“You get two cents a word,” Crosbeigh reminded him, “you haven’t a wife and children to support.”
“I’d be a gay little adventurer to try it on what I make at writing,” Trent told him. “It takes me almost a month to write one of those yarns and I get a hundred and fifty each.”
“You are a slow worker,” his editor declared.
“I have to be,” he retorted. “If I were writing love slush and pretty heroine stuff it would be different. Do you know, Crosbeigh, there isn’t a thing in these stories of mine that is impossible? I take the most particular care that my details are correct. When I began I didn’t know anything about burglar alarms. What did I do? I got a job in the shop that makes the best known one. I’m worth more than two cents a word!”
“That’s our maximum,” Crosbeigh asserted. “These are not good days for the magazine business. Shot to pieces. If I said what I knew. If you knew what I got and how much I had to do with it!”
Anthony Trent looked at him critically. He saw a very carefully dressed Crosbeigh to-day, a man whose trousers were pressed, whose shoes were shined, who exuded prosperity. Never had he seen him so apparently affluent.
“Come into money?” he enquired. “Whence the prosperity? Whose wardrobe have you robbed?”
“These are my own clothes,” returned Crosbeigh with dignity, “at least leave me my clothes.”
“Sure,” said Trent amiably, “if I took ’em you’d be arrested. But tell me why this sartorial display. Are you going to be photographed for the ‘great editors’ series?”
“I’m lunching with an old friend,” Crosbeigh answered, “a man of affairs, a man of millions, a man about whom I could say many things.”