“Johnson said he was going into the town,” said Roland apologetically, “so I asked him to get me an evening paper. I wanted to see the lunch scores.”
If he had been looking at his hostess then, an action which he was strenuously avoiding, he might have seen a curious spasm pass over her face. Mrs. Windlebird turned very pale and sat down suddenly in the chair which Roland had vacated at the beginning of their conversation. She lay back in it with her eyes closed. She looked tired and defeated.
Roland took the paper mechanically. He wanted it as a diversion to the conversation merely, for his interest in the doings of Surrey and Yorkshire had waned to the point of complete indifference in competition with Mrs. Windlebird's news.
Equally mechanically he unfolded it and glanced at front page; and, as he did do, a flaring explosion of headlines smote his eye.
Out of the explosion emerged the word “WILD-CATS”.
“Why!” he exclaimed. “There's columns about Wild-cats on the front page here!”
“Yes?” Mrs. Windlebird's voice sounded strangely dull and toneless. Her eyes were still closed.
Roland took in the headlines with starting eyes.
THE WILD-CAT REEF GOLD-MINE
ANOTHER KLONDIKE
FRENZIED SCENES ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE
BROKERS FIGHT FOR SHARES
RECORD BOOM
UNPRECEDENTED RISE IN PRICES
Shorn of all superfluous adjectives and general journalistic exuberance, what the paper had to announce to its readers was this: