“I wish to have a word with you, sir.”
“Mr. Windsor, I presume?”
“Pardon me!”
“I should like a few moments’ conversation.”
The start was good and even; but the gentleman who said “Pardon me!” necessarily finished first with the rest nowhere.
Psmith turned to him, bowed, and fixed him with a benevolent gaze through his eye-glass.
“Are you Mr. Windsor, sir, may I ask?” inquired the favoured one.
The others paused for the reply.
“Alas! no,” said Psmith with manly regret.
“Then who are you?”
“I am Psmith.”
There was a pause.
“Where is Mr. Windsor?”
“He is, I fancy, champing about forty cents’ worth of lunch at some neighbouring hostelry.”
“When will he return?”
“Anon. But how much anon I fear I cannot say.”
The visitors looked at each other.
“This is exceedingly annoying,” said the man who had said “Pardon me!” “I came for the express purpose of seeing Mr. Windsor.”
“So did I,” chimed in the rest. “Same here. So did I.”
Psmith bowed courteously.
“Comrade Windsor’s loss is my gain. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Are you on the editorial staff of this paper?”
“I am acting sub-editor. The work is not light,” added Psmith gratuitously. “Sometimes the cry goes round, ‘Can Psmith get through it all? Will his strength support his unquenchable spirit?’ But I stagger on. I do not repine.”
“Then maybe you can tell me what all this means?” said a small round gentleman who so far had done only chorus work.
“If it is in my power to do so, it shall be done, Comrade–I have not the pleasure of your name.”
“My name is Waterman, sir. I am here on behalf of my wife, whose name you doubtless know.”
“Correct me if I am wrong,” said Psmith, “but I should say it, also, was Waterman.”
“Luella Granville Waterman, sir,” said the little man proudly. Psmith removed his eye-glass, polished it, and replaced it in his eye. He felt that he must run no risk of not seeing clearly the husband of one who, in his opinion, stood alone in literary circles as a purveyor of sheer bilge.
“My wife,” continued the little man, producing an envelope and handing it to Psmith, “has received this extraordinary communication from a man signing himself W. Windsor. We are both at a loss to make head or tail of it.”
Psmith was reading the letter.
“It seems reasonably clear to me,” he said.
“It is an outrage. My wife has been a contributor to this journal from its foundation. Her work has given every satisfaction to Mr. Wilberfloss. And now, without the slightest warning, comes this peremptory dismissal from W. Windsor. Who is W. Windsor? Where is Mr. Wilberfloss?”
The chorus burst forth. It seemed that that was what they all wanted to know: Who was W. Windsor? Where was Mr. Wilberfloss?
“I am the Reverend Edwin T. Philpotts, sir,” said a cadaverous- looking man with pale blue eyes and a melancholy face. “I have contributed ‘Moments of Meditation’ to this journal for a very considerable period of time.”
“I have read your page with the keenest interest,” said Psmith. “I may be wrong, but yours seems to me work which the world will not willingly let die.”
The Reverend Edwin’s frosty face thawed into a bleak smile.
“And yet,” continued Psmith, “I gather that Comrade Windsor, on the other hand, actually wishes to hurry on its decease. It is these strange contradictions, these clashings of personal taste, which make up what we call life. Here we have, on the one hand–”
A man with a face like a walnut, who had hitherto lurked almost unseen behind a stout person in a serge suit, bobbed into the open, and spoke his piece.
“Where’s this fellow Windsor? W. Windsor. That’s the man we want to see. I’ve been working for this paper without a break, except when I had the mumps, for four years, and I’ve reason to know that my page was as widely read and appreciated as any in New York. And now up comes this Windsor fellow, if you please, and tells me in so many words the paper’s got no use for me.”