The Sins of Séverac Bablon | Page 8

that
invaluable collaborator. With his data presently arranged in better
mental order, he returned to the table and covered page after page with
facile reasoning. Then the drowsiness which he could not altogether
shake off crept upon him again, and staring at the words "Such
societies have existed in fiction, now we have one existing in fact," he
dropped into a doze--as the clock in the hall struck one.
When he awoke, with his chin on his breast, it was to observe, firstly,
that the MS. no longer lay on the pad, and, secondly, on looking up,
that a stranger sat in the arm-chair, opposite, reading it!
"Who----" began Sheard, starting to his feet.
Whereupon the stranger raised a white, protesting hand.
"Give me but one moment's grace, Mr. Sheard," he said quietly, "and I
will at once apologise and explain!"

"What do you mean?" rapped the journalist. "How dare you enter my
house in this way, and----" He broke off from sheer lack of words, for
this calm, scrupulously dressed intruder was something outside the
zone of things comprehensible.
In person he was slender, but of his height it was impossible to judge
accurately whilst he remained seated. He was perfectly attired in
evening-dress, and wore a heavy, fur-lined coat. A silk hat, by an
eminent hatter, stood upon Sheard's writing-table, a pair of gloves
beside it. A gold-mounted ebony walking-stick was propped against the
fireplace. But the notable and unusual characteristic of the man was his
face. Its beauty was literally amazing. Sheard, who had studied
black-and-white, told himself that here was an ideal head--that of
Apollo himself.
And this extraordinary man, with his absolutely flawless features
composed, and his large, luminous eyes half closed, lounged in
Sheard's study at half-past one in the early morning and toyed with an
unfinished manuscript--like some old and privileged friend who had
dropped in for a chat.
"Look here!" said the outraged pressman, stepping around the table as
the calm effrontery of the thing burst fully upon him. "Get out! Now!"
"Mr. Sheard," said the other, "if I apologise frankly and fully for my
intrusion, will you permit me to give my reasons for it?"
Sheard again found himself inarticulate. He was angrily conscious of a
vague disquiet. The visitor's suave courtesy under circumstances so
utterly unusual disarmed him, as it must have disarmed any average
man similarly situated. For a moment his left fist clenched, his mind
swung in the balance, irresolute. The other turned back a loose page
and quietly resumed his perusal of the manuscript.
That decided Sheard's attitude, and he laughed.
Whereat the stranger again raised the protestant hand.

"We shall awake Mrs. Sheard!" he said solicitously. "And now, as I see
you have decided to give me a hearing, let me begin by offering you
my sincere apology for entering your house uninvited."
Sheard, his mind filled with a sense of phantasy, dropped into a chair
opposite the visitor, reached into the cabinet at his elbow, and proffered
a box of Turkish cigarettes.
"Your methods place you beyond the reach of ordinary castigation," he
said. "I don't know your name and I don't know your business; but I
honestly admire your stark impudence!"
"Very well," replied the other in his quiet, melodious voice, with its
faint, elusive accent. "A compliment is intended, and I thank you! And
now, I see you are wondering how I obtained admittance. Yet it is so
simple. Your front door is not bolted, and Mrs. Sheard, but a few days
since, had the misfortune to lose a key. You recollect? I found that key!
Is it enough?"
"Quite enough!" said Sheard grimly. "But why go to the trouble? What
do you want?"
"I want to insure that one, at least, of the influential dailies shall not
persistently misrepresent my actions!"
"Then who----" began Sheard, and got no farther; for the stranger
handed him a card--
SÉVERAC BABLON
"You see," continued the man already notorious in two continents,
"your paper, here, is inaccurate in several important particulars! Your
premises are incorrect, and your inferences consequently wrong!"
Sheard stared at him, silent, astounded.
"I have been described in the Press of England and America as an
incendiary, because I burned the Runek Mills; as a maniac, because I

compensated men cruelly thrown out of employment; as a thief,
because I took from the rich in Park Lane and gave to the poor on the
Embankment. I say that this is unjust!"
His eyes gleamed into a sudden blaze. The delicate, white hand that
held Sheard's manuscript gripped it so harshly that the paper was
crushed into a ball. That Séverac Bablon was mad seemed an
unavoidable conclusion; that he was forceful, dominant, a power to be
counted with, was a truth legible in every line of