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Page 6
But, even as he unscrambled himself and resumed a normal posture,
from his immediate rear there rent the quiet morning air a clear
and musical laugh. It floated out on the breeze and hit him like
a bullet.
Three months ago Ashe would have accepted the laugh as
inevitable, and would have refused to allow it to embarrass him;
but long immunity from ridicule had sapped his resolution. He
spun round with a jump, flushed and self-conscious.
From the window of the first-floor front of Number Seven a girl
was leaning. The Spring sunshine played on her golden hair and
lit up her bright blue eyes, fixed on his flanneled and sweatered
person with a fascinated amusement. Even as he turned, the laugh
smote him afresh.
For the space of perhaps two seconds they stared at each other,
eye to eye. Then she vanished into the room.
Ashe was beaten. Three months ago a million girls could have
laughed at his morning exercises without turning him from his
purpose. Today this one scoffer, alone and unaided, was
sufficient for his undoing. The depression which exercise had
begun to dispel surged back on him. He had no heart to continue.
Sadly gathering up his belongings, he returned to his room, and
found a cold bath tame and uninspiring.
The breakfasts--included in the rent--provided by Mrs. Bell, the
landlady of Number Seven, were held by some authorities to be
specially designed to quell the spirits of their victims, should
they tend to soar excessively. By the time Ashe had done his best
with the disheveled fried egg, the chicory blasphemously called
coffee, and the charred bacon, misery had him firmly in its grip.
And when he forced himself to the table, and began to try to
concoct the latest of the adventures of Gridley Quayle,
Investigator, his spirit groaned within him.
This morning, as he sat and chewed his pen, his loathing for
Gridley seemed to have reached its climax. It was his habit, in
writing these stories, to think of a good title first, and then
fit an adventure to it. And overnight, in a moment of
inspiration, he had jotted down on an envelope the words: "The
Adventure of the Wand of Death."
It was with the sullen repulsion of a vegetarian who finds a
caterpillar in his salad that he now sat glaring at them.
The title had seemed so promising overnight--so full of strenuous
possibilities. It was still speciously attractive; but now that
the moment had arrived for writing the story its flaws became
manifest.
What was a wand of death? It sounded good; but, coming down to
hard facts, what was it? You cannot write a story about a wand of
death without knowing what a wand of death is; and, conversely,
if you have thought of such a splendid title you cannot jettison
it offhand. Ashe rumpled his hair and gnawed his pen.
There came a knock at the door.
Ashe spun round in his chair. This was the last straw! If he had
told Mrs. Ball once that he was never to be disturbed in the
morning on any pretext whatsoever, he had told her twenty times.
It was simply too infernal to be endured if his work time was to
be cut into like this. Ashe ran over in his mind a few opening
remarks.
"Come in!" he shouted, and braced himself for battle.
A girl walked in--the girl of the first-floor front; the girl
with the blue eyes, who had laughed at his Larsen Exercises.
Various circumstances contributed to the poorness of the figure
Ashe cut in the opening moments of this interview. In the first
place, he was expecting to see his landlady, whose height was
about four feet six, and the sudden entry of somebody who was
about five feet seven threw the universe temporarily out of
focus. In the second place, in anticipation of Mrs. Bell's entry,
he had twisted his face into a forbidding scowl, and it was no
slight matter to change this on the spur of the moment into a
pleasant smile. Finally, a man who has been sitting for half an
hour in front of a sheet of paper bearing the words: "The
Adventure of the Wand of Death," and trying to decide what a wand
of death might be, has not his mind under proper control.
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