“I’m amazed even Banghurst—” said my cousin Melville.
“It’s in the Daily Gunfire as well,” said the older of the two emergency journalists.
“What’s one more or less of these ha’penny fever rags?” cried my cousin with a ringing scorn. “Surely you’re not going to take your Folkestone news from mere London papers.”
“But how did the story come about?” began the older emergency journalist.
“That’s not my affair.”
The younger emergency journalist had an inspiration. He produced a note book from his breast pocket. “Perhaps, sir, you wouldn’t mind suggesting to us something we might say——”
My cousin Melville complied.
II
The rising young journalist who had first got wind of the business—who must not for a moment be confused with the two emergency journalists heretofore described—came to Banghurst next night in a state of strange exultation. “I’ve been through with it and I’ve seen her,” he panted. “I waited about outside and saw her taken into the carriage. I’ve talked to one of the maids—I got into the house under pretence of being a telephone man to see their telephone—I spotted the wire—and it’s a fact. A positive fact—she’s a mermaid with a tail—a proper mermaid’s tail. I’ve got here——”
He displayed sheets.
“Whaddyer talking about?” said Banghurst from his littered desk, eyeing the sheets with apprehensive animosity.
“The mermaid—there really is a mermaid. At Folkestone.”
Banghurst turned away from him and pawed at his pen tray. “Whad if there is!” he said after a pause.
“But it’s proved. That note you printed——”
“That note I printed was a mistake if there’s anything of that sort going, young man.” Banghurst remained an obstinate expansion of back.
“How?”
“We don’t deal in mermaids here.”
“But you’re not going to let it drop?”
“I am.”
“But there she is!”
“Let her be.” He turned on the rising young journalist, and his massive face was unusually massive and his voice fine and full and fruity. “Do you think we’re going to make our public believe anything simply because it’s true? They know perfectly well what they are going to believe and what they aren’t going to believe, and they aren’t going to believe anything about mermaids—you bet your hat. I don’t care if the whole damned beach was littered with mermaids—not the whole damned beach! We’ve got our reputation to keep up. See?… Look here!—you don’t learn journalism as I hoped you’d do. It was you what brought in all that stuff about a discovery in chemistry——”
“It’s true.”
“Ugh!”
“I had it from a Fellow of the Royal Society——”
“Stuff that the public won’t believe aren’t facts.”
“I don’t care if you had it from—anybody. Stuff that the public won’t believe aren’t facts. Being true only makes ’em worse. They buy our paper to swallow it and it’s got to go down easy. When I printed you that note and headline I thought you was up to a lark. I thought you was on to a mixed bathing scandal or something of that sort—with juice in it. The sort of thing that all understand. You know when you went down to Folkestone you were going to describe what Salisbury and all the rest of them wear upon the Leas. And start a discussion on the acclimatisation of the café. And all that. And then you get on to this (unprintable epithet) nonsense!”
“But Lord Salisbury—he doesn’t go to Folkestone.”
Banghurst shrugged his shoulders over a hopeless case. “What the deuce,” he said, addressing his inkpot in plaintive tones, “does that matter?”
The young man reflected. He addressed Banghurst’s back after a pause. His voice had flattened a little. “I might go over this and do it up as a lark perhaps. Make it a comic dialogue sketch with a man who really believed in it—or something like that. It’s a beastly lot of copy to get slumped, you know.”
“Nohow,” said Banghurst. “Not in any shape. No! Why! They’d think it clever. They’d think you was making game of them. They hate things they think are clever!”
The young man made as if to reply, but Banghurst’s back expressed quite clearly that the interview was at an end.
“Nohow,” repeated Banghurst just when it seemed he had finished altogether.
“I may take it to the Gunfire then?”
Banghurst suggested an alternative.
“Very well,” said the young man, heated, “the Gunfire it is.”
But in that he was reckoning without the editor of the Gunfire.
III
It must have been quite soon after that, that I myself heard the first mention of the mermaid, little recking that at last it would fall to me to write her history. I was on one of my rare visits to London, and Micklethwaite was giving me lunch at the Penwiper Club, certainly one of the best dozen literary clubs in London. I noted the rising young journalist at a table near the door, lunching alone. All about him tables were vacant, though the other parts of the room were crowded. He sat with his face towards the door, and he kept looking up whenever any one came in, as if he expected some one who never came. Once distinctly I saw him beckon to a man, but the man did not respond.
“Look here, Micklethwaite,” I said, “why is everybody avoiding that man over there? I noticed just now in the smoking-room that he seemed to be trying to get into conversation with some one and that a kind of taboo——”
Micklethwaite stared over his fork. “Ra-ther,” he said.
“But what’s he done?”
“He’s a fool,” said Micklethwaite with his mouth full, evidently annoyed. “Ugh,” he said as soon as he was free to do so.
I waited a little while.
“What’s he done?” I ventured.
Micklethwaite did not answer for a moment and crammed things into his mouth vindictively, bread and all sorts of things. Then leaning towards me in a confidential manner he made indignant noises which I could not clearly distinguish as words.
“Oh!” I said, when he had done.
“Yes,” said Micklethwaite. He swallowed and then poured himself wine—splashing the tablecloth.
“He had me for an hour very nearly the other day.”
“Yes?” I said.
“Silly fool,” said Micklethwaite.
I was afraid it was all over, but luckily he gave me an opening again after gulping down his wine.
“He leads you on to argue,” he said.
“That——?”
“That he can’t prove it.”
“Yes?”
“And then he shows you he can. Just showing off how damned ingenious he is.”
I was a little confused. “Prove what?” I asked.
“Haven’t I been telling you?” said Micklethwaite, growing very red. “About this confounded mermaid of his at Folkestone.”
“He says there is one?”
“Yes, he does,” said Micklethwaite, going purple and staring at me very hard. He seemed to ask mutely whether I of all people proposed to turn on him and back up this infamous scoundrel. I thought for a moment he would have apoplexy, but happily he remembered his duty as my host. So he turned very suddenly on a meditative waiter for not removing our plates.