“Reporter – legman – anything that comes up. I’m still learning.”

Mrs Bannister smiled at him. “What’s a legman?” She was not beyond flirting, obliquely, with a young man of this quality.

Grant smiled in answer. “The one that does the work …” He turned back to Esther, studying her face and then her figure with an appraisement that was somehow not offensive. “That’s a terrific story,” he said at last. “I’d like to write it. Would you mind?”

“No,” said Mrs Bannister, after consideration. “Not if you think it’s worth it.”

“I’ll say it’s worth it.”

There was a pause between them. She saw that he was already thinking hard – sorting phrases, choosing adjectives – and she kept silence momentarily, not wishing to interrupt. Presently Grant said: “How long did it take you?”

“More than a year. It was slow at the start – I had to learn myself, from the very beginning. Like going to school again.”

He said, looking at Esther’s pretty face: “You did a wonderful job … Does she know I’m sitting here?”

“Yes. I told her who you were, and she knows I’m talking to someone.” She took Esther’s hand again, and there was another pause while the two of them exchanged sentences. Then Mrs Bannister said: “She wants to know what you look like.”

Harry Grant grinned at her. “What do you say to that one?”

Mrs Bannister smiled back, enjoying the moment. “I guess I’ll keep that in our language.”

Grant got up, his expression serious again. “I must go. But I’d like to write it … Can I call you up if I get stuck?”

“Surely – do that. Or come round and see us.” She gave him the number of the apartment, and then nodded goodbye. “Nice to see you again.”

“More than that, for me.” Like an excited child’s, his face was beginning to express his wonder once more, and then he checked it, as if remembering some rule about not showing emotion … He said, curtly: “Be seeing you,” and walked determinedly away down the path, his body lithe, his arms swinging.

He seemed to take a lot of the sunlight with him.

Chapter Seven

Harry Grant waited in the Star-Telegram newsroom, his eyes on the open door leading to the news editor’s office. The news editor was still tied up, as he had been for the past hour, with some fragrant domestic crisis that involved missing copy, Al Stevens (the paper’s resident – though now absentee – drunk), a girl reporter who was trying to cover up for Al, and an editor who for no reason at all wanted a certain story in the paper – not next Tuesday, not tomorrow, but NOW. In newspaper life, it was just another of those rows, but that didn’t rob it of a single degree of uproar, on this current occasion.

Grant had waited a long time, but he did not mind the delay. He did not mind anything connected with the Star-Telegram – not the endless hanging about, not the time wasted on stories that came to nothing, not having his stuff contemptuously spiked, not irregular hours, not living for days and nights on beer and peanut butter sandwiches, not even love nest murders with the gore still gleaming round the edges.