The day did come, however, when I found I must have it out with Schofield about this superciliousness I have mentioned.  The Falchion had just begun to print the third series of my Martin Renard; and this had been made the occasion of another of Schofield’s ponderous compliments.  I acknowledged it with none too much graciousness; and then he said: 

“I’ve na doubt, Harrison, that by this time the famous sleuth-hound of crime has become quite a creature of flesh and blood to ye.”

It was the tone as much as the words that riled me; and I replied that his doubts or the lack of them were a privacy with which I did not wish to meddle.  From being merely a bore the fellow was rapidly becoming insolent.

“But I opine he’ll get wearisome now and then, and in that case poor Michael’s ‘Life’ will come as a grand relaxation,” he next observed.

If I meant to have it out, here was my opportunity.

“I should have thought you’d have traced a closer connection than that between the two things,” I remarked.

He shot a quick glance at me from beneath his shaggy russet brows.

“How so?  I see varry little connection,” he said suspiciously.

“There’s this connection—­that while you speak with some freedom of what I do, you are quite willing to take advantage of it when it serves your turn.”

“‘Advantage,’ Harrison?” he said slowly.

“Of the advertisement Martin Renard gives you.  I must point out that you condone a thing when you accept the benefit of it.  Either you shouldn’t have come to me at all, or you should deny yourself the gratification of these slurs.”

“Slurrrrs?” he repeated loweringly.

“Both of you—­you and Miss Andriaovsky, or Maschka as I call her, tout court.  Don’t suppose I don’t know as well as you do the exact worth of my ‘sleuth-hound,’ as you call him.  You didn’t come to me solely because I knew Andriaovsky well; you came because I’ve got the ear of the public also; and I tell you plainly that, however much you dislike it, Michael’s fame as far as I’m of any use to him, depends on the popularity of Martin Renard."

He shook his big head.  “This is what I feared,” he said.

“More,” I continued, “you can depend upon it that Michael, wherever he is, knows all about that.”

“Ay, ay,” he said sagely, “I misdoubt your own artistic soul’s only to be saved by the writing of poor Michael’s ‘Life,’ Harrison.”

“Leave that to me and Michael; we’ll settle that.  In the meantime, if you don’t like it, write and publish the ‘Life’ yourself.”

He bent his brows on me.

“It’s precisely what I wanted to do from the varry first,” he said.  “If you’d cared to accept my symposium in the spirit in which it was offered, I cannot see that the ‘Life’ would have suffered.  But now, when you’re next in need of my services, ye’ll mebbe send for me.”