ghastly white--his eyes were widened with an expression of awful
terror--his hands were stretched out as though grasping the air. He
stood motionless for some moments, staring into vacancy; then his
rigid expression relaxed, his arms dropped to his sides, and he came
down the stairs.
"What has happened?" he enquired.
"That!" said Auberthal, bluntly, pointing to the skeleton.
Siebach bent over it for a moment. Then he kicked it contemptuously
aside.
"Somebody has been playing a practical joke," he remarked.
Auberthal coughed.
"I have not, nor has Bazarac. Who could have done it?"
"Do you suppose I have?"
Siebach seemed indignant. Auberthal looked at him very quietly.
"I do not suppose anything," he said, "but there is the skeleton, and
there is--"
He turned to look for the horse, but it was gone.
"There was the horse," he concluded, "and to-morrow morning I leave
for Paris. Good-night!"
He disappeared up the staircase, leaving me face to face with Siebach.
"What does he mean?"
[Illustration: "I RECOGNISED ONE OF SIEBACH'S SERVANTS."]
"I really don't know, Siebach."
"Do you intend to leave for Paris, too?"
"I am very sorry," I said, "but my nerves are really not equal to this
sort of thing. Good-night, Siebach!"
He surveyed me with an odd expression; then, suddenly, he gripped my
arm.
"Do you think--" he almost gasped in my ear--"do you think that he
suspects anything?"
I shook him off.
"Good heavens, Siebach! What should he suspect? Can't you explain this
horrible thing?"
He recovered his self-command almost immediately, and smiled feebly.
"No. I can't," he said. "Am I to explain all my family skeletons,
Bazarac?"
"Not if you do not wish."
And I left him standing by the skeleton of the Stone Rider.
* * * * *
For some years I did not come across Count Siebach von
Salitz--neither, I am afraid, did I wish to do so. Of the Stone
Rider--who had proved to be no stone at all--I often thought, but
at last I hardly regarded the incident as anything more than the
recollection of a bad dream. Auberthal and I met frequently, and
often discussed our adventure; and I believed that he had suspicions
concerning Siebach which I did not care to share. But one evening
as we sat in the "Atelier Espagnol"--Auberthal and myself--someone
knocked at the door and came hastily in. I recognised one of Siebach's
servants.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Will M. Bazarac or M. Auberthal come to my master at once? He is very
ill at the Hôtel ----."
We both rose and looked at each other, and Auberthal slipped his arm
through mine.
"We had better go together."
So we went. The Hôtel ---- was close by. In ten minutes we were in
Siebach's bedroom.
[Illustration: "HIS EYES BLAZED WITH FEVERISH LIGHT."]
He lay in bed, looking thinner and more haggard than ever. His eyes
blazed with feverish light, and he beckoned us eagerly to approach.
"There is not much time," he said, speaking in a weak, strained voice;
"I sent for you to tell you--what is that?"
His eyes dilated with fear, and he glanced round the room.
"It is nothing," said Auberthal, gently.
He laughed--a short, bitter laugh.
"He is not far off--he never is. Don't you hear the horse breathing
outside the door? I can. I always hear it now. Don't let it come
in--don't--don't, Auberthal!"
His voice rose to a shriek.
"Nothing shall come in."
"Thank you. I am so foolish to mind! I--I wanted to tell you. I--I
murdered him."
He fell back exhausted.
"Whom?" asked Auberthal, aghast.
"My cousin Franz. He was the heir."
"But he was drowned."
Siebach struggled up on his elbow.
"No, I told them that. I shot him; and I knew if they found the body
they would accuse me, so I hid it. And when his father died, and I
got the castle, I dug him up--and--you know. I could not hide the
skeleton, so I put it on the horse. Don't you think that was a good
idea?"
He laughed, and Auberthal looked at me with a shudder.
"The armour hid it," went on Siebach, "and I knew they were all so
superstitious they wouldn't touch it. And then you came--you and
Auberthal."
At that moment the doctor came in. When he left the room he called me
out.
"Count Siebach is mad?" I questioned,
"He is not responsible for what he says. Are you a friend of his?"
"In a way."
"Then you had better stay with him. Send for me if he gets worse. I
shall do no good by stopping."
I went back to Auberthal. Siebach was obviously too ill to be left. I
agreed to sit up with him half the night, whilst Auberthal rested.
Siebach was exhausted, and for some hours lay quite still. I think he
was insensible. But about 12 o'clock I heard a sound from the bed,
and went to him. He was sitting up, looking straight before him into
space.
"Don't you hear it?" he asked.
I listened, to appease him.
"No."
"Not the horse?"
I listened more attentively.
Yes--the old rattle--the old sound of a horse's hoofs. It was coming
up the stairs.
Slowly the door opened--slowly the light I had seen before grew in the
darkened air--and into the room rode the Stone Rider, rigid, erect,
with the unearthly radiance all around him.
He came up to the foot of the bed, and slowly lifted the vizor of his
helmet, disclosing a glistening skull--and, as I looked, the skull
became the face in the portrait over the mantelpiece of the study at
Salitz. It was too evident that Siebach recognised it. His eyes were
fixed on the apparition; his thin features were grey, and drawn with
fear. For a moment he remained motionless, staring at it; then he
threw up his arms with an awful cry, and fell back.
Slowly the Stone Rider drew the mailed gauntlet from his right hand.
For a moment he poised it deliberately in the air, then flung it full
in Siebach's face.
A shudder ran through the prostrate figure, but it did not move again;
and the Stone Rider turned his horse and rode from the room. The light
followed him, and we were again in semi-darkness.
Then I lit a candle and rang for Auberthal and the servants.
* * * * *
Whether the story of the murder was correct or not, I cannot say. It
may have been the madness of a diseased imagination, or it may have
been the late remorse of a criminal. At any rate, it is not for me to
throw suspicion on the name of a dead man. I can only relate what I
myself saw and heard. The doctor declared, and maintains to this day,
that his patient was insane; and, being a doctor, he very naturally
has the world on his side. But, say what he will, there is one thing
he can never explain. When I lit the candle that night, and found
Count Siebach von Salitz lying dead, I found also that on his forehead
was the distinct print--purple and bruised--of a clenched fist. The
doctor cannot explain this; perhaps I can. For what could it be if it
was not left by the gauntlet of the Stone Rider?
[Illustration: "I ... FOUND COUNT SIEBACH VON SALITZ LYING DEAD."]
MAKING A MODERN NEWSPAPER.
SOME SECRETS REVEALED
BY ALFRED C. HARMSWORTH, Editor of the _Daily Mail_.
[Illustration: FROM FOREST--]
When you casually and carelessly open your newspaper of a morning, how
often do you realise, even if you are aware, that it is the product
of a score of busy organisations, with tentacles spread over the whole
world, the operation of which involves the best brains and machinery
of the age; that unlimited capital and thought are devoted to its
daily production; that its continual appearance has created a new
class of men who work at night and sleep by day; that its distribution
requires the use of special trains, and the gathering of its news the
opening at night of telegraph, cable, and telephone offices; that the
public appetite for reading is sweeping away vast Scandinavian and
American forests for the manufacture of the wood pulp of which the
paper itself is made; and that the very journal you are reading may
have formed part of a growing tree a month ago!
In the days of wagers, the wool growing on a sheep's back was once
converted into a dresscoat by dinner-time--and they dined at four
o'clock then! In the last few years a not dissimilar experiment
resulted in the conversion of a tree that was growing at dawn into a
newspaper by luncheon.
Your daily newspaper is the best bargain you will ever make, and you
make it every day. Do you grasp the fact that your newspaper is the
most splendid example of co-operation imaginable--that it enables you
to obtain for a few pence each week that which, if only one copy were
printed, would cost you, for telegraphy, for brain work, for machinery
and building and land, a thousand pounds a day or more? The Duke of
Westminster or Mr. Astor might buy a better horse, picture, or theatre
seat than you can, but your newspaper is as good as theirs.
According to Mr. Labouchere and some other folk, the mystery of the
press is the secret of its power. Yet I venture to think that if I
lift the curtain a little--nay more, if I take the public behind
the scenes for a short while--I shall be increasing rather than
endangering the respect in which the newspaper press is very properly
held in this country.
In the days when many newspapers were small sheets, produced in dark
alleys, under the charge of disreputable ne'er-do-wells, who veiled
a vast amount of vulgarity under the name of Bohemianism, it was
doubtless a wise thing to surround the press with mystery. The less
the public knew about a newspaper office the better for the newspaper.
But to-day the public press is the concentration of all that is best
in thought and all that is most modern in mechanism.
[Illustration: --TO FLEET STREET.
A three mile roll of paper.]
[Illustration: HOW THE NEWS COMES--BY CABLE, TELEGRAPH, TELEPHONE,
ETC.]
The internal construction of a newspaper office is almost as
complicated as that of a battleship--the duties of a modern editor as
onerous as those of the man in the conning tower.
Let us take a hasty glance at the inside life of a journal.
A newspaper office is one of the few business establishments in which
the human machinery is at work the whole twenty-four hours round. The
business department, which requires the same staff as is needed in an
insurance office or bank, starts its operations, as a rule, at nine
in the morning, when the heads and clerks of the advertising,
circulation, and other departments assemble.
With them arrives the first of the editorial staff. He, in the case of
one newspaper with which I am acquainted, relieves the colleague who
has been on duty since the previous midnight. It is his duty to open
the editorial letters, to watch the news of the day, to see whether
the particular journal on which he is engaged has gained or lost by
comparison with its competitors in the collection of news, and to
arrange matters generally for the coming of his co-workers, the
foreign editor, and others, who assemble at eleven o'clock.
By this hour many of the reporters are already engaged in their
multifarious engagements in various parts of the metropolis. The
preparation of the next day's paper goes on steadily until five
o'clock, when there is usually a brief conference of the editorial
powers that be on the policy to be adopted on any particular event,
and the methods required for obtaining any particular news or
other features, and then, at six o'clock, the hard work of the day
commences.
[Illustration: JUST OUT!]
The clerks, who have been receiving and checking advertisements all
day, have sent them to the printing department, where advertisers'
announcements are being put into print as rapidly as nimble fingers
can operate quick machinery, and then, save for the presence of one
or two clerks, the advertisement and commercial side of a newspaper
"shuts down" for the day. The sub-editors appear, reporters come in
with the results of their day's labours, news arrives by the tape and
other news machines in a constantly increasing quantity for the next
nine hours. First comes the news from China or India. The Indian
correspondent puts his telegram on the wire at eight or nine o'clock
in Bombay, which is equal to four o'clock in the afternoon in London;
and this difference of time, even allowing a couple of hours for
transmission, makes him always first in the field with his news. But,
on the other hand, the American news will not arrive until very late
indeed, for when it is seven o'clock in the evening at New York it is
midnight here.
[Illustration: OLD STYLE.
(Setting type by hand at 10 words per minute.)]
"How do you manage to find all the little pieces of news to put
into your paper?" is a question that must have been asked of every
journalist.
[Illustration: NEW STYLE.
(Setting type by machinery at 40 words per minute.)]
That is not the difficulty. One's heaviest task is the keeping out of
the items of news. On an average day it is safe to estimate that twice
or thrice as much intelligence comes to a newspaper as it can possibly
use. At times like, say, the last Jubilee, or at any moment of public
excitement, news pours in in a manner appalling to contemplate.
The wonder is that there are so few mistakes in journals. When it is
remembered that those who handle and pass the news have often but a
second to decide as to its accuracy, that it often comes from parts
of the world to which it is impossible to refer speedily by telegram,
that it frequently consists of statements made by public men, who
may disavow them when put to the test--when it is remembered that
the sub-editor has to contend with the errors of shorthand, of the
telegraph, the electric cable, and the telephone, I think that British
newspapers, and London metropolitan newspapers in particular, are an
object lesson to the world in accuracy. Laborious publications like
the _Army List_, and the _London Gazette_, which are compiled by a
leisurely Government staff, contain as many errors in proportion as
the hastily produced modern newspaper.
Accuracy, indeed, may be considered to be the feature of English
journalism. The stress of newspaper competition in New York induces
the younger journals to rush anything into type that comes to hand,
and the American public does not seem to mind it.
But I pity the English journal which should print one or two items of
false news. The average Briton, who is a plodding, painstaking man,
takes his newspaper as seriously as his breakfast, and one or two
mistakes in his newspaper, or his eggs, would make him change his
caterer. He has no sympathy for "enterprise" which leads him astray.
And from this fact arises one of the differences between the English
and the American newspaper. From the American aspect, ours is dull,
slow, stupid, and behind the times. On the other hand our journals are
typical of the painstaking, plodding nature of our people, and, like
our public buildings, are often much better than they look.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTING CARTS WAITING FOR THE EVENING PAPER TO
COME FROM THE MACHINES.]
To return to our visit to the newspaper office. All the evening long
as news arrives it is cut down and measured as to its importance,
corrected, given its proper heading, and sent upstairs by pneumatic
or other lifts to the composing department. Towards eleven o'clock
at night every brain is concentrated on its task. At one o'clock the
worst is over. There is time for a cigar or a cigarette. One may be
waiting for important news from a war correspondent, or merely keeping
the paper open for any news that may arrive between one and three in
the morning.
[Illustration: CYCLIST DISTRIBUTORS "LOADING UP."]
The type is first set into columns by machinery, corrected and
re-corrected; these columns are then made up into pages, which are
again corrected, each page being tightly screwed into an iron frame (I
am purposely using no technicalities). A papier maché or other mould
is then taken of each page, and into this mask (or matrix) hot metal
is poured, and the pages come out in the form of curved plates ready
for fixing on the machines. It is a difficult process to explain
without ocular demonstration, and I have been so long accustomed to
the work that I have lost all sense of its beauty and ingenuity.
Towards three o'clock in the morning all the curved plates have been
fixed on the machines; final proof copies--that is to say, first
impressions of the paper--have been passed; the machines start, and
up come complete copies of the paper as you see it at the breakfast
table, the club, or in the railway train.
The first complete copies are carefully scanned by dozens of eager
eyes in the hope of finding some tiny blunder which it is not too late
to remove.
Each of these modern printing presses depicted here has a nominal
capacity of 48,000, or 96,000 copies per hour, according to the size
of the paper.
[Illustration: THE MACHINE WHICH EATS PAPER AT THE RATE OF 20 MILES AN
HOUR.]
It is a speed truly terrific. The carts that are waiting outside the
newspaper office in the night seem to be filled almost by magic.
One hears the machinery start; a few minutes later the race for the
distributing agents and the railway trains begins. Upstairs such of
the editorial staff as have not gone home are enjoying the same kind
of chat at the conclusion of their labours as other men do at their
clubs. Nor are we newspaper men clubless even at that hour. The Press
Club, hard by Fleet Street, keeps its doors open for journalists
until five a.m.; and for the printers and others there are special
hostelries open to them, and to them only, by legal enactment. Railway
companies, too, provide trains for us, though not so many as they
should, thus enabling us to get away from the city to the pure air of
the suburbs at a time when all the world is sleeping.
[Illustration: HOW THE PAPERS COME UP FROM THE "INFERNAL REGIONS."]
Newspapers are commercial concerns, and their proprietors are as
anxious to attractively stock their columns as tradesmen their shop
windows. We do not say so in our journals, but privately we are
entirely aware that we are racing each other for attractive news.
As to what does or does not sell in a newspaper, always an important
question, opinions differ greatly. I doubt whether any two editors of
metropolitan daily journals would agree on that point, the fact being
that what pleases one audience does not necessarily interest another.
Sometimes a newspaper will adopt a feature that has proved successful
in a contemporary with most disappointing results in its own case. Now
and then a particular feature will spread throughout the whole press.
At one time the public is bent upon foreign news, at another time upon
matters purely domestic, but I think all are agreed that the average
metropolitan reader nowadays turns to his foreign news before he reads
anything else. Two or three years ago there appeared to be a positive
craze for sporting intelligence. To-day mere sporting news seems to
have lost much of its attraction. The year before last the amount of
cricket in the evening journals was a source of amazement. This year I
venture to think cricket will reach its proper level.
[Illustration: PAPERS BEING TURNED OUT COMPLETE, FOLDED, COUNTED, AND
READY FOR THE AGENTS--AT THE RATE OF 48,000 COPIES PER HOUR.]
But that every section of the public values the quick and accurate
publication of news is obvious. The desire for speed increases each
year, and it is now recognised that the main object of a modern
newspaper organisation is the collection of news and the accurate and
speedy publication thereof. Incidentally it may be mentioned that of
the quickness with which this is performed by the press, the evening
journals in particular, few of the public have the least appreciation.
I have known the verdict of a trial, the result of a cricket match,
or a boat race, published to the world within _ten seconds_ of the
arrival of the news in the newspaper office. The statement seems
incredible, but the thing can be done in more than one newspaper
office in London and the provinces.
[Illustration: AN EDITORIAL CONCLAVE.
(Deciding the policy of the paper.)]
I have asked for and obtained an item of news from New York in
seven minutes. In this space of time was comprised the writing of my
question in London, its transmission to New York, the writing of the
news there, and the telegraphing of it back to London.
The British evening journals, and more especially those of the
provinces, and Scotland, are, in my opinion, ahead of the world in the
rapidity with which they publish accurate information.
We newspaper men love to chat among ourselves of great examples of the
publication of exclusive news, "beats" and "scoops," we call them. One
of the most successful was that achieved by the _Pall Mall Gazette_
when it announced, in the teeth of press and official denials
innumerable, the resignation of Mr. Gladstone. I was in the United
States at the time, and can truly say that for well-nigh a month the
_Pall Mall Gazette_ was advertised day after day by a contradictory
telegram in every paper in the United States. It is said that £500
was paid for that item of intelligence. It would have been cheap at
£5,000.
Another great achievement was the publication by the _New York World_
of news of the sinking of H.M.S. _Victoria_. It is not pleasant
for the British journalist to remember that the full account first
appeared in a journal published on the other side of the Atlantic,
and that that account was retransmitted to England. Then among other
sensational news victories were those of the _Times_ correspondent
at Pekin, in the recent Far Eastern imbroglio, and of Mr. Archibald
Forbes at the time of the Franco-Prussian war.
The present generation has almost forgotten a great newspaper
development of a generation back. Nearly thirty years ago the whole
world was wondering what had become of Dr. Livingstone. Many attempts
were made to find him; there were private and semi-official hunts for
the missing missionary, but without avail. Then the _Daily Telegraph_
and the _New York Herald_ despatched Mr. Stanley, who found him at
Ujiji. Next to the splendid war work of Sir W. H. Russell during
the Crimea, Stanley's work was the best expeditionary journey of
the century. More recently we have seen great feats of newspaper
enterprise, both in this country and the United States, grow out
of the Hispano-American war. War news will probably always be a
newspaper's greatest luxury.
[Illustration: FLEET STREET BEFORE DAWN.]
The _Sheffield Daily Telegraph_ did a very big thing in 1867. I
extract an account of the accomplishment from a recent publication:
"At that time, although few outsiders suspected it, there existed
in Sheffield a British Vehmgericht--of which a man named Broadhead,
secretary of the Sawgrinders' Union, was president--for the secret
trial and punishment of non-unionist workmen. The _Telegraph_, acting
on private and dearly-bought information, attacked this organisation,
Sir William Leng, of course, finding the money, and often personally
conducting the necessary investigations. It was a delicate as well as
a dangerous task, as he soon found to his cost.
"One of his reporters was bludgeoned and left for dead in one of the
principal streets of the town, and in broad daylight. The house in
which another lodged was blown up with gunpowder. His own life was
threatened day by day, and often many times a day. His leaders were
written with a revolver on his desk and another strapped to his hip,
and for nearly a year he never went abroad unarmed. At length the
famous Royal Commission of 1867 was appointed, with the result that
the secret horrors Sir William had so fearlessly denounced were
dragged into the light of day. All England stood aghast, and the
arch-villain Broadhead, together with Crookes, Hallam, and others of
his tools, made full confession in order to save their own miserable
necks. The power of the terrible tribunal was broken for ever; but
the exposure cost the _Telegraph_, from first to last, some eighteen
thousand pounds."
Sir William Leng's daring calls to mind that of Mr. Ross, of _Black
and White_, who as a young man went through an experience that, while
it proved a stepping-stone to his fortune (for he made nearly £1,000
by his exclusive telegrams to the press), thrilled the world for a
very long time. The following is an account of the matter given me by
a friend of his:--