Editor DeWitt held his hand over the phone mouthpiece and fixed Penny with a gloomy eye. “Time you got here,” he observed. “Anything new? Did you get the pictures?”
Penny produced the photograph of Mr. Rhett which the editor studied an instant, then tossed to his assistant, with a terse: “Make it a one column—rush!”
Knowing that with a deadline practically at hand Mr. DeWitt was in no mood for a lengthy tale, Penny told him only such facts as were pertinent to Mr. Rhett’s disappearance.
“So the family won’t talk?” DeWitt growled. “Well, play up that angle. We’ve already set up everything you gave us over the phone. Make this an add and get it right out.”
Penny nodded and slid into a chair behind the nearest typewriter. An “add” she knew, was an addition to a story already set up in type. It was easier to write than a “lead” which contained the main facts of all that had happened, but even so, she would be hard pressed to make the deadline.
For a moment she concentrated, but the noises of the room distracted her somewhat. Editor DeWitt was barking into the telephone again; a reporter on her left side was clicking a pencil against the desk; the short-wave radio blared a police call; and across the room someone bellowed: “Copy boy!”
Then Penny began to write, and the noises blanked out, until she was aware only of the moving ribbon of words on the copy paper. She had written perhaps four paragraphs when DeWitt ordered tersely: “Give me a take.”
Without looking up, Penny nodded, wrote a few more words, then jerked the copy from her machine. A boy snatched it from her hand and carried it to DeWitt, who read it rapidly. Pencilling a few minor corrections, he shot it to the copy desk.
Meanwhile, with another sheet of paper rolled in her machine, Penny was grinding out more of the story. Words flowed easily now, and she scarcely paused to think.
DeWitt called for more copy. Again she ripped it from the roller and gave it to the boy.