“I feel so deeply in your debt,” Barnaby said. “Is there nothing I can do—?”

“You will think me unbearably fulsome — I have, I believe, become rather Latinized in my style, but I assure you the mere fact of meeting you and in some small manner—”

This conversation, Barnaby thought, is going round in circles. “Well,” he said, “you must dine with me. Let’s make a time, shall we?”

But Mr. Mailer, now squeezing his palms together, was evidently on the edge of speech and presently achieved it. After a multitude of deprecating parentheses he at last confessed that he himself had written a book.

He had been at it for three years: the present version was his fourth. Through bitter experience, Barnaby knew what was coming and knew, also, that he must accept his fate. The all-too-familiar phrases were being delivered: “…value, enormously, your opinion…” “…glance through it…” “…advice from such an authority…” “…interest in publisher…”

“I’ll read it, of course,” Barnaby said. “Have you brought it with you?”

Mr. Mailer, it emerged, was sitting on it. By some adroit and nimble sleight-of-hand, he had passed it under his rump while Barnaby was intent upon his recovered property. He now drew it out, wrapped in a dampish Roman newssheet and, with trembling fingers, uncovered it. A manuscript closely written in an Italianate script, but not, Barnaby rejoiced to see, bulky. Perhaps forty thousand words, perhaps, with any luck, less.

“Neither a novel nor a novella in length, I’m afraid,” said its author, “but so it has befallen and as such I abide by it.”

Barnaby looked up quickly. Mr. Mailer’s mouth had compressed and lifted at the corners. “Not so diffident after all,” Barnaby thought.

“I hope,” said Mr. Mailer, “my handwriting does not present undue difficulties. I cannot afford a typist.”