Chapter 5

It tormented him so the next morning that after threshing it out a
little further he felt he had something of a grievance. Mrs. Ryves's
intervention had made him acutely uncomfortable, for she had taken
the attitude of exerting pressure without, it appeared, recognising
on his part an equal right. She had imposed herself as an influence,
yet she held herself aloof as a participant; there were things she
looked to him to do for her, yet she could tell him of no good that
would come to him from the doing. She should either have had less to
say or have been willing to say more, and he asked himself why he
should be the sport of her moods and her mysteries. He perceived her
knack of punctual interference to be striking, but it was just this
apparent infallibility that he resented. Why didn't she set up at
once as a professional clairvoyant and eke out her little income more
successfully? In purely private life such a gift was disconcerting;
her divinations, her evasions disturbed at any rate his own
tranquillity.

What disturbed it still further was that he received early in the day
a visit from Mr. Locket, who, leaving him under no illusion as to the
grounds of such an honour, remarked as soon as he had got into the
room or rather while he still panted on the second flight and the
smudged little slavey held open Baron's door, that he had taken up
his young friend's invitation to look at Sir Dominick Ferrand's
letters for himself. Peter drew them forth with a promptitude
intended to show that he recognised the commercial character of the
call and without attenuating the inconsequence of this departure from
the last determination he had expressed to Mr. Locket. He showed his
visitor the davenport and the hidden recess, and he smoked a
cigarette, humming softly, with a sense of unwonted advantage and
triumph, while the cautious editor sat silent and handled the papers.
For all his caution Mr. Locket was unable to keep a warmer light out
of his judicial eye as he said to Baron at last with sociable
brevity--a tone that took many things for granted: "I'll take them
home with me--they require much attention."

The young man looked at him a moment. "Do you think they're
genuine?" He didn't mean to be mocking, he meant not to be; but the
words sounded so to his own ear, and he could see that they produced
that effect on Mr. Locket.

"I can't in the least determine. I shall have to go into them at my
leisure, and that's why I ask you to lend them to me."

He had shuffled the papers together with a movement charged, while he
spoke, with the air of being preliminary to that of thrusting them
into a little black bag which he had brought with him and which,
resting on