"Well, my dear fellow, this does not tell us what we are to fill up the paper with now!... If the doings connected with Fantômas are frightful, rousing our feelings in the highest degree, I repeat that yesterday's crime bears no resemblance to them: we can put in a paragraph or so—that is all!"
"No way, is there, of compromising anyone with our Baroness de Vibray?"
"I don't think so! It's a perfectly common-place affair. An elderly woman patronises a young painter, whose mistress she may or may not be, and she ends up by getting herself assassinated when the young man imagines he is mentioned in her will."
"Ah! good! Well, I think you will have to fall back on the opening of the artesian well. That suit you?"
"Oh, quite all right!... If you like I can give you my copy in half an hour. I know who are going to speak at the inauguration ceremony, and I can add names this evening! You know I am a bit of a specialist as regards reports written beforehand!"
Fandor had got well on with his article: at the rate he was going he would have finished that morning, he thought with pleasure, and would have a free afternoon. Just then an office boy appeared:
"Monsieur Fandor, you are being asked for at the telephone."
Like most journalists, Fandor was accustomed to reply in nine cases out of ten, in similar cases, that he was not to be found. On this occasion, however, some interior prompting made him say:
"I will come."
A few minutes later Fandor went up to the editorial secretary: