“But you’re on thorns, old boy, to hear about the journalistic plum. Well, here goes. You once met my uncle, Sir Archibald Carlyon?”
Hammond nodded.
“He is crazy to start a daily,” said Carlyon. “It is no new craze with him; he has been itching to do it for years. And now that gold has been discovered on that land of his in Western Australia, and he is likely to be a multi-millionaire—the concessions he has already sold have given him a clear million,—now that he is rich beyond all his dreams, he won’t wait another day; he will be a newspaper proprietor. It’s a case of that kiddie in the bath, Tom, doncher-know, that’s grabbing for the soap—‘he won’t be happy till he gets it.’”
“He wants to find at once a good journalist, who is also a keen business man; one who will take hold of the whole thing. To the right man he will give a perfectly free hand, will interfere with nothing, but be content simply to finance the affair.”
An almost fierce light was burning in the eyes of the eager, listening Hammond. A thousand thoughts rioted through his brain, but he uttered no word; he would not interrupt his friend.
“I told Nunkums last night, when he was bubbling and boiling over with his project, that I had heard you say it was easier to drop a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds over the starting of a new paper than perhaps over any other venture in the world.
“Nunkums just smiled as I spoke, dropped a walnut into his port glass, and said quietly, ‘Then I’ll drop them.’
“He hooked that walnut out of his wine with the miniature silver boathook—he had the thing made for him for the purpose,—devoured the wine-saturated nut, then smiled back into my face, as he said: ‘Yes, Georgie, I am quite prepared to drop my hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand, if needs be, as I did my walnut. But I am equally hopeful—if I can secure the right man to edit and manage my paper,—that I shall eventually hook out an excellent dividend for my outlay. I want a man who not only knows how to do his own work well, as an editor, but one who has the true instinct in choosing his staff.’
“Of course, Tom, I trotted you out before him. He remembered you, of course, and jumped at the idea of getting you, if you were to be got. The upshot of it is, nothing would satisfy him but that I should come up by an early train this morning—early bird catches the worm, and all that kind of business, you know,—and now, in spite of the fact that my particular worm had wriggled and squirmed miles from his usual habitat, I’ve caught him. Now, tell me, are you open to treat with Sir Archibald?”
“Yes, and can begin business this very day!” Hammond laughed with the abandon of a boy, as he told, in a few sentences, the story of his dismissal.