A Man in Uniform by Kate Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

on ferreting him out, but it was this Azimut Martin writing in
La Presse
who had a more dispassionate view. The man seemed to know a lot about the case—or knew someone in the military who did. He could tell Dubon if the captain’s case was as hopeless as it looked from the outside and whether anyone had ever successfully appealed a court martial.
    “If there is no one here who goes by that name, then who is he?” Dubon demanded of the clerk. “Someone here must know who writes the articles that are published in your paper.”
    “Really, Monsieur.” The clerk was now taking umbrage. “I’m sure the editor knows. I mean, Azimut, what kind of name is that?” He snickered a little, for the astronomical term
azimuth
, meaning a path or direction, hardly seemed a likely first name. It dawned on Dubon that he had been naive; these newspaper fellows used pseudonyms, of course.
    “Well,” he said loudly, his embarrassment making him belligerent, “if your writers haven’t the courage to use real names, why should your readers believe what you print?”
    A lady entering from the street glared as she passed him on her way to a small elevator in the opposite corner of the lobby. “Journalists,” she sniffed.
    The clerk, who clearly did not want a scene, was now looking worried, but Dubon was not to be put off. “One way or another, I want to see the fellow, whoever he is,” he said. “I insist I will see your Azimut Martin.”
    “And so you shall, Monsieur. Or at least, you shall see me, and I will take responsibility for whatever it is he has written that has so offended you.”
    Dubon turned to see a gentleman in a well-tailored gray suit who had entered from the street door and was now extending a hand.
    “Who are you?” Dubon asked, shaking his hand.
    The man smiled pleasantly. “My name is Chalon. I’m the editor.”He nodded at the visibly relieved clerk. “Thank you, Roger. I’ll take this gentleman into my office.”
    “Of course, Monsieur Chalon,” the clerk said in a studiously neutral tone.
    Chalon led Dubon through the door into a hallway where another clerk sat at a desk. The editor greeted this second clerk and pushed through a pair of glass-paneled doors into a single large room where a dozen men sat hunched over desks surrounded by paper. Not only were their desktops covered in reams of the stuff—full sheets, half sheets, and torn scraps—but their in-baskets also overflowed, and more sheets lay at their ankles. In a corner, two figures pounded away on typewriters that produced a loud clatter, while no fewer than three telephones were ringing as they entered. Dubon was just wondering how anyone could get any work done in such mayhem when one of the seated men yelled out something unintelligible and held aloft a sheet of paper while continuing to mark up the page that lay before him on his desk. A clerk repeated the shout and came running, grabbed the sheet from his hand, and ran out the door with it, pushing past Dubon and the editor with the briefest of nods.
    “You catch us at a busy time, Monsieur,” Dubon’s guide explained. “We go to press at two, and they still have to set the type. The typesetters and the printers are just round the corner on the rue du Croissant. I imagine that is where Perrin was galloping off to with the first pages. We share the presses at the
Figaro:
they get the early hours of the morning; we take over in the afternoon. Our deadline is eleven.” It was now ten thirty.
    “I’m surprised you are at leisure to see me, Monsieur,” Dubon remarked.
    “We can’t have irate readers causing disturbances in the lobby,” Chalon said cheerfully. “Normally, I would be chained to my desk at this hour, but I had to step out on a bit of business, a little political question that needed my attention.”
    He had, by this point, walked Dubon across the newsroom and into his office. He settled his visitor in a chair before crossing to his own desk and sitting