Queed Part 13

"It is extraordinary that such a position should be held by a girl like you, who can have no scientific knowledge of the many complex problems.... However," he said, a ray of brightness lightening his displeasure, "your State is notoriously backward in this field. Your department, I fancy, can hardly be more than rudimentary."

"It will be much, much more than that in another year or two. Why, we're only four years old!"

"So this is why you are interested in having editorials written about reformatories. It is a reformatory for women that you wish to establish?"

"How did you know?"

"I merely argue from the fact that your State is so often held up to reproach for lack of one. What is the plan?"

"We are asking," said the a.s.sistant Secretary, "for a hundred thousand dollars--sixty thousand to buy the land and build, forty thousand for equipment and two years' support. Modest enough, is it not? Of course we shall not get a penny from the present legislature. Legislatures love to say no; it dearly flatters their little vanity. We are giving them the chance to say no now. Then when they meet again, two years from now, we trust that they will be ready to give us what we ask--part of it, at any rate. We can make a start with seventy-five thousand dollars."

Queed was moved to magnanimity. "Look here. You have been civil to me--I will write that article for you Myself."

While Sharlee had become aware that the little Doctor was interested, really interested, in talking social science with her, she thought he must be crazy to offer such a contribution of his time. A guilty pink stole into her cheek. A reformatory article by Mr. Queed would doubtless be scientifically pluperfect, but n.o.body would read it. Colonel Cowles, on the other hand, had never even heard of Willoughby and Smathers; but when he wrote an article people read it, and the humblest understood exactly what he was driving at.

"Why--it's very nice of you to offer to help us, but I couldn't think of imposing on your time--"

"Naturally not," said he, decisively; "but it happens that we have decided to allow a breathing-s.p.a.ce in my series on taxation, that the public may digest what I have already written. I am therefore free to discuss other topics for a few days. For to-morrow's issue, I am a.n.a.lyzing certain little understood industrial problems in Bavaria. On the following day--"

"It's awfully good of you to think of it," said Sharlee, embarra.s.sed by his grave gaze. "I can't tell you how I appreciate it. But--but--you see, there's a lot of special detail that applies to this particular case alone--oh, a great lot of it--little facts connected with peculiar State conditions and--and the history of our department, you know--and I have talked it over so thoroughly with the Colonel--"

"Here is Colonel Cowles now."

She breathed a sigh. Colonel Cowles, entering with the breath of winter upon him, greeted her affectionately. Queed, rather relieved that his too hasty offer had not been accepted, noted with vexation that his conversation with the agent had cost him eighteen minutes of time.

Vigorously he readdressed himself to the currency problems of the Bavarians; the girl's good-night, as applied to him, fell upon ears deafer than any post.

Sharlee walked home through the tingling twilight; fourteen blocks, and she did them four times a day. It was a still evening, clear as a bell and very cold; already stars were pushing through the dim velvet round; all the world lay white with a light hard snow, crusted and sparkling under the street lights. Her private fear about the whole matter was that Queed Senior was a person of a criminal mode of life, who, discovering the need of a young helper, was somehow preparing to sound and size up his long-neglected son.

VII

_In which an a.s.sistant Editor, experiencing the Common Desire to thrash a Proof-Reader, makes a Humiliating Discovery; and of how Trainer Klinker gets a Pupil the Same Evening._

The industrial problems of the Bavarians seemed an inoffensive thesis enough, but who can evade Destiny?

Queed never read his own articles when they appeared in print in the _Post_. In this peculiarity he may be said to have resembled all the rest of the world, with the exception of the Secretary of the Tax Reform League, and the a.s.sistant Secretary of the State Department of Charities. But not by any such device, either, can a man elude his Fate.

On the day following his conversation with Mrs. Paynter's agent, Fortune gave Queed to hear a portion of his article on the Bavarians read aloud, and read with derisive laughter.

The incident occurred on a street-car, which he had taken because of the heavy snow-fall: another ill.u.s.tration of the tiny instruments with which Providence works out its momentous designs. Had he not taken the car--he was on the point of not taking it, when one whizzed invitingly up--he would never have heard of the insult that the Post's linotype had put upon him, and the course of his life might have been different. As it was, two men on the next seat in front were reading the Post and making merry.

"... '_A lengthy procession of fleas hara.s.sed the diet._' Now what in the name of Bob ..."

Gradually the sentence worked its way into the closed fastness of the young man's mind. It had a horrible familiarity, like a ghastly parody on something known and dear. With a quick movement he leaned forward, peering over the shoulder of the man who held the paper.

The man looked around, surprised and annoyed by the strange face breaking in so close to his own, but Queed paid no attention to him. Yes ... it was his article they were mocking at--HIS article. He remembered the pa.s.sage perfectly. He had written: "A lengthy procession of pleas hara.s.sed the Diet." His trained eye swept rapidly down the half column of print. There it was! "A procession of fleas." In _his_ article!

Fleas, unclean, odious vermin, in His Article!

Relatively, Queed cared nothing about his work on the _Post_, but for all the children of his brain, even the smallest and feeblest, he had a peculiar tenderness. He was more jealous of them than a knight of his honor, or a beauty of her complexion. No insult to his character could have enraged him like a slight put upon the least of these his articles.

He sat back in his seat, feeling white, and something clicked inside his head. He remembered having heard that click once before. It was the night he determined to evolve the final theory of social progress, which would wipe out all other theories as the steam locomotive had wiped out the prairie schooner.

He knew well enough what that click meant now. He had got a new purpose, and that was to exact personal reparation from the criminal who had made Him and His Work the b.u.t.t of street-car loafers. Never, it seemed to him, could he feel clean again until he had wiped off those fleas with gore.

To his grim inquiry Colonel Cowles replied that the head proof-reader, Mr. Pat, was responsible for typographical errors, and Mr. Pat did not "come on" till 6.30. It was now but 5.50. Queed sat down, wrote his next day's article and handed it to the Colonel, who read the t.i.tle and coughed.

"I shall require no article from you to-morrow or next day. On the following day"--here the Colonel opened a drawer and consulted a schedule--"I shall receive with pleasure your remarks on 'Fundamental Principles of Distribution--Article Four.'"

Queed ascended to the next floor, a noisy, discordant floor, full of metal tables on castors, and long stone-topped tables not on castors, and Mergenthaler machines, and slanting desk-like structures holding fonts of type. Rough board part.i.tions rose here and there; over everything hung the deadly scent of acids from the engravers' room.

"That's him now," said an ink-smeared lad, and nodded toward a tall, gangling, mustachioed fellow in a black felt hat who had just come up the stairs.

Queed marched straight for the little cubbyhole where the proof-readers and copy-holders sweated through their long nights.

"You are Mr. Pat, head proof-reader of the _Post_?"

"That's me, sor," said Mr. Pat, and he turned with rather a sharp glance at the other's tone.

"What excuse have you to offer for making my article ridiculous and me a common b.u.t.t?"

"An' who the divil may you be, please?"

"I am Mr. Queed, special editorial writer for this paper. Look at this."

He handed over the folded _Post_, with the typographical enormity heavily underscored in blue. "What do you mean by falsifying my language and putting into my mouth an absurd observation about the most loathsome of vermin?"

Mr. Pat was at once chagrined and incensed. He happened, further, to be in most sensitive vein as regards little oversights in his department.

His professional pride was tortured with the recollection that, only three days before, he had permitted the _Post_ to refer to old Major Lamar as "that immortal veterinary," and upon the _Post's_ seeking to retrieve itself the next day, at the Major's insistent demand, he had fallen into another error. The hateful words had come out as "immoral veteran."

"Now look here!" said he, "there's nothing to be gained talking that way. Ye've got me--I'll give ye that! But what do ye expect?--eighty columns of type a night and niver a little harmless slip--?"

"You must be taught to make no slips with my articles. I'm going to punish you for that--"

"What-a-at! Say that agin!"

"Stand out here--I am going to give you a good thrashing. I shall whip ..."

Another man would have laughed heartily and told the young man to trot away while the trotting was good. He was nearly half a foot shorter than Mr. Pat, and his face advertised his unmartial customs. But Mr. Pat had the swift fierce pa.s.sions of his race; and it became to him an unendurable thing to be thus bearded by a little spectacled person in his own den. He saw red; and out shot his good right arm.

The little Doctor proved a good sailer, but bad at making a landing. His course was arched, smooth, and graceful, but when he stopped, he did it so bluntly that men working two stories below looked up to ask each other who was dead. Typesetters left their machines and hurried up, fearing that here was a case for ambulance or undertaker. But they saw the fallen editor pick himself up, with a face of stupefied wonder, and immediately start back toward the angry proof-reader.

Mr. Pat lowered redly on his threshhold. "G'awn now! Get away!"

Queed came to a halt a pace away and stood looking at him.

"G'awn, I tell ye! I don't want no more of your foolin'!"

The young man, arms hanging inoffensively by his side, stared at him with a curious fixity.