CHARLES FERMIN, ESQ.,
Offices of the Orb,
Strand,
London.
I had received the letter at breakfast. I took a cab, and drove straight to the Orb.
A painted hand, marked “Editorial,” indicated a flight of stairs. At the top of these I was confronted by a glass door, beyond which, entrenched behind a desk, sat a cynical-looking youth. A smaller boy in the background talked into a telephone. Both were giggling. On seeing me the slightly larger of the two advanced with a half-hearted attempt at solemnity, though unable to resist a Parthian shaft at his companion, who was seized on the instant with a paroxysm of suppressed hysteria.
My letter was taken down a mysterious stone passage. After some waiting the messenger returned with the request that I would come back at eleven, as Mr. Fermin would be very busy till then.
I went out into the Strand, and sought a neighbouring hostelry. It was essential that I should be brilliant at the coming interview, if only spirituously brilliant; and I wished to remove a sensation of stomachic emptiness, such as I had been wont to feel at school when approaching the headmaster’s study.
At eleven I returned, and asked again for Mr. Fermin; and presently he appeared—a tall, thin man, who gave one the impression of being in a hurry. I knew him by reputation as a famous quarter-miler. He had been president of the O.U.A.C. some years back. He looked as if at any moment he might dash off in any direction at quarter-mile pace.
We shook hands, and I tried to look intelligent.
“Sorry to have to keep you waiting,” he said, as we walked to his club; “but we are always rather busy between ten and eleven, putting the column through. Gresham and I do ‘On Your Way,’ you know. The last copy has to be down by half-past ten.”
We arrived at the Club, and sat in a corner of the lower smoking-room.
“Macrae says that you are going in for writing. Of course, I’ll do anything I can, but it isn’t easy to help a man. As it happens, though, I can put you in the way of something, if it’s your style of work. Do you ever do verse?”