CHAPTER XXVIII
By the end of the first week in June Cleland was in a highly excited state of mind in regard to his infant novel, in which all the principals were now on the edge of catastrophe.
"I don't know how they got there," he said nervously to Badger Spink, who had dropped in to suggest himself as illustrator in case any magazine took the story for serial publication.
Spink's clever, saturnine features remained noncommittal. If Cleland turned out to be a coming man, he wished to participate and benefit; if he proved a failure he desired to remain pleasantly aloof.
For the only thing in the world that interested Badger Spink was his own success in life; and he had a horror of contaminating it by any professional association with mediocrity or failure.
"What's your story about?" he inquired with that bluntness that usually passed for the disinterested frankness of good comradeship.
"Oh, it's about a writer of stories," said Cleland, vaguely.
"He's the hero?"
"If you'd call him that. What is a hero, Spink? I never saw one in real life."
Spink squinted. It was his way of grinning.