“That,” said her husband, “is just what I’m so interested to know.” He picked up the paper and glanced over the staring headlines with affectionate proprietorship. “They’ve really done us quite proud, haven’t they! By the way, can I have another cup of coffee, please?”
“I’m not surprised you need it,” said Cynthia, taking his cup.
Guy continued to run gratified eyes over The Courier’s hysterics. The Courier was in the habit of letting itself go when it felt that it had got hold of something really good; this time it had not so much let itself go as gone behind itself and pushed. Headlines half an inch high broke the news to an astonished world; the two columns were liberally interspersed with sentences, and sometimes whole paragraphs, in heavy leaded type; such words as “incredible,” “amazing,” “astounding,” and “epoch-making in the annals of crime,” appeared in prodigal profusion.
Under Doyle’s own name one column was filled with his account of the affair; the other was devoted to his interviews with “The Constable in the Cupboard,” as The Courier facetiously termed that functionary, and Reginald Foster, Esquire, “who actually intercepted one member of the nefarious gang and obtained from her facts of paramount importance.” The Crown Prince motif was played up to its utmost capacity, and The Man with the Broken Nose was accorded the honour of leaded type whenever his pseudonym occurred, which was very often. In a screaming leader The Courier laid it down that this lamentable affair was a Disgrace to Civilisation and attributed it directly to the pusillanimity of our present (so-called) Government, referred in scathing terms to the Constable in the Cupboard as an example of the ineptitude of our rural police force, and called upon its readers to avenge this slight to England’s honour by themselves prosecuting the search for the notorious Man with the Broken Nose.
The Courier then sat back on its haunches and sent for its circulation manager.
Let it not be thought that The Courier had been too easily gulled. The night editor, who was a naturally sceptical man, had caused a telephone call to be put through to the Abingchester police station before Mr. Doyle had been talking to him for three minutes. Subsequent calls to the houses of Messrs. Reginald Foster and Guy Nesbitt at Duffley confirmed the incredible. Doubting not that it was on firm ground The Courier acceded (more or less) to Mr. Doyle’s terms, and so made certain of being the only one in the field the next morning with this scoop of a lifetime; then it scrapped its old centre-page at enormous cost, got behind itself and pushed.
The result was most gratifying to all concerned.
“Oh, put the horrible thing away!” Cynthia cried suddenly, snatching the paper from Guy and throwing it violently on the floor. “I can’t bear to look at it any longer.”
“Dear wife,” Guy murmured, “you’re taking this thing in the wrong spirit.”
“I don’t want to take it in any spirit at all,” retorted his dear wife. “What I was thinking of ever to let you embark on it, I can’t imagine. I must have been out of my senses.”