Queed Part 68

"Mr. Queed? This is Mr. Hickok," said the incisive voice over the wire.

"Well, what in the mischief are you doing up there?"

"I'm--I'm--transacting some important business--with the Department,"

said Mr. Surface, and gave Sharlee's hands a desperate squeeze. "But my--"

"Well, we're transacting some important business down here. Never should have found you but for Mr. Dayne's happening along. Did you know that West had resigned?"

"No, has he? But I started--"

"Peace to his ashes. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. The directors are meeting now to elect his successor. Only one name has been mentioned.

There's only one editor we'll hear of for the paper. Won't you come back to us, my boy?"

The young man cleared his throat. "Come? I'd--think it the greatest honor--there's nothing I'd rather have. You are all too--too kind to me--I can't tell you--but--"

"Oh, no buts! But us no buts now! I'll go tell them--"

"No--wait," called the young man, hastily. "If I come, I don't come as Queed, you know. My name is Henry G. Surface. That may make a difference--"

"Come as Beelzebub!" said the old man, testily. "We've had enough of hiring a _name_ for the _Post_. This time we're after a man, and by the Lord, we've got one!"

Henry Surface turned away from the telephone, struggling with less than his usual success to show an unmoved face.

"You--know?"

She nodded: in her blue-spar eyes, there was the look of a winged victory. "That was the little secret--don't you think it was a nice one?

It is your magnificent boast come true.... And you don't even say 'I told you so'!"

He looked past her out into the park. Over the budding trees, already bursting and spreading their fans of green, far off over the jagged stretch of roofs, his gaze sought the battered gray _Post_ building and the row of windows behind which he had so often sat and worked. A mist came before his eyes; the trees curveted and swam; and his visible world swung upside down and went out in a singing and spark-shot blackness.

She came to his side again: in silence slipped her hand into his; and following both his look and his thought, she felt her own eyes smart with a sudden bright dimness.

"This is the best city in the world," said Henry Surface. "The kindest people--the _kindest people_--"

"Yes, little Doctor."

He turned abruptly and caught her to him again; and now, hearing even above the hammering of his own blood the wild fluttering of her heart against his, his tongue unlocked and he began to speak his heart. It was not speech as he had always known speech. In all his wonderful array of terminology there were no words fitted to this undreamed need; he had to discover them somehow, by main strength make them up for himself; and they came out stammering, hard-wrung, bearing new upon their rough faces the mint-mark of his own heart. Perhaps she did not prize them any the less on that account.

"I'm glad that you love me that way--Henry. I must call you Henry now--mustn't I, Henry?"

"Do you know," she said, after a time, "I am--_almost_ weakening about giving our money for a Home. Somehow, I'd so like for you to have it, so that--"

She felt a little s.h.i.+ver run through him.

"No, no! I could not bear to touch it. We shall be far happier--"

"You could stop work, buy yourself comforts, pleasures, trips. It is a mad thing," she teased, "to give away money.... Oh, little Doctor--I can't breathe if you hold me--so tight."

"About the name," he said presently, "I--dislike to oppose you, but I cannot--I cannot--"

"Well, I've decided to change it, Henry, in deference to your wishes."

"I am extremely glad. I myself know a name--"

"Instead of calling it the Henry G. Surface Home--"

Suddenly she drew away from him, leaving behind both her hands for a keepsake, and raised to him a look so luminous and radiant that he felt himself awed before it, like one who with impious feet has blundered upon holy ground.

"I am going to call it the Henry G. Surface _Junior_ Home. Do you know any name for a Home so pretty as that?"

"No, no, I--can't let you--"

But she cried him down pa.s.sionately, saying: "Yes, that is _our_ name now, and we are going to make it honorable."

From his place beside the sociological bookcase--perhaps faunal naturalists can tell us why--the great pleasure-dog Behemoth, whose presence they had both forgotten, raised his leonine head and gave a sharp, joyous bark.