Not that Mr. Queed had been inconvenienced by the little delay.  The minute after his landlady’s agent left him, he had become immersed in that great work of his, and there by day and night, he had remained.  Having turned over to the agent the full responsibility for finding work for him, he no longer had to bother his head about it.  The whole matter dropped gloriously from his mind; he read, wrote, and avoided practicing sociology with tremendous industry; and thus he might have gone on for no one knows how long had there not, at five o’clock on the fifth day, come a knock upon his door.

“Well?” he called, annoyed.

Emma came in with a card.  The name, at which the young man barely glanced, conveyed nothing to him.

“Well?  What does he want?”

Emma did not know.

“Oh!” said Mr. Queed, irritably—­“tell him to come up, if he must.”

The Post director came up—­two flights; he knocked; was curtly bidden to enter; did so.

He stepped into one of the smallest rooms he had ever seen in his life; about nine by five-and-a-half, he thought.  A tiny single bed ran along one side of it; jammed against the foot of the bed was a tiny table.  A tiny chair stood at the table; behind the chair stood a tiny bureau; beside the bureau, the tiniest little iron wash-stand in the world.  In the chair sat a man, not tiny, indeed, but certainly nobody’s prize giant.  He sat in a kind of whirling tempest of books and papers, and he rode absorbedly in the whirlwind and majestically directed the storm.

West was intensely interested.  “Mr. Queed?” he asked, from just inside the door.

“Yes,” said the other, not looking up.  “What can I do for you?”

West burst out laughing; he couldn’t help it.

“Maybe you can do a great deal, Mr. Queed.  On the other hand maybe I can do some little trifle for you.  Which leg the boot is on nobody on earth can say at this juncture.  I have ventured to call,” said he, “as an ambassador from the morning Post of this city.”

“The Post?”

The name instantly started Queed’s memory to working; he recalled something about the Post—­as yet, so it happened, only the copy of it he had read; and he turned and looked around with slow professorial amusement kindling in his eyes.

“Ah!” said he.  “Possibly you are Colonel Cowles, the military political economist?”

West was more amused than ever.  “No,” said he, “on the contrary, West is the name, C.G.  West—­to correspond, you know, with the one on that card you have in your hand.  I’ll sit down here on the bed—­shall I?—­so that we can talk more comfortably.  Sitting does help the flow of ideas so remarkably, don’t you find?  I am trespassing on your time,” said he, “at the suggestion of—­an acquaintance of yours, who has been telling me great things about your work.”

Queed looked completely puzzled.