"I couldn't get no paper, 'm," Elsie explained. "I had to go down nearly to the Viaduct before I could get one. And now it isn't the Evening Standard—it's the Star. They were all sold out, 'm."
She advanced towards the office, and in her deferential hands the white newspaper became the document of some mysterious and solemn message to the waiting master. Her demeanour, indeed, showed that she knew it to be such. She had not been reading the paper—that, somehow, for her, would have been to pry—but as she passed under the sole gas-lamp of Riceyman Steps she had by accident noticed one word on the Star's front page. That word was "Clerkenwell." Something terrible had been occurring in Clerkenwell. Mr. Earlforward, whose habits she knew well, must have seen a reference to Clerkenwell on the Evening Standard's poster on his way home, and after careful reflection he had decided to buy a copy of the paper.
"Wait a moment! Wait a moment!" said Mr. Earlforward to Elsie as she turned to leave the office. Elsie stood still. Violet sat on the chair behind the desk. Mr. Earlforward maintained his position by the fire, and created expectancy.
"'Further slump in the franc,'" he read, his eye negligently wandering over the paper.
Elsie had not the least idea what this meant or signified. Violet was by no means sure of its import, but she knew positively that it was bad news for decent investing persons.
"'Belgian franc falls in sympathy.'"
Happily Elsie did not even know what a franc was; but whatever a franc might be she vaguely wondered in the almost primeval night of her brain how its performances could be actuated by such a feeling as sympathy. For Violet the financial situation grew still gloomier.
"'Over a million doomed to starvation in the Volga region.' That's communism, I'd like you to know; that's the result of communism, that is," observed Mr. Earlforward, looking over his glasses and including both women in an equal glance. "That's what communism leads to. And what it must lead to wherever it's tried."
He had suddenly become an oracle. The women were impressed. They felt as if they had been doing something wrong, perhaps defending communism or trying to practise it. Elsie could not believe that he had bought the paper in order to obtain the latest results of communism. She waited for the word "Clerkenwell," but Mr. Earlforward was never in a hurry and could not be hurried. As usual he was postponing.
"'Fatal Affray in a Clerkenwell Communist Club,'" he announced at length. "Ah! So that's it ... Great Warner Street. Just across the road from here. Not five minutes away. 'The Millennium Club.' ..." He nodded scornfully at the name. "'Girl's heroism.' ... Girls in it, too!... Oh! She was the waitress. 'Threw herself very courageously between the assailants and seized the revolver, which, however, Vicenza wrenched from her and then fired, wounding Arthur Trankett in the abdomen. When the police effected an entrance at midnight'—that's last night—'Smith was lying dead on the floor in front of the bar, and Trankett was unconscious by his side.... Vicenza was subsequently apprehended in a house in Coldbath Square.'"