued without heeding him: "Look here, Betton—could Strett have written them?"
"Strett?" Betton roared. " Strett?" He threw himself into his arm-chair to shake out his mirth at greater ease.
"I'll tell you why. Strett always posts all my answers. He comes in for them every day before I leave. He posted the letter to the misunderstood party—the letter from you that the Dead Letter Office didn't return. I posted my own letter to her; and that came back."
A measurable silence followed the emission of this ingenious conjecture; then Betton observed with gentle irony: "Extremely neat. And of course it's no business of yours to supply any valid motive for this remarkable attention on my valet's part."
Vyse cast on him a slanting glance.
"If you've found that human conduct's generally based on valid motives—!"
"Well, outside of mad-houses it's supposed to be not quite incalculable."
Vyse had an odd smile under his thin moustache. "Every house is a mad-house at some time or another."
Betton rose with a careless shake of the shoulders. "This one will be if I talk to you much longer," he said, moving away with a laugh.