"What's up?" chorused Jamieson and Willoughby.
"Lord knows!" he gasped. "He wants me to go somewhere or the other with him."
"Most certainly you are either going to be sacked or have your salary raised," remarked Willoughby. "But if you are going to be made editor, be kind to us when you are all-powerful."
"Ass!" laughed Humphrey, in reply.
He went back. Ferrol made a noise of satisfaction, and led the way out of his room, carefully switching off the lights. Down the stairs they went, side by side, Humphrey walking beside the mighty Ferrol, just as he did in his dreams. Down the stairs they went, and the men coming up—his colleagues—raised their hats to Ferrol, for they always gave him respect, and the heart of him throbbed with the strangeness of it all.
The commissionaire saluted stiffly, and gazed at Humphrey with a new esteem. A small boy in uniform darted with haste before them, and opened the door of a limousine car, reflecting the lights of the night in its lacquered brilliance. The chauffeur touched the polished peak of his hat. It seemed that everybody paid homage to Ferrol, greatest of all men in the eyes of Humphrey Quain.
For this man was the symbol, the personification of the Street and the paper for which he had worked with all his heart, with all his might, and with all his soul.
He stood aside to let Ferrol step into the car first, but Ferrol, with a smile, urged him into the lighted interior. He received an impression of superlative comfort and riches in that small, blue-lined room with its little electric lamp overhead. There were rugs of deliciously soft camel-hair, and, as he settled in the yielding cushions, his outstretched feet struck something hard, that gave warmth instantly, even through the leather of his boots. A silver cone-shaped holder, filled with red roses, confronted him; their very scent suggested ease and luxury. There were touches of silver everywhere: an ash-tray at his right hand, a whistle attached to a speaking tube, and a row of books in a silver case—an A B C Railway Guide, a diary, an address book, and a postal guide. They gave the Ferrol touch of concentrated energy, even in these surroundings of comfortable, upholstered rest.
The car sped along with a soft movement, almost noiseless, except for the low purring of its engines. Through the windows, past the strong face of Ferrol, he caught glimpses of a wet world with people walking upon their own reflections in the glistening pavements, of ragged beggars slouching along with hunched-up shoulders, of streaming crowds passing and repassing, ignoring entirely the passage of this splendid, immaculate room on wheels, never questioning the right of those people within it to the shelter which was denied to them.
And he felt extraordinarily remote from all these people: an odd thrill of contempt for them moved him to think: "What fools they are not to get cars for themselves." It was as if he had been suddenly translated to another world: a world inhabited by a superior race of men and women, almost god-like in the power of their possessions, who looked down on other struggling mortals from their exalted plane, with a vision blurred by warmth and security.