CHAPTER

IN NO PHASE OF LIFE is the shortness of the public memory more evident than in the newspaper profession. Within six months the names of many of those who figured in the blaze of publicity that made the Saxon murder case a theme of vivid interest to the man in the street had faded almost out of memory.

      There were other and more immediate things to occupy the public mind. And yet for three long months the case had dragged over the coroner's court, the police-court, to the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey. Eston himself was always certain of a niche of infamy in the minds of a certain section of the public; but, then, Eston was hanged. Beyond that, the details of the case were obscured to most people.

      It may be that this shortness of public memory is a deliberate device on the part of Providence for the benefit of those innocent people who must be concerned in every great case. Neither Garfield nor his colleagues had any objection to publicity once the matter had reached the court.

      Jimmie Silverdale, however, came to hate the sight of his name in a descriptive report, though be fully appreciated the irony of a journalist figuring in a cause célèbre. He was even more concerned, however, by the prominence afforded to Hilary.

      To lawyers, to court officials, to news-editors, and to his fellow-reporters, he appeared at various times to stagemanage Hilary's part of the affairs as quietly as possible. Mostly, they would have gone far to oblige Jimmie, but the momentum of the facts was too much for them. Hilary was well in the picture, and Silverdale ground his teeth with impotence. It was one thing to start a big story, and quite another to stop it.

      On that sultry July evening when the jury had retired for the last time, Jimmie escorted Hilary out of court, and returned to his seat beneath the jurybox. Eston, pale, with tight-pressed lips, glanced in that direction as he was escorted back to the dock to hear his fate.

      His eyes met Jimmie's full, and, for the fraction of a second he smiled—a harassed, ghastly smile, but still a smile. Almost instantly his face had became again impassive, and his gaze sought the foreman who, a small piece of paper gripped tightly in his hand, stood standing facing the Clerk of Arraigns.

      "Gentlemen of the jury, do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?"

      Silverdale had witnessed many such scenes, but this somehow had him by the throat. He slipped away to join Hilary, the solemn, deep-throated warning of the usher preceding the sentence of death coming faintly to him: "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!"

      After that, it was a matter of small moment that Knuckleduster Jim had been sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude, and Velvet Fred to five. The thing was over.

      Some of the papers had short homilies in their leader columns next day which were not read, and many columns descriptive of the closing scenes of the trial, which were widely read. Thereafter the big story was over. It had burnt out.

      There remains only one more episode. At a little church in an unfashionable locality, some three months later, the news-editor of the Daily Wire, resplendent in morning-coat and silk hat, waited on the steps with quiet amusement, while the hatchet-faced young man with him fidgeted with his watch.

      "I hope nothing has happened," said Jimmie Silverdale impatiently.

      His friend grinned unfeelingly.

      "The lady's due in, perhaps, ten minutes, my lad. Keep calm, like a good newspaperman. You're behaving like a bridegroom out of the comic papers."

      "I feel like one," agreed Jimmie. "You're sure you have got that ring all right?" "Sure. . . . Here they come!"

      A motor slid to a standstill. Chief-Detective Inspector Garfield, huge and smiling, offered his hand to the bride, and the news-editor hustled Jimmie into the church, lest the etiquette of these affairs should be violated.

      So the ceremony proceeded. Not until they were at breakfast in the hotel, where a quiet reception had been arranged, did the newseditor speak his mind.

      "Jimmie Silverdale," he said, in a speech he had prepared for the toast of the bride and groom, "has been the best newspaperman I have known in a long experience. Let me warn you, Mrs. Silverdale, that one of two things must happen. If he continues to be a good newspaperman, he will be a bad husband, and if he becomes a good husband, he will be a bad newspaperman."

      Hilary clung to her husband's arm.

      "I'll take the risk," she said.

THE END