Chapter VIII: Shows the Pulse of the World

Jealousy is the hydra of calamities, the seven-fold death; and things are only worth what one makes them worth.

Women have always some idea kept in the background. What, I wondered, was Daisy's?

I telephoned to Marvin at home, and received instructions to keep an engagement at Hampstead--a meeting upon a question in which the _Evening Herald_ had taken great interest. Then I lit a pipe and sat for a long time pondering, thinking of the man who at that moment was in the wagon-lit of the Orient Express, speeding eastward across Europe.

I read the report of the inquest carefully, trying to discover what it was which had so suddenly caused a change in the manner of my well-beloved. But I could discern nothing. True, the story of the mysterious second woman was told for the first time, with the account of how she had committed suicide. Yet somehow I did not think it was that which had caused her such consternation and amazement.

My brain was awhirl. The problem was inscrutable.

I went down to the Savage Club, and in the big picture-hung, tobacco-mellowed room, half of which is devoted to smoking and half to eating, I ate my dinner at a table with two friends, journalists on rival newspapers. One was Day, a reporter on the _Morning Post_, and the other Melville, of the _Globe_. Both had "done" the inquest at Barnes that afternoon, and knowing that I had been with Whitlock were anxious to hear the latest. But I was close and said nothing. Whitlock knew that I could keep a secret, and for that very reason allowed me to be present at so many confidential inquiries and investigations.

From eight till nine I sat in a public hall at Hampstead, and at nine-thirty took my stall at the Oxford Music Hall, waiting for the appearance of my well-beloved.

The place was packed in every part and thick with tobacco smoke. Not a seat in the house was unoccupied, and had I not obtained a stall by telephone I should have been compelled to stand in the lounge.

At last a troupe of clever acrobats concluded their "turn," and Daisy's number appeared in illuminated figures at the side of the proscenium.

Then the curtain went up, and, as the slim, sweet-faced girl came dancing on in her smart white motor-coat, cap, and veil, she was greeted by a hearty round of applause, which showed in what public favour she was held.

Next moment, when the orchestra struck up, she began to sing "The Motor Maid," the song that had already taken all London by storm, and which was being whistled, hummed, and played upon the barrel-organs everywhere. The whole audience quickly took up the tuneful chorus, which began--

"This smart little motor maid,
With a dainty kiss she paid."

The song received a loud encore, and in response she reappeared in a most becoming dress of black chiffon, the short dancing-skirt and bodice narrowly edged with pale pink, while the corsage was covered with silver sequins.

The orchestra struck up, and she executed a dance so full of wild abandon that the packed audience applauded over and over again, until she concluded with a final high kick, made her bow, and disappeared as the heavy plush curtains fell together again.

I hung about the stage door to catch sight of her, fearing to approach her because of old Annie. Then, after seeing her and the faithful old servant get into a cab and drive off, I returned along Oxford Street to my chambers.

James Marvin was, like most news editors and sub-editors in London, a Scotsman. When I entered the large, well-lighted sub-editors' room of the _Evening Herald_ next morning he had already been there since half-past seven, seated at his table, littered with piles of telegraph tape pasted upon slips of "copy-paper," and "flimsies," or sheets of oiled paper, carbon duplicates of news that had been sent round to all the other London evening papers.

There he was, busily reading, flinging some upon the floor and tossing others into the basket before him.

He was a red-moustached, bald-headed man of fifty, rather short, and when at work always sat in his shirt-sleeves, both summer and winter. He wore gold pince-nez, and he was acknowledged by every journalist in London to be--next to Wakeley, of the _Daily Herald_--the smartest news editor in the kingdom.

He had a keen eye for journalistic sensations and "scoops" both day and night. A perfect demon for work, he kept the noses of the whole staff to the grindstone, obtaining every ounce of force our bodies and brains possessed. If a man became slow or even a trifle elderly, out he went. Only the smartest of men were required on the up-to-date _Evening Herald_, with all its American methods and ingenious competitions.

"Late, Keene!" old Marvin snapped as I entered. "I marked you in the book for an engagement in the City an hour ago. Oh, you needn't trouble now. Franks has gone. Well," he went on, without glancing up at me, his big blue crayon slashing out a lot of penny-a-liners' verbiage from the piece of "flimsy" before him, "and what about that meeting at Hampstead? Worth anything?"

"Nothing," I replied.

"Let's see! You're doing the Barnes mystery? Anything fresh?"

"There's a bit just come in from the C.N.," remarked Hubbard, a consumptive-looking, yellow-haired youth, who had recently been promoted to the rank of an assistant sub-editor, and who was seated at a table behind which stood a row of seven telegraph tapes, all of which were clicking together, unrolling yards upon yards of news printed upon the narrow paper ribbons.

I crossed to his table to ascertain what fresh intelligence the Central News had circulated.

In the room were five other large writing-tables and five other big waste-paper baskets, besides that of the news editor, Marvin. At each sat the assistants, all engaged in the same work of rapidly scanning the various telegrams and reports, and deciding which was of sufficient interest to publish in the paper. On most newspapers nowadays the person known to the public as "The Editor" is merely a figure-head who arranges the subjects of the leading articles and directs the general policy of the journal. It is the news editor who "gets up" the paper, and upon whose shoulders the whole burden of responsibility falls.

Thus the bald-headed Scot, surrounded by his tape instruments, his telephones, his private wire to the City office--over which come the Stock Exchange quotations--and his five assistants, held his finger upon the pulse of the world.

That office never slept. Those clicking tapes went on night and day. An occurrence in San Francisco would reach the office within twenty-five minutes, while the paper with the winner of the University boat-race had been actually printing twenty seconds after the successful crew had passed the winning-post at Mortlake. On great occasions, too, an instrument which, covered by a small wooden box, was screwed to a little table in the corner would be used--the cable instrument direct from the New York office.

In the collection of news for the _Evening Herald_ no expense was ever spared. It was the unceasing hustle of which the staff complained. Each reporter was bound to have the telephone in his private house, and old Marvin--known in the office as "Joyous Jimmy"--would ring them up constantly in the middle of the night, when some new idea for a "scoop" or a good story occurred to him.

The popular legend was that he never slept. One thing is certain--that long hours never fatigued him, and that he was the first man in the office in the morning and the last to leave.

The _Daily Herald_ building was a perfect hive of industry, and, indeed, one of the sights of London: the big square block of offices, with its central courtyard whence the bundles of papers from the machine-rooms poured out into the vans, motor cars, and motor cycles; the six floors of small rooms housing the editorial staff of twenty different publications in addition to the morning and evening _Herald_. To the staff the place was known as the "rabbit-warren," for it consisted of hundreds of different departments, the top floor of which was given over to the _Evening Herald_. Below were the library, reference-room, tape-rooms, and news editor's department of one of the world's greatest and most influential journals, the _Daily Herald_, but these rooms being insufficient at night, their staff overflowed into ours from 9 p.m. till about 4 a.m. Therefore our rooms were never left and our tapes ticked out their messages year in year out--Sundays and week-days, incessant and never-ending.

Into that big square apartment with its large skylight was concentrated the whole news of the world day by day, hour by hour--nay, moment by moment.

The message which the consumptive youth handed to me proved to be a piece of column tape from the Central News instrument, which stated that, according to the _Western Evening Express_, at Plymouth, Inspector Whitlock had, on the previous day, made certain discoveries at the empty house in Barnes where the young girl had been found murdered. The report was practically the forged telegram which Whitlock and myself had read during its transmission on the previous day. There was, however, no mention of the source of information, even though it be so true, and evidently in the first place supplied by one well acquainted with the truth.

I wondered whether Whitlock's inquiries as to the sender of the mysterious message had been fraught with any result.

"Well," asked Marvin, still without looking up from his blotting-pad, "anything fresh in that Barnes affair? Shall we make it a feature to-day?"

"No," I replied. "I'm looking after it again this morning, but there won't be anything fresh for a day or two. The police know a lot of things, but don't want them made public."

He raised his head and peered forth at me through his gold-rimmed glasses--looked at me rather curiously, I thought.

"Do you know any of these things?" he asked.

"Well--some of them," I replied. "Indeed, there's something here which I suppose the other papers will give," and I handed him the piece of tape.

"H'm!" he grunted. "Is this true?"

I responded in the affirmative.

"And you knew it yesterday? Why didn't you send it up to us?" he asked, glaring at me. "We could have made it the feature of the 'special.'"

"Because--well, because Whitlock wouldn't allow it," I replied, resolved to keep the secret of the message and its mysterious authorship to myself.

"Whitlock be hanged!" he snarled. "When you get hold of a good thing publish it, and make an excuse afterwards. A Pressman who keeps his news to himself isn't any good nowadays. The _Herald's_ a live paper, and doesn't want to get its London news from Plymouth."

"But I----"

"What's the good of excuses?" he snapped, in his high-pitched voice. "You knew a good thing and didn't publish it. If the Chief gets to hear of it there'll be a row. You're not smart, Keene. I once thought you'd make a good crime investigator, but in this case--a real first-class sensation--you've failed miserably. What's the good of pottering about with Whitlock if you don't let us know what he's discovered?"

"But I managed to keep everything back from the other papers and agencies," I protested.

"And gave us nothing ourselves!" he laughed, with a sneer. "That's what you call up-to-date journalism? Why, when I was down at Bath thirty years ago we could do better than that--or we'd have got the sack."

"The confidence Whitlock reposes in me is based upon the fact that I've never abused it."

"Rot! A 'scoop' like that was worth a couple of hundred pounds, or more, to the paper. And you could easily have put it right with him afterwards. Good heavens! If you're going to be so infernally scrupulous about other people's feelings you'd better throw up journalism and go in for the church. It would suit you better," he declared, with a dry laugh. "But," he added, "let's see whether you can't make a bit of 'copy' to-day. You're getting like Julian Little, and won't write a line unless absolutely necessary."

"I don't want to give the subs unnecessary work," I replied, laughing, with an endeavour to treat his grumbling with humour.

"Well, just give 'em a little bit of exercise to-day," he said. "What's this about the police finding a small portrait of a gentleman, for instance? Just go and see Whitlock and induce him--pay him if you like--to let you have the loan of it, and we'll publish it in to-night's special."

"It might negative the efforts of the police."

"Negative them! Why, my dear Keene, some reader or other may identify the original and thus greatly assist them. Go along to Scotland Yard at once, use your best influence with Whitlock, and give him my compliments. Just get him to lend it to you for half an hour, and take it along to Park's studio. He'd take a copy of it. That will be a real good 'scoop' if we publish it to-night."

And he resumed his work with his blue pencil, while I stood staring at him without replying.

The expression upon his countenance as he had spoken had been very curious, almost as though he was actually aware of the amazing truth concerning the portrait.

He wished to publish it in that night's "special"!