But Joe was already out of the room and down two pair of stairs.  Before the minutes were up he was back again, Katie Murdock with him.  She was sliding her arm into the sleeve of her jacket as she entered.

“Forty-third and First Avenue, Miss Murdock,” said the night city editor, lifting his head so that the cat eyes had full play.  “Girl overboard from one of the ferry boats,—­lives at 117.—­Drowned, they say,—­ some fellow mixed up in it.  Take your snapshot along and get everything.  Find the mother if she’s got one and—­”

But the girl had gone.  She knew the value of time, —­especially at that hour, even if she had been but a week in her new department of “Special.”  Her chief knew it, too, or he wouldn’t have sent her at that hour.  There was time—­plenty of time if everything went right,—­thirty minutes, perhaps an hour,—­to spare, but they were not hers to waste.

“Wait for me, Joe,” she said, as she hurried past him.  “We’ll go up town together, soon as the presses start.”

Joe threw himself again on the pile of sacks and kept his ears open for orders.  It was a bad night for Katie to go out.  She was plucky and could hold her own,—­had done so a dozen times,—­once in a street car when some fellow tried to be familiar,—­ but he didn’t like her to go, all the same.  Nobody who looked into her face and then down into her blue eyes would ever make any mistake, but then some men mightn’t take the trouble to look.  He’d wait for her, no matter how late it might be.  When she came in she would be out of breath, and perhaps hungry,—­then he’d take her over to Cobb’s for a cup of coffee.

During the interim Joe’s legs had been kept busy.  Not only had he rushed downstairs and up again half a dozen times, springing to the night city editor’s curse, or pound, or shout, whichever had come handiest, but he had also been twice to the corner for frankfurters for reporters who hadn’t had a crumb to eat for hours.  He was unwrapping the second one when Katie burst in.

Her hat and coat were dripping wet and her hair hung in disorder about her pale face.  Her notes were nearly completed; she had worked them out on the elevated on her way downtown.  Joe absorbed her with a look, and slid to her side.  Something in her face told him of her errand; something of the suffering, and perhaps horror,—­and he wanted to get close to her.  The girl had reached the editor’s desk now, and was waiting until he had finished the paragraph his pen was inditing.

“Well,” he said, laying down his pen,—­“What have you got?” He was running his cat eyes over the girl’s notes as he spoke,—­taking in at a glance the “meat” of her report.  Then he added,—­“Get any snaps?”

“No, sir, I—­”

“Didn’t I tell you I must have ’em?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t do it.  The mother was half crazy and the two little children would have broken your heart.  She was the only one who could earn anything—­”