Part 56

"This is the editorial office of Good Humour, is it not?" inquired the stranger.

"It is."

"Is the editor in?"

"The editor is out."

"The sub-editor?" suggested the stranger.

"I am the sub-editor."

The stranger raised his eyebrows. Tommy, on the contrary, lowered hers.

"Would you mind glancing through that?" The stranger drew from his pocket a folded manuscript. "It will not take you a moment. I ought, of course, to have sent it through the post; but I am so tired of sending things through the post."

The stranger's manner was compounded of dignified impudence combined with pathetic humility. His eyes both challenged and pleaded. Tommy held out her hand for the paper and retired with it behind the protection of the big editorial desk that, flanked on one side by a screen and on the other by a formidable revolving bookcase, stretched fortress-like across the narrow room. The stranger remained standing.

"Yes. It's pretty," criticised the sub-editor. "Worth printing, perhaps, not worth paying for."

"Not merely a--a nominal sum, sufficient to distinguish it from the work of the amateur?"

Tommy pursed her lips. "Poetry is quite a drug in the market. We can get as much as we want of it for nothing."

"Say half a crown," suggested the stranger.

Tommy shot a swift glance across the desk, and for the first time saw the whole of him. He was clad in a threadbare, long, brown ulster--long, that is, it would have been upon an ordinary man, but the stranger happening to be remarkably tall, it appeared on him ridiculously short, reaching only to his knees. Round his neck and tucked into his waistcoat, thus completely hiding the shirt and collar he may have been wearing or may not, was carefully arranged a blue silk muffler. His hands, which were bare, looked blue and cold. Yet the black frock-coat and waistcoat and French grey trousers bore the unmistakable cut of a first-class tailor and fitted him to perfection. His hat, which he had rested on the desk, shone resplendent, and the handle of his silk umbrella was an eagle's head in gold, with two small rubies for the eyes.

"You can leave it if you like," consented Tommy. "I'll speak to the editor about it when he returns."

"You won't forget it?" urged the stranger.

"No," answered Tommy. "I shall not forget it."

Her black eyes were fixed upon the stranger without her being aware of it. She had dropped unconsciously into her "stocktaking" attitude.

"Thank you very much," said the stranger. "I will call again to-morrow."

The stranger, moving backward to the door, went out.

Tommy sat with her face between her hands. Czerny's Exercises lay neglected.

"Anybody called?" asked Peter Hope.

"No," answered Tommy. "Oh, just a man. Left this--not bad."

"The old story," mused Peter, as he unfolded the manuscript. "We all of us begin with poetry. Then we take to prose romances; poetry doesn't pay. Finally, we write articles: 'How to be Happy though Married,' 'What shall we do with our Daughters?' It is life summarised. What is it all about?"

"Oh, the usual sort of thing," explained Tommy. "He wants half a crown for it."

"Poor devil! Let him have it."

"That's not business," growled Tommy.

"Nobody will ever know," said Peter. "We'll enter it as 'telegrams.'"