George explained. To follow the clue necessitated, he said, instant departure—by train. He would write fullest details; would wire from time to time if necessary. His uncle must trust him implicitly. The detective must not be told until he gave the word.
Eager to clutch at any hope, Mr. Marrapit clutched at this. George was given money for expenses; at eight o'clock left the house. There had been no opportunity for words with his Mary. She did not even know that Mr. Marrapit had refused the money that was to mean marriage and Runnygate; she had not even danced with her George upon his success in his examination. Leaving the household upon his desperate clue, George could do no more than before them all bid her formal farewell. At half-past eight he is cramming the peerless Rose of Sharon into a basket taken from Mr. Fletcher's outhouses; at nine the villain is tramping the railway platform, in agony lest his burden shall mi-aow; at ten the monster is at Dippleford Admiral; at eleven the traitor is asleep in the bedroom of an inn, the agitated Rose uneasily slumbering upon his bed.
CHAPTER VII.
Terror At Dippleford Admiral.
I.
“Impress your client,” was the maxim of Mr. David Brunger. “Make a splash and keep splashing,” was that of Mr. Henry T. Bitt, editor of Fleet Street's new organ, the Daily.
Muddy pools were Mr. Bitt's speciality. His idea of the greatest possible splash was some stream, pure and beautiful to the casual eye, into which he could force his young men and set them trampling the bottom till the thick, unpleasant mud came clouding up whence it had long lain unsuspected. There was his splash, and then he would start to keep splashing. By every art and device the pool would be flogged till the muddy water went flying broadcast, staining this, that, and the other fair name to the nasty delight of Mr. Bitt's readers. Scandal was Mr. Bitt's chief quest. Army scandal, navy scandal, political scandal, social scandal—these were the courses that Mr. Bitt continuously strove to serve up to his readers. Failing them—if disappointingly in evidence on every side was the integrity and the honour for which Mr. Bitt raved and bawled when in the thick of splashing a muddy pool,—then, argued Mr. Bitt, catch hold of something trivial and splash it, flog it, placard it, into a sensational and semi-mysterious bait that would set the halfpennies rising like trout in an evening stream.
Bringing these principles-indeed they won him his appointment—to the editorship of the Daily, Mr. Bitt was set moody and irritable by the fact that he had no opportunity to exercise them over the first issue of the paper.