“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 assistant 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.