CHAPTER I.
THE SURPRISE.
Two of the myriad of London's nightworkers were walking down Fleet Street together soon after dawn on Sunday morning, 2nd September.
The sun had not yet risen. That main artery of London traffic, with its irregular rows of closed shops and newspaper offices, was quiet and pleasant in the calm, mystic light before the falling of the smoke-pall.
Only at early morning does the dear old City look its best; in that one quiet, sweet hour when the night's toil has ended and the day's has not yet begun. Only in that brief interval at the birth of day, when the rose tints of the sky glow slowly into gold, does the giant metropolis repose—at least, as far as its business streets are concerned—for at five o'clock the toiling millions begin to again pour in from all points of the compass, and the stress and storm of London at once recommences.
And in that hour of silent charm the two grey-bearded sub-editors, though engaged in offices of rival newspapers were making their way homeward to Dulwich to spend Sunday in a well-earned rest, and were chatting "shop," as Press men do.
"I suppose you had the same trouble to get that Yarmouth story through?" asked Fergusson, the news-editor of the "Dispatch," as they crossed Whitefriars Street. "We got about half a column, and then the wire shut down."
"Telegraph or telephone?" inquired Baines, who was four or five years younger than his friend.
"We were using both—to make sure."
"So were we. It was a rattling good story—the robbery was mysterious, to say the least—but we didn't get more than half of it. Something's wrong with the line, evidently," Baines said. "If it were not such a perfect autumn morning, I should be inclined to think there'd been a storm somewhere."