At Pastmaster House, Lady Metroland and Lord Monomark were talking about him. Lord Monomark was roaring with boyish laughter.
“That’s a great lad,” he said. “Came in a false beard, did he? That’s peppy. What’d you say his name was? I’ll raise him tomorrow first thing.”
And he turned to give Simon’s name to an attendant secretary.
And when Lady Metroland began to expostulate, he shut her up rather discourteously.
“Shucks, Margot,” he said. “You know better than to get on a high horse with me.”
VII
Then Adam became Mr. Chatterbox. He and Nina were lunching at Espinosa’s and quarrelling half-heartedly when a businesslike, Eton-cropped woman came across to their table, whom Adam recognized as the social editress of the Daily Excess.
“See here,” she said, “weren’t you over at the office with Balcairn the day he did himself in?”
“Yes.”
“Well, a pretty mess he’s let us in for. Sixty-two writs for libel up to date and more coming in. And that’s not the worst. Left me to do his job and mine. I was wondering if you could tell me the names of any of these people and anything about them.”
Adam pointed out a few well-worn faces.
“Yes, they ain’t no good. They’re on the black list. You see, Monomark was in an awful way about Balcairn’s story of Lady Metroland’s party, and he’s sent down a chit that none of the people who are bringing actions against the paper can be mentioned again. Well, I ask you, what’s one to do? It’s just bricks without straw. Why, we can’t even mention the Prime Minister or the Archbishop of Canterbury. I suppose you don’t know of anyone who’d care to take on the job? They’d have to be a pretty good mutt, if they would.”
“What do they pay?”
“Ten pounds a week and expenses. Know anyone?”
“I’d do it myself for that.”
“You?” The social editress looked at him sceptically. “Would you be any good?”
“I’ll try for a week or two.”
“That’s about as long as anyone sticks it. All right, come back to the office with me when you’ve finished lunch. You can’t cause more trouble than Balcairn, anyhow, and he looked the goods at first.”
“Now we can get married,” said Nina.
Meanwhile the libel actions against the authors, printers and publishers of Simon Balcairn’s last story practically paralysed the judicial system of the country. The old brigade, led by Mrs. Blackwater, threw themselves with relish into an orgy of litigation such as they had not seen since the war (one of the younger counsel causing Lady Throbbing particular delight. … “I do think, when you get to my age, dear, there is something sympathetique about a wig, don’t you? …”). The younger generation for the most part allowed their cases to be settled out of court and later gave a very delightful party on the proceeds in a captive dirigible. Miss Runcible, less well advised, filled two albums with Press cuttings portraying her various appearances at the Law Courts, sometimes as plaintiff, sometimes as witness, sometimes (in a hat borrowed from Miss Mouse) as part of the queue of “fashionably dressed women waiting for admission,” once as an intruder being removed by an usher from the Press gallery, and finally as prisoner being sentenced to a fine of ten pounds or seven days’ imprisonment for contempt of court.
The proceedings were considerably complicated by the behaviour of Mrs. Ape, who gave an interview in which she fully confirmed Simon Balcairn’s story. She also caused her Press agent to wire a further account to all parts of the world. She then left the country with her angels, having received a sudden call to ginger up the religious life of Oberammergau.
At intervals letters arrived from Buenos Aires in which Chastity and Divine Discontent spoke rather critically of Latin American entertainment.
“They didn’t know when they was well off,” said Mrs. Ape.
“It don’t sound much different from us,” said Creative Endeavour wistfully.
“They won’t be dead five minutes before they see the difference,” said Mrs. Ape.
Edward Throbbing and two secretaries returned to Hertford Street somewhat inopportunely for Miles and his dirt-track racer, who were obliged to move into Shepheard’s. Miles said that the thing he resented about his brother’s return was not so much the inconvenience as the expense. For some weeks Throbbing suffered from the successive discoveries by his secretaries of curious and compromising things in all parts of the house; his butler, too, seemed changed. He hiccuped heavily while serving dinner to two Secretaries of State, complained of spiders in his bath and the sound of musical instruments, and finally had “the horrors,” ran mildly amok in the pantry with the kitchen poker, and had to be taken away in a van. Long after these immediate causes of distress had been removed, the life of Throbbing’s secretaries was periodically disturbed by ambiguous telephone calls and the visits of menacing young men who wanted new suits or tickets to America, or a fiver to go on with.
But all these events, though of wide general interest, are of necessity a closed book to the readers of Mr. Chatterbox’s page.
Lord Monomark’s black list had made a devastating change in the personnel of the Daily Excess gossip. In a single day Mr. Chatterbox’s readers found themselves plunged into a murky underworld of nonentities. They were shown photographs of the misshapen daughters of backwoods peers carrying buckets of meal to their fathers’ chickens; they learned of the engagement of the younger sister of the Bishop of Chertsey and
