I knew what he meant. We had never allowed the Evening Special—highly successful as it was—to go on in a jog-trot fashion. We had a tremendous reputation for great "stunts," genuine, exclusive pieces of news, and now for weeks nothing particular had come our way.
"That's all very well, Williams, but we cannot make bricks without straw, and if everything is as stagnant as a duck pond, that's not our fault."
Miss Dewsbury broke in. She was a little woman of thirty with a large head, fair hair drawn tightly from a rather prominent brow, and wore tortoise-shell spectacles. She looked as if her clothes had been flung at her and had stuck, but for all that Julia Dewsbury was the best private secretary in London, true as steel, with an inordinate capacity for work and an immense love for the paper. I think she liked me a little too, and she was well worth the four hundred a year I paid her.
"I," said Miss Dewsbury, "live at Richmond."
Both Williams and I cocked our ears. Julia never wasted words, but she liked to tell her story her own way, and it was best to let her do so.
"Ah!" said Williams appreciatively.
"And I believe," she went on, "that one of the biggest newspaper stories, ever, is going to come from Richmond. It is something that will go round the world, if I am not very much mistaken, and we've got to have it first, Sir Thomas."
Williams gave a low whistle, and I strained at the leash, so to speak.
"I refer," Miss Dewsbury went on, "to the great wireless erections on Richmond Hill."
For a moment I felt disappointed. I didn't see how interest could be revived in that matter and I said so.