With these things, and others, as a beginning, I began to add page to page, phase to phase; and, in a time the shortness of which astonished myself, I had pretty well covered the whole of the first ten years of our friendship. Maschka called rather less, and Schofield rather more frequently, than I could have wished; and my surmise that he, at least, was in love with her, quickly became a certainty. This was to be seen when they called together. It was when they came together that something else also became apparent. This was their slightly derisive attitude towards the means by which I had attained my success. It was not the less noticeable that it took the form of compliments on the outward and visible results. Singly I could manage them; together they were inclined to get a little out of hand. I would have taxed them fairly and squarely with this, singly or together, but for one thing--the beautiful ease with which the "Life" was proceeding. Never had I felt so completely _en rapport_ with my subject. So beautifully was the thing running that I had had the idle fancy of some actual urge from Andriaovsky himself; and each night, before sitting down to work, I set his portrait at my desk's end, as if it had been some kind of an observance. The most beautiful result of all was, that I felt what I had not felt for five years--that I too was not "doing" my work, but actually living and being it. At times I took up the sheets I had written as ignorant of their contents as if they had proceeded from another pen--so freshly they came to me. And once, I vow, I found, in my own handwriting, a Polish name, that I might (it is true) have subconsciously heard at some time or other, but that stirred no chord in my memory even when I saw it written. Maschka checked and confirmed it afterwards; and I did not tell her by what odd circumstance it had issued from my pen. 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.