Mr. Adam

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I suppose it is up to me to tell the story in its entirety, because I broke it in the first place, and I lived with it from then on, and I grew to know Mr. Adam. My name is Stephen Decatur Smith, and before I got involved in the most important story in the world I was a feature writer on the New York staff of AP. I specialized in ship launchings, and sports spectacles, and indignation sprees at Town Hall, and the like. I inhabit the ground floor of a brownstone house on West Tenth Street. I am still married, which is a surprise to me.

I got a break on the story strictly by accident, which is of course the way you get most big beats. Most guys who win the Pulitzer Prize are also lucky at shooting craps.

It started on the night I covered the Zionist rally in the Garden. When the last resolution had been unanimously adopted I went hurtling out of the Garden, bound for Toots Shor’s. I never got there, because of my trick knee, and the fat lady. When the fat lady loomed up at the Eighth Avenue entrance I tried some fast evasive action and my trick knee went out on me. If it had not been for that medium tank of a woman the world would not have known for weeks, or perhaps several months, what had happened to it.

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