Night Extra

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The Call-Bulletin’s first deadline was at nine o’clock in the morning and by eight fifty-five everyone in the long brightly lighted city room was working under the insistent pressure of time. Reporters and rewritemen paused every now and then to check the clock above the city desk, pacing themselves by the steady sweep of the illuminated second hand.

Sam Terrell didn’t look up from the typewriter when the phone rang; he finished the item for his column, then lifted the receiver.

The voice in his ear said, “I’ve got something for Terrell. Is he around?”

“This is Terrell.”

“Answer your own phone, eh? Keeping the common touch?”

“Who’s this?”

“It doesn’t matter, Sam. What matters is I got something for you on Caldwell, our lily-white reform candidate.” The tipster’s voice was husky, and his inflection was heavily ironic. Terrell’s interest picked up; with elections two weeks off, almost anything on Caldwell had a priority value.

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