The River of Death | Page 3

mean, has Mr Chase been here again?"
"Well, he have, sir," Verity said slowly, "he come just after Mr Longdale. So I asked him to wait, which he did, then he come out again after a bit, saying as you seemed to be busily engaged he would call again."
"Um! Did he seem to be excited, Verity?"
"Well, he did, sir; white and very shiny about the eyes, and-- "
"That will do. Go and call me a hansom, at once," Darbyshire cried, as he dashed back into the inner room. "Here's a pretty thing; that confounded American journalist, Chase - you know him - has heard all we said and has helped himself to my notes; the whole thing will be blazing in the Telephone to-morrow, and perhaps half-a-dozen papers besides. Those fellows would wreck the empire for what they call a 'scoop.'"
"Awful!" Longdale groaned. "What are you going to do?"
Derbyshire responded that he was going to convince the editor of the Telephone that no alarmist article was to appear on the morrow.
He would be back again in an hour and Longdale was to wait. The situation was not quite so hopeless as it seemed on the face of it. There was a rattle of wheels outside and Darbyshire plunged hatless into the night.
"Offices of the Telephone," he cried. "A sovereign if I'm there in twenty minutes."
The cab plunged on headlong. The driver was going to earn that sovereign or know the reason why. He drove furiously into Trafalgar Square, a motor car crossed him recklessly, and a moment later Darbyshire was shot out on to his head from the cab. He lay there with no interest in mundane things. A languid crowd gathered, a doctor in evening dress appeared.
"Concussion of the brain," he said in a cool matter of fact tone. "By Jove, it's Dr. Derbyshire. Here, police; hurry up with the ambulance; he must be removed to Charing Cross at once."

II.
WITH no spiritual indigestion troubling him, Mr. James Chase, late of the New York Chanticleer, now of the Morning Telephone, lighted a cigarette at the corner of Harley Street. The night was young and there was plenty of time for him to mature his plans. He had got what he called an "almighty scoop" in his pocket, indeed in the whole history of yellow journalism he could remember no greater. London dried up like a withered sponge and absolutely devoid of water! London with the liquid plague bursting from every subterranean pipe and fountain! The whirling headlines were revolving in Chase's close-cropped head.
He reached the offices of the Telephone at length and crawled up a dingy flight of stairs. Without knocking he passed the barrier of a door marked "strictly private." The controlling genius of the Telephone sat limp and bereft of coat and vest. His greeting of Chase was not burdened with flattering politeness. He merely asked what the blazes he wanted. Chase nodded sweetly and drew a large sheet of paper before him. After a little thought he dashed in half-a-dozen vigorous lines with a blue pencil.
"Things pretty slack lately," he remarked amicably. "So hot that even the East end can't rise to its weekly brutal murder. Still you get on to a pearl sometimes. Grady, my boy, what do you think of that for a contents bill?"
He held the white sheet aloft so that the flare of the gas should fall upon it. The tired look faded from Grady's eyes; he sat up alert and vigorous. Here was the tonic that his fretted soul craved for.
"Chapter and Verse?" he said, speaking fast as if he had run far.
"Got it all from Derbyshire," Chase replied. "I overheard a conversation between him and Doctor Longdale in his own house, Also I managed to get hold of some notes to copy."
"It wants pluck," Grady remarked, "A scare like that might ruin the Empire; if--"
"None of that," Chase cut in. "Take it or leave it. If you haven't got the grit, Sutton of the Flashlight will jump at the chance."
He held the contents bill up to the light again and Grady nodded. He was going to do this thing deliberately, once he was sure of his ground. He remarked cynically that it sounded like a fairy story.
"Not a bit of it," Chase, said briskly. "The plague breaks out on this barque and the crew know it. There's no ceremony with sailors of that class. They just lose their vessel and strike for the nearest land. Knowing something of our quarantine laws they make themselves scarce as soon as they can. A local doctor calls the plague English cholera, too much bad fruit in very hot weather, and there you are."
Grady nodded again. The sweltering heat of the place no longer affected him. Down below the presses were already beginning to clang and