said Councillor Noakes as his glance fell upon the newspapers lying on Stephen’s desk. “Poor fellow, it must have been vertigo. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bought a ticket before he climbed up, would he? Still, it’s an ill wind; and I must say you’ve cashed in on it very nicely.” The gods never do things by halves; it is all or nothing with the gods. On the day after the appearance of the flying-saucer story, which was featured by five papers and corrected in the Stop Press by three, a retired commercial traveller called Micklethwaite, on holiday from Scotland, had walked into the Booking Office and paid Virginia ten shillings for a seat in the grandstand. With this evidence of his ambition to survive for at least another week in his pocket, he had climbed to the top of the Abbey tower, whence he had fallen, or cast himself, into the churchyard below. Entirely unmoved by this sad event, Faith had at once despatched excellent photographs of the tower to every London newspaper with a caption typed on the back of them describing the tragedy and mentioning, of course, the forthcoming Festival.
