"You saw no letters, photographs----"
"Nothing!" interrupted the landlady, emphatically. "I saw nothing."
"Then," said Gebb, rising briskly, "I must stick to the clue of the Yellow Room."
[CHAPTER IV]
THE FIVE LANDLADIES
The journalist is the true Asmodeus of the day, and is quite as fond as that meddlesome demon of interfering with what does not concern him. He invades the privacy of our lives, unroofs our houses, reveals our secrets, and trumpets forth things best left untold to the four quarters of the globe.
Gebb had an especial abhorrence of this magpie habit of the Press; as he averred, with much reason, that the excessively minute details of criminal cases set forth in the newspapers put the ill-doers on their guard, and warned them of coming dangers, with the result that they were easily able to evade the futile clutches of the hands of Justice. Yet in the instance of the Grangebury murder, the publication of details had a singular result: no less than the assisting of right against wrong.
As soon as the circumstances of the crime became known, the reporters of every newspaper in the metropolis flocked to Paradise Row with expansive notebooks, eager eyes, and inquiring minds. They surveyed the house, questioned the police, interviewed Mrs. Presk, and gave outline portraits of the landlady and her servant. The Yellow Boudoir especially attracted their attention, and stirred their imagination to descriptions of Eastern splendour. It was hinted that its magnificence was on more than a kingly scale; it was compared to the celebrated room in one of Balzac's romances, and its furnishing and appointments were minutely detailed in glowing descriptions, exhausting the most superlative adjectives in the English tongue. Also the unknown history and strange death of its occupant were commented upon; guesses were made as to her identity; and reasons were given for her secretive life, for her strange belief in, and consultation of, charlatans and fortune-tellers and all those cunning gipsies who live by the gullibility of the public. Appeals were made in these articles to the deaf and dumb driver to appear and declare the mystery of the yellow van, the yellow room, and their queer owner. In short, as the journals were in want of a sensation, they made the most of this material supplied by chance, and England from one end to the other rang with the tidings of Miss Ligram's death, Miss Ligram's boudoir, and Miss Ligram's mysterious life. And all this trumpeting and noise, Gebb, the enemy of the Press, heard with singular complacency, indeed, with pleasure and satisfaction.
"As a rule, I hate these revelations," said he to one who knew his views and wondered at his equanimity, "as in nine cases out of ten they do more harm than good by placing the criminal on his guard; but this is the tenth case, where it is advisable to make the details of the crime as public as possible. I rely on these descriptions of the Yellow Boudoir to trace Miss Ligram's past life."
"In what way?" demanded the inquirer.