THE NIGHT WIRE

“New York, September 30 CP FLASH

“Ambassador Holliwell died here today. The end came suddenly as theambassador was alone in his study....”

There’s something ungodly about these night wire jobs. You sit up hereon the top floor of a skyscraper and listen in to the whispers of acivilization. New York, London, Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore—they’reyour next-door neighbors after the street lights go dim and the worldhas gone to sleep.

Along in the quiet hours between 2 and 4, the receiving operators dozeover their sounders and the news comes in. Fires and disasters andsuicides. Murders, crowds, catastrophes. Sometimes an earthquake witha casualty list as long as your arm. The night wire man takes it downalmost in his sleep, picking it off on his typewriter with one finger.

Once in a long time you prick up your ears and listen. You’ve heard ofsomeone you knew in Singapore, Halifax or Paris, long ago. Maybethey’ve been promoted, but more probably they’ve been murdered ordrowned. Perhaps they just decided to quit and took some bizarre wayout. Made it interesting enough to get in the news.

But that doesn’t happen often. Most of the time you sit and doze andtap, tap on your typewriter and wish you were home in bed.

Sometimes, though, queer things happen. One did the other night and Ihaven’t got over it yet. I wish I could.

You see, I handle the night manager’s desk in a western seaport town;what the name is, doesn’t matter.

There is, or rather was, only one night operator on my staff, a fellownamed John Morgan, about forty years of age, I should say, and asober, hard-working sort.

He was one of the best operators I ever knew, what is known as a“double” man. That means he could handle two instruments at once andtype the stories on different typewriters at the same time. He was oneof the three men I ever knew who could do it consistently, hour afterhour, and never make a mistake.

Generally we used only one wire at night, but sometimes, when it waslate and the news was coming fast, the Chicago and Denver stationswould open a second wire and then Morgan would do his stuff. He was awizard, a mechanical automatic wizard which functioned marvelously butwas without imagination.

On the night of the sixteenth he complained of feeling tired. It wasthe first and last time I had ever heard him say a word about himself,and I had known him for three years.

It was at just 3 o’clock and we were running only one wire. I wasnodding over reports at my desk and not paying much attention to himwhen he spoke.

“Jim,” he said, “does it feel close in here to you?”

“Why, no, John,” I answered, “but I’ll open a window if you like.”

“Never mind,” he said. “I reckon I’m just a little tired.”

That was all that was said and I went on working. Every ten minutes orso I would walk over and take a pile of copy that had stacked upneatly beside his typewriter as the messages were printed out intriplicate.

It must have been twenty minutes after he spoke that I noticed he hadopened up the other wire and was using both typewriters. I thought itwas a little unusual, as there was nothing very “hot” coming in. On mynext trip I picked up the copy from both machines and took it back tomy desk to sort out the duplicates.

The first wire was running out the usual sort of stuff and I justlooked over it hurriedly. Then I turned to the second pile of copy. Iremember it particularly because the story was from a town I had neverheard of: “Xebico.” Here is the dispatch. I saved a duplicate of itfrom our files:

“Xebico Sept. 16 CP BULLETIN

“The

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