In an exclusive interview with Chief Painter this morning…

A tap on his shoulder interrupted him. He turned with his finger poised above the keys and saw Tommy, one of the copy boys, standing beside him. Tommy was round-faced and freckled. He grinned and said, “Boss wants to see you, Tim.”

“Tell him I’m busy,” Rourke growled. “Tell him-”

Still grinning, Tommy shook his head. “He saw you come in, and he wants you right now. He’s chewin’ hell out of his cigar,” the boy ended with a chuckle.

Rourke got up and went across to a closed door with the legend Managing Editor on the upper frosted-glass portion. He opened the door and went in, pulling it shut against the clatter of typewriters and the din of teletype machines.

Walter Bronson sat alone behind a big, bare oak desk, a massive man of 40, bald and heavy-featured. His thick-lidded eyes had a way of regarding his subordinates with brooding but benign severity, as though he accepted and understood their human weaknesses while he deplored them. His lips were pouched around a cigar, his jaws working slowly, ruminatively.

None of his evident perturbation showed in his bland voice when he said, “Come in, Timothy.”

Rourke leaned his shoulder blades against the frosted glass of the closed door, and said impatiently, “Let’s have it in a hurry. I’m doing a story.”

Bronson said, “I just had a call from Chief Painter.”

Rourke’s thin, wide mouth twisted in a grimace. “That’s my story.”

Bronson worked the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “You’re a competent reporter,” he said, “when you stick to reporting. But I’ve been meaning to speak to you about those stories you’ve been running the last few days.”

“Does the truth frighten you?” Rourke made a loose cigarette with brown paper and sack tobacco.