“Let him sit a bit longer. It’s a regular park bench out there, anyway——”
It was the dragging sock that attracted Dicky Cobden—a bit of mindless art on the part of the office boy that somehow aroused the young man by the dreary manuscript pile. Dicky’s world was now full of people who thought they had the story of the age; people who wanted to see the publisher himself; people afraid to trust their manuscripts to the mails; a world of such, coming up through great tribulation, but only here and there a dragging sock. He took a chance now and volunteered to Higgins to clear that bit of seat space in the reception room, if possible.
A dark-faced young man arose to meet him outside. Tired—that was the word that bored into Cobden’s mind with new meaning. There was something potent in the weariness of the black eyes, a deadly sort of patience that rarely goes with brilliance. Dicky was slightly above medium height. The other’s eyes were level with his own. The hanging sock was not in evidence, but Dicky felt that the stranger didn’t dare to move fast, for fear his clothes would break.
“Yet he feels clean,” he thought, “yet he feels clean.” This was important enough to repeat.
“I have a story——”
“Your name?”
“It is Naidu—but not known.”
“Are you from India?”
“Yes.”
“Why not let us have your story to read?”