I was sitting around, waiting for the boy to bring up the first batch of papers from the pressroom. I had my feet up on the desk, my hat pulled down over my eyes, feeling pretty sick.

I couldn't get the picture of the fellow hitting the sidewalk out of my mind. Twenty storeys is a long way to jump. When he'd hit he'd just sort of spattered and it was very messy.

The fool had cavorted and pranced around up on that ledge since early morning, four long hours, before he took the dive.

Herb Harding and Al Jarvey and a couple of other Globe photographers had gone out with me, and I listened to them figure out the way they'd co-operate on the shots. If the bird jumped, they knew they'd each have just time enough to expose one plate. So they got their schedules worked out beforehand.

Al would take the first shot with the telescopic lens as he made the jump. Joe would catch him halfway down. Harry would snap him just before he hit, and Herb would get the moment of impact on the sidewalk.

It gave me the creeps, listening to them.

But anyhow, it worked and the Globe had a swell sequence panel of the jump to go with my story.

We knew the Standard, even if it got that sidewalk shot, wouldn't use it, for the Standard claimed to be a family newspaper and made a lot of being a sheet fit for anyone to read.

But the Globe would print anything – and did. We gave it to 'em red-hot and without any fancy dressing.

'The guy was nuts,' said Herb, who had come over and sat down beside me.

'The whole damn world is nuts,' I told him. 'This is the sixth bird that's hopped off a high building in the last month.

I wish they'd put me down at the obit desk, or over on the markets, or something. I'm all fed up on gore.'