_A Remeeting in a Cemetery: the Unglassed Queed who loafed on
Rustic Bridges; of the Consequences of failing to tell a Lady that
you hope to see her again soon._
Fifi's grave had long since lost its first terrible look of bare
newness. Grass grew upon it in familiar ways. Rose-bushes that might
have stood a lifetime nodded over it by night and by day. Already "the
minute grey lichens, plate o'er plate," were "softening down the
crisp-cut name and date"; and the winds of winter and of summer blew
over a little mound that had made itself at home in the still city of
the dead.
Green was the turf above Fifi, sweet the peacefulness of her little
churchyard. Her cousin Sharlee, who had loved her well, disposed her
flowers tenderly, and stood awhile in reverie of the sort which the
surroundings so irresistibly invited. But the schedules of even electric
car-lines are inexorable; and presently she saw from a glance at her
watch that she must turn her face back to the city of the living.
On the little rustic bridge a hundred yards away, a man was standing,
with rather the look of having stopped at just that minute. From a
distance Sharlee's glance swept him lightly; she saw that she did not
know him; and not fancying his frank stare, she drew near and stepped
upon the bridge with a splendid unconsciousness of his presence. But
just when she was safely by, her ears were astonished by his voice
speaking her name.
"How do you do, Miss Weyland?"
She turned, surprised by a familiar note in the deep tones, looked,
and--yes, there could be no doubt of it--it was--
"Mr. Queed! Why, _how_ do you do!"
They shook hands. He removed his hat for the process, doing it with a
certain painstaking precision which betrayed want of familiarity with
the engaging rite.
"I haven't seen you for a long time," said Sharlee brightly.
The dear, old remark--the moss-covered remark that hung in the well! How
on earth could we live without it? In behalf of Sharlee, however, some
excuses can be urged; for, remembering the way she had talked to Mr.
Queed once on the general subject of failures, she found herself
struggling against a most absurd sense of embarrassment.
"No," replied Queed, replacing his hat as though following from memory
the diagram in a book of etiquette. He added, borrowing one of the
Colonel's favorite expressions, "I hope you are very well."
"Yes, indeed.... I'm so glad you spoke to me, for to tell you the truth,
I never, never should have known you if you hadn't."
"You think that I've changed? Well," said he, gravely, "I ought to have.
You might say that I've given five months to it."
"You've changed enormously."
She examined with interest this new Mr. Queed who loafed on rustic
bridges, five miles from a Sociology, and hailed passing ladies on his
own motion. He appeared, indeed, decidedly altered.
In the first place, he looked decidedly bigger, and, to come at once to
the fact, he was. For Klinker's marvelous exercises for all parts of the
body had done more than add nineteen pounds to his weight, and deepen
his chest, and broaden his shoulders. They had pulled and tugged at the
undeveloped tissues until they had actually added a hard-won
three-quarters of an inch to his height. The stoop was gone, and instead
of appearing rather a small man, Mr. Queed now looked full middle-height
or above. He wore a well-made suit of dark blue, topped by a correct
derby. His hair was cut trim, his color was excellent, and, last miracle
of all, he wore no spectacles. It was astonishing but true. The
beautiful absence of these round disfigurements brought into new
prominence a pair of grayish eyes which did not look so very
professorial, after all.
But what Sharlee liked best about this unglassed and unscienced Mr.
Queed was his entire absence of any self-consciousness in regard to her.
When he told her that Easter Monday night that he cheerfully took his
turn on the psychological operating-table, anæsthetics barred, and no
mercy asked or given, it appeared that he, alone among men, really meant
it.
Under the tiny bridge, a correspondingly tiny brook purled without
surcease, its heart set upon somewhere finding the sea. Over their heads
a glorious maple was taking off its coat of many colors in the wind.
Sharlee put back a small hand into a large muff and said:--
"At church this morning I saw Colonel Cowles. He told me about you. I
don't know how you look at it, but I think you're a subject for the
heartiest congratulations. So here are mine."
"The men at the Mercury were pleased, too," mused Mr. Queed, looking out
over the landscape. "Do you ever read my articles now?"
"For many years," said Sharlee, evasively, "I have always read the
_Post_ from cover to cover. It's been to me like those books you see in
the advertisements and nowhere else. Grips the reader from the start,
and she cannot lay it down till the last page is turned."
A brief smile appeared in the undisguised eyes. "Do you notice any
distinctions now between me and the Encyclopedia Britannica?"
"Unless you happen to refer to Lombroso or Buckle or Aristotle or
Plato," said Sharlee, not noticing the smile, "I never know whether it's
your article or Colonel Cowles's. Do you mind walking on? It's nearly
time for my car."
"A year ago," said he, "I certainly should not have liked that. I do
now, since it means that I have succeeded in what I set out to do. I've
thought a good deal about that tired bricklayer this summer," he went
on, quite unembarrassed. "By the way, I know one personally now: Timrod
Burns, of the Mercury. Only I can't say that I ever saw Timmy tired."
Down the woodland path they passed side by side, headed for the little
station known as Stop 11. Sharlee was pleased that he had remembered
about the bricklayer; she could have been persuaded that his remark was
vaguely intended to convey some sort of thanks to her. But saying no
more of this, she made it possible to introduce casually a reference to
his vanished glasses.
"Yes," said he, "I knocked them off the bureau and broke them one day.
So I just let them go. They were rather striking-looking glasses, I
always thought. I don't believe I ever saw another pair quite like
them."
"But," said Sharlee, puzzled, "do you find that you can see perfectly
well without them?"
"Oh, yes; if anything, better." He paused, and added with entire
seriousness: "You see those spectacles, striking-looking as they were,
were only window-glass. I bought them at a ten-cent store on Sixth
Avenue when I was twelve years old."
"Oh! What made you do that?"
"All the regulars at the Astor Library wore them. At the time it seemed
to be the thing to do, and of course they soon became second nature to
me. But I daresay no one ever had a sounder pair of eyes than I."
To Sharlee this seemed one of the most pathetic of all his confidences;
she offered no comment.
"You were in the churchyard," stated Mr. Queed. "I was there just ahead
of you. I was struck with that motto or text on the headstone, and shall
look it up when I get home. I have been making a more careful study of
your Bible this autumn and have found it exceptionally interesting. You,
I suppose, subscribe to all the tenets of the Christian faith?"
Sharlee hesitated. "I'm not sure that I can answer that with a direct
yes, and I _will_ not answer it with any sort of no. So I'll say that I
believe in them all, modified a little in places to satisfy my reason."
"Ah, they are subject to modification, then?"
"Certainly. Aren't you? Am not I? Whatever is alive is subject to
modification. These doctrines," said she, "are evolving because they
have the principle of life in them."
"So you are an evolutionist?"
"The expert in evolutionary sociology will hardly quarrel with me for
that."
"The expert in evolutionary sociology deals with social organisms,
nations, the human race. Your Bible deals with Smith, Brown, and Jones."
"Well, what are your organisms and nations but collections of my Smiths,
Browns, and Joneses? My Bible deals with individuals because there is
nothing else to deal with. The individual conscience is the beginning of
everything."
"Ah! So you would found your evolution of humanity upon the increasing
operation of what you call conscience?"
"Probably I would not give _all_ the credit to what I call conscience.
Probably I'd give some of it to what I call intellect."
"In that case you would almost certainly fall into a fatal error."
"Why, don't you consider that the higher the intellectual development
the higher the type?"
"Suppose we go more slowly," said Mr. Queed, intently plucking a dead
bough from an overhanging young oak.
"How do you go about measuring a type? When you speak of a high type,
exactly what do you mean?"
"When I speak of a high type," said Sharlee, who really did not know
exactly what she meant, "I will merely say that I mean a type that is
high--lofty, you know--towering over other types."
She flaunted a gloved hand to suggest infinite altitude.
"You ought to mean," he said patiently, "a type which most successfully
sketches the civilization of the future, a type best fitted to dominate
and survive. Now you have only to glance at history to see that
intellectual supremacy is no guarantee whatever of such a type."
"Oh, Mr. Queed, I don't know about that."
"Then I will convince you," said he. "Look at the French--the most
brilliant nation intellectually among all the European peoples. Where
are they in the race to-day? The evolutionist sees in them familiar
symptoms of a retrogression which rarely ends but in one way. Look at
the Greeks. Every schoolboy knows that the Greeks were vastly the
intellectual superiors of any dominant people of to-day. An
anthropologist of standing assures us that the intellectual interval
separating the Greek of the Periclean age from the modern Anglo-Saxon is
as great as the interval between the Anglo-Saxon and the African savage.
Point to a man alive to-day who is the intellectual peer of Aristotle,
Plato, or Socrates. Yet where are the Greeks? What did their exalted
intellectual equipment do to save them in the desperate struggle for the
survival of the fittest? The Greeks of to-day are selling fruit at
corner stands; Plato's descendants shine the world's shoes. They live to
warn away the most casual evolutionist from the theory that intellectual
supremacy necessarily means supremacy of type. Where, then, you may ask,
does lie the principle of triumphant evolution? Here we stand at the
innermost heart of every social scheme. Let us glance a moment," said
Mr. Queed, "at Man, as we see him first emerging from the dark
hinterlands of history."
So, walking through the sweet autumn woods with the one girl he knew in
all the world--barring only Miss Miller--Queed spoke heartily of the
rise and fall of peoples and the destiny of man. Thus conversing, they
came out of the woods and stood upon the platform of the rudimentary
station.
The line ran here on an elevation, disappearing in the curve of a heavy
cut two hundred yards further north. In front the ground fell sharply
and rolled out in a vast green meadow, almost treeless and level as a
mill-pond. Far off on the horizon rose the blue haze of a range of
foothills, upon which the falling sun momentarily stood, like a
gold-piece edge-up on a table. Nearer, to their right, was a strip of
uncleared woods, a rainbow of reds and pinks. Through the meadow ran a
little stream, such as a boy of ten could leap; for the instant it stood
fire-red under the sun.
Sharlee, obtaining the floor for a moment, asked Queed how his own work
had been going. He told her that in one sense it had not been going at
all: not a chapter written from May to September.
"However," he said, with an unclouded face, "I am now giving six hours a
day to it. And it is just as well to go slow. The smallest error of
angle at the centre means a tremendous going astray at the
circumference. I--ahem--do not feel that my summer has been wasted, by
any means. You follow me? It is worth some delay to be doubly sure that
I put down no plus signs as minuses."
"Yes, of course. How beautiful that is out there, isn't it?"
His eyes followed hers over the sunset spaces. "No, it is too quiet, too
monotonous. If there must be scenery, let it have some originality and
character. You yourself are very beautiful, I think."
Sharlee started, almost violently, and colored perceptibly. If a
text-book in differential calculus, upon the turning of a page, had
thrown problems to the winds and begun gibbering purple poems of
passion, she could not have been more completely taken aback. However,
there was no mistaking the utter and veracious impersonality of his
tone.
"Oh, do you think so? I'm very glad, because I'm afraid not many people
do...."
Mr. Queed remained silent. So far, so good; the conversation stood in a
position eminently and scientifically correct; but Sharlee could not for
the life of her forbear to add: "But I had no idea you ever noticed
people's looks."
"So far as I remember, I never did before. I think it was the appearance
of your eyes as you looked out over the plain that attracted my
attention. Then, looking closer, I noticed that you are beautiful."
The compliment was so unique and perfect that another touch could only
spoil it. Sharlee immediately changed the subject.
"Oh, Mr. Queed, has the Department you or Colonel Cowles to thank for
the editorial about the reformatory this morning?"
"Both of us. He suggested it and I wrote it. So you really cannot tell
us apart?"
She shook her head. "All this winter we shall work preparing the State's
mind for this institution, convincing it so thoroughly that when the
legislature meets again, it simply will not dare to refuse us. When I
mention we and us, understand that I am speaking to you Departmentally.
After that there are ten thousand other things that we want to do. But
everything is so immortally slow! We are not allowed to raise our
fingers without a hundred years' war first. Don't you ever wish for
money--oceans and oceans of lovely money?"
"Good heavens, no!"
"I do. I'd pepper this State with institutions. Did you know," she said
sweetly, "that I once had quite a little pot of money? When I was one
month old."
"Yes," said Queed, "I knew. In fact, I had not been here a week before I
heard of Henry G. Surface. Major Brooke speaks of him constantly,
Colonel Cowles occasionally. Do you," he asked, "care much about that?"
"Well," said Sharlee, gently, "I'm glad my father never knew."
From half a mile away, behind the bellying woodland, a faint hoot served
notice that the city-bound car was sweeping rapidly toward them. It was
on the tip of Queed's tongue to remind Miss Weyland that, in the case of
Fifi, she had taken the ground that the dead did know what was going on
upon earth. But he did not do so. The proud way in which she spoke of
_my father_ threw another thought uppermost in his mind.
"Miss Weyland," he said abruptly, "I made a--confidence to you, of a
personal nature, the first time I ever talked with you. I did not, it is
true, ask you to regard it as a confidence, but--"
"I know," interrupted Sharlee, hurriedly. "But of course I _have_
regarded it in that way, and have never spoken of it to anybody."
"Thank you. That was what I wished to say."
If Sharlee had wanted to measure now the difference that she saw in Mr.
Queed, she could have done it by the shyness that they both felt in
approaching a topic they had once handled with the easiest simplicity.
She was glad of his sensitiveness; it became him better than his early
callousness. Sharlee wore a suit of black-and-gray pin-checks, and it
was very excellently tailored; for if she purchased but two suits a
year, she invariably paid money to have them made by one who knew how.
Her hat was of the kind that other girls study with cool diligence,
while feigning engrossment in the conversation; and, repairing to their
milliners, give orders for accurate copies of it. From it floated a
silky-looking veil of gray-white, which gave her face that airy,
cloud-like setting that photographers of the baser sort so passionately
admire. The place was as windy as Troy; from far on the ringing plains
the breeze raced and fell upon this veil, ceaselessly kicking it here
and there, in a way that would have driven a strong man lunatic in seven
minutes. Sharlee, though a slim girl and no stronger than another,
remained entirely unconscious of the behavior of the veil; long
familiarity had bred contempt for its boisterous play; and, with her
eyes a thousand miles away, she was wishing with her whole heart that
she dared ask Mr. Queed a question.
Whereupon, like her marionette that she worked by a string, he opened
his mouth and gravely answered her.
"I have three theories about my father. One is that he is an eccentric
psychologist with peculiar, not to say extraordinary, ideas about the
bringing up of children. Another is that because of his own convenience
or circumstances, he does not care to own me as I am now. The third is
that because of my convenience or circumstances, he thinks that I may
not care to own him as he is now. I have never heard of or from him
since the letter I showed you, nearly nine months ago. I rather incline
to the opinion," he said, "that my father is dead."
"If he isn't," said Sharlee, gently, as the great car whizzed up and
stopped with a jerk, "I am very sure that you are to find him some day.
If he hadn't meant that, he would never have asked you to come all the
way from New York to settle here--do you think so?"
"Do you know," said Mr. Queed--so absorbedly as to leave her to clamber
up the car steps without assistance--"if I subscribed to the tenets of
your religion, I might believe that my father was merely a mythical
instrument of Providence--a tradition created out of air _just to bring
me down here_."
"Why," said Sharlee, looking down from the tall platform, as the car
whizzed and buzzed and slowly started, "aren't you _coming_?"
"No, I'm walking," said Mr. Queed, and remembered at the last moment to
pluck off his glistening new derby.
Thus they parted, almost precipitately, and, for all of him, might never
have met again in this world. Half a mile up the road, it came to the
young man that their farewell had lacked that final word of ceremony to
which he now aspired. To those who called at his office, to the men he
met at the sign of the Mercury, even to Nicolovius when he betook
himself from the lamp-lit sitting-room, it was his carefully attained
habit to say: "I hope to see you again soon." He meant the hope, with
these, only in the most general and perfunctory sense. Why, then, had he
omitted this civil tag and postscript in his parting with Miss Weyland,
to whom he could have said it--yes, certainly--with more than usual
sincerity? Certainly; he really did hope to see her again soon. For she
was an intelligent, sensible girl, and knew more about him than anybody
in the world except Tim Queed.
Gradually it was borne in upon him that the reason he had failed to tell
Miss Weyland that he hoped to see her again soon was exactly the fact
that he did hope to see her again soon. Off his guard for this reason,
he had fallen into a serious lapse. Looking with untrained eyes into the
future, he saw no way in which a man who had failed to tell a lady that
he hoped to see her again soon was ever to retrieve his error. It was
good-by, Charles Weyland, for sure.
However, Miss Weyland herself resolved all these perplexities by
appearing at Mrs. Paynter's supper-table before the month was out; and
this exploit she repeated at least once, and maybe twice, during the
swift winter that followed.
* * * * *
On January 14, or February 23, or it might have been March 2, Queed
unexpectedly reentered the dining-room, toward eight o'clock, with the
grave announcement that he had a piece of news. Sharlee was alone in the
room, concluding the post-prandial chores with the laying of the
Turkey-red cloth. She was in fickle vein this evening, as it chanced;
and instead of respectfully inquiring the nature of his tidings, as was
naturally and properly expected of her, she received the young man with
a fire of breezy inconsequentialities which puzzled and annoyed him
greatly.
She admitted, without pressure, that she had been hoping for his return;
had in fact been dawdling over the duties of the dining-room on that
very expectation. From there her fancy grew. Audaciously she urged his
reluctant attention to the number of her comings to Mrs. Paynter's in
recent months. With an exceedingly stagey counterfeit of a downcast eye,
she hinted at gossip lately arising from public observation of these
visits: gossip, namely, to the effect that Miss Weyland's ostensible
suppings with her aunt were neither better nor worse than so many bold
calls upon Mr. Queed. Her lip quivered alarmingly over such a
confession; undoubtedly she looked enormously abashed.
Mr. Queed, for his part, looked highly displeased and more than a shade
uncomfortable. He annihilated all such foolishness by a look and a
phrase; observed, in a stately opening, that she would hardly trouble to
deny empty rumor of this sort, since--
"I can't deny it, you see! Because," she interrupted, raising her eyes
and turning upon him a sudden dazzling yet outrageous smile--"_it's
true_."
She skipped away, smiling to herself, happily putting things away and
humming an air. Queed watched her in annoyed silence. His adamantine
gravity inspired her with an irresistible impulse to levity; so the law
of averages claimed its innings.
"While you are thinking up what to say," she rattled on, "might I ask
your advice on a sociological problem that was just laid before me by
Laura?"
"Well," he said impatiently, "who is Laura?"
"Laura is the loyal negress who cooks the food for Mrs. Paynter's bright
young men. Her husband first deserted her, next had the misfortune to
get caught while burgling, and is at present doing time, as the saying
is. Now a young bright-skin negro desires to marry Laura, and speaks in
urgent tones of the divorce court. Her attitude is more than willing,
but she learns that a divorce, at the lowest conceivable price, will
cost fifteen dollars, and she had rather put the money in a suit and
bonnet. But a thought no larger than a man's hand has crossed her mind,
and she said to me just now: 'I 'clare, Miss Sharly, it do look like,
when you got a beau and he want to marry you, and all the time axin' and
coaxin' an' beggin' you to get a div-o'ce, it do look like _he_ ought to
pay for the div-o'ce.' Now what answer has your old science to give to a
real heart problem such as that?"
"May I ask that you will put the napkins away, or at the least remain
stationary? It is impossible for me to talk with you while you flutter
about in this way."
At last she came and sat down meekly at the table, her hands clasped
before her in rather a devotional attitude, while he, standing, fixed
her with his unwavering gaze.
"I speak to you," he began, uncompromisingly, "as to Mrs. Paynter's
agent. Professor Nicolovius is going to move in the spring and take an
apartment or small house. He has invited me to share such apartment or
house with him."
"What! But you declined?"
"On the contrary, I accepted at once."
Mrs. Paynter's agent was much surprised and interested by this news, and
said so. "But how in the world," she went on, puzzled, "did you make him
like you so? I always supposed that he hated everybody--he does me, I
know."
"I believe he does hate everybody but me."
"Strange--extraordinary!" said Sharlee, picturing the two scholars alone
together in their flat, endeavoring to soft-boil eggs on one of those
little fixtures over the gas.
"I can see nothing in the least extraordinary in the refusal of a
cultured gentleman to hate me."
"I don't mean it that way at all--not at all! But Professor Nicolovius
must know cultured gentlemen, congenial roomers, who are nearer his own
age--"
"Oh, not necessarily," said Queed, and sat down in the chair by her,
Major Brooke's chair. "He is a most unsocial sort of man,"--this from
the little Doctor!--"and I doubt if he knows anybody better than he
knows me. That he knows me so well is due solely to the fact that we
have been forced on each other three times a day for over a year. For
the first month or so after I came here, we remained entire strangers, I
remember, and passed each other on the stairs without speaking.
Gradually, however, he has come to take a great fancy to me."
"And is that why you are going off to a honeymoon cottage with him?"
"Hardly. I am going because it will be the best sort of arrangement for
me."
"Oh!"
"I will pay, you see," said Queed, "no more than I am paying here; for
that matter, I have no doubt that I could beat him down to five dollars
a week, if I cared to do so. In return I shall have decidedly greater
comforts and conveniences, far greater quiet and independence, and
complete freedom from interruptions and intrusions. The arrangement will
be a big gain in several ways for me."
"And have you taken a great fancy to Professor Nicolovius, too?"
"Oh, no!--not at all. But that has very little to do with it. At least
he has the great gift of silence."
Sharlee looked at his absorbed face closely. She thought that his head
in profile was very fine, though certainly his nose was too prominent
for beauty. But what she was wondering was whether the little Doctor had
really changed so much after all.
"Well," said she, slowly, "I'm sorry you're going."
"Sorry--why? It would appear to me that under the tenets of your
religion you ought to be glad. You ought to compliment me for going."
"I don't find anything in the tenets of my religion that requires you to
go off and room-keep with Professor Nicolovius."
"You do not? It is a tremendous kindness to him, I assure you. To have a
place of his own has long been his dream, he tells me; but he cannot
afford it without the financial assistance I would give. Again, even if
he could finance it, he would not venture to try it alone, because of
his health. It appears that he is subject to some kind of
attacks--heart, I suppose--and does not want to be alone. I have heard
him walking his floor at 3 o'clock in the morning. Do you know anything
about his life?"
"No. Nothing."
"I know everything."
He paused for her to ask him questions, that he might have the pleasure
of refusing her. But instead of prying, Sharlee said: "Still I'm sorry
that you are going."
"Well? Why?"
"Because," said Sharlee.
"Proceed."
"Because I don't like his eyes."
"The question, from your point of view," said Mr. Queed, "is a
moral--not an optic one. These acts which confer benefits on others," he
continued, "so peculiarly commended by your religion, are conceived by
it to work moral good to the doer. The _eyes_ (which you use
synecdochically to represent the _character_) of the person to whom they
are done, have nothing--"
"Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, briskly interrupting his exegetical words, "I
believe you are going off with Professor Nicolovius chiefly because--you
think he needs you!"
He looked up sharply, much surprised and irritated. "That is absolutely
foolish and absurd. I have nothing in the world to do with what
Professor Nicolovius needs. You must always remember that I am not a
subscriber to the tenets of your religion."
"It is not too late. I always remember that too."
"But I must say frankly that I am much surprised at the way you
interpret those tenets. For if--"
"Oh, you should never have tested me on such a question! Don't you see
that I'm the judge sitting in his or her own case? Two boarders gone at
one swoop! How shall I break the news to Aunt Jennie?"
He thought this over in silence and then said impatiently; "I'm sorry,
but I do not feel that I can consider that phase of the matter."
"Certainly not."
"The arrangement between us is a strictly business one, based on mutual
advantage, and to be terminated at will as the interests of either party
dictates."
"Exactly."
He turned a sharp glance on her, and rose. Having risen he stood a
moment, irresolute, frowning, troubled by a thought. Then he said, in an
annoyed, nervous voice:--
"Look here, will it be a serious thing for your aunt to lose me?"
The agent burst out laughing. He was surprised by her merriment; he
could not guess that it covered her instantaneous discovery that she
liked him more than she would ever have thought possible.
"While I'm on the other side--remember that," said she, "I'm obliged to
tell you that we can let the rooms any day at an hour's notice. Not that
the places of our two scholars can ever be filled, but the
boarding-house business is booming these days. We are turning them away.
Do you remember the night that you walked in here an hour late for
supper, and I arose and collected twenty dollars from you?"
"Oh, yes.... By the way--I have never asked--whatever became of that
extraordinary pleasure-dog of yours?"
"Thank you. He is bigger and more pleasurable than ever. I take him out
every afternoon, and each day, just as the clock strikes five, he knocks
over a strange young man for me. It is delightful sport. But he has
never found any young man that he enjoyed as heartily as he did you."
Gravely he moved toward the door. "I must return to my work. You will
tell your aunt I have given notice? Well--good-evening."
"_Good_-evening, Mr. Queed."
The door half shut upon him, but opened again to admit his head and
shoulders.
"By the way, there was a curious happening yesterday which might be of
interest to you. Did you see it in the _Post_--a small item headed 'The
Two Queeds'?"
"Oh--no! About you and Tim?"
"About Tim, but not about me. His beat was changed the other day, it
seems, and early yesterday morning a bank in his new district was broken
into. Tim went in and arrested the burglar after a desperate fight in
the dark. When other policemen came and turned on the lights, Tim
discovered to his horror that he had captured his brother Murphy."