‘According to this mornin’s papers they never ’ave no rain at all there.’
‘Where?’ he said, to show that he was awake.
‘Arabia, so it seems.’
He heard the door close and dropped a little further under the surface of things for the enjoyment of those four minutes. Arabia. Arabia. Another soporific. They had found Shangri-la in Arabia. They—
Arabia!
In one great whirl of blankets he came to the surface and reached for the papers. There were two, but it was the Clarion that came to his hand first because it was the Clarion whose headlines constituted Mrs Tinker’s daily dose of reading.
He did not have to search for it. It was there on the front page. It was the best front-page stuff that any newspaper had had since Crippen.
SHANGRI–LA REALLY EXISTS. SENSATIONAL DISCOVERY. HISTORIC FIND IN ARABIA.
He glanced over the hysterically excited paragraphs and discarded the paper impatiently for the more trustworthy Morning News. But the Morning News was almost as excited as the Clarion. KINSEY-HEWITT’S GREAT FIND, said the Morning News. ASTOUNDING NEWS FROM ARABIA.
‘We print, with great pride, Paul Kinsey-Hewitt’s own despatch,’ said the Morning News. ‘As our readers will see his discovery had been vouched for by three R.A.F. planes sent to locate the place after Mr Kinsey-Hewitt’s arrival at Makallah.’ The Morning News had had a contract with Kinsey-Hewitt for a series of articles on his present journey, when that journey should be completed, and was now delirious with pleasure at its unexpected luck.