By then, of course, Morrow’s admonitions were too late. Two weeks ago, the owner of the camera that had opened its shutter on what appeared to be a tender sunrise embrace between Irene Foster and Sam Mallory on the Waikiki beach, arrived by steamship in San Francisco, where he proceeded to the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle and offered to sell the newspaper the entire roll of film on an exclusive basis.

Now, the Chronicle, being the respectable kind of newspaper, none of your scurrilous muckraking yellow journalism sullying its pages, did not deem this particular news fit to print. The subjects, after all, were presently lost at sea, perhaps dead, as far as the frantic world knew. In fact, Sam and Irene were almost certainly dead, heroically so, dead in the sacred cause of human advancement, and you simply had to draw the line of decency somewhere, didn’t you? Even in the face of the kind of stop-the-presses scoop for which most newspapermen waited their whole lives. Sorry, sonny. No can do. Anyway, how do we even know for sure that’s Foster and Mallory on the beach together? Could be any man and woman who bear a passing resemblance.

Nothing daunted, the photographer then proceeded to the offices of the other newspapers in town, and those down the peninsula and across the bay. The San Jose Mercury-News. The Oakland Tribune. Still no takers. He bought a train ticket to Los Angeles and visited the Times, the Orange County Register, and so on down the circulation tables, and still he could not find a single buyer for his sensational photographs. Denver Post? Nope. Chicago Tribune? Don’t waste my time, you goddamn louse. Cleveland Plain Dealer? Go stick your photos where the sun don’t shine, and what kind of American are you, anyway.