“Can I ask one favor?” I said. “I can’t bear to walk back across the newsroom, where everyone can see me. It would hurt too much. I need to go upstairs and see Mr. Sellinger now. Can you take me up the back stairs?”

“Sure, kid,” said Weiss. “You want me to come along?” I said I would rather talk to Sellinger alone. Weiss buzzed the publisher and told him I was coming up, and then escorted me to the stairwell outside his office door.

I didn’t see Sellinger at first, the office was so big and the view was obscured by a huge vase of cut flowers. Where Weiss’s office was full of journalistic trophies, Sellinger’s was filled with the trophies that money can buy. The walls were hung with large abstract expressionist paintings—a big bold composition of slashing colors by Michael Heizer and a luminous blue canvas by Richard Diebenkorn. It was a grand office, suitable for the gentle man who had tried so hard to keep our ship afloat.

His secretary had left the door open, but I asked him to close it. Sellinger looked haggard. The sparkle in his blue eyes was gone; the trim, elegant body looked as if it had been crumpled into a ball and then straightened out again.

“I’ve been fired,” I said.

“I know,” he answered. “Ed just told me. He said he had to do it, to protect the newspaper.”

“He’s probably right. I didn’t try to talk him out of it. But there are some things he doesn’t know—no one knows—that I have to tell you.”

“I can guess at some of them. But go ahead. You tell me the story, and I’ll listen.”

“Before he died, Arthur Bowman was trying to help you find enough money to keep the Mirror afloat, wasn’t he?”

Sellinger gave a thin smile. “Yes. He used all his contacts to try to help find us some additional capital.”

“Arthur didn’t have much luck at first,” I continued. “He tried Arabs, and Japanese and Koreans and Brits, but nobody wanted to buy a piece of a failing old newspaper. But one day he called and said that if you were really desperate, he knew a French company that could help.”

“That’s almost right,” Sellinger said. “Actually, I was the one who called Arthur. I said I had exhausted all my options. If we couldn’t find five hundred million dollars in two weeks, a syndicate of our creditors was going to be formed, and they were threatening to force us into bankruptcy. We were close to the end. Arthur said he knew one group in Europe that might be able to help, and I asked him, please, to do what he could.”