The rest of the afternoon was spent in gathering outside details. I hunted up the local paper, which was getting out an extra, and got permission to read its earlier account. I went to the depot to see how the trains ran, and by accident ran into Wood. In spite of my inability to send a telegram the city editor had seen fit to take my advice and send him. He was intensely wrought up over how to illustrate it all, and I am satisfied that my description of what had occurred did not ease him much. I accompanied him back to the hospital to see if there was anything there he wished to illustrate, and then described to him the horror as I saw it. Together we visited the morgue of the hospital, where already fourteen naked bodies had been laid out in a row, bodies from which the flames had eaten great patches of skin, and I saw that there was nothing now by which they could be identified. Who were they? I asked myself. What had they been, done? The nothingness of man! They looked so commonplace, so unimportant, so like dead flies or beetles. Curiously enough, the burns which had killed them seemed in some cases pitifully small, little patches cut out of the skin as if by a pair of shears, revealing the raw muscles beneath. All those dead were stark naked, men who had been alive and curiously gaping only two or three hours before. For once Dick was hushed; he did not theorize or pretend; he was silent, pale. “It’s hell, I tell you,” was all he said.
On the way back on the train I wrote. In my eagerness to give a full account I impressed the services of Dick, who wrote for me such phases of the thing as he had seen. At the office I reported briefly to Mitchell, giving that solemn salamander a short account of what had occurred. He told me to write it at full length, as much as I pleased. It was about seven in the evening when we reached the office, and at eleven I was still writing and not nearly through. I asked Hartung to look out for some food for me about midnight, and then went on with my work. By that time the whole paper had become aware of the importance of the thing I was doing; I was surrounded and observed at times by gossips and representatives of out-of-town newspapers, who had come here to get transcripts of the tale. The telegraph editor came in from time to time to get additional pages of what I was writing in order to answer inquiries, and told me he thought it was fine. The night editor called to ask questions, and the reporters present sat about and eyed me curiously. I was a lion for once. The realization of my importance set me up. I wrote with vim, vanity, a fine frenzy.
By one o’clock I was through. Then after it was all over the other reporters and newspaper men gathered about me—Hazard, Bellairs, Benson, Hartung, David the railroad man, and several others.
“This is going to be a great beat for you,” said Hazard generously. “We’ve got the Post licked, all right. They didn’t hear of it until three o’clock this afternoon, but they sent five men out there and two artists. But the best they can have is a cold account. You saw it.”
“That’s right,” echoed Bellairs. “You’ve got ’em licked. That’ll tickle Mac, all right. He loves to beat the other Sunday papers.” It was Saturday night.
“Tobe’s tickled sick,” confided Hartung cautiously. “You’ve saved his bacon. He hates a big story because he’s always afraid he won’t cover it right and it always worries him, but he knows you’ve got ’em beat. McCullagh’ll give him credit for it, all right.”
“Oh, that big stiff!” I said scornfully, referring to Tobias.
“Something always saves that big stiff,” said Hazard bitterly. “He plays in luck, by George! He hasn’t any brains.”
I went in to report to my superior after a time, and told him very humbly that I thought I had written all I could down here but that there was considerable more up there which I was sure should be personally covered by me and that I ought to go back.
“Very well,” he replied gruffly. “But don’t overdo it.”