There was a plentiful crop of grey hairs sown between Charing Cross and Ludgate Hill in the early hours of that summer morning. With his mouth to the telephone, Lidiat stirred up the purlieus of Fleet Street and the Strand until office after office, composing room after composing room, and foundry after foundry, all along the line, began to drone and hum resentfully, like an outraged apiary in the dead of night. When he once took up the wire he never put it down again until he had swept the "London Dailies: Morning" section of Sell and Mitchell from beginning to end. Those who wished to retort and temporise after he had done with them, had to fall back upon the telescribe—which involved the disadvantage to Fleet Street of having to write and coldly transmit the indignant messages that it would fain pour hot and blistering into its tormentor's ear. For two hours and a half by the watch beneath his eye he harrowed up all the most cherished journalistic traditions of the land, and from a small, box-like room a mile away, he controlled the reins of the Fourth Estate of an Empire—a large, fat, perspiring man of persuasive authority, and conscious of unlimited capital at his back.
By the end of that time chaos had given place to order. The Scythe had shown an amenable disposition with a readiness suggesting that it possibly knew more than it had told in the past. The Ensign was won over by persuasion and the condition of the Navy, and The Mailed Fist was clubbed and bullied and cajoled with big names until it was dazed. For seven minutes Lidiat poured patriotism into the ear of The Beacon's editor, and gold into the coffers of The Beacon's manager, and then turned aside to win over The Daily News-Letter by telling it what The Daily Chronicler was doing, and the Chronicler by reporting the News-Letter's acquiescence. The Morning Post Card remained obdurate for half an hour, and only capitulated after driving down and having an interview with Hampden. The Great Daily—well, for more than a year The Great Daily had been the property and organ of the League, only no one had suspected it. The little Illustrated Hour, beset by the difficulty of half-tone blocks, and frantic at the thought of having to recast its plates and engage in the mysteries of "making ready" again after half its edition had been run off, was the last to submit. So long was it in making up its mind, that at last Lidiat sarcastically proposed an inset, and, taking the suggestion in all good faith, the Illustrated Hour startled its sober patrons by bearing on its outside page a gummed leaflet containing a leaderette and two news paragraphs.
So the list spun out. Lidiat did not touch the provinces, but sixteen London dailies, including some sporting and financial organs, marked the thoroughness of his work. At half-past three he finally hung up the receiver; and taking the brougham, rode like another Wellington over the field of his still palpitating Waterloo. His appearance, bovine and imperturbable despite the shameful incongruity of his garb when revealed in the tremulous and romantic dawn of a day and of an epoch, and further set off by the unimpeachable correctness of the equipage from which he alighted, was a thing that rankled in the minds of lingering compositors and commissionaires until their dying days.
A few minutes after his departure Hampden returned to the telephone and desired to make the curious connection "1 Telescribe."
"Who is there?" he asked, when "1 Telescribe" responded.
The man at the other end explained that he was a clerk on the main platform of "1 Telescribe"—name of Firkin, if the fact was of Metropolitan interest.
"Is Mr Woodbarrow there yet?"
It appeared, with increased respect, that Mr Woodbarrow was in his own office and could be informed of the gentleman's name.
"Please tell him that Sir John Hampden wishes to speak with him."
In two minutes another voice filtered through the wire, a voice which Hampden recognised.