It was true that, on Raffles’ advice, I dabbled in freelance journalism as a cover for the more lucrative activities in which I was his confederate.
“I shall be happy to cooperate,” I said.
To this, Lord Pollexfen made no objection, and he proceeded to suggest that an honorarium for Raffles would be appropriate, and for my own services an emolument in the nature of a salary. Though delicately enough phrased, the actual sums mentioned by the Press baron were nothing to write home about, but Raffles accepted them with casual inconsequence.
When the peer had gone off to arrange about office space and staff for us in the Pollexfen Press Building in Covent Garden I said that I felt we might have made a better bargain.
“Why strain at sprats, Bunny,” Raffles said, “when there may be mackerel in the offing?”
“You have some idea, Raffles?”
“That depends, Bunny.”
“On what?”
“On the girl who threw the bomb. You heard what she was shouting about. It may have possibilities.” Raffles’ grey eyes danced as he offered me a Sullivan from his cigarette-case. “She’ll be up in front of the magistrate at Marlborough Street to-morrow morning. We’ll be there.”
In addition to her honey-coloured hair, the girl in the dock at Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court next morning proved to have other attractions. She had spent the night in a cell, but evidently someone, possibly her solicitor, had wisely brought her more appropriate attire in which to appear before the magistrate than the trousers she had worn at Lord’s.
Her name was Mirabel Renny, and she was a fine figure of a girl, standing there in the dock, though her proud bearing and defiant expression were at variance with the moving plea which her solicitor, quite a young man, made on her behalf.
“My client, Your Honour,” he said, “as the only girl in a family dominated by her father and five large, athletic brothers, naturally occupied a subordinate place. As Your Honour is doubtless aware, pernicious literature about the social and political status of the female sex has been filtering into this country from the United States. Some of it chanced to fall into the hands of my client, who, in her girlish simplicity, was so unduly moved by it as to leave her country home and come to London. Here she lodged at a Ladies’ Hostel in Fulham, where she fell in with some elder persons of her sex who likewise had been infected by these imported fallacies.”
The girl opened her mouth, as though about to rebut her own solicitor’s statement, but the young lawyer continued hastily, to forestall her.
“No doubt in a pathetic attempt to emulate her brothers’ athletic prowess,” he said, “my client has acquired, Your Honour, a taste and aptitude for outdoor pastimes — golf, croquet, tennis, archery, horseback-riding, to name but a few. Taking advantage of these admittedly hoydenish proclivities of my client, the elder persons at the Ladies’ Hostel prevailed upon her to be the instrument of yesterday’s lamentable demonstration at Lord’s Cricket Ground — a demonstration which she now deeply regrets.”
I saw the girl’s hands, lightly sun-tanned, clench hard on the rail of the dock. Again she opened her mouth, but her solicitor hastened on.
“If Your Honour pleases,” he said, “any actual damage to the turf at Lord’s, the immemorial headquarters of our summer game, would have been viewed with repugnance by my client, with her sporting inclinations, however little they may become her in other respects. Indeed, as Inspector Harrigan has stated in evidence, the bomb-casing could not possibly have been fragmented by the detonation of its contents, consisting as these did merely of small fireworks — Chinese crackers or squibs.”
This was news to Raffles and myself, who had arrived while the hearing was in progress, and we exchanged a surprised glance.
“In view of the fact, Your Honour,” pleaded the solicitor, “that the bomb was designed only as a means of attracting attention, and that my client now bitterly regrets the incident, I ask Your Honour to exercise leniency in this case.”
The magistrate, after addressing some stern remarks to the defendant in the dock, said, “The fine will be ten guineas, with two guineas costs. Next case!”
“Come on, Bunny,” said Raffles.
To my astonishment, he sought out the functionary who collected fines and paid the girl’s fine. As he returned his wallet to his pocket, Miss Mirabel Renny and her attendant solicitor came to the desk, and the functionary, indicating Raffles, said that the fine had been paid.
Though Raffles was now wearing an immaculate town suit, with a pearl in his cravat, the girl immediately recognized him.
“Why, you’re the man who was batting at Lord’s when I—” She broke off. Her fine eyes flashed. “How dare you,” she said hotly, “presume to pay my fine? I’m not in need of charity from men!”
“No charity is involved,” Raffles assured her. “The amount will be deducted from your first month’s salary.”
“Salary?” she exclaimed. “What d’you mean? What are you talking about?”
“The post of Contributing Editor on a magazine now in the fruitful planning stage,” said Raffles. “If such a post, with the opportunity it provides for the dissemination of opinion, should happen to appeal to you, Miss Renny—”
No question about it. She jumped at it. And, as the next few weeks proved, Raffles could not have made a happier choice of young sportswoman to help in carrying out the editorial policy on which he had decided.
As he explained to Mirabel Renny and myself, before he went off to join cricketing house parties at some of the stately homes of the country, “Sport is in the English blood — which biologically, as far as I know, is no different in women from what it is in men. So we want to produce a well-balanced magazine which will equitably represent the interests and views of those of both sexes who have a taste for active pastimes.”
Mirabel’s enthusiasm knew no bounds. She threw herself heart and soul into executing the role he assigned to her. She was a dynamo of activity. Our office in the Pollexfen Press Building looked out on Covent Garden, from which rose the clip-clopping hoofbeats of the horses drawing tumbrils ablaze with flowers, while market porters bustled about with tall, round towers of fruit-baskets balanced on their heads in the sunshine.
We were untroubled by Lord Pollexfen, as Raffles had insisted on full editorial control. Raffles himself was active in the background on our behalf and, thanks to his influence, marvellous literary material came in, for merely token fees, from some of the greatest names in the world of sport.
What with this, and with Mirabel’s aptitude and energy, my own task in putting together our first issue was far from onerous. Usually, at about noon, I would suggest that I take her to lunch, for she looked charming in the blue skirt and white shirtwaist, crisp and businesslike, which she wore to the office. But it was rarely that she would leave her work.
“You go ahead, Mr. Manders,” she said. “I shall just have a sandwich and a cigarette.”
She made out that she smoked Sullivans, like Raffles, but I knew this was just a gesture of emancipation, as cigarettes made her cough. But I would leave her to it and saunter across the Strand, bustling with hansoms in the sunshine, for a leisurely lunch and a few rubbers of whist at my club in the Adelphi, dropping back to the office at about four o’clock for a last supervisory look round before returning to my Mount Street flat to take a tub and dress for dinner. It was not a bad life, the editorial life.