"I thought I was pretty well, till I set eyes on you," Victor replied.

Cawthorne gave back a sepulchral smile. He was tall and thin and stooped, with a fringe of white hair clinging to the sides and back of a formidably domed skull. "You do me too much honor,

sir," he said. "Of course, when it comes to honor I hold with Falstaff, so any honor would be too much. Is that the latest effusion from your goose there under your arm?"

"Maybe I should pluck you for quills next time-you seem prickly enough and to spare," Victor said.

"And here I was going to do you an honor." Cawthorne stared reprovingly over the tops of his gold-rimmed spectacles. They were of a curious design he had devised himself. A horizontal line across each lens separated weaker and stronger magnifications, so he could read and see at a distance without changing pairs.

"A likely story," Victor said. "More likely, you were about to set some libel against me in type."

"Oh, any printer from Croydon down to the border of Spanish Atlantis could do that," Custis Cawthorne said dismissively. "But no-I had something new and interesting and perhaps even important to tell you, and did you want to hear it? It is to laugh."

"Go ahead. Say your say," Radcliff replied. He laughed at himself. "Why should I waste my time encouraging you? You'll do as you please anyhow. You always do."

" 'Do what thou wilt'-there is the whole of the law. Or so said a wiser man than I." Cawthorne might have been-probably was-the wisest man in Atlantis. By mentioning someone he reckoned wiser, he reminded his audience of that truth. "Because you make yourself so obnoxious, I ought not to tell you."