I saw a query in his eye as he looked at me, and I went on:
“They are loaded—that's the reason—loaded to the muzzle, and they'd come pretty near blowing up your establishment. You know my reputation possibly.”
“Oh, very well.”
“Then you know that I am not in the habit of going off at half-cock. I tell you the facts would put you squarely on the Judas roll, and it isn't a popular part to play. Briefly, the facts are: Norris suffered for a friend, and that puts him on a plane so high that it isn't safe to touch him.”
“On your word, Mr. Potter, I will do what I can to kill the story—now and hereafter,” said he. “The young man who wrote it is a decent fellow and will soon be in my employ. But of course Norris will decline to be put in high places.”
Even this enlightened editor saw that a man who had suffered prison blight was a kind of frost-bitten plum. I left him with a feeling of discouragement in the world and its progress.
Before a week had passed I was summoned to the home of Norris and found him ill in bed. He was in the midst of a nervous breakdown which had seemed to begin with a critical attack of indigestion. It wearied him even to sign and execute his will, and I saw him for only a few minutes, and not again for months.
He improved rapidly, and one day Gwendolyn Norris called at my office.
The family were sailing for Hamburg within a week to spend the rest of the winter at Carlsbad and Saint Moritz. She said:
“Father wishes me to begin my business career, and so I've been looking after the details, and you must tell me if there's anything that I have forgotten.”