And what was there left of much interest in London? It seemed to me very little. In Lincoln's Inn Fields and the Temple the lawyers were no doubt busily getting up their briefs for _Scepter Assurance Corporation v. Aiglon Aviation Company_, but I could depend on Mackwith to keep me posted on all that. In the columns of the _Circus_ I had awakened quite a lively, if somewhat rambling, correspondence, in which the name of Charles Valentine Smith had not definitely appeared, but for the appearance of which, if the Case demanded it, I could arrange at a moment's notice. All the life and interest seemed to have passed out of these things. That is the worst of this intangible operation of Publicity--it possesses you in spurts, with gaps of complete listlessness. It is super-heated, and at a change of atmosphere condenses into a few chill drops. Then, when you have brought it up to the proper state of rarefaction again, you find that the popular interest has shifted leagues away. Already my correspondence showed signs of becoming as much beside the mark as had that nine-days'-wonder that one morning had filled Lennox Street with a gaping crowd and had set mysterious rumors circulating with the morning milk-carts. Publicity, like lightning, never strikes in the same place twice. Nobody now cared a rap whether an aeroplane had crashed in Chelsea on a May morning months ago, nor how, nor why. Nobody was going to drag the bed of the Thames for the identification-number of a useless Webley and Scott pistol. A spent bullet, flying in at an open window, had _not_ killed an Estate Agent's child, and Inspector Webster had far too much work on his hands to dream of applying to the Home Secretary through the proper channels for an Exhumation Order. Cases left long enough unanswered answer themselves. The scene changes, the circumstances alter, the world moves on. I too felt like moving on. Glenfield had offered me a holiday, and I had my book to finish. As well finish it at Santon as anywhere else. Santon--its cornfields and skies, the cliffs for ever a-racket with the seabirds' clamor, the dappled fawn of its sands! I was there in my heart already. I wrote to Mollie that very night. PART VIII AT SANTON I "For goodness' sake, Joan, stop chattering just for a few minutes!" Philip broke out testily. "If you don't want to sit, say so and have done with it. This is enough to drive anybody mad!" I had been wondering how much longer his patience would hold out. When an artist is in difficulties with his canvas, motor-bicycle talk for an hour on end can be extremely wearing. Joan looked up with aggravating sweetness. "What, Philip?" she inquired. "I say if you don't want to sit, off you go on the confounded machine and I'll start something else."