1316 Caraway Street

Virgil Quimbleton, Associate Director

He stared at the pasteboard, stupefied, and handed it to the city editor.

Meanwhile the three reporters had drawn near.  Light-hearted and irresponsible souls, unoppressed by the embittered suspicion of their superiors, they nosed the floating aroma with candid hilarity.

“The breath of Eden!” said one.

“It’s a warm evening,” remarked another, with seeming irrelevance.

The face of Virgil Quimbleton, the man in gray, relaxed again at these marks of honest appreciation.  He waved an encouraging arm over the crystals.  “With the compliments of the Corporation,” he repeated.

Bleak and the city editor looked again at the card, and at each other.  They scanned the face of their mysterious benefactor.  Bleak’s hand went out to the nearest glass.  He raised it to his lips.  An almost-forgotten formula recurred to him.  “Down the rat-hole!” he cried, and tilted his arm.  The others followed suit, and the associate director watched them with a glow of perfect altruism.

The glasses were still in air when the cartoonist emerged from his room.  “Holy cat!” he cried in amazement.  “What’s going on?” He seized one of the empty vessels and sniffed it.

“Treason!” he exclaimed.  “Who’s been robbing the mint?”

“Maybe you can have one too,” said Bleak, and turned to where Quimbleton had been standing.  But the mysterious visitor had leff the room.

“You’re too late, Bill,” said the city editor genially.  “There was a kind of Messiah here, but he’s gone.  Tough luck.”

“Say, boss,” suggested one of the reporters.  “There’s a story in this.  May I interview that guy?”

Bleak picked up the card and put it in his pocket.  A heavenly warmth pervaded his mental fabric.  “A story?” he said.  “Forget it!  This is no story.  It’s a legend of the dear dead past.  I’ll cover this assignment myself.”

He borrowed a match and lit his pipe.  Then he put on his coat and hat and left the office.

It was remarked by faithful readers of the Balloon that the next day’s cartoon was one of the least successful in the history of that brilliant newspaper.

CHAPTER II

THE HOUSE ON CARAWAY STREET

After telephoning to his wife that he would not be home for supper, Bleak set out for Caraway Street.  He was in that exuberant mood discernible in commuters unexpectedly spending an evening in town.  Instead of hurrying out to the suburbs on the 6:17 train, to mow the lawn and admire the fireflies, here he was watching the more dazzling fireflies of the city—­the electric signs which were already bulbed wanly against the rich orange of the falling sun.  He puffed his pipe lustily and with a jaunty condescension watched the crowds thronging the drugstores for their dram of ice-cream soda.  In his bosom the secret julep