"Which girl?"
"Why, Miss Sycamore ... you know the little girl that sings, 'Come Round and See Me in the Evening,' in the Pompadour Girl."
"No. Was he?"
"Was he not," said the elder man, with a hiccough. "Why, he used to be talking to me all day about her.... And the letters. My word, you should see the letters ... he used to show them to me before he sent them off. Full of high thinking and all that."
And gradually the whole story came out, in scattered pieces, that Humphrey saw he could put together into a real-life drama. Never once did he think of the dead man, or the dead man's wife in Surbiton (Willoughby was probably doing his best there). He only saw the secret drama unfolding itself like a novelist's plot. The meetings, the letters, the double life of Bellowes, a respectable churchwarden in Surbiton; a libertine in London—and then she threw him over; declined to see him when he called at the stage door; he had dressed himself as a woman, hoping to pass the stage-door keeper. Perhaps if he had got as far as the dressing-room, maddened by the breakage of his love, and the waste of his intrigue, there might have been a double tragedy. And so to the final grotesque death in the street.
It was eight o'clock when Humphrey had the whole story in his mind, and by that time, though he knew he had drunk far too much, he was not so drunk as the other two men.
"There you are, old boy," said the elder man, affectionately. "You can print it all, and keep my name and the name of the firm out of the papers."
"So long," said the younger man, as they parted at the door of the bar. "You won't have another."
"I'd better get back now," Humphrey replied. "Thanks awfully. You've done me a good turn."
He walked back to the office; the late evening papers still bore on their posters the word "Mystery"—but he alone of all the people hurrying to and fro knew the key of the mystery. He had set forth a few hours ago—it seemed years—ignorant of everything, and, behold, he had put a finger into the tragedy of three lives. All that feeling of revolt and hatred of his business passed away from him, and left in its place nothing but a great joy that he had succeeded, where he never dreamt success was possible. After this he knew he must be a journalist for ever, a licensed meddler in the affairs of other people.