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Antoine de Paris, popped into Lloyds Bank for money and on visiting her new house to inspect the decoration, indulged in some hocus-pocus with the hall lights, said to have been devised by Bodyguardsman David Storier. When the hall light gave two short winks and one long, that meant that Chauffeur Ladbrooke was to start up the royal Buick and with engine buzzing open the door for Mrs. Simpson to dash from house to car.
The Ipswich police were even more in a dither. They gave away the secret of how Mrs. Simpson was to arrive by practicing elaborately in front of Ipswich Courthouse. Inside last week, plagued with a bad cough and a runny nose, was Mr. Justice Hawke before whom Mrs. Simpson was to accuse Mr. Simpson of carrying on with "Buttercup." It was considered a good sign for Mrs. Simpson when Mr. Justice Hawke, after emitting a loud sneeze, snapped at a lawyer who was pleading another case: "Don't talk so much! I have already made up my mind." Sporting Mrs. Simpson asked no alimony when she divorced her U. S. husband some years ago and was expected to ask none in divorcing her British husband.
Meanwhile U. S. correspondents arriving in Ipswich were fascinated alike by the innocence of the local citizenry and the naughty talk of lawyers down from London. The latter's conversations were flavored with much the tone of a poem some of them read with gusto to one another from the current London New Statesman and Nation. Excerpts:
"Lord Barrenstock and Epicene, "What's it to me that you have been "In your pursuit of interdicted joys "Seducer of a hundred little boys . . . ? "Tis not for these unsocial acts, not these "I wet my pen! . . . "But oh! your tie is crooked and I see "Too plain you had an eclair for your tea. . . ."
This circulated freely through the mails and was sold on every newsstand in the United Kingdom, but elaborate press secrecy and squeamishness continued to be maintained about the King and Mrs. Simpson. No British newspaper had yet dared mention facts set forth in copies of Liberty which were confiscated when they reached England last week. For no clear reason this suppression did not operate against U. S. newspapers which arrived screaming the same facts under banner headlines and were sold last week on the bookstalls of famed W. H. Smith & Sons. Apt was a Chicago Tribune front page cartoon by John Tinney McCutcheon showing Edward VIII as Prince Charming kneeling to Mrs. Simpson as Cinderella and finding that her foot fits his jeweled slipper. In the background John Bull shushes a man representing British Journalism who tears his hair and cries: "Ye gods! The biggest news story in the world-and I've got to sh-h-h."