"No, I suppose not," Carley said, considering it. "Two sides of the same penny, when you come to think of it. Oh, well. That needn't worry you. The total circulation of the Watchman is about twenty thousand. If that."
"Perhaps. But practically every one of those twenty thousand has a second cousin in the permanent Civil Service in this country."
"So what? Has anyone ever known the permanent Civil Service to move a finger in any cause whatever outside their normal routine?"
"No, but they pass the buck. And sooner or later the buck drops into-into a-a—"
"A fertile spot," Carley offered, mixing the metaphor deliberately.
"Yes. Sooner or later some busybody or sentimentalist or egotist, with not enough to do, thinks that something should be done about this and begins to pull strings. And a string pulled in the Civil Service has the same effect as a string pulled in a peep-show. A whole series of figures is yanked into action, willy-nilly. Gerald obliges Tony, and Reggie obliges Gerald, and so on, to incalculable ends."
Carley was silent a moment. "It's a pity," he said. "Just when the Ack-Emma was losing way. Another two days and they would have dropped it for good. In fact they're two days over their normal schedule, as it is. I have never known them carry a subject longer than three issues. The response must have been terrific to warrant that amount of space."
"Yes," Robert agreed, gloomily.
"Of course, it was a gift for them. The beating of kidnapped girls is growing very rare. As a change of fare it was beyond price. When you have only three or four dishes, like the Ack-Emma, it's difficult to keep the customers' palates properly tickled. A tit-bit like the Franchise affair must have put up their circulation by thousands in the Larborough district alone."
"Their circulation will slack off. It's just a tide. But what I have to deal with is what's left on the beach."