Mr. DeWitt studied Penny with concentrated interest. Hope flickered in his eyes. Turning abruptly to Mr. Parker he asked: “Why not, Chief? We could use her on the desk for rewrite. We’re mighty hard up, and that’s a fact.”
“What about the personnel problem?” Mr. Parker frowned. “How would the staff take it?”
“Some of the reporters might not like it,” Mr. DeWitt admitted, “but who’s running this paper anyhow?”
“I often wonder,” sighed Mr. Parker.
Detecting signs of a weakening, Penny appealed to Mr. DeWitt. “Wouldn’t I be a help to you if I were on the staff?” she urged.
“Why, sure,” he agreed cautiously.
“There, you see, Dad! Mr. DeWitt wants me!”
“Penny, it’s a personnel problem,” her father explained with growing impatience. “The other reporters might not consider you a welcome addition to the staff. You would expect favors.”
“I never would!”
“We need her,” said Mr. DeWitt significantly. “We really do.”
With two against him, Mr. Parker suddenly gave in.
“All right,” he agreed. “Penny, we’ll put you on as a cub reporter. That means you’ll start as a beginner with a beginner’s salary and do routine work until you’ve proved your merit. You’ll expect no special consideration. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly!” Grinning from ear to ear, Penny would have agreed to anything.
“Furthermore, if the work gets you down, I won’t have you coming to me asking for a change.”
“I’ll never darken your office door, Dad. Just one question. How much money does a beginner get?”
“Twenty-five dollars.”
Penny’s face was a blank.
“It will be more than you are worth the first few weeks,” Mr. Parker said.
“I’ll take it,” Penny declared hastily. “When do I start?”
“Right now,” decided her father. “DeWitt, introduce her to the staff, and put her to work.”
Feeling highly elated but a trifle self-conscious, Penny followed Editor DeWitt past the photography studio and the A.P. wire room to the main newsroom where reporters were tapping at their typewriters.
“Gang,” said Mr. DeWitt in an all inclusive introduction. “This is Penny Parker. She’ll be working here for a few weeks.”
Heads lifted and appraising eyes focused upon her. Nearly everyone nodded and smiled, but one girl who sat at the far end of a long typewriter table regarded her with an intent, almost hostile stare. And as luck would have it, Mr. DeWitt assigned Penny to the typewriter adjoining hers.
“This is Elda Hunt,” he introduced her. “Show Penny the ropes, will you?”
The girl, a blonde, with heavily-rouged cheeks, patted the rigid rolls of her hair into place. Staring at Mr. DeWitt, she answered not a word.
“I’ll have a lot to learn,” Penny said, trying to make friendly conversation.
Elda shrugged. “You’re the publisher’s daughter, aren’t you?” she inquired.
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t think you’ll have too hard a time,” the girl drawled.
Penny started to reply, but thought better of it. Seating herself beside Elda, she unhooded the typewriter, rolled a sheet of copy paper into it, and experimented with the keys.
The main newsroom was a confusion of sound. Although work was being handled with dispatch, there was an air of tension, for press time on the five-star edition was drawing close. Telephones were ringing, and Editor DeWitt, who sat at the head of the big rectangular desk, tersely assigned reporters to take the incoming calls. Not far from Penny’s ear, the police shortwave radio blared. Copy boys ran to and fro.
Benny Jewell, the assistant editor, tossed her a handful of typewritten sheets.
“Take these handouts and make ’em into shorts,” he instructed briefly.
“Handouts?” Penny asked in bewilderment. “Shorts?”
“Cut the stories to a paragraph or two each.”
“Oh,” said Penny, catching on. “You want me to rewrite them.”
At her elbow, Elda openly snickered.
Color stained Penny’s cheeks, but she quietly read the first sheet, which was an account of a meeting to be held the following week. Picking out the most important facts, she boiled the story down to two short paragraphs, and dropped the finished copy into the editor’s wire basket.
Only then did Elda speak. “You’re supposed to make two carbons of every story you write,” she said pityingly.
The girl might have told her sooner, Penny thought. However, she thanked her politely, and finding carbon paper, rewrote the story. In her nervousness she inserted one of the carbons upside down, ruining the impression. As she removed the sheets from the machine, she saw what she had done. Elda saw too, and smiled in a superior way.
“She dislikes me intensely,” Penny thought. “I wonder why? I’ve not done a thing to her.”
Aware that she had wasted paper and valuable time, Penny recopied the story a third time and turned it in to the editor. After that, she rewrote the additional stories with fairly good speed. By watching other reporters she learned that the carbon copies were speared on spindles which at intervals a copy boy collected and carried away.
A telephone rang, and this time, Mr. DeWitt, looking straight at Penny, said: “An obituary. Will you take it?”
She went to the phone and copied down the facts carefully, knowing that while death notices were routine, they were of vital interest to readers of the paper. Any mistake of fact could prove serious.
Returning to her typewriter, she wrote the item. But after she had turned it in, Mr. DeWitt called her to his desk. He was pleasant but firm.
“What day are services to be held?” he asked. “Who are the survivors? Where did the woman die? Furthermore, we never use the word ‘Funeral Home’. Instead, we say ‘mortuary’.”
Penny telephoned for more information, and finally after rewriting the notice twice more, succeeded in getting it past Mr. DeWitt. But as he tossed the story to a copy reader, she saw that he had pencilled several changes.
“There’s more to writing routine stories than I thought,” she reflected. “I’ll really have to dig in unless I want to disgrace Dad.”
Penny was given another obituary to write which proved nearly as difficult as the first. Hopelessly discouraged, she started for the rest room to get a drink and wash her hands.
As she entered the lounge, voices reached her ears, and instantly she realized that Elda Hunt was talking to another girl reporter about her.
“The publisher’s daughter!” she heard her say scathingly. “As if we aren’t having a hard enough time here, without having to coddle her along!”
“I didn’t think she seemed so bad,” the other replied. “She’ll catch on.”
“She’ll be promoted over all our heads if that’s what you mean!” Elda retorted bitterly. “I know for a fact, she’s starting at fifty a week, and no experience! If you ask me, it’s unfair! We should walk out of here, and see how those fine editors would like that!”
CHAPTER 2
EXPLOSION!
Penny’s first thought was to accost the two girls and correct the misstatements. But sober reflection convinced her she could make no graver mistake. Far better, she reasoned, to ignore the entire matter.
She quickly washed her hands, purposely making enough noise to draw attention to her presence. Elda and her friend became silent. A moment later, coming through the inner door of the powder room, they saw her, but offered no comment. Penny hastily returned to the newsroom.
For the remainder of the day she worked with deep concentration, only dimly aware of what went on about her. Seemingly there were endless numbers of obituaries to write. Telephones rang constantly. Work was never finished, for as soon as one edition was off the press, another was in the making.
Now and then Penny caught herself glancing toward an empty desk at the far corner of the room. Jerry Livingsto
n had sat there until a year ago when he had been granted a leave of absence to join the Army Air Force. Unquestionably the Star’s most talented reporter, he had been Penny’s best friend.
“I wish Jerry were here,” she thought wistfully. “But if he were, he’d tell me to buckle down and not let this job lick me! Dad warned me it would be hard, monotonous work.”
Penny worked with renewed energy. After awhile she began to feel that she was making definite progress. Mr. Jewell, the assistant editor, made fewer corrections as he read over her copy, and now and then she actually saw him nod approvingly. Once when she turned in a rewritten “hand-out”—a publicity story which had been sent to the paper in unusable form—he praised her for giving it a fresh touch.
“Good lead,” he commented. “You’re coming along all right.”
Elda heard the praise and her eyes snapped angrily. At her typewriter, she slammed the carriage. No one noticed except Penny. A moment later, Mr. DeWitt called Elda to his desk, saying severely:
“Watch the spelling of names, Elda. This is the third one we’ve checked you on today. Don’t you ever consult the city directory?”
“Of course I do!” Elda was indignant.
“Well, watch it,” Mr. DeWitt said again. “We must have accuracy.”
With a swish of skirts, Elda went back to her desk. Her face was as dark as a thunder cloud. Deliberately she dawdled over her next piece of copy. After she had turned it in, she returned to the editor’s desk to take it from the wire basket and make additional corrections.
“Just being extra careful of names,” she said arrogantly as the assistant editor shot her a quick, inquiring glance.
Thinking no more of the incident, Penny kept on with her own work. She took special care with names, even looking up in the city directory those of which she was almost certain. When she turned in a piece of copy, she was satisfied that not a name or fact was inaccurate.
Late in the afternoon, she noticed that Mr. DeWitt and Mr. Jewell appeared displeased about a story they had found in the Five Star edition of the paper. After reading it, they talked together, and then sorted through a roll of discarded copy, evidently searching for the original. Finally, Mr. DeWitt called:
“Miss Parker!”
Wondering what she had done wrong, Penny went quickly to his desk.
“You wrote this story?” he asked, jabbing a pencil at one of the printed obituaries.
“Why, yes,” Penny acknowledged. “Is anything wrong with it?”
“Only that you’ve buried the wrong man,” DeWitt said sarcastically. “Where did you get that name?”
Penny felt actually sick, and her skin prickled with heat. She stared at the story in print. It said that John Gorman had died that morning in Mercy Hospital.
“The man who died was John Borman,” DeWitt said grimly. “It happens that John Gorman is one of the city’s most prominent industrialists. We’ve made the correction, but it was too late to catch two-thirds of the papers.”
Penny stared again at the name, her mind working slowly.
“But Mr. DeWitt,” she protested. “I don’t think I wrote it that way. I knew the correct name was Borman. I’m sure that was how I turned it in.”
“Maybe you hit a wrong letter on the typewriter,” the editor said less severely. “That’s why one always should read over a story after it’s written.”
“But I did that too,” Penny said, and then bit her lip, because she realized she was arguing about the matter.
“We’ll look at the carbons,” decided Mr. DeWitt.
They had been taken from the spindles by copy boys, but the editor ordered the entire day’s work returned to his desk. Pawing through the sheets, he came to the one Penny had written. Swiftly he compared it with the original copy.
“You’re right!” he exclaimed in amazement. “The carbons show you wrote the name John Borman, not Gorman.”
“I knew I did!”
“But the copy that was turned into the basket said John Gorman. Didn’t you change it on the first sheet?”
“Indeed I didn’t, Mr. DeWitt.”
Scowling, the editor compared the two copies. Obviously on the original sheet, a neat erasure had been made, and a typewritten letter G had been substituted for B.
“There’s something funny about this,” Mr. DeWitt said. “Mighty funny!” His gaze roved about the typewriter table, focusing for an instant upon Elda who had been listening intently to the conversation. “Never mind,” he added to Penny. “We’ll look into this.”
Later, she saw him showing the copy sheets to the assistant editor. Seemingly, the two men were deeply puzzled as to how the error had been made. Penny had her own opinion.
“Elda did it,” she thought resentfully. “I’ll wager she removed the sheet from the wire basket when she pretended to be making a correction on her own story!”
Having no proof, Penny wisely kept her thoughts to herself. But she knew that in the future she must take double precautions to guard against other tricks to discredit her.
At the end of the day, the newsroom rapidly emptied. One by one, reporters covered their typewriters and left the building. A few of the girls remained, among them, Penny and Elda. Editor DeWitt was putting on his hat when the telephone rang.
Absently he reached for it and then straightened to alert attention. Grabbing a sheet of copy paper, he scrawled a few words. Eyes focused upon him, for instinctively everyone knew that something important had happened.
DeWitt hung up the receiver, his eyes staring into space for an instant. Then he seized the telephone again and called the composing room.
“Hold the paper!” he ordered tersely. “We’re making over the front page!”
The news was electrifying, for only a story of the greatest importance would bring an order to stop the thundering presses once they had started to roll.
Calling the photography room, DeWitt demanded:“Is Salt Sommers still there? Tell him to grab his camera and get over to the Conway Steel Plant in double-quick time! There’s been a big explosion! They think it’s sabotage!”
The editor’s harassed gaze then wandered over the little group of remaining reporters. Elda pushed toward the desk.
“You want me to go over there, Chief?” she demanded eagerly.
DeWitt did not appear to hear her. Seizing the telephone once more, he tried without success to get two of the men reporters who had left the office only a few minutes earlier.
Slamming down the receiver, his gloomy gaze focused upon Elda for an instant. But he passed her by.
“Miss Parker!”
Penny was beside him in a flash.
“Ride with Salt Sommers to the Conway Plant!” he ordered tersely. “Two men have been reported killed in the explosion! Get everything you can and hold on until relieved!”
Seizing hat and purse, Penny made a dash for the stairway. No need for DeWitt to tell her that this was a big story! Because all the other reporters except Elda were gone, she had been given the assignment! But could she make good?
“This is my chance!” she thought jubilantly. “DeWitt probably thinks I’ll fold up, but I’ll prove to him I can get the facts as well as one of his seasoned reporters.”
Penny was well acquainted with Salt Sommers, who next to Jerry Livingston was her best friend. Reaching the ground floor, she saw his battered car starting away from the curb.
“Salt!” she shouted. “Wait!”
The photographer halted and swung open the car door. She slid in beside him.
“What are you doing here, Penny?” he demanded, shifting gears.
“I’m your little assistant,” Penny broke the news gently. “I just started to work on the paper.”
“And DeWitt assigned you to this story?”
“He couldn’t help himself. Nearly everyone else had left the office.”
The car whirled around a corner and raced through a traffic light just as it turned amber. Suddenly from far away, there came a dul
l explosion which rocked the pavement. Salt and Penny stared at each other with alert comprehension.
“That was at the Conway Plant!” the photographer exclaimed, pushing his foot hard on the gas pedal. “Penny, we’ve got a real assignment ahead of us!”
CHAPTER 3
SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT
Darkness shrouded the streets as the press car careened toward the outskirts of the city where the Conway Steel Plant was situated. Rattling over the river bridge, Salt and Penny caught their first glimpse of the factory.
Flames were shooting high into the sky from one of the buildings, and employes poured in panic through the main gate. No policemen were yet in evidence, nor had the fire department arrived.
Pulling up at the curb, Salt seized his camera and stuffed a handful of flashbulbs into his pockets. Grabbing Penny’s elbow, he steered her toward the gate. To get through the barrier, they fought their way past the outsurging, panic-stricken tide of fleeing employes.
“Scared?” Salt asked as they paused to stare at the shooting flames.
“A little,” Penny admitted truthfully. “Will there be any more explosions?”
“That’s the chance we’re taking. DeWitt shouldn’t have sent you on this assignment!”
“He couldn’t know there would be other explosions,”Penny replied. “Besides, someone had to cover the story, and no one else was there. I can handle it.”
“I think you can too,” said Salt quietly. “But you’ll have to work alone. My job is to take pictures.”
“I’ll meet you at the car,” Penny threw over her shoulder as she left him.
Scarcely knowing how or where to begin, she ran toward the burning building. One of the smaller storage structures of the factory, it was not connected with the main office. The larger building remained intact. Workmen with an inadequate hose were making a frantic effort to keep the flames from spreading to the other structures.
Penny ran up to one of the men, plucking at his sleeve to command attention.
“What set off the explosion?” she shouted in his ear.
“Don’t know,” he replied above the roar of the flames.
“Anyone killed?”
“Two workmen. They’re over there.” The man waved his hand vaguely toward another building.
The Penny Parker Megapack: 15 Complete Novels Page 148
