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I had arranged with Maschka that Schofield should bring me the whole of the work Andriaovsky had left behind him; and he arrived late one afternoon in a fourwheeler, with four great packages done up in brown paper.
It had been on this hazardous calculation that I had made my promise to Maschka. I passed that week in a state of constantly increasing apprehension. True, I worked at the "Life," even assiduously; but it was plain sailing, mere cataloguing of certain of Andriaovsky's works, a chapter I had deliberately planned pour mieux sauter to enhance the value of the penultimate and final chapters.
"Well, I shall have to rely on Schofield for those five years in which I saw little of Michael; but unless Schofield knows more of publishing than I do, and can enforce a better contract and a larger sum on account than I can, I really think, Maschka, that you'll do better to leave things to me. For one thing, it's only fair to me.
Maschka, quoted by Warren, reports the case of a boy of twelve, who was struck on the anterior portion of the larynx by a stone. He fell lifeless to the ground, and at autopsy no local lesion was found nor any lesion elsewhere. The sudden death may be attributed in this case partly to shock and partly to cerebral anemia.
It was not likely that Schofield would have refrained from telling Maschka of our little difference on our last meeting; and within a week of the date I have just mentioned I learned that she knew all about it. And, as the circumstances of my learning this were in a high degree unusual, I will relate them with such clearness as I am able. He, Maschka, and I passed the proofs in consultation.
You doubtless know my name, whichever country or hemisphere you happen to live in, as that of the creator of Martin Renard, the famous and popular detective; and I was not at that moment disposed to apologise, either to Maschka or Schofield or anybody else, for having written the stories at the bidding of a gaping public.
They had come in the suspicion that I was throwing them over, and, though that suspicion was removed, Maschka wished, if there was any throwing over to be done, to do it herself. In a word, she wanted to compare me with Schofield. "To see it as far as it is written," I repeated slowly.... "Well, you may. That is, you, Michael's sister, may.
He had not been too far gone to recognise me, however, for he had muttered something brokenly about "knowing better," that a spasm had interrupted. Besides myself, only Maschka had been there; and I had been thankful for the summons that had called her for a moment out of the room.
"I did say that," I admitted; "but I never said that whatever you did I should not go on with mine." "Yours!" cried Maschka. "What right have you in my brother's 'Life'?" I quickly told her. "I have the right to write my recollections of him, and, subject to certain provisions of the Law, to base anything on them I think fit," I replied. "But," she cried aghast, "there can't be two 'Lives'!..."
Maschka called rather less, and Schofield rather more frequently, than I could have wished; and my surmise that he, at least, was in love with her, quickly became a certainty. This was to be seen when they called together. It was when they came together that something else also became apparent. This was their slightly derisive attitude towards the means by which I had attained my success.
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