‘Well, where is he?  What was he up to?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Miss Martin, ’it just comes as I go on.  It has just got to come.  It is a fourteen hours a day business.  All writing.  I crib things from the French.  Not whole stories.  I take the opening situation; say the two men in a boat on the river who hook up a sack.  I don’t read the rest of the Frenchman, I work on from the sack, and guess what was in it.’

‘What was in the sack?’

’In the Sack!  A name for a story!  Anything, from the corpse of a freak (good idea, corpse of a freak with no arms and legs, or with too many) to a model of a submarine ship, or political papers.  But I am tired of corpses.  They pervade my works.  They give “a bouquet, a fragrance,” as Mr. Talbot Twysden said about his cheap claret.’

‘You read the old Masters?’

‘The obsolete Thackeray?  Yes, I know him pretty well.’

‘What are you publishing just now?’

‘This to an author?  Don’t you know?’

‘I blush,’ said Logan.

‘Unseen,’ said Miss Martin, scrutinising him closely.

‘Well, you do not read the serials to which I contribute,’ she went on.  ‘I have two or three things running.  There is The Judge’s Secret.’

‘What was that?’

‘He did it himself.’

‘Did what?’

’Killed the bishop.  He is not a very plausible judge in English:  in French he would be all right, a juge d’instruction, the man who cross-examines the prisoners in private, you know.’

‘Judges don’t do that in England,’ said Logan.

’No, but this case is an exception.  The judge was such a very old friend, a college friend, of the murdered bishop.  So he takes advantage of his official position, and steals into the cell of the accused.  My public does not know any better, and, of course, I have no reviewers.  I never come out in a book.’

‘And why did the judge assassinate the prelate?’

’The prelate knew too much about the judge, who sat in the Court of Probate and Divorce.’

‘Satan reproving sin?’ asked Logan.

‘Yes, exactly; and the bishop being interested in the case—­’

‘No scandal about Mrs. Proudie?’

‘No, not that exactly, still, you see the motive?’

‘I do,’ said Logan.  ‘And the conclusion?’

’The bishop was not really dead at all.  It takes some time to explain.  The corpus delicti—­you see I know my subject—­was somebody else.  And the bishop was alive, and secretly watching the judge, disguised as Mr. Sherlock Holmes.  Oh, I know it is too much in Dickens’s manner.  But my public has not read Dickens.’

‘You interest me keenly’ said Logan.

’I am glad to hear it.  And the penny public take freely.  Our circulation goes up.  I asked for a rise of three pence on the thousand words.’