ver, the
proposition had come to him in a concrete form, from a man who had
succeeded, a man, moreover, who knew his capacity, and was able to judge
his prospects of success. After all, it was only part of that game of
drift which he had been playing for the last ten years; and the new
phase had this advantage--he might be able to make use of what he had
learned during the previous stages of his drifting. So he followed
Douglas Kelly out into Fleet Street, then down one of the narrow alleys,
to the _Herald_ office.

The main entrance to the _Record_ building, that through which the
general public enters, when it wishes to pay for advertisements, or
consult the files, or order back numbers, has a rather gorgeous swing
door and a quite gorgeous door-keeper in uniform with no less than four
medal ribbons on his breast; but all this is closed in by an iron grille
when normal people leave the City, and the staff has to enter through a
small door at the back, which is guarded by an old and surly porter,
over the window of whose box hangs a peremptory and uncleanly notice
forbidding anyone to smoke in the building.

Douglas Kelly ignored both the porter and the notice, and went straight
up to the second floor, where, after a moment's parley with a
weary-looking secretary, he and Jimmy were admitted to the editor's
room.

Somehow, Jimmy had always pictured the editor of a great daily as a
plethoric person with keen eyes, and a background of leather-bound
volumes; but this one was thin and insignificant; there was not a single
book in his room, and, at the first glance, Jimmy was inclined to
believe that his friend had been right when he spoke of the editor
singing in a chapel choir. Yet, after Kelly had introduced him briefly,
as an old colleague, and Dodgson had put a few curt questions, Grierson
began to change his mind.

Jimmy could talk well. He had, in an unusual degree, the art of putting
things vividly and crisply, and he possessed an extraordinary memory
for those little details which give actuality to the picture. When he
described the shooting of a presidential candidate, Dodgson could see
the man with his grimy hands and torn collar, crumpling up as the volley
from the firing party caught him. The editor himself had never come in
contact with crude realities such as this--a London County Councillor
escaping by a hair's breadth from a fully-deserved conviction for
corruption over a tramway contract was the neares