Page 303 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"Hello, Blue Eyes."

"Are you wearing a tie, Mr. Murray?" she said.

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bsp; Ties had become unfashionable, and anyway a clerk-typist was not required to be smart. "No," he said.

"Put one on. Herb Gould wants to see you at ten."

"He does? Why?"

"There's a vacancy for a researcher on This Day. I showed him your clippings."

"Thank you--you're an angel!"

"Put on a tie." Mrs. Salzman hung up.

Jasper returned to his room and put on a clean white shirt and a sober dark tie. Then he put his jacket and topcoat back on and went to work.

At the newsstand in the lobby of the skyscraper, he bought a small box of chocolates for Mrs. Salzman.

He went to the offices of This Day at ten minutes to ten. Fifteen minutes later, a secretary took him to Gould's office.

"Good to meet you," Gould said. "Thanks for coming in."

"I'm glad to be here." Jasper guessed that Gould had no memory of their conversation in the elevator.

Gould was reading the assassination edition of The Real Thing. "In your resume it says you started this newspaper."

"Yes."

"How did that come about?"

"I was working on the official university student newspaper, St. Julian's News." Jasper's nervousness receded as he began to talk. "I applied for the post of editor, but it went to the sister of the previous editor."

"So you did it in a fit of pique."

Jasper grinned. "Partly, yes, though I felt sure I could do a better job than Valerie. So I borrowed twenty-five pounds and started a rival paper."

"And how did it work out?"

"After three issues we were selling more than St. Julian's News. And we made a profit, whereas St. Julian's News was subsidized." This was only slightly exaggerated. The Real Thing had just about broken even over a year.

"That's a real achievement."

"Thank you."

Gould held up the New York Post clipping of the interview with Walli. "How did you get this story?"

"What had happened to Walli wasn't a secret. It had already appeared in the German press. But in those days he was not a pop star. If I may say so . . ."

"Go on."

"I believe the art of journalism is not always finding out facts. Sometimes it's realizing that certain already-known facts, written up the right way, add up to a big story."

Gould nodded agreement. "All right. Why do you want to switch from print to television?"

"We know that a good photograph on the front page sells more copies than the best headline. Moving pictures are even better. No doubt there will always be a market for long in-depth newspaper articles, but for the foreseeable future most people are going to get their news from television."

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