Page:The Poison Belt - Conan Doyle, 1913.djvu/238

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The Great Awakening
195

much amazed he will be at finding that an issue is missing. Yes, my young friend," he added, to the American reporter, with a sudden mood of amused geniality, "it may interest you to know that the world has swum safely through the poisonous current which swirls like the Gulf Stream through the ocean of ether. You will also kindly note for your own future convenience that to-day is not Friday, August the twenty-seventh, but Saturday, August the twenty-eighth, and that you sat senseless in your cab for twenty-eight hours upon the Rotherfield Hill."

And "right here," as my American colleague would say, I may bring this narrative to an end. It is, as you are probably aware, only a fuller and more detailed version of the account which appeared in the Monday edition of the Daily Gazette—an account which has been universally admitted to be the greatest journalistic scoop of all time, which sold no fewer than three-and-a-half million