CHAPTER XXVI.
["THE LITTLE BUSY BEE" GETS AHEAD OF ITS RIVALS.]
Two days afterwards, that is, on the 9th of March, some hours after the morning papers were in circulation, all London was ringing with the news of the mysterious murder in Catchpole Square. The name of Samuel Boyd was on every tongue; the newsboys shouted it out raucously and jubilantly, with the full force of their lungs, and the wind carried it into all the highways and byeways of the vast metropolis; it was printed on the variously coloured waybills of the newspapers in scarlet letters, green letters, yellow letters, as large as the width of the sheets permitted; it was read aloud and discussed in omnibuses, in public-house bars, in the workshops and places of business; it was bandied about, tossed in the air, caught up and passed on, embellished, illustrated and exaggerated, and rolled over the tongue as the most tempting of tempting morsels. Editorial offices were alive with it, their swing doors had not a moment's rest, the whole of the staff were on the qui vive, reporters hurried this way and that in their hunt for facts, fanciful or otherwise, that had the remotest connection, or no connection at all, with the name of the murdered man and the circumstances of the murder, as far as they were known. Now was the chance for the descriptive writer, for the youthful aspirants for journalistic fame, for the enterprising interviewer. Things had been rather dull lately. There had been no stirring crime, no bloodthirsty deed, no sensational trial, no tremendous conflagration, no awful shipwreck, no colliery explosion, no terrible railway collision, for quite a week, and circulation was languishing. But here at last was a dish of hot spice to stir the blood, to set tongues wagging, to fire the imagination, to make the pulses glow. A murder! And such a murder! Dark, thrilling, impenetrable, inscrutable, enveloped in delicious mystery. What is one man's meat is another man's poison, and Samuel Boyd, who had never in life given a beggar a penny or the price of a meal to a starving man, was the means, in death, of filling many a platter and frothing up many a pewter pot. Trade revived. People spent more, drank more, smoked more, went to the music-halls and theatres more, for it was impossible to keep still with such an excitement in the air. See the radiant faces of the ragged street urchins as they shout it out and dispose of their sheets, and are not asked for change of a penny--see the journalistic scouts as they follow the trail, true trail, false trail, any trail--see the crowds in Fleet Street and the Strand and all the narrow thoroughfares leading riverwards--see the smart newspaper carts, with their dapper ponies flying north, south, east, and west with their latest editions--see the travellers on the tops of omnibuses throwing down their coppers and bending over to seize the papers--see the railway bookstalls besieged by eager buyers, who, rushing to catch a train, pick up half a dozen different journals, in the hope of finding in one of them two or three lines of different import from those contained in all the others--see the men standing at street corners, running their eyes down the columns, animated by a similar hope--see the telegraph wires, blind and deaf to human passion, carrying the message of murder, murder, murder, on their hundreds of miles of silent tongues--see the envy of the hawkers of wax matches, penny toys, and bone shirt studs, as they watch the roaring trade that is being done by the busy armies of tag, rag, and bobtail, who form the distributing street agency of journalistic literature, and wish that heaven had sent them such a bit of luck. Sold out again, Jack! Hurrah! Fly off for another quire. As good as a Derby Day, Bill! As good? Ten times better! Where are "all the winners" now? Shorn of their glory they sink into the background, and no small punter so poor to do them reverence? What are "all the winners" to a rattling spicy murder?
Never had "The Little Busy Bee" more fully justified its title than on the present occasion. A daring scheme had suggested itself to one of the members of the staff, which had been crowned with success. Ahead of all its rivals it was the first to publish the exciting news, and needless to say it made the most of its golden opportunity. The office was besieged; it was like a Jubilee Day. Men and boys fought and scrambled for the copies as the steam presses belched them forth, and selling them out before they reached the wider thoroughfares, rushed back for more. The day was Saturday, and the whirling tumult lasted till midnight.
The manner of "The Little Busy Bee's" buzzing in its preliminary editions was as follows: First, a quotation in large type from "Macbeth." "And one cried, Murder!" Then half a column of the usual sensational headings. Then the account of the daring scheme and the discovery in the following fashion: