Page:When It Was Dark.djvu/175

Rh that everything depends on us. Have you got any of that brandy left? My head throbs like an engine." A sub-editor who came in and was briefly dismissed told his colleagues that something was going on in the editor's room of an extraordinary nature. "The chief was actually drinking a peg, and his hand shook like a leaf."

Ommaney drank the spirits — he was an absolute teetotaler as a rule, though not pledged in any way to abstinence — and it revived him. "Now let us try and think," he said, lighting a cigarette and walking up and down the room.

Spence lit a cigarette also. As he did so he gave a sudden, sharp, unnatural chuckle. He was smoking when the Light of the World — the whole great world! — was flickering into darkness.

Ommaney saw him and interpreted the thought. He pulled him up at once with a few sharp words, for he knew that Spence was close upon hysteria.

"From a news point of view," he continued, "we hold all the cards. No one else knows what we know. I am certain that the German papers will publish nothing for a day or two. The Emperor will tell them nothing, and they can have no other source of information; so I gather from this telegram. Dr. Schmöulder will not say anything until he has instructions from Potsdam. That means I need not publish anything in to-morrow's paper. It will relieve me of a great responsibility. We shall be first in the field, but I shall still have a few hours to consult with others."

He pressed a bell on the table. "Tell Mr. Jones I wish to see him," he told the boy who answered the summons.

A young man came in, the editor of the "personal" column.