Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/145



HIS was the first important assignment they had given him since he had become a newspaper man.

The Star was the name of the paper, a bright afternoon paper that printed very few pictures and a great deal of news. The name of the reporter was Rufus Carrington, and most of the time they seemed to forget his existence and made him sit idle in the middle of the busy room, getting in people's way, just as they do with all cubs, letting them soak in the atmosphere of the place. This seemed all wrong to Rufus, who thought that a newspaper man, of all men in the busy city, ought to be the busiest.

He had supposed that reporters went out upon the street and prowled about blindly on the lookout for news, like policemen after arrests, and he had wondered what part of the