And, presently, sometimes receding and sometimes coming nearer above the hum and buzz that sounded like the wind and the waves roaring about the deep-sea cables, he heard the voice of Westgate coming from England. "Hallo ... hallo ... hallo.... That you, Quain.... Can't hear you.... Get another line ... buzz--zz--zz ... oooo. Ah! that's better." Westgate's voice became suddenly clear and vibrating as though he were speaking from the next room. But Humphrey could see the little box in the sub-editors' room, where all the men were working round Selsey, and the messenger-boys coming and going with their flimsy envelopes; he could see the strained, eager face of Westgate, as he waited, pencil in hand ... and he began.
He shouted the news of Paris for fifteen minutes, and at the end the perspiration wetted his forehead, and Westgate's good-night left him exhausted. Sometimes, when the wires were interfered with by a gale, the fifteen minutes were wasted in futile shouting and endeavour to be heard in London; sometimes Westgate would say bluntly: "Selsey says he doesn't want any of that story," when he began to read his carefully prepared notes. Those were desperate minutes, shouting to London against time.
"All well?" asked Dagneau, when he finished.
"I suppose so," Humphrey answered. "Westgate was in great form to-night--he was taking down at the rate of a hundred and twenty words a minute...." He rose and stretched himself. "Will you pay the late call at the newspaper offices? I'll be at Constans in case anything happens."
Out again into the bright glamour of the Boulevards to Constans at the corner of the Place de l'Opera, in the shadow of the opera-house, to meet the other correspondents, and wait on the events of Europe, and drink brandy and soda or the light lager-beer that was sold at Constans.
It was a place where most of the Paris correspondents gathered, and, sometimes, the "Special Correspondents" came also. They were lofty people, who had long since left the routine of Fleet Street; the princes of journalism, who passed through Paris on their way to St Petersburg, to Madrid--to any part of Europe or the world where there was unrest; war correspondents, and special commissioners; men who had letters of introduction from diplomat to diplomat, who talked with kings and chancellors, and interviewed sultans. They flitted through Paris whenever any big news happened, in twos and threes, only staying for a few hours at Constans to meet friends, and then on again by the midnight expresses....