8

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. Simpson Street was quiet after the brisk business of the morning. The air quivered up from the pavement in the still heat. The occasional people about the street moved slowly. The collars of the few visible tradesmen were soft rags around their necks and they mopped red faces with saturated handkerchiefs. The morning breeze had died; the afternoon breeze would drift in at four o'clock or so; until which time Sunbury ladies took their naps and Sunbury business men dozed at their desks. Saturday closing had not made much headway at this period, though the still novel game of golf was beginning to work its mighty change in small-town life.

Through this calm scene, absorbed in their affairs, unaware of the heat, strode Humphrey and Henry—down past the long hotel veranda, where the yellow rocking chairs stood in endless empty rows, past Swanson's and Donovan's and Jackson's book store to the meat market and then, rapidly, up the long stairway.

They found McGibbon with his long legs stretched out under his desk, hands deep in pockets, thin face lined and weary, but eyes nervously bright as always. He was in his shirt-sleeves, of course. His drab brown hair seemed a little longer and even more ragged than usual where it met his wilted collar.

But he grinned at them, and waved a long hand.

'My God!' he cried, 'but it's good to see a human face. Look!' His hand swept around, indicating the dusty, deserted desks and the open press-room door. It was still out there; not a man hummed or whistled as he clicked type into his stick, not one of the four job presses rumbled out its cheerful drone of industry.

'Rats all gone!' McGibbon added. 'But the Caliph was up again.'

'Yes,' Henry, who found himself suddenly and deeply moved, breathed softly, 'we know.'

'Came up a hundred. He'll pay six hundred now. For all this. An actual investment of more'n four thousand.' The hand waved again. 'It's amusing. He doesn't know I'm on to him. You see the old fox's been nosing around to get up a petition to throw me into involuntary bankruptcy, but he can't find any creditors. Has to be five hundred dollars, you know.'

'What did you say to him?' asked Humphrey, thoughtfully.

'Showed him out. Second time to-day. It was a hard climb for him, too. He did puff some.'

Humphrey slowly drew a large envelope from an inner pocket and laid it on the table at his elbow.

McGibbon eyed it alertly.

'Here!' he said, his hand moving up toward the row of four or five cigars that projected from a vest pocket, 'smoke up, you fellows.'

Henry shook his head. Humphrey drew out his pipe; then raised his head, and said quietly:—

'Listen!'

There came the unmistakable sound of heavy feet on the stairs. Steadily, step by step, a slowly moving body mounted.

Then, framed in the doorway, stood the huge bulk of Norton P. Boice, breathless, red, and wet of face, his old straw hat pushed back, his yellowish-white, wavy beard covering his necktie and the upper part of his roundly protruding, slightly spotted vest, against which the heavy watch chain with its dangling fraternal insignia stood out prominently.

Boice's eyes, nearly expressionless, finally settled on Humphrey.

'What are you doing here?' he asked, between puffs.

Humphrey's only reply was a slight impatient gesture.

'You oughta be at your desk.'

Then he came into the room. Of the three men seated there Humphrey was the only one who knew by certain small external signs, that the Caliph of Simpson Street was blazing with wrath. For here was his own hired lieutenant hobnobbing with the boy whose agile, irresponsible pen had made him the laughing stock of the township and with the intemperate rival who had first attacked and then defied him. And then he had just climbed the stairs for the third and what he meant to be the last time.

He came straight to business.

'Have you decided to accept my offer?'

'Sit down,' said McGibbon, pushing a chair over with his foot.

Boice ignored this final bit of insolence.

'Have you decided to accept my offer?'

'Well'—McGibbon shrugged; spread out his hands—'I've decided nothing, but as it looks now I may find myself forced to accept it.'

'Then I suggest that you accept it now.'

'Well——' the hands went out again.

'Wait a moment,' said Humphrey.

'I think you had better go back to the office,' Boice broke in.

'Shortly. I have no intention of leaving you in the lurch, Mr Boice. But first I have business here.'

'You have business!'

'Yes.' Humphrey opened the large envelope. 'Here, McGibbon, is your note to Henry for one thousand dollars, due in November.'

Before their eyes, deliberately, he tore it up, leaned over McGibbon's legs with an, 'I beg your pardon!' and dropped the pieces in the waste-basket. Next he produced a folded document engraved in green and red ink. 'Here,' he concluded, 'is a four per cent, railway bond that stands to-day at a hundred two and a quarter in the market. That's our price for the Gleaner.'

McGibbon's nervous eyes followed the movements of Humphrey's hands as if fascinated. During the hush that followed he sat motionless, chin on breast. Then, slowly, he drew in his legs, straightened up, reached for the bond, turned it over, opened it and ran his eye over the coupons, looked up and remarked:—

'The paper's yours.'

'Then, Mr Boice,' said Humphrey, 'the next issue of the Gleaner will be published by Weaver and Calverly, and the stories you object to will run their course.'

But Mr Boice, creaking deliberately over the floor, was just disappearing through the doorway.'