go easy,” advised him Tommy, “till I complain of having too much to do.”
Peter returned to his desk. Elizabeth looked up. It seemed to Peter that Elizabeth winked.
The fortnight that followed was a period of trouble to Peter, for Tommy, her suspicions having been aroused, was sceptical of “business” demanding that Peter should dine with this man at the club, lunch with this editor at the Cheshire Cheese. At once the chin would go up into the air, the black eyes cloud threateningly. Peter, an unmarried man for thirty years, lacking experience, would under cross-examination contradict himself, become confused, break down over essential points.
“Really,” grumbled Peter to himself one evening, sawing at a mutton chop, “really there’s no other word for it—I’m henpecked.”
Peter that day had looked forward to a little dinner at a favourite restaurant, with his “dear old friend Blenkinsopp, a bit of a gourmet, Tommy—that means a man who likes what you would call elaborate cooking!”—forgetful at the moment that he had used up “Blenkinsopp” three days before for a farewell supper, “Blenkinsopp” having to set out the next morning for Egypt. Peter was not facile at invention. Names in particular had always been a difficulty to him.
“I like a spirit of independence,” continued Peter to himself. “Wish she hadn’t quite so much of it. Wonder where she got it from.”
The situation was becoming more serious to Peter than he cared to admit. For day by day, in spite of her tyrannies, Tommy was growing more and more indispensable to Peter. Tommy was the first audience that for thirty years had laughed at Peter’s jokes; Tommy was the first public that for thirty years had been convinced that Peter was the most brilliant journalist in Fleet Street; Tommy was the first anxiety that for thirty years had rendered it needful that Peter each night should mount stealthily the creaking stairs, steal with shaded candle to a bedside. If only Tommy wouldn’t “do” for him! If only she could be persuaded to “do” something else.
Another happy thought occurred to Peter.
“Tommy—I mean Jane,” said Peter, “I know what I’ll do with you.”
“What’s the game now?”
“I’ll make a journalist of you.”
“Don’t talk rot.”
“It isn’t rot. Besides, I won’t have you answer me like that. As a Devil—that means, Tommy, the unseen person in the background that helps a journalist to do his work—you would be invaluable to me. It would pay me, Tommy—pay me very handsomely. I should make money out of you.”
This appeared to be an argument that Tommy understood. Peter, with secret delight, noticed that the chin retained its normal level.
“I did help a chap to sell papers, once,” remembered Tommy; “he said I was fly at it.”
“I told you so,” exclaimed Peter triumphantly. “The methods are different, but the instinct required is the same. We will get a woman in to relieve you of the housework.”
The chin shot up into the air.
“I could do it in my spare time.”
“You see, Tommy, I should want you to go about with me—to be always with me.”
“Better try me first. Maybe you’re making an error.”
Peter was learning the wisdom of the serpent.
“Quite right, Tommy. We will first see what you can do. Perhaps, after all, it may turn out that you are better as a cook.” In his heart Peter doubted this.
But the seed had fallen upon good ground. It was Tommy herself that manoeuvred her first essay in journalism. A great man had come to London—was staying in apartments especially prepared for him in St. James’s Palace. Said every journalist in London to himself: “If I could obtain an interview with this Big Man, what a big thing it would be for me!” For a week past, Peter had carried everywhere about with him a paper headed: “Interview of Our Special Correspondent with Prince Blank,” questions down left-hand column, very narrow; space for answers right-hand side, very wide. But the Big Man was experienced.
“I wonder,” said Peter, spreading the neatly folded paper on the desk before him, “I wonder if there can be any way of getting at him—any dodge or trick, any piece of low cunning, any plausible lie that I haven’t thought of.”
“Old Man Martin—called himself Martini—was just such another,” commented Tommy. “Come pay time, Saturday afternoon, you just couldn’t get at him—simply wasn’t any way. I was a bit too good for him once, though,” remembered Tommy, with a touch of pride in her voice; “got half a quid out of him that time. It did surprise him.”
“No,” communed Peter to himself aloud, “I don’t honestly think there can be any method, creditable or discreditable, that I haven’t tried.” Peter flung the one-sided interview into the wastepaper-basket, and slipping his notebook into his pocket, departed to drink tea with a lady novelist, whose great desire, as stated in a postscript to her invitation, was to avoid publicity, if possible.
Tommy, as soon as Peter’s back was turned, fished it out again.
An hour later in the fog around St. James’s Palace stood an Imp, clad in patched trousers and a pepper-and-salt jacket turned up about the neck, gazing with admiring eyes upon the sentry.
“Now, then, young seventeen-and-sixpence the soot,” said the sentry, “what do you want?”
“Makes you a bit anxious, don’t it,” suggested the Imp, “having a big pot like him to look after?”
“Does get a bit on yer mind, if yer thinks about it,” agreed the sentry.
“How do you find him to talk to, like?”
“Well,” said the sentry, bringing his right leg into action for the purpose of relieving his left, “ain’t ’ad much to do with ’im myself, not person’ly, as yet. Oh, ’e ain’t a bad sort when yer know ’im.”
“That’s his shake-down, ain’t it?” asked the Imp, “where the lights are.”
“That’s it,” admitted sentry. “You ain’t an Anarchist? Tell me if you are.”
“I’ll let you know if I feel it coming on,” the Imp assured him.
Had the sentry been a man of swift and penetrating observation—which he wasn’t—he might have asked the question in more serious a tone. For he would have remarked that the Imp’s black eyes were resting lovingly upon a rain-water-pipe, giving to a skilful climber easy access to the terrace underneath the Prince’s windows.
“I would like to see him,” said the Imp.
“Friend o’ yours?” asked the sentry.
“Well, not exactly,” admitted the Imp. “But there, you know, everybody’s talking about him down our street.”
“Well, yer’ll ’ave to be quick about it,” said the sentry. “ ’E’s off to-night.”
