So Mr Boice had offered five hundred for plant, good will, and the stories!
No mere legal, technical claim on those stories as property, as assets, held the slightest interest for Henry. He couldn't understand that. They were his. He had created them, made them out of nothing--just a few one-cent lead pencils and a lot of copy paper. Bob had snatched them away to print them in the _Gleaner_. But they weren't Bob's.
'They're mine!' he said aloud. 'They're mine! Old Boice shan't have them! Never!' He caught himself then; looked about sharply, all hot emotion and tingling nerves.
A little later--it was getting on toward noon--he found himself on Filbert Avenue approaching Simpson Street. Without plan or guidance, he was heading northward, toward the rooms. It would be necessary to cross Simpson Street. He was fighting down the impulse to go several blocks to the east, toward the lake, where the stores and shops gave place to homes and lawns and shade trees, where he could slip across unnoticed; but his feet were leading him straight toward the corner of Filbert and Simpson, the busiest, most conspicuous corner in town, where were the hotel and Berger's grocery and, only a few doors off, Donovan's drug store and Swanson's flower shop and Duneen's general store and the _Voice_ office. It had come down, the warfare within him, to a question of proving to himself that he wasn't a coward, that he could face disaster, even the complete disaster that seemed now to be upon him. It was like the end of the world.
In a pocket his fingers were tightly clasped about the anonymous note that had been the cloud over his troubled sleep of the night and his gloomy awakening of the morning. The note was now but a detail in the general crash. He decided to press on, march straight across Simpson Street, head high. He even brought out the note from his pocket; held it in his hand as he walked stiffly on. It was a somewhat bitter touch of bravado, but I find I like Henry none the less for it.
A little way short of the corner, it must be recorded, he faltered. It was by Berger's rear door. There was a gate in the fence here, that now stood open. Two of the Berger delivery wagons were backed in there. And right by the gate Henry Berger himself, his ample person enveloped in a long white apron, was opening a crate.