For a few moments Humphrey hesitated a little nervously. He was a minute or two in advance of the time appointed for the interview, and he stood there, irresolute, filled with a wondrous sense of expectancy, among the crowd that hurried to and fro. He noticed on the other side of the road a bearded man, in a silk hat and a frayed overcoat, sitting on a doorstep at the top of Whitefriars Street. The man had a keen, intelligent face with blue eyes. It was the shiny silk hat that leapt to Humphrey's notice, it seemed so out of keeping with the rest of the man's clothes. Besides, why should a man in a silk hat sit on a doorstep.... Years later the man was still there, every day, sitting sphinx-like, surveying those who passed him ... he must have marked their faces grow older.
The commissionaire regarded Humphrey critically. It was the business of the commissionaire in The Day office, especially, to be a judge of character. He divided callers into two main classes—those who wanted to see the editor, and those whom the editor wanted to see. The two classes were quite distinct, and there were few who, like Humphrey Quain, belonged to both.
"Yes, by appointment," said Humphrey, a little proudly, to the commissionaire's cold question that rose like a wall to so many callers.
He was shown into a little room, and made to fill up a form—name, address and business. The next minute a boy in a green uniform led him up a flight of stairs, through the ante-room where the pink-cheeked Trinder sat typewriting diligently, and so to Ferrol's room.
Humphrey had a confused impression of a broad, high room, of a man sitting at a desk miles away at the farther end of the room by the half-curtained window; of red walls hung with files of newspapers, and the contents bills of that day; of a Louis XVI. clock, all scrolls and cupids, bringing a queer touch of drawing-room leisure with it; and of telephones and buttons that surrounded the man at the desk. The buttons fascinated him: he saw that thin slips of ivory labelled them with the names of the different departments—Editor, News-Editor, Reporters, Sub-Editors, Advertisement Manager, Business Manager, Literary Editor, Sporting Editor, City Editor, Foreign Editor—the whole of the building, with all its workers, seemed to be within the reach of Ferrol's fingers. He was like the captain of a great ship, navigating the paper from this room, steering daily through the perilous journey. Humphrey remembered afterwards how he was possessed with an odd longing; he wanted to see Ferrol press all the buttons at once, to hear the bones of the paper, the framework on which it was built up each day, come clattering and rattling into the room.
Ferrol looked up from his papers, pushed back his round, upholstered chair that tipped slightly on its axis, and the room with its red walls and carpet suddenly faded from Humphrey, and he became aware only of a face that looked at him ... a masterful, powerful face, strong in every feature, from the thick, closely-knit eyebrows below the broad forehead, to the round, large chin. There was something insistent in this face of Ferrol, with its steel-coloured eyes, that hardened or softened with his moods, and its black moustache, that bulged heavily over his upper lip and gave him an appearance of rugged ferocity.
Humphrey felt as if he were a squirming thing under the microscope.... That was the way of Ferrol—everything depended on the first impression that he received; all his being was tautened to receive that first impression. It was a narrow system of judging character, but he made few mistakes.... They were quickly corrected. He never forgave those who deceived him by wearing a mask over their true selves.
There is not the slightest doubt that Humphrey felt a little nervous—who would not, with Ferrol's eyes boring through one?—but he knew that great issues were at stake. He carried his head high, and his eyes met Ferrol's without a quiver. Thus he stood by the table for five seconds, though it seemed as many minutes to him, until Ferrol told him to sit down.
"So you want to come on The Day," was the way Ferrol began. They were eye to eye all the while.
"Yes, sir," said Humphrey, briskly. Somehow or other, with the sound of Ferrol's voice all his nervousness departed. It was the silence that had made him feel awkward.