“The very thing that was in my mind.”
CHAPTER II
ANTHONY TRENT TALKS ON CRIME
ANTHONY TRENTwas working his typewriter at top speed when there came a sudden, peremptory knocking at his door.
“Lord!” he grumbled, rising, “it must be old Lund to say I’m keeping him awake.”
He threw open his door to find a small, choleric and elderly man clad in a faded dressing gown. It was a man with a just grievance and a desire to express it.
“This is no time to hammer on your typewriter,” said Mr. Lund fiercely. “This is a boarding house and not a private residence. Do you realize that you generally begin work at midnight?”
“Come in,” said Anthony Trent genially. With friendly force he dragged the smaller man along and placed him in a morris chair. “Come in and give me your opinion of the kind of cigar smoked by the president of the publishing house for whose magazines I work noisily at midnight.”
Mr. Lund found himself a few seconds later sitting by an open window, an excellent cigar between his teeth, and the lights of New York spread before him. And he found his petulance vanishing. He wondered why it was that although he had before this come raging to Anthony Trent’s door, he always suffered himself to be talked out of his ill humors. It was something magnetic and engaging that surrounded this young writer of short stories.
“I can’t smoke a cigar when I’m working,” said Trent, lighting a pipe.
“Surely,” said Mr. Lund, not willing so soon to be robbed of his grievance, “you choose the wrong hours to work. Mrs. Clarke says you hardly ever touch your typewriter till late.”