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In a brief flash of retrospection Bernald saw the earlier books dwindle and fall into their place as mere precursors of this fuller revelation; then, with a leap of helpless rage, he pictured Howland Wade's pink hands on the new treasure, and his prophetic feet upon the lecture platform. "IT won't do oh, he let him down as gently as possible; but it appears it simply won't do."
So much Bernald retained of his companion's actual narrative; the rest was swept away under the tide of wonder that rose and submerged him as Pellerin at some indefinitely later stage of their talk picked up his manuscript and began to read.
Bernald himself not only questioned the form under which this incident was shaping itself before posterity, but the mere radical fact of its occurrence: he had never been able to discover any break in the dense cloud enveloping Pellerin's later life and its mysterious termination.
"How he'll draw him how he'll draw him!" Bernald chuckled, with a security the more unaccountable that his one glimpse of Winterman had shown the latter only as a passive subject for experimentation; and he felt himself avenged in advance for the injury of Howland Wade's existence.
He reflected afterward that there must have been a mysteriously fertilizing quality in the stranger's silence: it had brooded over their talk like a large moist cloud above a dry country. Mrs. Wade, apparently apprehensive lest her son should have given Bernald an exaggerated notion of their visitor's importance, had hastened to qualify it before the latter appeared.
To a critic, obliged by his trade to cultivate convictions, it was the essence of luxury to leave them at home in his hours of ease; and Bernald gave his preference to circles in which less finality of judgment prevailed, and it was consequently less embarrassing to be caught without an opinion.
Winterman's fame, trumpeted abroad by Miss Fosdick, had reached the four corners of the Uplift Club, and Bernald found himself fabricating de toutes pieces a Winterman legend which should in some degree respond to the Club's demand for the human document.
Bain murmured with a deprecating gesture; and Howland Wade, emerging between the palms, took the centre of the platform. A pang of commiseration shot through Bernald as he saw him there, so innocent and so exposed.
Doctor Bob imparted the ineluctable fact to Bernald while the two men, accidentally meeting at their club a few nights later, sat together over the dinner they had immediately agreed to consume in company. Bernald had left Portchester the morning after his strange discovery, and he and Bob Wade had not seen each other since.
"Not the least little message?" "Not the least little message." "Or a rumour or report of any kind?" "Or a rumour or report of any kind." Miss Fosdick's interest seemed to be revived by the strangeness of the case. "It's rather creepy, isn't it? What could have happened? You don't suppose he could have been waylaid and murdered?" she asked with brightening eyes. Bernald shook his head serenely.
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