PAGE 4
The Cub Reporter
by
“Why–why–yes, sir!”
“Very well. That’s the spirit I like. You can take your time on the story, and you needn’t come back till you bring it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now pay attention, here it is. About two weeks ago a blond girl committed suicide in a Main Street boarding-house. The body’s down at the Morgue now. Find out who she is.” He turned back to his desk and began to work.
The hungry youth behind him experienced a sudden sinking at the stomach. All at once he became hopelessly empty and friendless, and he felt his knees urging him to sit down. He next became conscious that the shoulders of Mr. Burns were shaking a bit, as if he had encountered a piece of rare humor. After an instant, when Anderson made no move to go, the man at the desk wheeled about, exposing a bloated countenance purple with suppressed enjoyment.
“What’s the matter?” he giggled. “Don’t you want the job? I can’t tell you any more about the girl; that’s all we know. The rest is up to you. You’ll find out everything, won’t you? Please do, for your own sake and the sake of The Intelligencer. Yes, yes, I’m sure you will, because you’re a good newspaper man–you told me so yourself.” His appreciation of the jest threatened to strangle him.
“Mr. Burns,” began the other, “I–I’m up against it. I guess you don’t know it, but I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten for three days.”
At this the editor became positively apoplectic.
“Oh yes–yes, I do!” He nodded vigorously. “You show it in your face. That’s why I went out of my way to help you. He! He! He! Now you run along and get me the girl’s name and address while I finish this proof. Then come back and have supper with me at the Press Club.” Again he chortled and snickered, whereupon something sullen and fierce awoke in young Anderson. He knew of a way to get food and a bed and a place to work even if it would only last thirty days, for he judged Burns was the kind of man who would yell for the police in case of an assault. Paul would have welcomed the prospect of prison fare, but he reasoned that it would be an incomplete satisfaction merely to mash the pudgy face of Mr. Burns and hear him clamor. What he wanted at this moment was a job; Burns’s beating could hold over. This suicide case had baffled the pick of Buffalo’s trained reporters; it had foiled the best efforts of her police; nevertheless, this fat-paunched fellow had baited a starving man by offering him the assignment. It was impossible; it was a cruel joke, and yet–there might be a chance of success. Even while he was debating the point he heard himself say:
“Very well, Mr. Burns. If you want her name I’ll get it for you.”
He crammed his hat down over his ears and walked out, leaving the astonished editor gazing after him with open mouth.
Anderson’s first impulse had been merely to get out of Burns’s office, out of sight of that grinning satyr, and never to come back, but before he had reached the street he had decided that it was as well to starve striving as with folded hands. After all, the dead girl had a name.
Instead of leaving the building, he went to the files of the paper and, turning back, uncovered the original story, which he cut out with his pen-knife, folded up, and placed in his pocket. This done, he sought the lobby of a near-by hotel, found a seat near a radiator, and proceeded to read the clipping carefully.
It was a meager story, but it contained facts and was free from the confusion and distortions of the later accounts, which was precisely what he wished to guard against. Late one afternoon, so the story went, the girl had rented a room in a Main Street boarding-house, had eaten supper and retired. At eleven o’clock the next day, when she did not respond to a knock on her door, the room had been broken into and she had been found dead, with an empty morphine-bottle on the bureau. That was all. There were absolutely no clues to the girl’s identity, for the closest scrutiny failed to discover a mark on her clothing or any personal articles which could be traced. She had possessed no luggage, save a little hand-satchel or shopping-bag containing a few coins. One fact alone stood out in the whole affair. She had paid for her room with a two-dollar Canadian bill, but this faint clue had been followed with no result. No one knew the girl; she had walked out of nowhere and had disappeared into impenetrable mystery. Those were the facts in the case, and they were sufficiently limited to baffle the best efforts of Buffalo’s trained detective force.