“As you wish,” the head photographer returned surlily, “but I doubt if they’ll make as good cuts as the regular glossy prints.”
After Riley had gone, Orris offered no comment. He experimented in the darkroom, and gave orders to the other photographers how the new prints were to be made. While he neither praised nor criticised Flash, his attitude made it evident that he considered the young man something of a pest.
However, the new prints made an attractive change in the _Ledger_, and Riley was pleased.
Three days later, after an uneventful afternoon, Flash and Joe Wells were lounging in the photography department, waiting for their trick to end. It was not quite four o’clock.
“Never saw things so dull since I’ve been on the _Ledger_,” Joe Wells yawned. “A few more days like this, and we’ll be laid off.”
Flash took his friend seriously. “I’ll be the first one to go,” he said, “because I’m the youngest man.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Wells replied. “We didn’t need an extra photographer when Riley hired you. He took you on because you showed a lot of promise. Your work has been all right, too.”
“Spectacular pictures don’t drop into a fellow’s lap every day. You’ll get your big chance one of these days, Flash.”
The door opening into the news room stood ajar. From where they were they could hear the teletype machines pounding out their news from all parts of the country. Suddenly everyone in the office was startled to hear a steady jingle of the signal bell, followed by Riley’s excited shout:
Flash and the other photographers ran into the adjoining room, crowding about the teletype machine. The first bulletin was brief, stating little more than the bare fact that the great passenger liner had sunk less than fifty miles from New York, following a violent explosion. Three hundred American passengers, nearly all of them holiday tourists, had been taken aboard the steamship _Belmonia_ which was making for New York. Ten persons were known to be dead, and thirty were missing.
“There were several Brandale passengers on the _Alexander_,” Riley recalled excitedly. “We ran a story about two weeks ago. Adams, check on that angle!”
As new bulletins kept coming in, every department was spurred to action. Long distance telephone calls were placed to correspondents in New York. But Riley felt that the story was too important to be handled in a routine way.