In a furious rage with the universe as constituted, he marched blindly out of the house and straight across the pavement with intent to quit even her side of the road. His brain in a whirl, he looked neither to right nor left, careless of an environment which was at that moment scarcely real to him. He only half-heard the raucous scream of a Klaxon horn, a warning human shout—and then something struck him violently on the side, followed it with a crashing blow on his head.
He could not see Betty’s face, tense and white, bending over his senseless body as it was extricated from under James Arrowsmith’s plutocratic car and—after her emphatic prohibition of hospital—borne into her father’s house.
* * * * * *
He felt himself shoot upward in the vast, familiar elevator of the Daily Rostrum building. His head was full of important business, interviews with Senators, statesmen, financiers which had filled his busy day. With practised mental control he screened these matters temporarily from his consciousness, cleared his brain for the immediate tasks which awaited him. The elevator stopped opposite a door which bore his name. As he opened it he heard, with the little glow of observed success, the awed recognitory whisper of one of the two seedy journalists he left behind him in the lift: “The Editor!”
He entered the big room hung with wall-maps above the low-ranged bookcases, where a lady clerk was arranging his afternoon tea on a little table by the side of his massive desk. His secretary, evidently alert for his entrance, appeared at another door.
“Mr. Bolingbroke is waiting to see you, sir!”
“Good! Show him in!”
He settled himself in his big chair, glanced at the pile of papers on his desk, looked up to nod a curt greeting to the keen-faced young man who entered.
“Five minutes, Mr. Bolingbroke!” he said warningly, with a gesture toward the papers which awaited him.
The young man smiled.