"No one"s an outsider whom Jinny Willard vouches for. Besides every one likes Hal Surtaine for himself."
"You among the number?"
"Yes, indeed," she responded frankly. "He"s attractive. And he seems older and more--well--interesting than most of the boys of my set."
"And that appeals to you?"
"Yes: it does. I get awfully bored with the just-out-of-college chatter of the boys. I want to see the wheels go round, Guardy. Real wheels, that make up real machinery and get real things done. I"m not quite an _ingenue_, you know."
"Thirty-five, thirty, twenty-five, fifteen, three," murmured her uncle, rubbing his ear. "And does young Surtaine give you inside glimpses of the machinery of his business?"
"Sometimes. He doesn"t know very much about it himself, yet."
"It"s a pretty dirty business, Honey. And, I"m afraid, he"s a pretty bad breed."
"The father _is_ rather impossible, isn"t he?" she said, laughing. "But they say he"s very kindly, and well-meaning, and public-spirited, and that kind of thing."
"He"s a scoundrelly old quack. It"s a bad inheritance for the boy. Where are you off to this morning?"
"To the "Clarion" office."
"What! Well, but, see here, dear, does Cousin Clarice approve of that sort of thing?"
"Wholly," Esme a.s.sured him, dimpling. "It"s on behalf of the Recreation Club. That"s the Reverend Norman Hale"s club for working-girls, you know. We"re going to give a play. And, as I"m on the Press Committee, it"s quite proper for me to go to the newspapers and get things printed."
"Humph!" grunted Dr. Elliot. "Well: good hunting--Pumess."
After the girl had gone, he sat thinking. He knew well the swift intimacies, frank and clean and fine, which spring up in the small, close-knit social circles of a city like Worthington. And he knew, too, and trusted and respected the judgment of Mrs. Festus Willard, whose friendship was tantamount to a certificate of character and eligibility.
As against that, he set the unforgotten picture of the itinerant quack, vending his poison across the countryside, playing on desperate fears and tragic hopes, coining his dollars from the grimmest of false dies; and now that same quack,--powerful, rich, generous, popular, master of the good things of life,--still draining out his millions from the populace, through just such deadly swindling as that which had been lighted up by the flaring exploitation of the oil torches fifteen years before. Could any good come from such a stock? He decided to talk it out with Esme, sure that her fastidiousness would turn away from the ugly truth.
Meantime, the girl was making a toilet of vast and artful simplicity wherewith to enrapture the eye of the beholder. The first profound effect thereof was wrought upon Reginald Currier, alias "Bim," some fifteen minutes later, at the outer portals of the "Clarion" office.
"Hoojer wanter--" he began, and then glanced up. Almost as swiftly as he had aforetime risen under Hal"s irate and athletic impulsion, the redoubtable Bim was lifted from his seat by the power of Miss Elliot"s glance. "Gee!" he murmured.
The Great American Pumess, looking much more like a very innocent, soft, and demurely playful kitten, accepted this ingenuous tribute to her charms with a smile. "Good-morning," she said. "Is Mr. Surtaine in?"
"Same t"you," responded the courteous Mr. Currier. "Sure he is. Walk this way, maddim!"
They found the editor at his desk. His absorbed expression brightened as he jumped up to greet his visitor.
"You!" he cried.
Esme let her hand rest in his and her glance linger in his eyes, perhaps just a little longer than might have comported with safety in one less adept.
"How is the paper going?" she inquired, taking the chair which he pulled out for her.
"Completely to the dogs," said Hal.
"No! Why I thought--"
"You haven"t given any advice to the editor for six whole days," he complained. "How can you expect an inst.i.tution to run, bereft of its presiding genius? Is it your notion of a fair partnership to stay away and let your fellow toilers wither on the bough? I only wonder that the presses haven"t stopped."
"Would this help at all?" The visitor produced from her shopping-bag the written announcement of the Recreation Club play.
"Undoubtedly it will save the day. Lost Atlantis will thrill to hear, and deep-sea cables bear the good news to unborn generations. What is it?"
She frowned upon his levity. "It is an interesting item, a _very_ interesting item of news," she said impressively.
"Bring one in every day," he directed: "in person. We can"t trust the mails in matters of such vital import." And scrawling across the copy a single hasty word in pencil, he thrust it into a wire box.
"What"s that you"ve written on it?"
"The mystic word "Must.""
"Does it mean that it must be printed?"
"Precisely, O Fountain of Intuition. It is one of the proud privileges which an editor-in-chief has. Otherwise he does exactly what the city desk or the advertising manager or the head proof-reader or the fourth a.s.sistant office boy tells him. That"s because he"s new to his job and everybody in the place knows it."
"Yet I don"t think it would be easy for any one to make you do a thing you really didn"t want to do," she observed, regarding him thoughtfully.
"When you lift your eyebrows like that--"
"I thought you weren"t to make pretty speeches to me in business hours,"
she reproached him.
"Such a stern and rock-bound partner! Very well. How does the paper suit your tastes?"
"You"ve got an awfully funny society column."
"We strive to amuse. But I thought only people outside of society ever read society columns--except to see if their names were there."
"I read _all_ the paper," she answered severely. "And I"d like to know who Mrs. Wolf Tone Maher is."
"Ring up "Information,"" he suggested.
"Don"t be flippant. Also Mr. and Mrs. B. Kirschofer, and Miss Amelia Sproule. All of which give teas in the society columns of the "Clarion."
_Or_ dances. _Or_ dinners. And I notice they"re always sandwiched in between the Willards or the Vanes or the Ellisons or the Pierces, or some of our own crowd. I"m curious."
"So am I. Let"s ask Wayne."
Accordingly the city editor was summoned and duly presented to Miss Elliot. But when she put the question to him, he looked uncomfortable.
Like a good city editor, however, he defended his subordinate.
"It isn"t the society reporter"s fault," he said. "He knows those people don"t belong."
"How do they get in there, then?" asked Hal.
"Mr. Shearson"s orders."