It is like stating that the world is round to say that London is the
best of hiding-places. It is the best, because there are many Londons,
and one London knows practically nothing about any of the other Londons.
When, therefore, Mercy Milton disappeared from Northmuir House, Belgrave
Square, Joan Carthew promptly appeared at her old camping-ground, the
boarding-house in Woburn Place.
Joan was no longer penniless, and as far as Lord Northmuir was
concerned, she was easy in her mind. A man of his stamp was unlikely to
risk the much-prized "honour of his name" to seek her with detectives;
while, unassisted, he would have to shrug his weary old shoulders and
resign himself to loss and loneliness.
But ambition kindled restlessness. She grudged wasting a moment when
her fortune had to be made, her permanent place in life fixed. Besides,
she was dissatisfied with her adventure in the house of Lord Northmuir.
She had not come off badly, yet it galled her to remember that in
self-defence she had been driven to confess her scheme to its victim,
and that--this expedient not proving efficacious--she had eventually
been forced to run away like the coward she was not. On the whole, she
had to admit that if Lord Northmuir had not in the end got the better of
her, he had come near to doing so. The sharp taste of failure was in
her mouth, and the only way to be rid of it was to get the better of
somebody else--somebody disagreeable, so that the sweets of success
might be unmixed with bitterness.
Existence as Lord Northmuir's adopted relative had been deadly dull;
existence as his wife would have been worse; and the remembrance of
boredom was too vivid still for Joan to regret what she had sacrificed.
Nevertheless, she realised that it had been a sacrifice which she would
not a little while ago have believed herself fool enough, or wise
enough, to be capable of making. She wanted her reward, and that reward
must mean new excitements, difficulties, and dangers.
"I should like to do something big on a great London paper," she said to
herself on the first night of her return to Woburn Place. "What fun to
undertake a thrilling journalistic mission, and succeed better than any
man! I wonder whether Mr. Mainbridge, who was a reporter on _The
Planet_, is here still. He wasn't at dinner, but then he used often to
be away. I must ask in the morning."
Joan went to sleep with this resolve in her mind, and before breakfast
she had carried it out. Mr. Mainbridge was still one of Miss Witt's
boarders, and had often inquired after Miss Carthew. He had come in
late last night, was now asleep, but would be down to luncheon, and
there was no doubt that he would be delighted to see the object of his
solicitude.
All turned out as Miss Witt prophesied, and Joan was even nicer to the
reporter than she had been before. He invited her to dine that evening
at an Italian restaurant, and she consented. When they had come to the
sweets, Mr. Mainbridge could control his pent-up feelings no longer, and
was about to propose when Joan stopped him.
"We are too poor to indulge in the luxury of being in love," said she,
with a sweet frankness which took the sting from the rebuff and dimly
implied hope for the future. "I shall not marry until I am earning as
much money as--as the man I love. I could not be happy unless I were
independent. Oh, Mr. Mainbridge! if you do care to please me, prove it
by introducing me to the editor of your paper! I want to ask him for
work."
The stricken young man felt his throat suddenly dry. In his first
acquaintance with Joan he had boasted of his "influence" with the powers
that were upon that new and phenomenally successful daily, _The Planet_.
As a matter of fact, the influence existed in Mainbridge's dreams, and
there only. Sir Edmund Foster, the proprietor and editor, hardly knew
him by sight, and probably would not recognise him out of Fleet Street.
To ask such a favour as an introduction for a strange young girl,
however attractive, was almost as much as the poor fellow's place was
worth, but he could not bear to refuse Joan.
"Tell Sir Edmund that I have information, important to the paper, for
his private ear," added the girl, reading her admirer's mind as if it
had been a book.
"But--but if--er--you haven't really anything which he----" stammered
Mainbridge.
"Oh, I have! I guarantee he shall be satisfied with me and not angry
with you. Only I must see him alone. Tell him I come from"--Joan
hesitated for an instant, but only for an instant--"from the Earl of
Northmuir."
Mainbridge was impressed by the name and her air of self-confidence.
Encouraged, he promised to use every effort to bring about the
introduction, if possible the very next day. If he succeeded, he would
telegraph Joan the time of the appointment, which would certainly not be
earlier than three in the afternoon, as Sir Edmund never appeared at the
office until that hour.
"Then I won't stop for the telegram and give him a chance to change his
mind before I can drive from Woburn Place to Fleet Street," said Joan.
"I will be at the office at three in the afternoon, and wait until
something is settled, if I have to wait till three in the morning."
The next day, after luncheon, Joan chose her costume with extreme care,
as she invariably did when it was necessary to arm herself for conquest.
Radiant in pale blue cloth edged with sable, she presented herself at
the offices of _The Planet_. There was a waiting-room at the end of a
long corridor, and there she was bidden to sit; but instead of remaining
behind a closed door, as soon as her guide was out of sight she began
walking up and down near the stairway where Sir Edmund Foster must
sooner or later pass. She had never seen the famous man, but she
remembered his photograph in one of the illustrated papers.
Presently a tall, smooth-shaven, sallow man, with eagle features and
bags under his keen eyes, came rapidly along the corridor, accompanied
by a much younger, less impressive man, who might have been a secretary.
Joan advanced, pretending to be absorbed in thought, then stood aside
with a start of shy surprise and a look nicely calculated to express
reverence of greatness. Sir Edmund Foster glanced at the apparition and
let his eyes linger for a few seconds as his companion rang the bell of
the lift, close to the wide stone stairway.
"When he hears that there is a young woman waiting to see him, he will
remember me, and the recollection may influence his decision," thought
Joan, who did not under-value her beauty as an asset.
Perhaps it fell out as she hoped (things often did), for she had not
read more than three or four back numbers of _The Planet_, which lay on
the waiting-room table, when Ralph Mainbridge, flushed and almost
tremulous with excitement, came to say that Sir Edmund had consented to
see her at once.
Without seeming as much overpowered as he expected, the girl prepared to
enter the presence of greatness. But she was not in reality as calm as
she appeared. The thunderous whirr of the printing-machines had almost
bereft her of the capacity for thought, just at the moment when she
wished to think clearly. Her nerves were twanging like the strings of a
violin which is out of tune, and it was an intense relief to be shot up
in the alarmingly rapid lift to a quieter region. The rumbling roar was
deadened on Sir Edmund's floor, and as the door of his private office
closed on her, it was shut out altogether.
"Miss Carthew, from Lord Northmuir," the famous editor-proprietor said.
"I believe you have some interesting information for me." He smiled
with a certain dry benignity, for Joan was very pretty, and he was,
after all, a man. "I think I saw you downstairs."
"I saw you, Sir Edmund." Joan's manner was dignified now, rather than
shy. "I trust you will not be angry, but within the last two hours
everything has changed for me. Lord Northmuir, whom I know well through
my cousin, Miss Mercy Milton, his ward (you may have heard of her; we
are said to resemble each other), has now changed his mind about
allowing the piece of information I meant for you to be published. He
has forbidden his name to be used, but it was too late to stop that. I
can only beg, for my cousin Miss Milton's sake more than my own, that
you will not let the fact come to his ears; if it should, she will
suffer."
"You need not fear that," Sir Edmund reassured her; "but if you have no
information to give me, Miss--er----"
"I had to come and explain why I hadn't," Joan cut in. "I hope you
won't blame poor Mr. Mainbridge for putting you to this trouble. It
isn't his fault, and he doesn't even know."
"Who is Mr. Mainbridge? Oh, ah! yes, of course. Pray don't regard it
as a trouble. Quite the contrary. But unfortunately, I----"
"You would say you are a very busy man," Joan threw into the editor's
suggestive pause. "I won't take up much more of your time. But I want
to say that, although I have nothing of value, as I hoped, to tell, I
shall have later, if you will consent to engage me on your staff."
Sir Edmund laughed. He evidently considered Joan a spoiled darling of
Society with a new whim. "My dear young lady!" he exclaimed, "in what
capacity, pray? We do not devote space to fashions, even in a Saturday
edition. Would you come to us as a reporter, like your friend Mr.
Mainbridge?"
"As a special reporter," amended Joan. "I would undertake any mission of
importance----"
"There are none going begging on _The Planet_. But" (this soothingly by
way of sugaring a dismissal) "you have only to get hold of something
good and bring it to me. For instance, some nice, spicy little item as
to the truth of the rumoured alliance between Russia and Japan. We
would pay you quite well for that, you know, provided you gave it to us
in time to publish ahead of any other paper."
"How much would you pay me?" asked Joan, nettled at this chaffing tone
of the famous man.
"Enough to buy a new frock and perhaps a few hairpins; say a hundred
pounds."
"That isn't enough," said Joan; "I should want a thousand."
Sir Edmund turned a sudden, keen gaze upon the girl; then his face
relaxed. "We might rise to that. At all events, I'm safe in promising
it."
"It _is_ a promise, then?"
"Oh, certainly."
"Thank you. Let me see if I understand clearly. I'm not quite the baby
you think, Sir Edmund. I read the papers--yours especially--and take, I
trust, an intelligent interest in the political situation. Now, the
latest rumour is that Russia is secretly planning an understanding with
Japan and China. What you would like to know is whether there is truth
in the rumour, and what, in that event, England would do."
"Exactly. That is what all the papers are dying to find out."
"If you could get the official news before any of them, you would give
the person who obtained it for you a thousand pounds. If, in addition,
they, or one of them--let us say _The Daily Beacon_--got the _wrong_
news on the same day, you would no doubt add five hundred to the
original thousand; for revenge is sweet, even to an editor, I suppose,
and _The Beacon_ has, I have heard, contrived to be first in the field
on one or two important occasions within the last few years."
This allusion was a pin-prick in a sensitive place, for Joan was aware
that _The Daily Beacon_ and _The Planet_ were deadly rivals as well as
political opponents. Mainbridge had told her the tale of _The Planet's_
humiliation by the enemy, and she had not forgotten. _The Beacon_ had
been able, at the very time when _The Planet_ was arguing against their
probability, to assert that certain political events would take place,
and in time these statements had been justified, to the discomfiture of
_The Planet_.
Sir Edmund frowned slightly. "_The Daily Beacon_ possesses exceptional
advantages," he sneered. "It is difficult for less favoured journals to
compete with it for political information."
"I believe I can guess what you refer to," answered Joan. "I hear
things, you know, from my cousin, Miss Milton." (This to shield
Mainbridge.) "Lord Henry Borrowdaile, an Under Secretary of State, is a
distant relative of Mr. Portheous, the proprietor of _The Daily Beacon_,
and it is said that there has been a curious leakage of diplomatic
secrets, once or twice, by which _The Beacon_ profited."
"You are a well-informed young lady."
"I hope to earn your cheque as well as your compliment," said Joan.
"Perhaps you will write it before many days have passed."
"It must be before many days, if at all."
"I understand that time presses, if you are to be first in the field,
for the great secret can't be kept from the public for more than a week
or ten days at most. But look here, Sir Edmund, would you go that extra
five hundred if, on the day that your paper published the truth about
the situation, _The Beacon_ made a fool of itself by printing exactly
the opposite?"
"Yes," said the editor, "I would."
"Well, we shall see what we shall see," returned Joan. She then took
leave of Sir Edmund, who was certainly not in a mood to blame Mainbridge
for an introduction under false pretences, even if he were far from sure
that charming Miss Carthew could accomplish miracles.
As for Joan, her head was in a whirl. She wanted to do this thing more
than she had ever wanted anything in her life, though it had not entered
her head a few moments ago. She would not despise fifteen hundred
pounds; but it was not of the money she was dreaming as she told her
cabman to drive to Battersea Park, and keep on driving till ordered to
stop. The strange girl could always collect and concentrate her
thoughts while driving, and this was her object now.
Joan had never met Lord Henry Borrowdaile, but during her year at
Northmuir House she had known people who were friends or enemies of the
young man and his wife. She had her own reason for listening with
interest to intimate talk about the character and private affairs of
persons who were important figures in the world, for at any time she
might wish to use knowledge thus gained. She did not believe, from what
she had heard, that Lord Henry Borrowdaile, son of the Marquis of
Wastwater, was a man to betray State secrets for money. He was "bookish"
and literary, and though he was not rich, neither did he covet riches.
But he did adore his beautiful young wife, and was said by those who
knew him to be as wax in her hands. She was popular, as well as pretty;
was vain of being the leader of a very gay set, and dressed as if her
reputation depended upon being the best-gowned woman in London. Because
Lady Henry posed as an _ingenue_, who scarcely knew politics from polo,
Joan suspected her. "It is she who worms out secrets from her husband
and sells them to Portheous," Joan said to herself. "Oh! to be a fly on
the wall in the Borrowdailes' house for the next week!"
This wish was so vivid, that like a lightning flash it seemed to
illumine the dim corners of the girl's brain. She suddenly recalled
another story of the inestimable Mainbridge's, told in connection with
the rivalry of _The Daily Beacon_ and _The Planet_.
"An eminent statesman's servant told the secret of his master's intended
resignation," she said to herself. "Why shouldn't a servant at the
Borrowdailes'----"
She did not finish out the thought at the moment; the vista it opened
was too wide to be taken in at a glance. But after driving for an hour
round and round Battersea Park, the patient cabman suddenly received an
order to go quickly to Clarkson's, the wigmaker. At the shop, the
hansom was discharged, and it was a very different-looking fare which
another cab picked up at the same door somewhat later.