Blanford?"
"The Bishop of Blanford, who has the bad taste to disapprove of 'The Purple Kangaroo.'"
"Has he ever read it?"
"Of course not; the ecclesiastical mind is nothing if not dogmatic."
"My dear fellow, I was only trying to assign a reason."
"Chaff away, but it's principally my Aunt Matilda."
"The Bishop, I remember, is a widower."
"Rather. My aunt keeps house for him."
"Ah, these aunts!" exclaimed the journalist. "They make no end of trouble – and copy."
"It's not so bad as that," said Cecil; "but she rules the governor with a rod of iron, and she kicked up such a row about my book that I dropped the whole show."
"Don't correspond with 'em?"
"Not on my side. I receive occasional sermons from Blanford."
"Which remain unanswered?"
Cecil nodded, and changed the subject.
"You know my father's cathedral?" he asked.
"Oh, yes. The verger prevented my chipping off a bit of the high altar as a memento the last time I was over. You English are so beastly conservative. Not that the Bishop had anything to do with it."
Banborough laughed, and returned to the charge.
"So I came abroad," he continued, "and approached the most respectable and conservative firm of publishers I could find in New York."
"Was that out of consideration for the Bishop?"
"I thought it might sweeten the pill. But somehow the book doesn't sell."
"Advertising, my boy – that's the word."
"The traditions of the firm forbid it," objected Banborough.
"Traditions! What's any country less than a thousand years old got to do with traditions?" spluttered Marchmont. "I knew a Chicago author who got a divorce every time he produced a new novel. They sold like hot cakes."
"And the wives?"
"Received ten per cent. of the profits as alimony."
"Talk sense, and say something scandalous about me in the Leader. What possessed you, anyway, to join such a disgraceful sheet?"
"If I'd an entailed estate and an hereditary bishopric, I wouldn't. As it is, it pays."
"The bishopric isn't hereditary," said Cecil. "I wish it were. Then I might have a chance of spending my life in the odour of sanctity and idleness, and the entail is – a dream."
"So you write novels," retorted Marchmont, "that are neither indecent nor political, and expect 'em to succeed. Callow youth! Well, I must be off to the office. I've some copy up my sleeve, and if it's a go it'll give your book the biggest boom a novel ever had."
"Are you speaking the truth?" said the Englishman. "I beg your pardon. I forgot it was out of professional hours."
"Wait and see," replied the journalist, as he strolled out of the club.
"Hi, Marchmont, I've got a detail for you!" called the editor, making the last correction on a belated form and attempting to revivify a cigar that had long gone out.
"Yes?" queried Marchmont, slipping off his coat and slipping on a pair of straw cuffs, which was the chief reason why he always sported immaculate linen.
"We're on the track of a big thing. Perhaps you don't know that the President has delivered an ultimatum, and that our Minister at Madrid has received his passports?"
"Saw it on the bulletin-board as I came in," said his subordinate laconically.
"Well, it's a foregone conclusion that the Spanish Legation will establish a secret service in this country, and the paper that shows it up will achieve the biggest scoop on record."
"Naturally. But what then?"
"Why, I give the detail to you. You don't seem to appreciate the situation, man. It's the chance of a lifetime."
"Quite so," replied Marchmont, lighting a cigarette.
"But you can't lose a minute."
"Oh, yes, I can – two or three. Time for a smoke, and then I'll write you a first-column article that'll call for the biggest caps you have in stock."
"But I – What the – Say, you know something!"
"I know that the secret service has been organised, I know the organisers, and I know the password."
Here Marchmont's chief became unquotable, lapsing into unlimited profanity from sheer joy and exultation.
"I'll give you a rise if you pull this off!" he exclaimed, after hearing the recital of the events at the club. "May I be" – several things – "if I don't! Now what are you going to do about it?"
"Suppose we inform the nearest police station, have the crowd arrested, and take all the glory ourselves."
"Suppose we shut up shop and take a holiday," suggested the chief, with a wealth of scorn.
"Well, what have you to propose?"
"We must work the whole thing through our detective agency."
"But we haven't a detective agency," objected Marchmont.
"But we will have before sunset," said the chief. "There's O'Brien – "
"Yes. Chucked from Pinkerton's force for habitual drunkenness," interjected his subordinate.
"Just so," said the editor, "and anxious to get a job in consequence. He'll be only too glad to run the whole show for us. The city shall be watched, and the first time 'The Purple Kangaroo' is used in a suspicious sense we'll arrest the offenders, discover the plot, and the Daily Leader, as the defender of the nation and the people's bulwark, will increase its circulation a hundred thousand copies! It makes me dizzy to think of it! I tell you what it is, Marchmont, that subeditorship is still vacant, and if you put this through, the place is yours."
The reporter grasped his chief's hand.
"That's white of you, boss," he said, "and I'll do it no matter what it costs or who gets hurt in the process."
"Right you are!" cried his employer. "The man who edits this paper has got to hustle. Now don't let the grass grow under your feet, and we'll have a drink to celebrate."
When the chief offers to set up a sub it means business, and Marchmont was elated accordingly.
At the Club the Bishop's son still contemplated the Avenue from the vantage-point of the most comfortable armchair the room possessed. Praise, he reflected, which was not intended for the author's ear was praise indeed. No man could tell to what it might lead. No one indeed, Cecil Banborough least of all, though he was destined to find out before he was many hours older; for down in the editorial sanctum of the Daily Leader O'Brien was being instructed:
"And
