




THE NIGHT WIRE

By H. F. Arnold


“New York, September 30 CP FLASH

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

There’s something ungodly about these night wire jobs. You sit up here
on the top floor of a skyscraper and listen in to the whispers of a
civilization. New York, London, Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore--they’re
your next-door neighbors after the street lights go dim and the world
has gone to sleep. Along in the quiet hours between 2 and 4, the receiving operators doze
over their sounders and the news comes in. Fires and disasters and
suicides. Murders, crowds, catastrophes. Sometimes an earthquake with
a casualty list as long as your arm. The night wire man takes it down
almost 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 of
someone you knew in Singapore, Halifax or Paris, long ago. Maybe
they’ve been promoted, but more probably they’ve been murdered or
drowned. Perhaps they just decided to quit and took some bizarre way
out. Made it interesting enough to get in the news. But that doesn’t happen often. Most of the time you sit and doze and
tap, tap on your typewriter and wish you were home in bed. Sometimes, though, queer things happen. One did the other night and I
haven’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 fellow
named John Morgan, about forty years of age, I should say, and a
sober, 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 and
type the stories on different typewriters at the same time. He was one
of the three men I ever knew who could do it consistently, hour after
hour, and never make a mistake. Generally we used only one wire at night, but sometimes, when it was
late and the news was coming fast, the Chicago and Denver stations
would open a second wire and then Morgan would do his stuff. He was a
wizard, a mechanical automatic wizard which functioned marvelously but
was without imagination. On the night of the sixteenth he complained of feeling tired. It was
the 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 was
nodding over reports at my desk and not paying much attention to him
when 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 or
so I would walk over and take a pile of copy that had stacked up
neatly beside his typewriter as the messages were printed out in
triplicate. It must have been twenty minutes after he spoke that I noticed he had
opened up the other wire and was using both typewriters. I thought it
was a little unusual, as there was nothing very “hot” coming in. On my
next trip I picked up the copy from both machines and took it back to
my desk to sort out the duplicates. The first wire was running out the usual sort of stuff and I just
looked over it hurriedly. Then I turned to the second pile of copy. I
remember it particularly because the story was from a town I had never
heard of: “Xebico.” Here is the dispatch. I saved a duplicate of it
from our files:

    “Xebico Sept. 16 CP BULLETIN

    “The heaviest mist in the history of the city settled over the
    town at 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon. All traffic has stopped and
    the mist hangs like a pall over everything. Lights of ordinary
    intensity fail to pierce the fog, which is constantly growing
    heavier. “Scientists here are unable to agree as to the cause, and the
    local weather bureau states that the like has never occurred
    before in the history of the city. “At 7 p. m. last night municipal authorities--(more)”

That was all there was. Nothing out of the ordinary at a bureau
headquarters, but, as I say, I noticed the story because of the name
of the town. It must have been fifteen minutes later that I went over for another
batch of copy. Morgan was slumped down in his chair and had switched
his green electric light shade so that the gleam missed his eyes and
hit only the top of the two typewriters. Only the usual stuff was in the right hand pile, but the left hand
batch carried another story from “Xebico.” All press dispatches come
in “takes,” meaning that parts of many different stories are strung
along together, perhaps with but a few paragraphs of each coming
through at a time. This second story was marked “add fog.” Here is the
copy;

    “At 7 p. m. the fog had increased noticeably. All lights were now
    invisible and the town was shrouded in pitch darkness. “As a peculiarity of the phenomenon, the fog is accompanied by a
    sickly odor, comparable to nothing yet experienced here.”

Below that in customary press fashion was the hour, 3:27, and the
initials of the operator, JM. There was only one other story in the pile from the second wire. Here
it is:

    “2nd add Xebico Fog

    “Accounts as to the origin of the mist differ greatly. Among the
    most unusual is that of the sexton of the local church, who groped
    his way to headquarters in a hysterical condition and declared
    that the fog originated in the village churchyard. “‘It was first visible in the shape of a soft gray blanket
    clinging to the earth above the graves,’ he stated. ‘Then it began
    to rise, higher and higher. A subterranean breeze seemed to blow
    it in billows, which split up and then joined together again. “‘Fog phantoms, writhing in anguish, twisted the mist into queer
    forms and figures. And then--in the very thick midst of the
    mass--something moved. “‘I turned and ran from the accursed spot. Behind me I heard
    screams coming from the houses bordering on the graveyard.’

    “Although the sexton’s story is generally discredited, a party has
    left to investigate. Immediately after telling his story, the
    sexton collapsed and is now in a local hospital, unconscious.”

Queer story, wasn’t it? Not that we aren’t used to it, for a lot of
unusual stories come in over the wire. But for some reason or other,
perhaps because it was so quiet that night, the report of the fog made
a great impression on me. It was almost with dread that I went over to the waiting piles of
copy. Morgan did not move and the only sound in the room was the
tap-tap of the sounders. It was ominous, nerve-racking. There was another story from Xebico in the pile of copy. I seized on
it anxiously.