Sir Edmund turned a sudden, keen gaze upon the girl; then his face relaxed. "We might rise to that. At all events, I'm safe in promising it."
"It is a promise, then?"
"Oh, certainly."
"Thank you. Let me see if I understand clearly. I'm not quite the baby you think, Sir Edmund. I read the papers--yours especially--and take, I trust, an intelligent interest in the political situation. Now, the latest rumour is that Russia is secretly planning an understanding with Japan and China. What you would like to know is whether there is truth in the rumour, and what, in that event, England would do."
"Exactly. That is what all the papers are dying to find out."
"If you could get the official news before any of them, you would give the person who obtained it for you a thousand pounds. If, in addition, they, or one of them--let us say The Daily Beacon--got the wrong news on the same day, you would no doubt add five hundred to the original thousand; for revenge is sweet, even to an editor, I suppose, and The Beacon has, I have heard, contrived to be first in the field on one or two important occasions within the last few years."
This allusion was a pin-prick in a sensitive place, for Joan was aware that The Daily Beacon and The Planet were deadly rivals as well as political opponents. Mainbridge had told her the tale of The Planet's humiliation by the enemy, and she had not forgotten. The Beacon had been able, at the very time when The Planet was arguing against their probability, to assert that certain political events would take place, and in time these statements had been justified, to the discomfiture of The Planet.
Sir Edmund frowned slightly. "The Daily Beacon possesses exceptional advantages," he sneered. "It is difficult for less favoured journals to compete with it for political information."
"I believe I can guess what you refer to," answered Joan. "I hear things, you know, from my cousin, Miss Milton." (This to shield Mainbridge.) "Lord Henry Borrowdaile, an Under Secretary of State, is a distant relative of Mr. Portheous, the proprietor of The Daily Beacon, and it is said that there has been a curious leakage of diplomatic secrets, once or twice, by which The Beacon profited."
"You are a well-informed young lady."