"Deuced queer," Soane muttered. He began to scribble with a pencil. From
the tone of his voice I knew that he had reached the precise stage at
which something brilliant--the real thing of its kind--might be
expected.

Very late Soane finished his leader. He looked up as he wrote the last
word.

"I've got it written," he said. "But ... I say, what the deuce is up?
It's like being a tall clock with the mainspring breaking, this."

I rang the bell for someone to take the copy down.

"Your metaphor's too much for me, Soane," I said.

"It's appropriate all the way along," he maintained, "if you call me a
mainspring. I've been wound up and wound up to write old de Mersch and
his Greenland up--and it's been a tight wind, these days, I tell you.
Then all of a sudden ..."

A boy appeared and carried off the copy.

"All of a sudden," Soane resumed, "something gives--I suppose
something's given--and there's a whirr-rr-rr and the hands fly backwards
and old de Mersch and Greenland bump to the bottom, like the weights."

The boom of the great presses was rattling the window frames. Soane got
up and walked toward one of the cupboards.