“Perfectly,” replied the other with his
bootlace in his teeth.
“Under those conditions,” continued Turnbull,
his voice coming through the hole with a slight note
of trepidation very unusual with him, “I have
a suggestion to make, if that can be called a suggestion,
which has probably occurred to you as readily as to
me. Until the actual event comes off we are practically
in the position if not of comrades, at least of business
partners. Until the event comes off, therefore
I should suggest that quarrelling would be inconvenient
and rather inartistic; while the ordinary exchange
of politeness between man and man would be not only
elegant but uncommonly practical.”
“You are perfectly right,” answered MacIan,
with his melancholy voice, “in saying that all
this has occurred to me. All duellists should
behave like gentlemen to each other. But we,
by the queerness of our position, are something much
more than either duellists or gentlemen. We
are, in the oddest and most exact sense of the term,
brothers—in arms.”
“Mr. MacIan,” replied Turnbull, calmly,
“no more need be said.” And he closed
the trap once more.
They had reached Finchley Road before he opened it
again.
Then he said, “Mr. MacIan, may I offer you a
cigar. It will be a touch of realism.”
“Thank you,” answered Evan. “You
are very kind.” And he began to smoke
in the cab.
The duellists had from their own point of view escaped
or conquered the chief powers of the modern world.
They had satisfied the magistrate, they had tied
the tradesman neck and heels, and they had left the
police behind. As far as their own feelings
went they had melted into a monstrous sea; they were
but the fare and driver of one of the million hansoms
that fill London streets. But they had forgotten
something; they had forgotten journalism. They
had forgotten that there exists in the modern world,
perhaps for the first time in history, a class of
people whose interest is not that things should happen
well or happen badly, should happen successfully or
happen unsuccessfully, should happen to the advantage
of this party or the advantage of that part, but whose
interest simply is that things should happen.
It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture
of our modern existence, that it must be a picture
made up entirely of exceptions. We announce
on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding.
We do not announce on flaring posters that a man
has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter
fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating
that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man,
is still abroad upon the earth. That the man
has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational;
and it is also some thousand times more common.
But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus
