The Silent Barrier. Tracy Louis
anybody is damaging the paint outside.”
Spencer smiled so agreeably that the editor of “The Firefly” softened. At first, he had taken his visitor for an unpaid contributor; but the American accent banished this phantom of the imagination. He continued to pour into a tumbler the contents of a bottle of beer.
“Well,” he said, “now that you are here, what can I do for you, Mr. – ”
“Spencer – Charles K. Spencer.”
Instantly it struck the younger man that little more than an hour had elapsed since he gave his name to the letter clerk in the hotel. The singularity of his proceedings during that hour was thereby brought home to him. He knew nothing of newspapers, daily or weekly; but commonsense suggested that “The Firefly’s” radiance was not over-powering. His native shrewdness advised caution, though he felt sure that he could, in homely phrase, twist this faded journalist round his little finger.
“Before I open the ball,” he said, “may I see a copy of your magazine?”
Meanwhile the other was trying to sum him up. He came to the conclusion that his visitor meant to introduce some new advertising scheme, and, as “The Firefly” was sorely in need of advertisements, he decided to listen.
“Here is last week’s issue,” he said, handing to Spencer a small sixteen-page publication. The American glanced through it rapidly, while the editor sampled the beer.
“I see,” said Spencer, after he had found a column signed “H. W.,” which consisted of paragraphs translated from a German article on airships, – “I see that ‘The Firefly’ scintillates around the Tree of Knowledge.”
The editor relaxed sufficiently to smile. “That is a good description of its weekly flights,” he said.
“You don’t use many cuts?”
“N-no. They are expensive and hard to obtain for such subjects as we favor.”
“Don’t you think it would be a good notion to brighten it up a bit – put in something lively, and more in keeping with the name?”
“I have no opening for new matter, if that is what you mean,” and the editor stiffened again.
“But you have the say-so as to the contents, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes. The selection rests with me.”
“Good. I’m sort of interested in a young lady, Miss Helen Wynton by name. She lives in Warburton Gardens, and does work for you occasionally. Now, I propose to send her on a month’s trip to Switzerland, where she will represent ‘The Firefly.’ You must get her to turn out a couple of pages of readable stuff each week, which you will have illustrated by a smart artist at a cost of say, twenty pounds an article for drawings and blocks. I pay all expenses, she gets the trip, and you secure some good copy for nothing. Is it a deal?”
The editor sat down suddenly and combed his whiskers with nervous fingers. He was a weak man, and a too liberal beer diet was not good for him.
“Are you in earnest, Mr. Spencer?” he queried in a bewildered way.
“Dead in earnest. You write the necessary letter to Miss Wynton while I am here, and I hand you the first twenty in notes. You are to tell her to call Monday noon at any bank you may select, and she will be given her tickets and a hundred pounds. When I am certain that she has started I undertake to pay you a further sum of sixty pounds. I make only two conditions. You must guarantee to star her work, as it should help her some, and my identity must not be disclosed to her under any circumstances. In a word, she must regard herself as the accredited correspondent of ‘The Firefly.’ If she appears to be a trifle rattled by your generosity in the matter of terms, you must try and look as if you did that sort of thing occasionally and would like to do it often.”
The editor pushed his chair away from the table. He seemed to require more air. “Again I must ask you if you actually mean what you say?” he gasped.
Spencer opened a pocketbook and counted four five-pound notes out of a goodly bundle. “It is all here in neat copperplate,” he said, placing the notes on the table. “Maybe you haven’t caught on to the root idea of the proposition,” he continued, seeing that the other man was staring at him blankly. “I want Miss Wynton to have a real good time. I also want to lift her up a few rungs of the journalistic ladder. But she is sensitive, and would resent patronage; so I must not figure in the affair at all. I have no other motive at the back of my head. I’m putting up two hundred pounds out of sheer philanthropy. Will you help?”
“There are points about this amazing proposal that require elucidation,” said the editor slowly. “Travel articles might possibly come within the scope of ‘The Firefly’; but I am aware that Miss Wynton is what might be termed an exceedingly attractive young lady. For instance, you wouldn’t be philanthropic on my account.”
“You never can tell. It all depends how your case appealed to me. But if you are hinting that I intend to use my scheme for the purpose of winning Miss Wynton’s favorable regard, I must say that she strikes me as the kind of girl who would think she had been swindled if she learned the truth. In any event, I may never see her again, and it is certainly not my design to follow her to Switzerland. I don’t kick at your questions. You’re old enough to be her father, and mine, for that matter. Go ahead. This is Saturday afternoon, you know, and there’s no business stirring.”
Spencer had to cover the ground a second time before everything was made clear. At last the fateful letter was written. He promised to call on Monday and learn how the project fared. Then he relieved the cabman’s anxiety, as the alley possessed a second exit, and was driven to the Wellington Theater, where he secured a stall for that night’s performance of the Chinese musical comedy in which Miss Millicent Jaques played the part of a British Admiral’s daughter.
While Spencer was watching Helen’s hostess cutting capers in a Mandarin’s palace, Helen herself was reading, over and over again, a most wonderful letter that had fallen from her sky. It had all the appearance of any ordinary missive. The King’s face on a penny stamp, or so much of it as was left uninjured by a postal smudge, looked familiar enough, and both envelop and paper resembled those which had brought her other communications from “The Firefly.” But the text was magic, rank necromancy. No wizard who ever dealt in black letter treatises could have devised a more convincing proof of his occult powers than this straightforward offer made by the editor of “The Firefly.” Four articles of five thousand words each, – tickets and 100 pounds awaiting her at a bank, – go to the Maloja-Kulm Hotel; leave London at the earliest possible date; please send photographs and suggestions for black-and-white illustrations of mountaineering and society! What could it possibly mean?
At the third reading Helen began to convince herself that this rare stroke of luck was really hers. The concluding paragraph shed light on “The Firefly’s” extraordinary outburst.
“As this commission heralds a new departure for the paper, I have to ask you to be good enough not to make known the object of your journey. In fact, it will be as well if you do not state your whereabouts to any persons other than your near relatives. Of course, all need for secrecy ceases with the appearance of your first article; but by that time you will practically be on your way home again. I am anxious to impress on you the importance of this instruction.”
Helen found herein the germ of understanding. “The Firefly” meant to boom itself on its Swiss correspondence; but even that darksome piece of journalistic enterprise did not explain the princely munificence of the hundred pounds. At last, when she calmed down sufficiently to be capable of connected thought, she saw that “mountaineering” implied the hire of guides, and that “society” meant frocks. Of course it was intended that she should spend the whole of the money, and thus give “The Firefly” a fair return for its outlay. And a rapid calculation revealed the dazzling fact that after setting aside the fabulous sum of two pounds a day for expenses she still had forty pounds left wherewith to replenish her scanty stock of dresses.
Believing that at any instant the letter might dissolve into a curt request to keep her scientific jottings strictly within the limits of a column, Helen sat