“What was the rumpus upstairs, do you know?  It sounded as if somebody had a bad fall.”

“Somebody did get a fall, though not a bad one, I believe.”

“Who?” queried the editor briefly.

“I.”

In the hall, it occurred to Queed that perhaps he had misled his chief a little, though speaking the literal truth.  The fall that some body had gotten was indeed nothing much, for people’s bodies counted for nothing so long as they kept them under.  But the fall that this body’s self-esteem had gotten was no such trivial affair.  It struck the young man as decidedly curious that the worst tumble his pride had ever received had come to him through his body, that part of him which he had always treated with the most systematic contempt.

The elevator received him, and in it, as luck would have it, stood a tall young man whom he knew quite well.

“Hello, there, Doc!”

“How do you do, Mr. Klinker?”

“Been up chinning your sporting editor, Ragsy Hurd.  Trying to arrange a mill at the Mercury between Smithy of the Y.M.C.A. and Hank McGurk, the White Plains Cyclone.”

“A mill—?”

“Scrap—­boxin’ match, y’ know.  Done up your writings for the day?”

“My newspaper writings—­yes.”

In the brilliant close quarters of the lift, Klinker was looking at Mr. Queed narrowly.  “Where you hittin’ for now?  Paynter’s?”

“Yes.”

“Walkin’?—­That’s right.  I’ll go with you.”

As they came out into the street, Klinker said kindly:  “You ain’t feelin’ good, are you, Doc?  You’re lookin’ white as a milk-shake.”

“I feel reasonably well, thank you.  As for color, I have never had any, I believe.”

“I don’t guess, the life you lead.  Got the headache, haven’t you?  Have it about half the time, now don’t you, hey?”

“Oh, I have a headache quite frequently, but I never pay any attention to it.”

“Well, you’d ought to.  Don’t you know the headache is just nature tipping you off there’s something wrong inside?  I’ve been watching you at the supper table for some time now.  That pallor you got ain’t natural pallor.  You’re pasty, that’s right.  I’ll bet segars you wake up three mornings out of four feelin’ like a dish of stewed prunes.”

“If I do—­though of course I can only infer how such a dish feels—­it is really of no consequence, I assure you.”

“Don’t you fool yourself!  It makes a lot of consequence to you.  Ask a doctor, if you don’t believe me.  But I got your dia’nosis now, same as a medical man that’s right.  I know what’s your trouble, Doc, just like you had told me yourself.”

“Ah?  What, Mr. Klinker?”

“Exercise.”

“You mean lack of exercise?”

“I mean,” said Klinker, “that you’re fadin’ out fast for the need of it.”

The two men pushed on up Centre Street, where the march of home-goers was now beginning to thin out, in a moment of silence.  Queed glanced up at Klinker’s six feet of red beef with a flash of envy which would have been unimaginable to him so short a while ago as ten minutes.  Klinker was physically competent.  Nobody could insult his work and laugh at the merited retribution.