Chapter 8. There were only three other news hawks crowded around the barricades when Jack

Peters arrived, and they all looked like they wanted to be somewhere else. Peters knew just how they

felt. It had only been a day and a half since what the papers had dubbed the Midnight Massacre,

in spite of the fact that it happened around 9 o'clock in the

evening. Scores of innocent people dead or missing, countless more wounded, some seriously,

a neighborhood in ruins, and here he was. A newsman has to make hay while the sun shines,

and an accident down at the Harrison Proving Grounds was not going to win the jousting contest for

column inches today.

Jack unfolded his long legs out the door of his old jalopy,

picked up the camera that Editor Purley had insisted he lug along,

and loped off to join the thin crowd at the barricades.

He could see Bailey from the Sentinel, chewing on a toothpick and leaning heavily on the wooden saw horse that was intended to keep back the throng of reporters that had failed utterly to materialize

peter nodded polly he said pey bailey said not removing the toothpick or looking directly at Jack.

"'Bennie along?' Peter's asked, knowing full well what the answer was.

"'Long enough,' Bailey drolled.

"'How'd you draw a crummy story like this?' "'Peter shrugged.

"'I assume I'm being punished for something,' he said.

"'It's true often enough as makes no odds.

"'You?' "'Bailey grinned and said nothing,

which Peters assumed meant his fellow reporter had been sniffing around the hen house again.

Bailey had a reputation for taking a lap around the typing pool every so often, and that didn't

play well at the conservative sentinel.

...