Queed: A Novel

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

The Colonel's gaze gradually softened. "You might have been worse employed; I compliment and congratulate you," said he; and then added: "Whether you have really caught the idea and mastered the technique or not, it is too soon to say. But I'll say frankly that this article is worth more to me than everything else that you've written for the Post put together."

"I am—ahem—gratified that you are pleased with it."

The Colonel, whose glance had gone out of the window, swung around in his chair and smote the table a testy blow.

"For the Lord's sake," he exploded, "get some heat in you! Squirt some color into your way of looking at things! Be kind and good-natured in your heart—just as I am at this moment—but for heaven's sake learn to write as if you were mad, and only kept from yelling by phenomenal will-power."

This was in early May. Many other talks upon the art of editorial writing did the two have, as the days went. The Colonel, mystified but pleased by revelations of actuality and life in his heretofore too-embalmed assistant, found an increasing interest in developing him. Here was a youth, with the qualities of potential great valuableness, and the wise editor, as soon as this appeared, gave him his chance by calling him off the fields of taxation and currency and assigning him to topics plucked alive from the day's news.

On the fatal 15th of May, the Colonel told Queed merely that the Post desired his work as long as it showed such promise as it now showed. That was all the talk about the dismissal that ever took place between them. The Colonel was no believer in fulsome praise for the young. But to others he talked more freely, and this was how it happened that the daughter of his old friend John Randolph Weyland knew that Mr. Queed was slated for an early march upstairs.

For Queed the summer had been a swift and immensely busy one. To write editorials that have a relation with everyday life, it gradually became clear to him that the writer must himself have some such relation. In June the Mercury Athletic Association had been thoroughly reorganized and rejuvenated, and regular meets were held every Saturday night. At Trainer Klinker's command, Queed had resolutely permitted himself to be inducted into the Mercury; moreover, he made it a point of honor to attend the Saturday night functions, where he had the ideal chance to match his physical competence against that of other men. Early in the sessions at the gymnasium, Buck had introduced his pupil to boxing-glove and punching-bag, his own special passions, and now his orders ran that the Doc should put on the gloves with any of the Mercuries that were willing. Most of the Mercuries were willing, and on these early Saturday nights, Stark's rocked with the falls of Dr. Queed. But under Klinker's stern discipline, he was already acquiring something like a form. By midsummer he had gained a small reputation for scientific precision buttressed by invincible inability to learn when he was licked, and autumn found many of the Mercuries decidedly less Barkis-like than of old.

Queed lived now in the glow of perfect physical health, a very different thing, as Fifi had once pointed out, from merely not feeling sick. In the remarkable development that his body was undergoing, he had found an unexpected pride. But the Mercury, though he hardly realized it at the time, was useful to him in a bigger way than bodily improvement.

Here he met young men who were most emphatically in touch with life. They treated him as an equal with reference to his waxing muscular efficiency, and with some respect as regards his journalistic connection. "Want you to shake hands with the editor of the Post," so kindly Buck would introduce him. After the bouts or the "exhibition" of a Saturday, there was always a smoker, and in the highly instructed and expert talk of his club-mates the Doctor learned many things that were to be of value to him later on. Some of the Mercuries, besides their picturesque general knowledge, knew much more about city politics than ever got into the papers. There was Jimmy Wattrous, for example, already rising into fame as Plonny Neal's most promising lieutenant. Jimmy bared his heart with the Mercuries, and was particularly friendly with the representative of the great power which moulds public opinion. Now and then, Neal himself looked in, Plonny, the great boss, who was said to hold the city in the hollow of his hand. Many an editorial that surprised and pleased Colonel Cowles was born in that square room back of Stark's.

And all these things took time ... took time.... And there were nights when Queed woke wide-eyed with cold sweat on his brow and the cold fear in his heart that he and posterity were being cheated, that he was making an irretrievable and ghastly blunder.