The Formula for Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

London’s newspaper world.
    In New York, the major papers have similarly gathered along Park Row, which is nicknamed “Newspaper Row.” Mr. Pulitzer and other publishers claim they put their papers there to be close to City Hall, but it also proves convenient for their reporters to spy on what the other papers are drumming up. As with thieves, there is no honor among reporters when it comes to gathering news.
    Even before I enter, I know that behind the good-natured bonhomie newspeople maintain publicly toward each other, the true atmosphere of the place will be cutthroat and secretive—whoever has a door, locks it when they leave, those only with a desk lock that, too.
    The International News Building houses correspondents from just about everywhere that can be reached by the world’s undersea cables and overland telegraph networks. It even has its own cable office, humming with messages sent off across the Channel to Paris, Berlin, and Rome, to New York on the other side of the Atlantic, and as far away as Bombay, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.
    It is truly a miracle of modern science that a reporter can send a story that will travel several thousand miles under the sea by cable and then race more thousands of miles on telegraph lines strung on poles across the continent to a newspaper in San Francisco.
    Sadly my presence at this building is not to send exciting reports of wars and the rise and fall of empires, but to dispose of any confidential information on the news stories Hailey might have left behind.
    The World ’s regular correspondent will be back in a few days to keep the news moving. In the meantime, Mr. Pulitzer has arranged for a correspondent from another of his newspapers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , to also cover for The World .
    I hesitate, hating to go in and rummage through Hailey’s office. I feel like a child who’s been dropped off at school and doesn’t want to enter. A little rain has begun to fall, more of a mist than drops. I wish it would pour so no one would know I’ve been crying.
    First I had to see Hailey’s body and say “good-bye” to her, then I read her suicide note, and now I have to leaf through her work. Sometimes I hate life.
    “Let’s get this over with,” I mumble to myself as I reluctantly enter the building.
    The newsroom before me is a familiar one, not unlike the large bay where reporters hug desks at The World —there is also the same cloud of pipe and cigar smoke hovering and the sharp reek of tobacco smoke, along with spittoons that need a good cleaning. Like most males of the species, reporters—almost all of whom are men—believe they have a God-given right to foul the air and spit disgusting juices at brass spittoons, missing often.
    A few cubicles along the wall offer some privacy and for the biggest newspapers, a category in which The World falls, a stairway to the right leads up to a balcony lined with doors to small offices. I already know that Hailey’s office will be on the second floor.
    Another common feature of the newsroom is a railing keeping people out and a person I call the “gatekeeper” posted next to the swinging gate to bar entry to all but the privileged.
    To get my first reporting job, I had to make a mad dash past the newsroom’s guardian and through The World ’s gate rushing into the office where I confronted Mr. Pulitzer and Mr. Cockerill with my plan to prove I could be a reporter by spending ten days in the madhouse for women on Blackwell’s Island.
    I will never forget that day in New York.
    I was penniless and desperate for work. For four months, since arriving from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I went to every newspaper on Park Row and was rejected by them all. And to make matters worse, the night before seeing Mr. Pulitzer, my purse was stolen in Central Park while walking home, leaving me without a cent. That morning, I not only borrowed a coat from my landlady, but cab fare.
    Determined to get an audience with Mr. Pulitzer, who