for a matter of five nights.  But they gave me a new idea of Fox, those two or three weird hours that night.  It was as if I had never seen him before.  The attacks grew more virulent as the night advanced.  He groaned and raved, and said things—­oh, the most astounding things in gibberish that upset one’s nerves and everything else.  At the height he sang hymns, and then, as the fits passed, relapsed into incredible clear-headedness.  It gave me, I say, a new idea of Fox.  It was as if, for all the time I had known him, he had been playing a part, and that only now, in the delirium of his pain, in the madness into which he drank himself, were fragments of the real man thrown to the surface.  I grew, at last, almost afraid to be alone with him in the dead small hours of the morning, and longed for the time when I could go to bed among the uninspiring, marble-topped furniture of my club.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

At noon of the next day I gave Fox his look in at his own flat.  He was stretched upon a sofa—­it was evident that I was to take such of his duties as were takeable.  He greeted me with words to that effect.

“Don’t go filling the paper with your unbreeched geniuses,” he said, genially, “and don’t overwork yourself.  There’s really nothing to do, but you’re being there will keep that little beast Evans from getting too cock-a-hoop.  He’d like to jerk me out altogether; thinks they’d get on just as well without me.”

I expressed in my manner general contempt for Evans, and was taking my leave.

“Oh, and—­” Fox called after me.  I turned back.  “The Greenland mail ought to be in to-day.  If Callan’s contrived to get his flood-gates open, run his stuff in, there’s a good chap.  It’s a feature and all that, you know.”

“I suppose Soane’s to have a look at it,” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” he answered; “but tell him to keep strictly to old Cal’s lines—­rub that into him.  If he were to get drunk and run in some of his own tips it’d be awkward.  People are expecting Cal’s stuff.  Tell you what:  you take him out to lunch, eh?  Keep an eye on the supplies, and ram it into him that he’s got to stick to Cal’s line of argument.”

“Soane’s as bad as ever, then?” I asked.

“Oh,” Fox answered, “he’ll be all right for the stuff if you get that one idea into him.”  A prolonged and acute fit of pain seized him.  I fetched his man and left him to his rest.

At the office of the Hour I was greeted by the handing to me of a proof of Callan’s manuscript.  Evans, the man across the screen, was the immediate agent.

“I suppose it’s got to go in, so I had it set up,” he said.

“Oh, of course it’s got to go in,” I answered.  “It’s to go to Soane first, though.”

“Soane’s not here yet,” he answered.  I noted the tone of sub-acid pleasure in his voice.  Evans would have enjoyed a fiasco.