Up a dark staircase we went, and at the summit were half flung back again by another self-acting door.
In the room to which we next came an old man and a youngish one were bent over a large, littered table, scribbling on and arranging pieces of grey tissue paper and telegrams. Behind the old man stood a boy. Neither of them looked up.
"Mr Buchanan in his—" the doctor began to question. "Oh! There you are!"
The editor was standing in hat and muffler at the window, gazing out. His age was about that of the doctor—forty or so; and like the doctor he was rather stout and clean-shaven. Their Scotch accents mingled in greeting, the doctor's being the more marked. Buchanan shook my hand with a certain courtliness, indicating that he was well accustomed to receive strangers. As an expert in small talk, however, he shone no brighter than his visitors, and the three of us stood there by the window awkwardly in the heaped disorder of the room, while the other two men scratched and fidgeted with bits of paper at the soiled table.
Suddenly and savagely the old man turned on the boy:
"What the hades are you waiting there for?"
"I thought there was something else, sir."
"Sling your hook."
Buchanan winked at Stirling and me as the boy slouched off and the old man blandly resumed his writing.
"Perhaps you'd like to look over the place?" Buchanan suggested politely to me. "I'll come with you. It's all I'm fit for to-day.... 'Flu!" He glanced at Stirling, and yawned.