between the eyes; he had turned rather red, and a question had
formed itself in his mind which reached my sense as distinctly as
if he had uttered it: "What sort of a damned fool are YOU?" Then
he got up, gathering together his hat and gloves, buttoning his
coat, projecting hungrily all over the place the big transparency
of his mask. It seemed to flare over Fleet Street and somehow made
the actual spot distressingly humble: there was so little for it
to feed on unless he counted the blisters of our stucco or saw his
way to do something with the roses. Even the poor roses were
common kinds. Presently his eyes fell on the manuscript from which
Paraday had been reading to me and which still lay on the bench.
As my own followed them I saw it looked promising, looked pregnant,
as if it gently throbbed with the life the reader had given it.
Mr. Morrow indulged in a nod at it and a vague thrust of his
umbrella. "What's that?"

"Oh, it's a plan--a secret."

"A secret!" There was an instant's silence, and then Mr. Morrow
made another movement. I may have been mistaken, but it affected
me as the translated impulse of the desire to lay hands on the
manuscript, and this led me to indulge in a quick anticipatory grab
which may very well have seemed ungraceful, or even impertinent,
and which at any rate left Mr. Paraday's two admirers very erect,
glaring at each other while one of them held a bundle of papers
well behind him. An instant later Mr. Morrow quitted me abruptly,
as if he had really carried something off with him. To reassure
myself, watching his broad back recede, I only grasped my
manuscript the tighter. He went to the back door of the house, the
one he had come out from, but on trying the handle he appeared to