Splendid Wratten, he thought! How long would it be before he acquired such ease, such sure familiarity—how long before he should prove himself worthy to dangle his legs freely in the presence of Rivers.
Within a few days something happened that made Humphrey the celebrity of a day in the reporters' room. It was a fluke, a happy chance, as most of the good things in life are. A man had killed himself in a London street under most peculiar circumstances. He had dressed himself in woman's clothes, and only, after death, when they took him to the hospital, did they find that the dead body was that of a man. He was employed in a solicitor's office near Charing Cross Road. His name was Bellowes, and he was married, and lived at Surbiton. These facts were published briefly in the afternoon papers. Rivers, scenting a mystery, threw his interest into the story. There is nothing like a mystery for selling the paper. He sent for Willoughby.
Humphrey had found Willoughby one of the most astonishing individuals of the reporters' room. He was a tall, slim man, with a hollow-cheeked face and a forehead that was always frowning. His hair fell in disorder almost over his eyebrows, and whenever he wrote he pulled his hair about with his left hand, and mumbled the sentences as he wrote them. His speciality was crime: he knew more of the dark underside of human nature than any one Humphrey had met. He knew the intimate byways of crime, and its motives; every detective in the Criminal Investigation Department was his friend, and though by the rigid law of Scotland Yard they were forbidden to give information, he could chat with them, make his own deductions as well as any detective, and sometimes accompany them when an arrest was expected. He drew his information from unknown sources, and he was always bringing the exclusive news of some crime or other to The Day.
He was a bundle of nerves, for he lived always in a world of expectancy. At any moment, any hour, day and night, something would be brought to light. Murder and sudden death and mystery formed the horizon of his thoughts.
Humphrey had found a friend in Willoughby. In very contrast to the work in which he was engaged, he kept the room alive with merriment. He could relate stories as well as he could write them, and he spoke always with the set phrases of old-time journalism that had a ludicrous effect on his listeners. His character was a strange mixture of shrewdness, worldly-wisdom, and ingenuousness, and this was reflected in the books he carried always with him. In one pocket there would be an untranslatable French novel, and, in the other, by way of counterblast, a Meredith or a Stevenson. He and Humphrey had often talked about books, and Willoughby showed the temperament of a cultured scholar and a philosopher when he discussed literature.
Willoughby went up to Rivers' room.
"Here you are, my son," said Rivers, tossing him over the cuttings on the affair of the strange suicide. "Get down to Surbiton and see if you can nose out anything. I'll get some one else to look after the London end."
The some one else chanced to be Humphrey, for there was nobody but him left in the reporters' room. Thus it came about that, a few minutes after Willoughby had set out for Surbiton, Humphrey came out on Fleet Street with instructions to look after the "London end" of the tragedy.
Rivers' parting words were ringing in his ears. They had a sinister meaning in them. "... And don't you fall down, young man," he had said, using the vivid journalistic metaphor for failure.
The busy people of the street surged about him, as he stood still for a moment trying to think where he should begin on the London end. He felt extraordinarily inexperienced and helpless.... He thought how Wratten would have known at once where to go, or how easily Tommy Pride, with his years of training, could do the job. He did not dare ask Rivers to teach him his business—he had enough common sense to know that, at any cost, his ignorance must be hidden under a mask of wisdom.