Mr. Flood pondered this information for a moment with his bulging eyes still fastened on Mr. Candler in their look of stupefied curiosity. Then, as the full import of what he had heard at length soaked into his intelligence, he shook his great coarse head once, slowly, in a movement of ponderous but emphatic satisfaction, and said with hoarse conviction:
“Well, he’s a good’un! If any one can sell’em, he’s the one.”
This judgment was followed by a brief but heavy pause, which was broken in a moment by the voice of the pompous, swarthy little man who, in a tone of detached curiosity, said:
“Whatever became of that other boy—the one who used to work there in The Courier office when you owned it? What was his name, anyway?”
“Ben,” said Mr. Flood heavily, but without hesitation. “That was Ben.” Here he coughed in an alarming, phlegmy sort of way, cleared his throat and spat chokingly into the spittoon at his feet, wiped his mouth with his wadded handkerchief and in a moment, panting for breath, wheezed:
“Ben was the one that worked for me.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” the swarthy little man said rapidly, as if now it all came back to him. “Ben! That was the one! Whatever became of him? I haven’t seen him recently.”
“He’s dead,” said Mr. Flood, still wheezing rapidly for breath and gazing at the spittoon. “That’s the reason you haven’t seen him,” he said seriously. And suddenly, as if the long-awaited moment had come, he bent over, torn by a fit of choking and phlegmy sounds of really astounding proportions. When it was over, he raised himself, settled back slowly and painfully in his seat, and for a moment, with closed eyes, did nothing but wheeze rapidly. In a moment, still with closed eyes, he gasped almost inaudibly:
“Ben was the one that died.”
“Oh, yes! I do remember now,” the pompous little man declared, nodding his head sharply with an air of conviction. “That’s been some time ago, hasn’t it?” he said to the boy.
“He died two years ago,” the boy replied, “during the war.”
“Oh, that’s so, he did! I remember now!” the man cried instantly, with an air of recollection that somehow said that he remembered nothing. “He was overseas at the time, wasn’t he?” he asked smoothly.
“No, sir,” the boy answered. “He was at home. He died of pneumonia—during that big epidemic.”
