Tales of Men and Ghosts

His first thought was that the man facing him from the hearth-rug was the very Duncan Vyse of old: small, starved, bleached-looking, with the same sidelong movements, the same queer air of anaemic truculence. Only he had grown shabbier, and bald.

Betton held out a hospitable hand.

“This is a good surprise! Glad you looked me up, my dear fellow.”

Vyse’s palm was damp and bony: he had always had a disagreeable hand.

“You got my note? You know what I’ve come for?” he said.

“About the secretaryship? (Sit down.) Is that really serious?”

Betton lowered himself luxuriously into one of his vast Maple armchairs. He had grown stouter in the last year, and the cushion behind him fitted comfortably into the crease of his nape. As he leaned back he caught sight of his image in the mirror between the windows, and reflected uneasily that Vyse would not find him unchanged.

“Serious?” Vyse rejoined. “Why not? Aren’t you?”

“Oh, perfectly.” Betton laughed apologetically. “Only—well, the fact is, you may not understand what rubbish a secretary of mine would have to deal with. In advertising for one I never imagined—I didn’t aspire to any one above the ordinary hack.”

“I’m the ordinary hack,” said Vyse drily.

Betton’s affable gesture protested. “My dear fellow—. You see it’s not business—what I’m in now,” he continued with a laugh.

Vyse’s thin lips seemed to form a noiseless ” Isn’t it?” which they instantly transposed into the audibly reply: “I inferred from your advertisement that you want some one to relieve you in your literary work. Dictation, short-hand—that kind of thing?”

“Well, no: not that either. I type my own things. What I’m looking for is somebody who won’t be above tackling my correspondence.”

Vyse looked slightly surprised. “I should be glad of the job,” he then said.

Betton began to feel a vague embarrassment. He had supposed that such a proposal would be instantly rejected. “It would be only for an hour or two a day—if you’re doing any writing of your own?” he threw out interrogatively.

“No. I’ve given all that up. I’m in an office now—business. But it doesn’t take all my time, or pay enough to keep me alive.”

“In that case, my dear fellow—if you could come every morning; but it’s mostly awful bosh, you know,” Betton again broke off, with growing awkwardness.

Vyse glanced at him humorously. “What you want me to write?”

“Well, that depends—” Betton sketched the obligatory smile. “But I was thinking of the letters you’ll have to answer. Letters about my books, you know—I’ve another one appearing next week. And I want to be beforehand now—dam the flood before it swamps me. Have you any idea of the deluge of stuff that people write to a successful novelist?”

As Betton spoke, he saw a tinge of red on Vyse’s thin cheek, and his own reflected it in a richer glow of shame. “I mean—I mean—” he stammered helplessly.

“No, I haven’t,” said Vyse; “but it will be awfully jolly finding out.”

There was a pause, groping and desperate on Betton’s part, sardonically calm on his visitor’s.

“You—you’ve given up writing altogether?” Betton continued.

“Yes; we’ve changed places, as it were.” Vyse paused. “But about these letters—you dictate the answers?”

“Lord, no! That’s the reason why I said I wanted somebody—er—well used to writing. I don’t want to have anything to do with them—not a thing! You’ll have to answer them as if they were written to you—” Betton pulled himself up again, and rising in confusion jerked open one of the drawers of his writing-table.

“Here—this kind of rubbish,” he said, tossing a packet of letters onto Vyse’s knee.

“Oh—you keep them, do you?” said Vyse simply.

“I—well—some of them; a few of the funniest only.”

Vyse slipped off the band and began to open the letters. While he was glancing over them Betton again caught his own reflection in the glass, and asked himself what impression he had made on his visitor. It occurred to him for the first time that his high-coloured well-fed person presented the image of commercial rather than of intellectual achievement. He did not look like his own idea of the author of “Diadems and Faggots”—and he wondered why.

Vyse laid the letters aside. “I think I can do it—if you’ll give me a notion of the tone I’m to take.”

“The tone?”

“Yes—that is, if I’m to sign your name.”

“Oh, of course: I expect you to sign for me. As for the tone, say just what you’d—well, say all you can without encouraging them to answer.”

Vyse rose from his seat. “I could submit a few specimens,” he suggested.

“Oh, as to that—you always wrote better than I do,” said Betton handsomely.

“I’ve never had this kind of thing to write. When do you wish me to begin?” Vyse enquired, ignoring the