"No, I rather didn't expect to," said Hartley quietly. He was beginning to scent danger ahead.
"Didn't, eh? Well, I guess I've been letting you off kind of easy lately. I've struck a new scheme, and I need a good chesty talker like you to push it through for me. Goin' to try you on a new line of work. I want you to go 'round to the different fancy outfitters and get anything flashy in fall styles for the Fashion Page. Then look up six or seven club-men--well-known club-men--and get me up a breezy two columns on expensive underwear for men of the Four Hundred. Find out what young Van Asteroid pays for his silk things and how many he's got, and all that kind of guff."
There was a moment's silence. The author of Nausicaa and Other Poems when anger took hold of him always went white and said little. He looked down at his enemy, outwardly calm. But an inner fire was burning away the last link of his bondage.
"I don't think I should care to undertake an assignment of that nature." The oppressor had not seen his face.
"Probably you wouldn't," retorted the unsuspecting editor. "But we ain't all here doing the things we want to. Everybody in this push, I guess, has his dirty work to do. We want that article by four to-morrow. That clear?"
"Quite clear. But I don't think you understand me," said the other, struggling in vain to rise above his rage.
"You--you mean to tell me you won't! Look here, young man, you were a sandwich-eating, no-account immigrant, starving in the gutters when I picked you up and tried to make a New York newspaper man out of you. There's men from Maine to New Mexico hungering to get the chance I gave you--men who'd pay good money to get into this office. And you can do what I say or get out."
Hartley wondered what strange metamorphosis had taken place somewhere deep within his soul to give rise to the sudden new reckless spirit of independence which swept through him. Before it his anger melted away; he reveled only in a new sense of freedom.
"Very well, then; I get out," he replied, turning on his heel, almost smilingly.
The voice of the managing editor had risen high above the smaller noises of the office, and as Hartley walked to his dusty old desk and took up his hat and somewhat tattered gloves there was a moment of unbroken silence. He stood at the door and looked back. Timidly and nervously the busy typewriters behind the little partitions started to tinkle out their doleful staccato again. The managing editor sat, half turned in his pivot chair, looking through the door after Hartley in amazement. Then he swore at him lustily, and declaring before all that was holy that it would do him good to go out and starve, he snorted the burden of his rage from his mind and savagely commanded Daisy Dineen to give him a match.