It tormented him so the next morning that after threshing it out a little further he felt he had something of a grievance.Mrs.Ryves's intervention had made him acutely uncomfortable, for she had taken the attitude of exerting pressure without, it appeared, recognising on his part an equal right.She had imposed herself as an influence, yet she held herself aloof as a participant; there were things she looked to him to do for her, yet she could tell him of no good that would come to him from the doing.She should either have had less to say or have been willing to say more, and he asked himself why he should be the sport of her moods and her mysteries.He perceived her knack of punctual interference to be striking, but it was just this apparent infallibility that he resented.Why didn't she set up at once as a professional clairvoyant and eke out her little income more successfully? In purely private life such a gift was disconcerting;her divinations, her evasions disturbed at any rate his own tranquillity.
What disturbed it still further was that he received early in the day a visit from Mr.Locket, who, leaving him under no illusion as to the grounds of such an honour, remarked as soon as he had got into the room or rather while he still panted on the second flight and the smudged little slavey held open Baron's door, that he had taken up his young friend's invitation to look at Sir Dominick Ferrand's letters for himself.Peter drew them forth with a promptitude intended to show that he recognised the commercial character of the call and without attenuating the inconsequence of this departure from the last determination he had expressed to Mr.Locket.He showed his visitor the davenport and the hidden recess, and he smoked a cigarette, humming softly, with a sense of unwonted advantage and triumph, while the cautious editor sat silent and handled the papers.
For all his caution Mr.Locket was unable to keep a warmer light out of his judicial eye as he said to Baron at last with sociable brevity--a tone that took many things for granted: "I'll take them home with me--they require much attention."The young man looked at him a moment."Do you think they're genuine?" He didn't mean to be mocking, he meant not to be; but the words sounded so to his own ear, and he could see that they produced that effect on Mr.Locket.
"I can't in the least determine.I shall have to go into them at my leisure, and that's why I ask you to lend them to me."He had shuffled the papers together with a movement charged, while he spoke, with the air of being preliminary to that of thrusting them into a little black bag which he had brought with him and which, resting on the shelf of the davenport, struck Peter, who viewed it askance, as an object darkly editorial.It made our young man, somehow, suddenly apprehensive; the advantage of which he had just been conscious was about to be transferred by a quiet process of legerdemain to a person who already had advantages enough.Baron, in short, felt a deep pang of anxiety; he couldn't have said why.Mr.
Locket took decidedly too many things for granted, and the explorer of Sir Dominick Ferrand's irregularities remembered afresh how clear he had been after all about his indisposition to traffic in them.He asked his visitor to what end he wished to remove the letters, since on the one hand there was no question now of the article in the Promiscuous which was to reveal their existence, and on the other he himself, as their owner, had a thousand insurmountable scruples about putting them into circulation.
Mr.Locket looked over his spectacles as over the battlements of a fortress."I'm not thinking of the end--I'm thinking of the beginning.A few glances have assured me that such documents ought to be submitted to some competent eye.""Oh, you mustn't show them to anyone!" Baron exclaimed.
"You may think me presumptuous, but the eye that I venture to allude to in those terms--""Is the eye now fixed so terribly on ME?" Peter laughingly interrupted."Oh, it would be interesting, I confess, to know how they strike a man of your acuteness!" It had occurred to him that by such a concession he might endear himself to a literary umpire hitherto implacable.There would be no question of his publishing Sir Dominick Ferrand, but he might, in due acknowledgment of services rendered, form the habit of publishing Peter Baron."How long would it be your idea to retain them?" he inquired, in a manner which, he immediately became aware, was what incited Mr.Locket to begin stuffing the papers into his bag.With this perception he came quickly closer and, laying his hand on the gaping receptacle, lightly drew its two lips together.In this way the two men stood for a few seconds, touching, almost in the attitude of combat, looking hard into each other's eyes.