"
"Have you the paper on you?"
"Ye-es, but what's the use of showing it? It's only a lot of scratches. All
the same, we might have 'em reproduced in the book on the front page."
"I'll attend to those details. Show me what your men wrote."
He pulled out of his pocket a sheet of note-paper, with a single line of
scratches upon it, and I put this carefully away.
"What is it supposed to mean in English?" I said.
"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps it means 'I'm beastly tired.' It's great nonsense,"
he repeated, "but all those men in the ship seem as real people to me. Do do
something to the notion soon; I should like to see it written and printed."
"But all you've told me would make a long book."
"Make it then. You've only to sit down and write it out."
"Give me a little time. Have you any more notions?"
"Not just now. I'm reading all the books I've bought. They're splendid."
When he had left I looked at the sheet of note-paper with the inscription upon
it. Then I took my head tenderly between both hands, to make certain that it
was not coming off or turning round.
Then--but there seemed to be no interval between quitting my rooms and finding
myself arguing with a policeman outside a door marked Private in a corridor of
the British Museum.
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