The Mind Readers Read Online Free

suited her as well as it once had done.
    He sat down as she came in with the electric trolley, and looked almost domesticated waiting for his food, so that she ventured a flattery of the only kind he found amusing.
    â€˜I know why you like these damn sprats. Because you can bite them up whole!’ she said.
    As in the first, the fourth of the five stirrings heralding the main movement took place in one man’s mind, and again closely concerned his own dedicated labours.
    While the Waterside D.D.I. was regretting, Canon Avril meditating and Lord Ludor machinating, down in the centre of Fleet Street the office of Lord Feste’s journal
The Daily Paper
had begun to stir. It was the youngest in spirit of all the ‘mornings’ and it had scooped the best publicity of its career on the day when it had first announced its impudent title to a string of established rivals. They had attempted to restrain it by due process of law but without avail, and it had never lost the initial lead. Just now its imposing building was beginning to vibrate as the staff came streaming back to whip up the nightly fit of excitement in which it was ‘put to bed.’
    As yet, the two editorial mezzanine floors were comparatively quiet and W. Pegg Braithwaite, working snugly in his sacred corner, was almost as peacefully comfortable as was decent in that bedlam of an office. If it had not been for the twitter from the John Aubrey Column cubicle which separated him from Features, he might have thought he was in his cubby-hole at home overlooking the river at Chiswick.
    â€˜Peggie’ was one of the first journalists to popularise Science without insulting it and was by now a considerable figure in both fierce worlds. His other claim to rarity was that he was one of the very few men who had worked for Lord Feste continuously ever since they had both arrived in London in the same month many years before. The chief attribute they shared was an essential youthfulness, epitomised by that naïve and obstinate faith in the invincible might of the pen which is both the strength of Fleet Street and its Achilles’ heel.
    Compared with everybody else in the building Peggie was practically secure; he had a name and a following and a private reference library on his own subject kept safe from rivals in his own bald head. The chatter from next door came from two less happily placed people. The male voice, which belonged to the compiler of the column, was verging on the shrill as the nightly dilemma over the lead story became acute. The scout, a woman, was working hard. Her drawl, which Peggie had known when it was pure south London, was now very Mayfair and it jarred upon him most unreasonably; he himself became more Yorkshire the longer he stayed in the South.
    â€˜Journalists may be unimportant but Giles Sanderton was Business Editor. It really was quite a funeral,’ she was saying.
    â€˜Who cares? We are playing the whole thing down. We can use your little bit about Edith Lady Trier being in black down to her pearls, but that will be all. There’s to be a par in the news.’
    â€˜But why for Heaven’s sake? Sanderton worked for Lord Feste, he held a very trusted and influential position on a leading newspaper, his death was tragically sudden and there were more names at his funeral than we tagged on to the Howard first night yesterday. . . .’
    â€˜Dearest girl . . .’ the man was talking through his teeth and old Peggie teetered softly to himself as he did when the nerves of younger people showed through. ‘Just take my word for it.
I do not want to irritate the Owner.
I can’t and won’t put it clearer.’
    â€˜Really?’ She was on to it like a terrier. Peggie had to hand it to her. ‘And he used to be the Old Man’s white-headed boy! What was it? “The wrong associates”, as they say?’
    â€˜I don’t know and I don’t want to know.