The Cub Reporter Page #4

"The Cub Reporter" by Rex Ellingwood Beach is a compelling novel that explores the challenges and adventures faced by a young aspiring journalist. The story follows the protagonist’s journey as he navigates the competitive world of newspaper reporting, uncovering stories that delve into both the mundane and the extraordinary aspects of society. Through his experiences, the reader gains insight into the ethics of journalism, the pursuit of truth, and the impact of media on public perception. With a blend of action, drama, and character development, Beach captures the excitement and trials of pursuing a career in journalism during a dynamic time in history.

• Short story

								

"She's in the third compartment."

Anderson lacked courage to ask the fellow to come along, but stumbled
out into a snow-filled areaway lighted by a swinging incandescent
which danced to the swirling eddies.

Compartment! He supposed bodies were kept upon slabs or tables, or
something like that. He had steeled himself to see rows of unspeakable
sights, played upon by dripping water, but he found nothing of the
sort.

The second door opened into a room which he discovered was colder than
the night outside, evidently the result of artificial refrigeration.
He was relieved to find the place utterly bare except for a sort of
car or truck which ran around the room on a track beneath a row of
square doors. These doors evidently opened into the compartments
alluded to by the keeper.

Which compartment had the fellow said? Paul abruptly discovered that
he was rattled, terribly rattled, and he turned back out of the place.
He paused shortly, however, and took hold of himself.

"Now, now!" he said, aloud. "You're a bum reporter, my boy." An
instant later he forced himself to jerk open the first door at his
hand.

For what seemed a full minute he stared into the cavern, as if
petrified, then he closed the door softly. Sweat had started from his
every pore. Alone once more in the great room, he stood shivering.
"God!" he muttered. This was newspaper training indeed.

He remembered now having read, several days before, about an Italian
laborer who had been crushed by a falling column. To one unaccustomed
to death in any form that object, head-on in the obscurity of the
compartment, had been a trying sight. He began to wonder if it were
really cold or stiflingly hot.

The boy ground his teeth and flung open the next door, slamming it
hurriedly again to blot out what it exposed. Why didn't they keep them
covered? Why didn't they show a card outside? Must he examine every
grisly corpse upon the premises?

He stepped to the third door and wrenched it open. He knew the girl at
once by her wealth of yellow hair and the beauty of her still, white
face. There was no horror here, no ghastly sight to weaken a man's
muscles and sicken his stomach; only a tired girl asleep. Anderson
felt a great pity as he wheeled the truck opposite the door and
reverently drew out the slab on which the body lay. He gazed upon her
intently for some time. She was not at all as he had pictured her, and
yet there could be no mistake. He took the printed description from
his pocket and reread it carefully, comparing it point by point. When
he had finished he found that it was a composite word photograph,
vaguely like and yet totally unlike the person it was intended to
portray, and so lacking in character that no one knowing the original
intimately would have been likely to recognize her from it.

So that was why no word had come in answer to all this newspaper
publicity. After all, this case might not be so difficult as it had
seemed; for the first time the dispirited youth felt a faint glow of
encouragement. He began to formulate a plan.

Hurriedly he fumbled for his note-book, and there, in that house
of death, with his paper propped against the wall, he wrote a
two-hundred-word description; a description so photographically exact
that to this day it is preserved in the Buffalo police archives as a
perfect model.

He replaced the body in its resting-place and went out. There was no
chill in him now, no stumbling nor weakness of any sort. He had found
a starting-point, had uncovered what all those trained newspaper men
had missed, and he felt that he had a chance to win.

Twenty minutes later Burns, who had just come in from supper, turned
back from his desk with annoyance and challenge in his little, narrow
eyes.

"Well?"

"I think I've got her, Mr. Burns."

"Nonsense!"

"Anyhow, I've got a description that her father or her mother or
her friends can recognize. The one you and the other papers printed
disguised her so that nobody could tell who she was--it might have
covered a hundred girls."

Rapidly, and without noting the editor's growing impatience, Paul read
the two descriptions, then ran on, breathlessly:

"All we have to do is print ten or twenty thousand of these and mail
them out with the morning edition--separate sheets, posters, you
understand?--so they can be nailed up in every post-office within two
hundred miles. Send some to the police of all the cities, and we'll
have a flash in twenty-four hours."

Burns made no comment for a moment. Instead, he looked the young man
over angrily from his eager face to his unblacked shoes. His silence,
his stare, were eloquent.

"Why? Why not?" Anderson demanded, querulously. "I tell you this
description isn't right. It--it's nothing like her, nothing at all."

"Say! I thought I'd seen the last of you," growled the corpulent man.
"Aren't you on to yourself yet?"

"Do you--mean that your talk this evening don't go?" Paul demanded,
quietly. "Do you mean to say you won't even give me the chance you
promised?"

"No! I don't mean that. What I said goes, all right, but I told you
to identify this girl. I didn't agree to do it. What d'you think this
paper is, anyhow? We want stories in this office. We don't care who or
what this girl is unless there's a story in her. We're not running a
job-print shop nor a mail-order business to identify strayed females.
Twenty thousand posters! Bah! And say--don't you know that no two men
can write similar descriptions of anybody or anything? What's the
difference whether her hair is burnished gold or 'raw gold' or her
eyes bluish gray instead of grayish blue? Rats! Beat it!"

"But I tell you--"

"What's her name? Where does she live? What killed her? That's what I
want to know. I'd look fine, wouldn't I, circularizing a dead story?
Wouldn't that be a laugh on me? No, Mr. Anderson, author, artist, and
playwright, I'm getting damned tired of being pestered by you, and you
needn't come back here until you bring the goods. Do I make myself
plain?"

It was anger which cut short the younger man's reply. On account of
petty economy, for fear of ridicule, this editor refused to relieve
some withered old woman, some bent and worried old man, who might be,
who probably were, waiting, waiting, waiting in some out-of-the-way
village. So Anderson reflected. Because there might not be a story in
it this girl would go to the Potter's Field and her people would never
know. And yet, by Heaven, they would know! Something told him there
was a story back of this girl's death, and he swore to get it. With
a mighty effort he swallowed his chagrin and, disregarding the insult
to himself, replied:

"Very well. I've got you this time."

"Humph!" Burns grunted, viciously.

"I don't know how I'll turn the trick, but I'll turn it." For the
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