Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/19

x "I go," he said dryly, "to hear you fellows talk." A whole diatribe could not have expressed more.

The workroom proved to be a very comfortably-appointed study, reached through a little ante-room, furnished as a hall. Everything proclaimed the occupant's success in life. Melwish lit the gas-fire and pulled up an easy-chair for me. While he engaged himself with spirit-lamp and glasses I looked frankly about the room. An illustrated interview was among the things I meant to do, and I speculated whether my host's standing would carry it. At all events there would be no harm in laying a foundation.

"Do you find it necessary to sit on any particular chair or to adopt any especial position while you write?" I inquired, apropos of the room at large. These intriguing details always bulked in an interview with an author in those days.

"My dear lad," he replied tolerantly, "I haven’t the least doubt that I could write equally well if I stood on my head all the time."

"Then you have no pet superstition or favourite mascot that you rely on?" I persisted.

"No," he grunted, conveying the impression that he thought I was talking hectic nonsense; and then I saw him pause and think, and turning down the spirit-lamp for a moment he came across to me.

"Yes, I have, by Jupiter," he admitted slowly. "I was forgetting that. You see the inkstand there? Well, I have the strongest possible conviction that in order to keep my work what is termed 'up to magazine standard,' I must write from that."

"This is jolly interesting," I said—the interview promised to be fashioning. "May I look at it?" Melwish nodded and went back to the brew.

Without doubt it was worth inspecting—in a way. It