The Four White Days | Page 3

Something might have been done with the electric trams, but all overhead wires were down.
In addition to this, the great grain wharfs along the Thames were very low. Local contractors and merchants had not been in the least frightened by the vagaries of Mr. Silas X. Brett; they had bought "short," feeling pretty sure that sooner or later their foresight would be rewarded.
Therefore they had been trading from hand to mouth. The same policy had been pursued by the small "rings" of wholesale meat merchants who supply pretty well the whole of London with flesh food. The great majority of the struggling classes pay the American prices and get American produce, an enormous supply of which is in daily demand.
Here Silas X. Brett had come in again. Again the wholesale men had declined to make contracts except from day to day.
Last and worst of all, the Thames--the chief highway for supplies--was, for the only time in the memory of living man, choked with ice below Greenwich.
London was in a state of siege as close and gripping as if a foreign army had been at her gates. Supplies were cut off, and were likely to be for some days to come.
The price of bread quickly advanced to ninepence the loaf, and it was impossible to purchase the cheapest meat under two shillings per pound. Bacon and flour, and such like provisions, rose in a corresponding ratio; coal was offered at "2 per ton, with the proviso that the purchaser must fetch it himself.
Meanwhile, there was no cheering news from the outside--London seemed to be cut off from the universe. It was as bad as bad could be, but the more thoughtful could see that there was worse to follow.

III
The sight of a figure staggering up a snow drift to a bedroom window in Keppel Street aroused no astonishment in the breast of a stolid policeman. It was the only way of entry into some of the houses in that locality. Yet a little further on the pavements were clear and hard.
Besides, the figure was pounding on the window, and burglars don't generally do that. Presently the sleeper within awoke. From the glow of his oil stove he could see that it was past twelve.
"Something gone wrong at the office?" Fisher muttered. "Hang the paper! Why bother about publishing Chat this weather?"
He rolled out of bed, and opened the window. A draught of icy air caught his heart in a grip like death for the moment. Gough scrambled into the room, and made haste to shut out the murderous air.
"Nearly five below zero," he said. "You must come down to the office, Mr. Fisher."
Fisher lit the gas. Just for the moment he was lost in admiration of Gough's figure. His head was muffled in a rag torn from an old sealskin jacket. He was wrapped from head to foot in a sheepskin recently stripped from the carcase of an animal.
"Got the dodge from an old Arctic traveller," Gough explained. "It's pretty greasy inside, but it keeps that perishing cold out."
"I said I shouldn't come down to the office to-night," Fisher muttered. "This is the only place where I can keep decently warm. A good paper is no good to us--we shan't sell five thousand copies to-morrow."
"Oh, yes, we shall," Gough put in eagerly "Hampden, the member for East Battersea is waiting for you. One of the smart city gangs has cornered the coal supply. There is about half a million tons in London, but there is no prospect of more for days to come The whole lot was bought up yesterday by a small syndicate, and the price to-morrow is fixed at three pounds per ton--to begin with. Hampden is furious."
Fisher shovelled his clothes on hastily. The journalistic instinct was aroused.
At his door Fisher staggered back as the cold struck him. With two overcoats, and a scarf round his head, the cold seemed to draw the life out of him. A brilliant moon was shining in a sky like steel, the air was filled with the fine frosty needles, a heavy hoar coated Gough's fleecy breast. The gardens in Russell Square were one huge mound, Southampton Row was one white pipe. It seemed to Gough and Fisher that they had London to themselves.
They did not speak, speech was next to impossible. Fisher staggered into his office and at length gasped for brandy. He declared that he had no feeling whatever. His moustache hung painfully, as if two heavy diamonds were dragging at the ends of it. The fine athletic figure of John Hampden, M.P., raged up and down the office. Physical weakness or suffering seemed to be strangers to him.
"I want you to rub it in thick," he shouted. "Make a picture of it in to-morrow's Chat. It's exclusive information I am