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!"

"Stuff that the public won't believe aren't facts."

"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―"

"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.