Wallace Carpenter and Hamilton, the journalist, seated against the sun-warmed bench of Mrs. Hathaway's boarding-house, commented on the band as it stumbled in to the wash-room.
“Those men don't know how big they are,” remarked the journalist. “That's the way with most big men. And that man Thorpe belongs to another age. I'd like to get him to telling his experiences; he'd be a gold mine to me.”
“And would require about as much trouble to 'work,'” laughed Wallace. “He won't talk.”
“That's generally the trouble, confound 'em,” sighed Hamilton. “The fellows who CAN talk haven't anything to say; and those who have something to tell are dumb as oysters. I've got him in though.” He spread one of a roll of papers on his knees. “I got a set of duplicates for you. Thought you might like to keep them. The office tells me,” he concluded modestly, “that they are attracting lots of attention, but are looked upon as being a rather clever sort of fiction.”
Wallace picked up the sheet. His eye was at once met by the heading, “'So long, boys,'” in letters a half inch in height, and immediately underneath in smaller type, “said Jimmy Powers, and threw his hat in the face of death.”
“It's all there,” explained the journalist, “—the jam and the break, and all this magnificent struggle afterwards. It makes a great yarn. I feel tempted sometimes to help it out a little—artistically, you know—but of course that wouldn't do. She'd make a ripping yarn, though, if I could get up some motive outside mere trade rivalry for the blowing up of those dams. That would just round it off.”
Wallace Carpenter was about to reply that such a motive actually existed, when the conversation was interrupted by the approach of Thorpe and Big Junko. The former looked twenty years older after his winter. His eye was dull, his shoulders drooped, his gait was inelastic. The whole bearing of the man was that of one weary to the bone.
“I've got something here to show you, Harry,” cried Wallace Carpenter, waving one of the papers. “It was a great drive and here's something to remember it by.”
“All right, Wallace, by and by,” replied Thorpe dully. “I'm dead. I'm going to turn in for a while. I need sleep more than anything else. I can't think now.”
He passed through the little passage into the “parlor bed-room,” which Mrs. Hathaway always kept in readiness for members of the firm. There he fell heavily asleep almost before his body had met the bed.