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Updated: May 27, 2025
"Have you ever read 'The Adventures of Martin Zeda'?" he asked suddenly, breaking a silence of some minutes' duration. Dunbar looked up with a start, as... "Never!" he replied; "I'm not wasting my time with magazine trash." "It's not trash," said Sowerby, assuming that unnatural air of reflection which sat upon him so ill.
It was a situation which could not have alarmed "Martin Zeda," but it alarmed, immeasurably, nay, struck inert with horror, Martin Zeda's creator. Then, in upon Leroux's mental turmoil, a sensible idea intruded itself. "Dr. Cumberly!" he muttered. "I hope to God he is in!"
They returned to the study, and Inspector Dunbar, for the first time since his arrival, walked across and examined the fragmentary message, raising his eyebrows when he discovered that it was written upon the same paper as Leroux's MSS. He glanced, too, at the pen lying on a page of "Martin Zeda" near the lamp and at the inky splash which told how hastily the pen had been dropped.
"Leave 'Martin Zeda' alone for once, and read a really cheerful book!" Leroux forced a smile to his lips. "The correction of these proofs," he said diffidently, "exacts no great mental strain, but is sufficient to distract my mind. Work, after all, is nature's own sedative." "I rather agree with Mr. Leroux, Denise," said Helen; "and really you must allow him to know best."
"IS it a waste of time?" inquired Sowerby, raising his eyebrows in a manner which lent him a marked resemblance to a famous comedian. "I tell you that the man who can work out plots like those might be a second Jack-the-Ripper and not a soul the wiser!"... "Ah!" "I've never met a more innocent LOOKING man, I'll allow; but if you'll read the 'Adventures of Martin Zeda, you'll know that"...
Cumberly took his departure, and, Helen looking at her companion interrogatively: "I think," said Denise Ryland, addressing Leroux, "that you should not over-tax your strength at present." She walked across to where he sat, and examined some proofslips lying upon the little table beside the couch. "'Martin Zeda," she said, with a certain high disdain.
But latterly he had begun to wonder in his peculiarly indefinite way he had begun to doubt his own philosophy. Was the void in his soul a product of thwarted ambition? for, whilst he slaved, scrupulously, upon "Martin Zeda," he loathed every deed and every word of that Old Man of the Sea.
So, amidst that classic company, smiling or frowning upon him from the oaken shelves, where Petronius Arbiter, exquisite, rubbed shoulders with Balzac, plebeian; where Omar Khayyam leaned confidentially toward Philostratus; where Mark Twain, standing squarely beside Thomas Carlyle, glared across the room at George Meredith, Henry Leroux pursued the amazing career of "Martin Zeda."
The table-clock ticked merrily on; SCRATCH SCRATCH SPLUTTER SCRATCH went Henry Leroux's pen; for this up-to-date litterateur, essayist by inclination, creator of "Martin Zeda, Criminal Scientist" by popular clamor, was yet old-fashioned enough, and sufficient of an enthusiast, to pen his work, while lesser men dictated.
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