Young Mr. Petheram greeted Roland with a joyous enthusiasm which the hound Argus, on the return of Ulysses, might have equalled but could scarcely have surpassed.
It seemed to be Mr. Petheram’s considered opinion that God was in His Heaven and all was right with the world. Roland’s attempts to correct this belief fell on deaf ears.
“Have I seen the advertisements?” he cried, echoing his editor’s first question. “I’ve seen nothing else.”
“There!” said Mr. Petheram proudly.
“It can’t go on.”
“Yes, it can. Don’t you worry. I know they’re arrested as fast as we send them out, but, bless you, the supply’s endless. Ever since the Revue boom started and actors were expected to do six different parts in seven minutes, there are platoons of music-hall ‘pros’ hanging about the Strand, ready to take on any sort of job you offer them. I have a special staff flushing the Bodegas. These fellows love it. It’s meat and drink to them to be right in the public eye like that. Makes them feel ten years younger. It’s wonderful the talent knocking about. Those Zulus used to have a steady job as the Six Brothers Biff, Society Contortionists. The Revue craze killed them professionally. They cried like children when we took them on.
“By the way, could you put through an expenses cheque before you go? The fines mount up a bit. But don’t you worry about that either. We’re coining money. I’ll show you the returns in a minute. I told you we should turn the corner. Turned it! Blame me, we’ve whizzed round it on two wheels. Have you had time to see the paper since you got back? No? Then you haven’t seen our new Scandal Page—’We Just Want to Know, You Know.’ It’s a corker, and it’s sent the circulation up like a rocket. Everybody reads ‘Squibs’ now. I was hoping you would come back soon. I wanted to ask you about taking new offices. We’re a bit above this sort of thing now.”
Roland, meanwhile, was reading with horrified eyes the alleged corking Scandal Page. It seemed to him without exception the most frightful production he had ever seen. It appalled him.
“This is awful,” he moaned. “We shall have a hundred libel actions.”
“Oh, no, that’s all right. It’s all fake stuff, tho the public doesn’t know it. If you stuck to real scandals you wouldn’t get a par. a week. A more moral set of blameless wasters than the blighters who constitute modern society you never struck. But it reads all right, doesn’t it? Of course, every now and then one does hear something genuine, and then it goes in. For instance, have you ever heard of Percy Pook, the bookie? I have got a real ripe thing in about Percy this week, the absolute limpid truth. It will make him sit up a bit. There, just under your thumb.”
Roland removed his thumb, and, having read the paragraph in question, started as if he had removed it from a snake.
“But this is bound to mean a libel action!” he cried.
“Not a bit of it,” said Mr. Petheram comfortably. “You don’t know Percy. I won’t bore you with his life-history, but take it from me he doesn’t rush into a court of law from sheer love of it. You’re safe enough.”
But it appeared that Mr. Pook, tho coy in the matter of cleansing his scutcheon before a judge and jury, was not wholly without weapons of defense and offense. Arriving at the office next day, Roland found a scene of desolation, in the middle of which, like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, sat Jimmy, the vacant-faced office boy. Jimmy was reading an illustrated comic paper, and appeared undisturbed by his surroundings.
“He’s gorn,” he observed, looking up as Roland entered.
“What do you mean?” Roland snapped at him. “Who’s gone and where did he go? And besides that, when you speak to your superiors you will rise and stop chewing that infernal gum. It gets on my nerves.”
Jimmy neither rose nor relinquished his gum. He took his time and answered.
“Mr. Petheram. A couple of fellers come in and went through, and there was a uproar inside there, and presently out they come running, and I went in, and there was Mr. Petheram on the floor knocked silly and the furniture all broke, and now ‘e’s gorn to ‘orspital. Those fellers ‘ad been putting ‘im froo it proper,” concluded Jimmy with moody relish.
Roland sat down weakly. Jimmy, his tale told, resumed the study of his illustrated paper. Silence reigned in the offices of ‘Squibs.’
It was broken by the arrival of Miss March. Her exclamation of astonishment at the sight of the wrecked room led to a repetition of Jimmy’s story.
She vanished on hearing the name of the hospital to which the stricken editor had been removed, and returned an hour later with flashing eyes and a set jaw.
“Aubrey,” she said—it was news to Roland that Mr. Petheram’s name was Aubrey—”is very much knocked about, but he is conscious and sitting up and taking nourishment.”
“That’s good.”
“In a spoon only.”
“Ah!” said Roland.
“The doctor says he will not be out for a week. Aubrey is certain it was that horrible book-maker’s men who did it, but of course he can prove nothing. But his last words to me were, ‘Slip it into Percy again this week.’ He has given me one or two things to mention. I don’t understand them, but Aubrey says they will make him wild.”
Roland’s flesh crept. The idea of making Mr. Pook any wilder than he appeared to be at present horrified him. Panic gave him strength, and he addressed Miss March, who was looking more like a modern Joan of Arc than anything else on earth, firmly.
“Miss March,” he said, “I realize that this is a crisis, and that we must all do all that we can for the paper, and I am ready to do anything in reason—but I will not slip it into Percy. You have seen the effects of slipping it into Percy. What he or his minions will do if we repeat the process I do not care to think.”
“You are afraid?”
“Yes,” said Roland simply.
Miss March turned on her heel. It was plain that she regarded him as a worm. Roland did not like being thought a worm, but it was infinitely better than being regarded as an interesting case by the house-surgeon of a hospital. He belonged to the school of thought which holds that it is better that people should say of you, “There he goes!” than that they should say, “How peaceful he looks”.
Stress of work prevented further conversation. It was a revelation to Roland, the vigor and energy with which Miss March threw herself into the breach. As a matter of fact, so tremendous had been the labors of the departed Mr. Petheram, that her work was more apparent than real. Thanks to Mr. Petheram, there was a sufficient supply of material in hand to enable ‘Squibs’ to run a fortnight on its own momentum. Roland, however, did not know this, and with a view to doing what little he could to help, he informed Miss March that he would write the Scandal Page. It must be added that the offer was due quite as much to prudence as to chivalry. Roland simply did not dare to trust her with the Scandal Page. In her present mood it was not safe. To slip it into Percy would, he felt, be with her the work of a moment.
Literary composition had never been Roland’s forte. He sat and stared at the white paper and chewed the pencil which should have been marring its whiteness with stinging paragraphs. No sort of idea came to him.
His brow grew damp. What sort of people—except book-makers—did things you could write scandal about? As far as he could ascertain, nobody.
He picked up the morning paper. The name Windlebird [] caught his eye. A kind of pleasant melancholy came over him as he read the paragraph. How long ago it seemed since he had met that genial financier. The paragraph was not particularly interesting. It gave a brief account of some large deal which Mr. Windlebird was negotiating. Roland did not understand a word of it, but it gave him an idea.