Sam led them to a modest entrance at the corner. “Most of the building is taken up by Le Petit Journal,” he explained. “They get the grand entrance on La Fayette and we use the tradesmen’s stairs out back. Watch your step—there’s hardly any light in the foyer.”
The newsroom was on the third floor, behind a door marked “Archives,” and was surprisingly quiet. She’d expected to see people rushing about and perhaps shouting at one another, but only four men sat at the central bank of desks, and the arrhythmic click-clack of their typewriters was the loudest noise in the room. The air was blue with smoke, with most desks anchored by an overflowing ashtray at one corner, and one of the men had an open bottle of Scotch whisky at his elbow.
“Look lively,” Sam said to the men at the desks. “I’ve brought a lady in for a visit.”
They smiled at her, every last man looking as if he’d just rolled out of bed and onto his desk chair, and one by one they came forward or reached across their desks to shake her hand.
“Gentlemen, this is Miss Helena Parr. Helena, these are my fellow deskmen. Fraser, Blochman—you’ve met them before—and here’s Small and Calmer. Where’s Paul?” he asked of no one in particular.
Blochman answered with a roll of his eyes. “He was howling at the moon earlier. Last I saw he was sleeping it off in a booth at Gillotte’s. It’s a quiet night, though. We’ll be all right.”
“Planning on joining us there later?” asked Fraser.
“Not tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow. Just came in to fetch that cable. You remember the one I was talking about?”
“It’s probably on Darragh’s desk. Nice meeting you, Miss Parr.”
Helena followed Sam to a fantastically messy desk at the far end of the room and stood by as he rifled through a towering stack of paper. Not far from the desk was a round table heaped with newspapers, all much fatter than the slim, eight-page European edition. She wandered over, curious, and saw they were day-and week-old copies of Paris and London papers.
“Keeping an eye on the competition?” she asked.
“Borrowing from them, more like it. Only our front page is written in-house. The rest is rewrite and filler. Mainly from the Paris papers, but we plug the gaps with whatever comes in from London and New York. Here—let me show you something.”
He pulled a cable form from a wire basket and handed it to her. She read it, her incomprehension growing with each puzzling word.
GENLPLUTARCO ELIAS CALLES OATHTOOK OFFICE PRESIDENT SMORNING ADNATL STADIUM MEXCITY STOP PRES CHEERED PAROMNI GLADSOME CROWDS COLORFUL CEREMONY ATTENDED AILINGGOMPERS ETAMERICAN REPSLABOR STOP ELN PRESCALLES SECURED CUMSUPPORT LATAMUNIONS FUT DTF UNRATIFIED YESTERYEAR BUCARELI TRTY STOP
“What on earth is this?”
“A cable from New York. They cost a bomb to send, so we’ve developed a sort of language to shorten them. ‘Cablese,’ we call it. Do you want me to translate?”
“Yes, please. It can’t be in English.”
“It is, after a fashion. Let’s see . . .
“‘General Plutarco Elias Calles took the oath of office and was sworn in as president this morning at the National Stadium in Mexico City. Thousands of onlookers cheered the president in a colorful ceremony that was also attended by an ailing Samuel Gompers and American labor representatives. The election of President Calles, which was secured with the support of Latin American trade unions, has put the future of the as-yet unratified year-old Bucareli Treaty in doubt.’
“That’s the gist of it. Could use a bit more color—some background on Calles, Gompers, the treaty. But it’s mainly there.”
“So you take cables like these and translate them, and then you turn them into a story?”
“There’s an art to it. This cable is pretty informative, but sometimes they’re only five or six words long. Try spinning that into five hundred words.”
“I see you what you mean. I—”
“Found it.” He pulled a page from the pile and pocketed it swiftly. “A cable from home. From my parents. Nothing serious, though.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“We’re done here. How about I see you home?”
They said good night to the deskmen and, after a few minutes’ wait in the cold, found a taxi on La Fayette. When Sam got in as well, she realized he meant to accompany her and also pay for the taxi, the third they’d taken that night.
“Sam, don’t. It’s too expensive. I can pay.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m flush tonight. Got paid yesterday.”
The taxi was an old one, its backseat terribly cramped, and rather than fight to maintain her distance she let her head fall against his shoulder, softly, easily, as if she had a right to be so near to him. He was her friend, just as Mathilde and Daisy and étienne were her friends, and it would be utterly foolish to think of him as anything else. As anything more. So why had her heart begun to flutter in her chest, and why were her palms faintly damp beneath her gloves?
“Seeing your office was terribly interesting,” she said after a while. “It was nothing like what I’d imagined.”
“That boring, huh?”