III

When the Professor left Harviss’s office, the manuscript remained behind.  He thought he had been taken by the huge irony of the situation—­by the enlarged circumference of the joke.  In its original form, as Harviss had said, the book would have addressed itself to a very limited circle:  now it would include the world.  The elect would understand; the crowd would not; and his work would thus serve a double purpose.  And, after all, nothing was changed in the situation; not a word of the book was to be altered.  The change was merely in the publisher’s point of view, and in the “tip” he was to give the reviewers.  The Professor had only to hold his tongue and look serious.

These arguments found a strong reinforcement in the large premium which expressed Harviss’s sense of his opportunity.  As a satire, the book would have brought its author nothing; in fact, its cost would have come out of his own pocket, since, as Harviss assured him, no publisher would have risked taking it.  But as a profession of faith, as the recantation of an eminent biologist, whose leanings had hitherto been supposed to be toward a cold determinism, it would bring in a steady income to author and publisher.  The offer found the Professor in a moment of financial perplexity.  His illness, his unwonted holiday, the necessity of postponing a course of well-paid lectures, had combined to diminish his resources; and when Harviss offered him an advance of a thousand dollars the esoteric savour of the joke became irresistible.  It was still as a joke that he persisted in regarding the transaction; and though he had pledged himself not to betray the real intent of the book, he held in petto the notion of some day being able to take the public into his confidence.  As for the initiated, they would know at once:  and however long a face he pulled, his colleagues would see the tongue in his cheek.  Meanwhile it fortunately happened that, even if the book should achieve the kind of triumph prophesied by Harviss, it would not appreciably injure its author’s professional standing.  Professor Linyard was known chiefly as a microscopist.  On the structure and habits of a certain class of coleoptera he was the most distinguished living authority; but none save his intimate friends knew what generalizations on the destiny of man he had drawn from these special studies.  He might have published a treatise on the Filioque without disturbing the confidence of those on whose approval his reputation rested; and moreover he was sustained by the thought that one glance at his book would let them into its secret.  In fact, so sure was he of this that he wondered the astute Harviss had cared to risk such speedy exposure.  But Harviss had probably reflected that even in this reverberating age the opinions of the laboratory do not easily reach the street; and the Professor, at any rate, was not bound to offer advice on this point.