When It Was Dark Part 21

"Sir Robert Llwellyn, isn't it?"

"Yes, he's my chief, and a very good fellow too, as a rule. He went away for several months, you know--travelled abroad for his health. When he first came back, three months ago, he looked as fit as a fiddle, and seemed awfully pleased with himself all round. But lately he's been decidedly off colour. He seems worried about something, does hardly any work, and always seems waiting and looking out for a coming event. He bothers me out of my life, always coming into my room and talking about nothing, or speculating upon the possibility of all sorts of new discoveries which will upset every one's theories."

"I met him in Dieppe in the spring. He seemed all right then, just at the beginning of his leave."

"Well, he's certainly not that now, worse luck, and confound him. He interferes with my work no end. Good-bye; sorry I must go."

He pa.s.sed softly over the heavy carpet of the smoking-room, and Spence was left alone once more.

It was after seven o'clock.

Spence wasn't hungry yet. The light meal in the hammam had satisfied him. He resolved to go to the Empire alone, not because the idea of going seemed very attractive, but because he had planned it and could subst.i.tute no other way of spending the evening for the first determination.

So, about nine o'clock, he strolled into the huge, garish music-hall.

He went into the Empire, and already his contentment was beginning to die away again. The day seemed a day of trivialities, a sordid, uneventful day of London gloom, which he had vainly tried to disperse with little futile rockets of amus.e.m.e.nt.

He sat down in a stall and watched a clever juggler doing wonderful things with billiard b.a.l.l.s. After the juggler a coa.r.s.ely handsome Spanish girl came upon the stage--he remembered her at La Scala, in Paris. She was said to be one of the beauties of Europe, and a king's favourite.

After the Spanish woman there were two men, "brothers" some one. One was disguised as a donkey--a veritable _peau de chagrin_!--the other as a tramp, and together they did laughable things.

With a sigh he went up-stairs and moved slowly through the thronged promenade. The hard faces of the men and women repelled him. One elderly Jewish-looking person reminded him of a great grey slug. He turned into the American bar at one extremity of the horse-shoe. It was early yet, and the big room, pleasantly cool, was quite empty. A man brought him a long, parti-coloured drink.

He felt the pressure of a packet in his pocket. It was Cyril Hands's letter, he found as he took it out. He thought of young Lambert at the club, a friend of Hands and fellow-worker in the same field, and languidly opened the letter.

Two women came in and sat at a table not far from him as he began to read. He was the only man in the place, and they regarded him with a tense, conscious interest.

They saw him open a bulky envelope with a careless manner. He would look up soon, they expected.

But as they watched they saw a sudden, swift contraction of the brows, a momentous convulsion of every feature. His head bent lower towards the ma.n.u.script. They saw that he became very pale.

In a minute or two what had at first seemed a singular paleness became a frightful ashen colour.

"That Johnny's going to be ill," one of the women said to the other.

As she spoke they saw the face change. A lurid excitement burst upon it like a flame. The eyes glowed, the mouth settled into swift purpose.

Spence took up his hat and left the room with quick, decided steps. He threaded his way through the crowd round the circle--like a bed of orchids, surrounded by heavy, poisonous scents--and almost ran into the street.

A cab was waiting. He got into it, and, inspired by his words and appearance, the man drove furiously down dark Garrick Street, and the blazing Strand towards the offices of the _Daily Wire_.

The great building of dressed stone which stood in the middle of Fleet Street was dark. The advertis.e.m.e.nt halls and business offices were closed.

Spence paid his man and dived down a long, narrow pa.s.sage, paved, and with high walls on either side. At the end of the pa.s.sage he pushed open some battered swing-doors. A _commissionaire_ in a little hutch touched his cap as Spence ran up a broad flight of stone stairs.

The journalist turned down a long corridor with doors on either side.

The gla.s.s fanlights over the doors showed that all the rooms were brilliantly lit within. The place was very quiet, save for the distant clicking of a typewriter and the thud of a "column-printer" tape machine as the wheel carrier shot back for a new line.

He opened a door with his own name painted on it and went inside. At a very large writing-table, on which stood two shaded electric lights, an elderly man, heavily built and bearded, was writing on small slips of paper. There was another table in the room, a great many books on shelves upon the walls, and a thick carpet. The big man looked up as Spence came in, lifted a cup of tea which was standing by him, and drank a little. He nodded without speaking, and went on with his leading article.

Spence took off his hat and coat, drew the sheets of Hands's letter from his pocket, and went out into the pa.s.sage. At the extreme end he opened a door, and pa.s.sing round a red baize screen found himself in Ommaney's room, the centre of the great web of brains and machinery which daily gave the _Wire_ to the world.

Ommaney's room was very large, warm, and bright. It was also extremely tidy. The writing-table had little on it save a great blotting-pad and an inkstand. The books on chairs and shelves were neatly arranged.

The editor sat at a table in the centre of the room, facing several doors which led into various departments of the staff. The chief sub-editor, a short, alert person, spectacled and Jewish in aspect, stood by Ommaney's side as Spence came in. He had proof of page three in his hand--that portion of the paper which consisted of news which had acc.u.mulated through the day. He was submitting it to the editor, so that the whole sheet might be finally "pa.s.sed for press" and "go to the foundry," where the type would be pressed into _papier-mache_ moulds, from which the final curved plates for the roller machines would be cast.

"Not at all a bad make-up, Levita," Ommaney said, as he initialled the margin in blue pencil. The sub-editor hurried from the room.

Ommaney was slim and pale, carefully dressed, and of medium height. He did not look very old. His moustache was golden and carefully tended, his pale, honey-coloured hair waved over a high, white forehead.

"I shall want an hour," Spence said. "I've just got what may be the most stupendous news any newspaper has ever published."

The editor looked up quickly. A flash of interest pa.s.sed over his pale, immobile face and was gone. He knew that if Spence spoke like this the occasion was momentous.

He looked at his watch. "Is it news for to-night's paper?" he said.

"No," answered Spence. "I'm the only man in England, I think, who has it yet. We shall gain nothing by printing to-night. But we must settle on a course of action at once. That won't wait. You'll understand when I explain."

Ommaney nodded. On the writing-table was a mahogany stand about a foot square. A circle was described on it, and all round the circle, like the figures on the face of a clock, were little ivory tablets an inch long, with a name printed on each. In the centre of the circle a vulcanite handle moved a steel bar working on a pivot. Ommaney turned the handle till the end of the bar rested over the tablet marked

+--------------------+ COMPOSING ROOM +--------------------+

He picked up the receiver and transmitter of a portable telephone and asked one or two questions.

When he had communicated with several other rooms in this way Ommaney turned to Spence.

"All right," he said, "I can give you an hour now. Things are fairly easy to-night."

He got up from the writing-table and sat down by the fire. Spence took a chair opposite.

He seemed dazed. He was trembling with excitement, his face was pale with it, yet, above and beyond this agitation, there was almost fear in his eyes.

"It's a discovery in Palestine--at Jerusalem," he said in a low, vibrating voice, spreading out the thin, crackling sheets of foreign note-paper on his knee and arranging them in order.

"You know Cyril Hands, the agent of the Palestine Exploring Fund?"

"Yes, quite well by reputation," said Ommaney, "and I've met him once or twice. Very sound man."

"These papers are from him. They seem to be of tremendous importance, of a significance that I can hardly grasp yet."

"What is the nature of them?" asked the editor, rising from his chair, powerfully affected in his turn by Spence's manner.

Harold put his hand up to his throat, pulling at his collar; the apple moved up and down convulsively.

"The Tomb!" Spence gasped. "The Holy Tomb!"

"What do you mean?" asked Ommaney. "Another supposed burial-place of Christ--like the _Times_ business, when they found the Gordon Tomb, and Canon MacColl wrote such a lot?"

His face fell a little. This, though interesting enough, and fine "news copy," was less than he hoped.