XXV

_Recording a Discussion about the Reformatory between Editor West and his Dog-like Admirer, the City Boss; and a Briefer Conversation between West and Prof. Nicolovius's Boarder._

About one o'clock the telephone rang sharply, and Queed, just arrived for the afternoon work and alone in the office, answered it. It was the Rev. Mr. Dayne, Secretary of the Department of Charities; he had learned that the reformatory bill was to be called up in the house next day. The double-faced politicians of the machine, said Mr. Dayne, with their pretended zeal for economy, were desperately afraid of the Post. Would Mr. Queed be kind enough to hit a final ringing blow for the right in to-morrow's paper?

"That our position to-day is as strong as it is," said the kind, firm voice, "is due largely to your splendid work, Mr. Queed. I say this gladly, and advisedly. If you will put your shoulder to the wheel just once more, I am confident that you will push us through. I shall be eternally grateful, and so will the State. For it is a question of genuine moral importance to us all."

Mr. Dayne received a.s.surance that Mr. Queed would do all that he could for him. He left the telephone rather wishing that the a.s.sistant editor could sometimes be inspired into verbal enthusiasm. But of his abilities the Secretary did not entertain the smallest doubt, and he felt that day that his long fight for the reformatory was as good as won.

Hanging up the receiver, Queed leaned back in his swivel chair and thoughtfully filled a pipe, which he smoked nowadays with an experienced and ripened pleasure. At once he relapsed into absorbed thought. Though he answered Mr. Dayne calmly and briefly according to his wont, the young man's heart was beating faster with the knowledge that he stood at the crisis of his longest and dearest editorial fight. He expected to win it. The whole subject, from every conceivable point of view, was at his fingers' ends. He knew exactly what to say; his one problem was how to say it in the most irresistible way possible.

Yet Queed, tilted back in his chair, and staring out over the wet roofs, was not thinking of the reformatory. He was thinking, not of public matters at all, but of the circ.u.mstances of his curious life with Henry G. Surface; and his thoughts were not agreeable in the least.

Not that he and the "old professor" did not get along well together. It was really surprising how well they did get along. Their dynamic interview of last June had at once been buried out of sight, and since then their days had flowed along with unbroken smoothness. If there had been times when the young man's thought recoiled from the compact and the intimacy, his manner never betrayed any sign of it. On the contrary, he found himself mysteriously answering the growing dependence of the old man with a growing sense of responsibility toward him, and discovering in the process a curious and subtle kind of compensation.

What troubled Queed about Nicolovius--as the world called him--was his money. He, Queed, was in part living on this money, eating it, drinking it, sleeping on it. Of late the old man had been spending it with increasing freedom, constantly enlarging the comforts of the joint menage. He had reached, in fact, a scale of living which constantly thrust itself on Queed's consciousness as quite beyond the savings of a poor old school teacher. And if this appearance were true, where did the surplus come from?

The question had knocked unpleasantly at the young man's mind before now. This morning he faced it, and pondered deeply. A way occurred to him by which, possibly, he might turn a little light upon this problem.

He did not care to take it; he shrank from doing anything that might seem like spying upon the man whose bread he broke thrice daily. Yet it seemed to him that a point had now been reached where he owed his first duty to himself.

"Come in," he said, looking around in response to a brisk knock upon his shut door; and there entered Plonny Neal, whom Queed, through the Mercury, knew very well now.

"Hi there, Doc! Playin' you was Horace Greeley?"

Mr. Neal opened the connecting door into West's office, glanced through, found it empty, and shut the door again. Whether he was pleased or the reverse over this discovery, his immobile countenance gave no hint; but the fact was that he had called particularly to see West on a matter of urgent private business.

"I was on the floor and thought I'd say howdy," he remarked pleasantly.

"Say, Doc, I been readin' them reformatory drools of yours. Me and all the boys."

"I'm glad to hear it. They are certain to do you good."

Queed smiled. He had a genuine liking for Mr. Neal, which was not affected by the fact that their views differed diametrically on almost every subject under the sun.

Mr. Neal smiled, too, more enigmatically, and made a large gesture with his unlighted cigar.

"I ain't had such good laughs since Tommy Walker, him that was going to chase me out of the city f'r the tall timber, up and died. But all the same, I hate to see a likely young feller sittin' up nights tryin' to make a laughin' stock of himself."

"The last laughs are always the best, Mr. Neal. Did you ever try any of them?"

"You're beat to a pappyer mash, and whistlin' to keep your courage."

"Listen to my whistle day after to-morrow--"

But the door had shut on Mr. Neal, who had doubtless read somewhere that the proper moment to terminate a call is on some telling speech of one's own.

"I wonder what he's up to," mused Queed.

He brought his chair to horizontal and addressed himself to his reformatory article. He sharpened his pencil; tangled his great hand into his hair; and presently put down an opening sentence that fully satisfied him, his own sternest critic. Then a memory of his visitor returned to his mind, and he thought pleasurably:

"Plonny knows he is beaten. That's what's the matter with him."

Close observers had often noted, however, that that was very seldom the matter with Plonny, and bets as to his being beaten were always to be placed with diffidence and at very long odds. Plonny had no idea whatever of being beaten on the reformatory measure: on the contrary, it was the reformatory measure which was to be beaten. Possibly Mr. Neal was a white-souled patriot chafing under threatened extravagance in an economy year. Possibly he was impelled by more machine-like exigencies, such as the need of just that hundred thousand dollars to create a few nice new berths for the "organization." The man's motives are an immaterial detail. The sole point worth remembering is that Plonny Neal had got it firmly in his head that there should be no reformatory legislation that year.

It was Mr. Neal's business to know men, and he was esteemed a fine business man. Leaving the a.s.sistant editor, he sallied forth to find the editor. It might have taken Queed an hour to put his hand on West just then. Plonny did it in less than six minutes.

West was at Semple's (formerly Semple & West's), where he looked in once a day just to see what the market was doing. This was necessary, as he sometimes explained, in order that the _Post_'s financial articles might have that authoritativeness which the paper's position demanded. West enjoyed the good man-talk at Semple's; the atmosphere of frank, cheery commercialism made a pleasant relief from the rarer alt.i.tudes of the uplift. He stood chatting gayly with a group of habitues, including some of the best known men of the town. All greeted Plonny pleasantly, West cordially. None of our foreign critics can write that the American man is a moral prude. On two occasions, Plonny had been vindicated before the grand jury by the narrow margin of one vote. Yet he was much liked as a human sinner who had no pretenses about him, and who told a good story surpa.s.singly well.

Ten minutes later Mr. Neal and Mr. West met in a private room at Berringer's, having arrived thither by different routes. Over a table, the door shut against all-comers, Mr. Neal went at once to the point, apologizing diffidently for a "b.u.t.ting in" which Mr. West might resent, but which he, Mr. West's friend, could no longer be restrained from. The _Post_, he continued, had been going along splendidly--"better'n under Cowles even--everybody says so--" and then, to the sorrow and disappointment of the new editor's admirers, up had come this dashed old reformatory business and spoiled everything.

West, whose thoughts had unconsciously run back to his last private talk with Plonny--the talk about getting in line--good-naturedly asked his friend if he was really lined up with the wire-pulling moss-backs who were fighting the reformatory bill.

"You just watch me and see," said Plonny, with humorous reproachfulness.

"No charge f'r lookin', and rain checks given in case of wet grounds."

"Then for once in your life, anyhow, you've called the turn wrong, Plonny. This inst.i.tution is absolutely necessary for the moral and social upbuilding of the State. It would be necessary if it cost five times one hundred thousand dollars, and it's as sure to come as judgment day."

"Ain't it funny!" mused Plonny. "Take a man like you, with fine high ideas and all, and let anything come up and pa.s.s itself off f'r a maw'l question and he'll go off half-c.o.c.ked ten times out of ten."

"Half-c.o.c.ked!" laughed West. "We've been studying this question three years."

"Yes, and began your studies with your minds all made up."

Plonny fastened upon the young man a gaze in which superior wisdom struggled unsuccessfully with overwhelming affection. "You know what it is, Mr. West? You've been took in, you've bit on a con game like a hungry pike. Excuse my speaking so plain, but I told you a long time ago I was mightily interested in you."

"Speak as plain as you like, Plonny. In fact, my only request at the moment is that you will speak plainer still. Who is it that has taken me in, and who is working this little con game you mention?"

"Rev. George Dayne of the Charities," said Plonny at once. "You mentioned wire-pulling just now. Lemme tell you that in the Rev. George you got the champeen wire-puller of the lot, the king politician of them all--the only one in this town, I do believe, could have thrown a bag as neat over _your_ head, Mr. West."

"Why, Plonny! Much learning has made you mad! I know Dayne like a book, and he's as straightforward a fellow as ever lived."

Mr. Neal let his eyes fall to the table-top and indulged in a slow smile, which he appeared to be struggling courteously, but without hope, to suppress.

"O' course you got a right to your opinion, Mr. West."

A brief silence ensued, during which a tiny imp of memory whispered into West's ear that Miss Weyland herself had commented on the Rev. Mr.

Dayne's marvelous gifts as a lobbyist.

"I'm a older man than you," resumed Neal, with precarious smilelessness, "and mebbe I've seen more of practical poltix. It would be a strange thing, you might say, if at my time of life, I didn't know a politician when I pa.s.sed him in the road. Still, don't you take my word for it. I'm only repeating what others say when I tell you that Parson Dayne wants to be Governor of this State some day. That surprises you a little, hey?

You was kind of thinking that 'Rev.' changed the nature of a man, and that ambition never thought of keeping open f'r business under a high-cut vest, now wasn't you? Well, I've seen funny things in my time.

I'd say that the parson wants this reformatory some f'r the good of the State, and mostly f'r the good of Mr. Dayne. Give it to him, with the power of appointing employees--add this to what he's already got--and in a year he'll have the prettiest little private machine ever you did see.

I don't ask you to believe me. All I ask is f'r you to stick a pin in what I say, and see 'f it don't come true."

West mused, impressed against his will. "You're wrong, Plonny, in my opinion, and if you were ten times right, what of it? You seem to think that the _Post_ is advocating this reformatory because Dayne has asked for it. The _Post_ is doing nothing of the sort. It is advocating the reformatory because it has studied this question to the bottom for itself, because it knows--"

"Right! Good f'r you!" exclaimed Mr. Neal, much gratified. "That's just what I tell the boys when they say you're playin' poltix with the little dominie. And that," said he, briskly, "is just why I'm _for_ the reformatory, in spite of Rev. Dayne's little games."