A moment more and the front door had closed on him. He stood before the house, staring up through the maple leaves at the starry sky, struggling, for the moment vainly, toward sanity. It was like the end of the world. If was unthinkable. It was awful.
But after waiting a while he went to Mr Merchant's. There was nothing else to do.
Mr Merchant himself opened the door to Henry. He lived in one of the earliest of the apartment buildings that later were to work a deep change in the home life of Sunbury. 'How are you, Calverly!' he said, in his offhand, superior way. Then in a lower and distinctly less superior tone, almost friendly indeed, he added, 'Got a bit of a surprise for you. Come in.'
The living-room was lighted by a single standing lamp with a red shade. Beneath it, curled up like a boy in a cretonne-covered wing chair, his shock of faded yellow hair mussed where his fingers had been, his heavy faded yellow moustache bushing out under a straight nose and pale cheeks, his old gray suit sadly wrinkled, sat a stranger reading from a handful of newspaper clippings.
Henry paused in the door. The man looked up, so quickly that Henry started, and fixed on him eyes that while they were a rather pale blue yet had an uncanny fire in them.
'Oh, come in! Needn't be afraid of me!' And coolly read on.
Henry stepped just inside the door. Turned mutely to his host. What a queer man! Had he had it within him at the moment to resent anything, he would have stiffened. But he was crushed to begin with.
The newspaper clippings had a faintly familiar look. From across the room he thought it the type and paper of the _Gleaner_. His stories, doubtless. Mr Merchant was making the man read them. Well, what of it! What was the good, if they made him so cross.
'Calverly, if Mr Galbraith would stop reading for a minute--'
Galbraith! The name brought colour to Henry's cheek. Not... It couldn't be!....
'But whether you care to know it or not, this is Mr Calverly, the author of----'
Then the extraordinary gentleman, muttering angrily, gathered up the clippings and went abruptly off down the hall, apparently to one of the bedrooms.
'That--that isn't _the_ Mr Galbraith?' asked Henry, in voice tinged with awe.