Yes, that was what it meant: Mr.Locket, in the twenty-four hours, had discovered so much in Sir Dominick's literary remains that his visitor found him primed with an offer.A hundred pounds would be paid him that day, that minute, and no questions would be either asked or answered."I take all the risks, I take all the risks," the editor of the Promiscuous repeated.The letters were out on the table, Mr.Locket was on the hearthrug, like an orator on a platform, and Peter, under the influence of his sudden ultimatum, had dropped, rather weakly, into the seat which happened to be nearest and which, as he became conscious it moved on a pivot, he whirled round so as to enable himself to look at his tempter with an eye intended to be cold.What surprised him most was to find Mr.Locket taking exactly the line about the expediency of publication which he would have expected Mr.Locket not to take."Hush it all up; a barren scandal, an offence that can't be remedied, is the thing in the world that least justifies an airing--" some such line as that was the line he would have thought natural to a man whose life was spent in weighing questions of propriety and who had only the other day objected, in the light of this virtue, to a work of the most disinterested art.
But the author of that incorruptible masterpiece had put his finger on the place in saying to his interlocutor on the occasion of his last visit that, if given to the world in the pages of the Promiscuous, Sir Dominick's aberrations would sell the edition.It was not necessary for Mr.Locket to reiterate to his young friend his phrase about their making a sensation.If he wished to purchase the "rights," as theatrical people said, it was not to protect a celebrated name or to lock them up in a cupboard.That formula of Baron's covered all the ground, and one edition was a low estimate of the probable performance of the magazine.
Peter left the letters behind him and, on withdrawing from the editorial presence, took a long walk on the Embankment.His impressions were at war with each other--he was flurried by possibilities of which he yet denied the existence.He had consented to trust Mr.Locket with the papers a day or two longer, till he should have thought out the terms on which he might--in the event of certain occurrences--be induced to dispose of them.A hundred pounds were not this gentleman's last word, nor perhaps was mere unreasoning intractability Peter's own.He sighed as he took no note of the pictures made by barges--sighed because it all might mean money.He needed money bitterly; he owed it in disquieting quarters.Mr.
Locket had put it before him that he had a high responsibility--that he might vindicate the disfigured truth, contribute a chapter to the history of England."You haven't a right to suppress such momentous facts," the hungry little editor had declared, thinking how the series (he would spread it into three numbers) would be the talk of the town.If Peter had money he might treat himself to ardour, to bliss.Mr.Locket had said, no doubt justly enough, that there were ever so many questions one would have to meet should one venture to play so daring a game.These questions, embarrassments, dangers--the danger, for instance, of the cropping-up of some lurking litigious relative--he would take over unreservedly and bear the brunt of dealing with.It was to be remembered that the papers were discredited, vitiated by their childish pedigree; such a preposterous origin, suggesting, as he had hinted before, the feeble ingenuity of a third-rate novelist, was a thing he should have to place himself at the positive disadvantage of being silent about.He would rather give no account of the matter at all than expose himself to the ridicule that such a story would infallibly excite.Couldn't one see them in advance, the clever, taunting things the daily and weekly papers would say? Peter Baron had his guileless side, but he felt, as he worried with a stick that betrayed him the granite parapets of the Thames, that he was not such a fool as not to know how Mr.Locket would "work" the mystery of his marvellous find.Nothing could help it on better with the public than the impenetrability of the secret attached to it.If Mr.Locket should only be able to kick up dust enough over the circumstances that had guided his hand his fortune would literally be made.Peter thought a hundred pounds a low bid, yet he wondered how the Promiscuous could bring itself to offer such a sum--so large it loomed in the light of literary remuneration as hitherto revealed to our young man.The explanation of this anomaly was of course that the editor shrewdly saw a dozen ways of getting his money back.There would be in the "sensation," at a later stage, the making of a book in large type--the book of the hour; and the profits of this scandalous volume or, if one preferred the name, this reconstruction, before an impartial posterity, of a great historical humbug, the sum "down," in other words, that any lively publisher would give for it, figured vividly in Mr.Locket's calculations.It was therefore altogether an opportunity of dealing at first hand with the lively publisher that Peter was invited to forego.Peter gave a masterful laugh, rejoicing in his heart that, on the spot, in the repaire he had lately quitted, he had not been tempted by a figure that would have approximately represented the value of his property.
It was a good job, he mentally added as he turned his face homeward, that there was so little likelihood of his having to struggle with that particular pressure.
