Jewel Weed Part 11

"h.e.l.lo!" he cried as he opened the door. Then he stood transfixed at the vision that met his sight, for a very blond and fuzzy head was bent over Ellery's desk and a very startled pair of blue eyes was raised to meet his own. There stood a rosebud dressed in gray. Is there anything more demure and innocent than a pinky girl in a mousy gown? d.i.c.k's hat came off and a deferential look replaced the careless one.

"h.e.l.lo, yourself!" said Norris. "You announce yourself like a telephone girl. Come in. What do you mean by troubling the quiet waters of my daily toil?"

"I beg your pardon," said d.i.c.k politely. "If you are busy I--"

"That's all right. Miss Quincy and I can postpone our confab without inconveniencing the order of the universe." Miss Quincy was already gathering her notes, and she smiled at d.i.c.k in a half-shy way that said, "I remember you very plainly." As she disappeared slowly down the hall, d.i.c.k started after her.

"Great Scott, Ellery!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "How you have lied to me about the grubbiness of your work! If this is your daily grind, I don't mind having a whirl at the editorial profession myself."

Norris laughed.

"It isn't the sum total of my duties," he said.

"Who is Hebe?" asked d.i.c.k.

"Well, she's rather a problem," Ellery replied. "I believe she appeared a few weeks ago at Miss Huntress' office--the woman editor, you know--with a catchy little article on fas.h.i.+ons. It happened that the boss was in the office, and we consider it rather a grind on him, for he was much taken by either the article or the eyes, and she got a little job as a sort of reportorial maid-of-all-work. Funny, isn't it? If a man is buying a rug, he wouldn't think of deciding on it because it was green, without testing its wearing qualities; but in nine cases out of ten a girl gets chosen because of her eyes. That's all I know about her.

Pretty, isn't she?"

"Pretty! Is that all the command you have of your native language? You ought to lose your job for that. Why she's--never mind--I haven't time now."

"Neither have I," answered Norris sharply. He remembered that long ago d.i.c.k had called Madeline pretty. It is a cheap and easy word. "I haven't time for you, either. Will you go away; or will you keep still while I finish this work?"

"Waltz away." d.i.c.k sat down on the window-sill and fell into a meditative state of mind. Once or twice he walked to the door and looked down the hall, while Norris plugged steadily away and ignored the presence of his friend.

After a prolonged silence, d.i.c.k spoke again, solemnly:

"I should like to meet her."

"Whom?"

"Miss--Quincy, did you call her?"

"Oh! Isn't she rather out of your cla.s.s?"

"Pshaw! Don't talk of cla.s.ses, now that you're out of college. Do you know anything about her?"

"Nothing," said Ellery shortly. "I don't consider it my business to go beyond my official relations."

"Well, I haven't any business relations not to go beyond," said d.i.c.k.

"So I mean to pursue the inquiry."

"Do as you like," Ellery answered. "Is that what you came down here to talk about?"

"No," said d.i.c.k, changing his manner. "I came to talk up an editorial campaign. You don't know my chum, Olaf Ericson, do you? He's the biggest man on the force, and he's a corker. I've learned more from him about bad smells than I did in two years of chemistry at New Haven. He knows this town from the seventh sub-cellar up, and 'him and me is great friends'. Seriously, Norris, I've begun to get hold of just the facts I wanted about 'the combine', and it's information that is so very definite and to the point that I believe I can make it hot for them. I want the public to be kept informed on everything that is to their discredit. Now the _Star_ is a fairly clean paper, as papers go. I want help."

"You'll have to go up higher for that, my boy. It's not for a freshman like myself to direct the policy of the paper. It would be a pretty serious matter to run up against those fellows. Mr. Lewis, the old man, is out, but when he comes back we'll go and have a talk with him."

"Talk to him! I should think so!" d.i.c.k exclaimed, and he began to pace the room and pour out the floods of his information, in wrath of soul and glow of spirits at his resolve to clean things up.

Meanwhile in Miss Huntress' office, farther down the hall, Lena was discussing with that determined person the possibility of supplying the public with more of the kind of literature for which women, in particular, are supposed to have a mad desire. Miss Huntress was an adept at filling her page with personalities by which those who know n.o.body may have almost as great a knowledge of the great as those who have achieved the proud distinction of being "in it". Lena had written a highly successful series of articles on "St. Etienne as seen from the shop windows," and she longed for new and similar fields to conquer.

"I've been wondering," said Miss Huntress, "if you couldn't get up some catchy little things on private libraries and picture galleries. If you can raise some photographs to go with them, you might make quite a hit.

That's the kind of thing that takes. You see it makes people able to talk about the inside of rich folk's houses."

"I suppose you would want me to begin with Mr. Early," said Lena, hardly knowing what reply to make.

"Never mind Mr. Early. Everybody knows just what he's got and how his place looks. You might include him later, but I should start with people who are more exclusive and yet whose names everybody knows. Now there's Mr. Windsor and Mrs. Percival. By the way, Mr. Norris is awfully intimate at the Percivals'. Perhaps he'd help you to an introduction. If Mrs. Percival would let you write up her library, you may be sure there'd be a lot of others who would follow her example. You might try it, anyway. Go and see her. Tell her what a hard time you are having to earn your own living. Your looks will carry you a long way."

"I think young Mr. Percival is in Mr. Norris' office now. Some one came in while I was there and I think he called him Percival," said Lena faintly.

"Say! is that so?" exclaimed Miss Huntress. "Now's your chance! Go in and ask while he's there. He'll find it hard to refuse to your face."

"You go," interposed Lena. "If I go, it will look as though I knew. But you can walk in all innocent."

Therefore the conversation on matters which were to change the destiny of a city was interrupted by a smart knock on the a.s.sistant editor's door, and Miss Huntress, eminently self-possessed, walked in on the two young men.

"Beg pardon, Mr. Norris, I didn't know you had any one here," she began.

"But I won't keep you a moment. The truth is, I want a series of articles on the private libraries of the city, and, knowing that you are acquainted with Mrs. Percival, I thought you'd help the paper to an opening there."

"Let me introduce Mr. Percival," said Norris. "He can give you more information than I can."

"Well, this is lucky!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Huntress.

"Our library isn't a show affair," d.i.c.k said stiffly. "My mother, I am sure, would be very unwilling to submit to that kind of a write-up. My father was a book-lover, not a book-fancier. It's essentially a private collection."

"I'm sorry you feel that way about it," Miss Huntress rejoined equably.

"Of course, nowadays, I can't admit that there's any such thing as privacy. And it isn't only that I want the articles, Mr. Percival. I want to help along a girl that needs the work, and an awfully nice girl she is. We haven't any regular job for her, and all I can do is to throw odd bits of work in her way. She has an old mother to support, and it would be a real charity to her if you'd look at it in that light. Miss Quincy is a perfect lady, and you may be sure she'd take no advantage of you to write up anything sensational or impertinent."

d.i.c.k started and glanced consciously at Norris, who grinned back.

"Of course that puts another light on it," Mr. Percival said after a decent pause, and trying to compose his face to a judicial expression.

"I'd hate to put a stumbling-block in the way of a girl like that.

Ah-um--I'll speak to my mother about it, Miss Huntress, and I dare say I can persuade her to allow it."

"That's very good of you," Miss Huntress answered,--with sad comprehension that a complexion like Lena's was a great aid to a literary career. "You couldn't manage to let Miss Quincy go up this afternoon, could you?" she went on with characteristic energy in pus.h.i.+ng an advantage. "It would be a good thing if she could get her first stuff ready for the Sat.u.r.day-night issue."

"My mother, I suppose, is driving this afternoon," d.i.c.k said hesitatingly. He went through a hasty calculation and saw reasons for cutting out certain of his own engagements. "See here, Miss Huntress, if you're in such a hurry, I don't mind taking Miss Quincy up and telling her what I know about old editions and rare folios. I'll make it right with mother afterward."

Miss Huntress' face cleared perceptibly.

"You're awfully good, Mr. Percival. Won't you come down to my office now, and I'll introduce you to Miss Quincy? This is a real favor." d.i.c.k shot a glance of triumph at Ellery, believing himself a skilled sly dog of a manipulator, and not knowing that he was the manipulated. Norris spoke in scorn.

"I suppose righteousness and reform can wait now."

"You can bet they will. I'll call on you to-morrow afternoon, Norris."

"That's the usual fate of reform. Don't be a fool, d.i.c.k." But d.i.c.k was already disappearing down the corridor in pursuit of the able woman editor.