Mightier than the Sword

If you had been standing on a certain cold night in January opposite the great building where The Day is jewelled in electric lights across the dark sky, you would have seen a little, stout man run down the steps of the entrance at the side, three at a time, land on the pavement as if he were preparing to leap the roadway, with the sheer impetus of the flight of steps behind him, and had suddenly thought better of it, glance hurriedly at the big, lighted clock whose hands, formed of the letters T-H-E D-A-Y, in red and green electric lights, showed that it was nearly half-past twelve, and suddenly start off in a terrible hurry towards Chancery Lane, as though pursued by some awful thing.

Considering the bulkiness of the little man, he ran remarkably well. He dodged a light newspaper van that was coming recklessly round Fetter Lane, for there was none of the crowded traffic of daylight to be negotiated, and then, he turned the corner of Chancery Lane—and there you would have seen the last of him. He would have vanished from your life, a stumpy little man, with an umbrella popped under one arm, a bundle of papers grasped in his hand, a hat jammed down on his head, and the ends of a striped muffler floating in the breeze of his own making.

The sight of a man running, even in these days when life itself goes with a rush, is sufficient to awaken comment in the mind of the onlooker. It suggests pursuit, the recklessness of other days; it impels, instinctively, the cry of "Stop, thief," for no man runs unless he is hunted by a powerful motive. Therefore it may be assumed that since I have sent a man bolting hard out of your sight up the lamp-lit avenue of Chancery Lane, you are wondering why the devil he's in such a hurry.

Well, he was hurrying because the last train to Shepherd's Bush goes at 12.35, and, as he had been away from home since ten o'clock that morning, he was rather anxious to get back. He could not afford a cab fare, though only a few hours ago he had been eating oysters, bisque soup, turbot, pheasant, asparagus out of season and pêche Melba at the Savoy Hotel with eighteenpence in his pocket—and the odd pence had gone to the waiter and the cloakroom man. So that by the time he had reached the top of Chancery Lane, dashed across the road and through the door of the station, where a porter would have slammed the grille in another second, and bought his ticket with an explosive, panting "Bush," he had just tenpence left.

The lift-man knew him, nodded affably and said: "Just in time, Mr Pride."

"A hard run," said Mr Pride; and then with a cheery smile, "never mind; good for the liver." There were only a few people in the lift—four men and a woman to be precise. He knew the men as casual acquaintances of the last tube train. There was Denning, a sporting sub-editor on The Lantern; another was a proof-reader on one of the afternoon papers, who finished work in the evening but never went home before the last tube; then there was Harlem, the librarian of The Day, an amazing man who spoke all the European languages, and some of the Asiatic ones after his fifth glass of beer; the fourth was a friend of Harlem, a moody young man who wore his hair long, smoked an evil-looking pipe, and seemed to be a little unsteady on his feet. As for the woman, Pride knew her well by sight. She had hair that was of an unreal yellow, and a latch-key dangled from her little finger as though it were a new kind of ring. She always got out at Tottenham Court Road.