“What if I am?”
“I’ve just happened along to have a few quiet words with you. If there’s no callers Saturdays, why, that’s exactly what I want, and I came right in because you didn’t answer my knock.”
“I tell you I’m not supposed to be here.”
“Then you shouldn’t draw corks while anybody is damaging the paint outside.”
Spencer smiled so agreeably that the editor of “The Firefly” softened. At first, he had taken his visitor for an unpaid contributor; but the American accent banished this phantom of the imagination. He continued to pour into a tumbler the contents of a bottle of beer.
“Well,” he said, “now that you are here, what can I do for you, Mr.——”
“Spencer—Charles K. Spencer.”
Instantly it struck the younger man that little more than an hour had elapsed since he gave his name to the letter clerk in the hotel. The singularity of his proceedings during that hour was thereby brought home to him. He knew nothing of newspapers, daily or weekly; but commonsense suggested that “The Firefly’s” radiance was not over-powering. His native shrewdness advised caution, though he felt sure that he could, in homely phrase, twist this faded journalist round his little finger.
“Before I open the ball,” he said, “may I see a copy of your magazine?”