A large cheerless room, its floor covered with a ragged old Turkey carpet, on its walls two or three book-shelves crammed with books of reference, two or three maps, an old clock gravely ticking, and a begrimed bust, with its hair dust-powdered, and with layers of dust on its highly developed cheek-bones. In the middle of the room a battered old desk covered with blue books, letters opened and unopened, piles of manuscript under paper-weights, baskets with cards of invitations for all sorts of soirées, entertainments, and performances, and snake-like india-rubber tubes for communication with distant printing-offices or reporters' rooms, a big leaden inkstand like a bath, and a sheaf of pens more or less dislocated. At this desk sat a tall man of about fifty, bald-headed, large-bearded, with sharp gray eyes, well-cut features, and good presence. This was Mr. Leigh, editor of the _Mercury_; a man who had been affiliated to the press from the time of his leaving college, who had been connected with nearly all the morning journals in one capacity or another, correspondent here, manager there, descriptive writer, leader-writer, critic, and scrub, and who, always rising, had been recommended by the Jupiter Tonans of the press, the editor of the _Statesman_, to fill the vacant editorial chair at the _Mercury_. A long-headed, far-seeing man, Grafton Leigh, bright as a diamond, and about as hard, keen as a sword in the hands of a fine fencer, and as difficult to turn aside, earnest, energetic, devoted to his work, and caring for nothing else in comparison--not even for his wife, then sound asleep in his little house in Brompton, or his boy working for his exhibition from Westminster. He looked up as George entered, and his features, tightly set, relaxed as he recognized the young man. "You, Ward!" said he. "We didn't look for you till to-morrow night. What rush of industry, what sudden desire to distinguish yourself, has brought you here to-night, my boy?" Before George could answer, a young man came forward from an inner room, and caught him by the hand. "What, Paul, old fellow, this is delicious! He must be brimming over with ideas, Chief, and has come down here to ventilate them." "Not I," said George. "My dear Chief," addressing Leigh, "both you and Cunningham give me credit for more virtue than I possess. I merely looked in as I passed from the railway to see how things were going on." "This _is_ a sell," said Mr. Cunningham. "I thought I had booked you. You see that confounded Shimmer has failed us again. He was to have done us a sensation leader on the murder--" "The murder! What murder?"