Needless to say the publication of this letter, with the names, and in three cases with portraits, of the men who were asserted to be the leaders of the conspiracy, and the offer of such large rewards, created a profound sensation not only in England and Ireland, but in America and on the Continent.
One or two of the “Daily Record’s” contemporaries did not hesitate to censure the action which had been taken as an advertising dodge, and a well-known Conservative organ declared that such a direct insult to the authorities was calculated seriously to injure the national prestige of England; that the Government had made every possible effort to protect society and to bring the perpetrators of the recent outrages to book, and that the result of the “Record’s” rash and ill-advised procedures would be to stultify the action of the police and to defeat the ends of justice.
On the other hand, the public generally—especially in view of the fact that the “Record” had succeeded in discovering who were the leaders of the conspiracy (which the police had apparently failed to do)—was inclined to give the editor and the proprietors credit for the patriotism they claimed, and it was confidently believed that the offer of so large a reward would tempt some one to turn informer and to give up his confederates to justice.
What the “Daily Record” did for England the “Dublin News”—which had been consistently loyal throughout, and the most fearlessly outspoken of all the Irish Press in its denunciation of Captain Shannon—did for Ireland. It hailed the proprietors and editor of the “Record” as patriots, declaring that, in view of the inefficiency which the Government had displayed in their efforts to protect the public, it was high time that the public should bestir itself and take the matter into its own hand. It reprinted—by the permission of the “Record”—the descriptions and portraits of the “suspects,” and distributed them broadcast over the country, and it announced that it would add to the amount which was offered by the “Daily Record” for information which would lead to the arrest of Captain Shannon the sum of £5,000.
CHAPTER IV
THE MURDER IN FLEET STREET
Ten A. M. is a comparatively quiet hour in Fleet Street. The sale of morning papers has practically dropped, and as the second edition of those afternoon journals, of which no one ever sees a first, has not yet been served out to the clamouring and hustling mob at the distributing centres, no vociferating newsboys, aproned with placards of “Sun,” “News,” “Echo” or “Star,” have as yet taken possession of the street corners and pavement kerbs.
On the morning of which I am writing, the newspaper world was sadly in want of a sensation. A royal personage had, it is true, put off the crown corruptible for one which would press less heavily on his brow; but he had, as a pressman phrased it, “given away the entire situation” by allowing himself for a fortnight to be announced as “dying.” This, Fleet Street resented as unartistic, and partaking of the nature of an anti-climax. Better things, it considered, might have been expected from so eminent an individual; and as such a way of making an end was not to be encouraged, the Press had, as a warning to other royal personages, passed by the event as comparatively unimportant.
It was true, too, that the Heir Apparent had on the previous evening entered a carriage on the Underground Railway as it was on the point of starting, and that the placards of the “special” editions had in consequence announced an “Alarming Accident to the Prince of Wales,” which, when H. R. H. had contemptuously remarked that there never had been an approach to danger, was changed in the “extra specials” to “The Prince describes his Narrow Escape.”
The incident had, however, been severely commented on as “sensation-mongering” by the morning papers (badly in want of a sensation themselves), and was now practically closed, so that the alliterative artist of the “Morning Advertiser’s” placards had nothing better upon which to exercise his ingenuity than a “Conflict among County Councillors,” and the “Daily Chronicle’s” most exciting contents were a poem by Mr. Richard le Gallienne and a letter from Mr. Bernard Shaw. Nor was anything doing in the aristocratic world. Not a single duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron was appearing as respondent or co-respondent in a divorce case, or as actor in any turf or society scandal, and there was a widespread feeling that the aristocracy, as a whole, was not doing its duty to the country.
As a matter of fact, one among many results of the sudden cessation, three months since, of every sort of Anarchistic outrage, had been that the daily papers could not seem other than flat reading to a public which had previously opened these same prints each morning with apprehension and anxiety. Though the vigorous action taken by the editor of the “Daily Record,” in London, and of the “Dublin News,” in Dublin, had not, as had been expected, led to the arrest of Captain Shannon or his colleagues, it had apparently so alarmed the conspirators as to cause them to abandon their plan of campaign. The general opinion was that Captain Shannon, finding so much was known, and that, though his own identity had not been fixed, the personality of the leaders of the conspiracy was no longer a secret, had deemed it advisable to flee the country, lest the offer of so large a reward as £25,000 should tempt the cupidity of some of his colleagues. And as it always had been believed that he was the prime source and author of the whole diabolical conspiracy, the cessation of the outrages was regarded as a natural consequence of his defalcation.