CHAPTER XLV
The fact that Audrey Valentine, conspicuous member of a conspicuous
social group that she was, had been working in the machine-shop of
the Spencer munitions works at the time of the explosion was in
itself sufficient to rouse the greatest interest. When a young
reporter, gathering human-interest stories about the event from the
pitiful wreckage in the hospitals, happened on Clare Gould, he got
a feature-story for the Sunday edition that made Audrey's own world,
reading it in bed or over its exquisite breakfast-tables, gasp with
amazement.
For, following up Clare's story, he found that Audrey had done much
more than run toward the telephone. She had reached it, had found
the operator gone, and had succeeded, before the roof fell in on her,
in calling the fire department and in sending in a general alarm to
all the hospitals.
The reporter found the night operator who had received the message.
He got a photograph of her, too, and, from the society file, an old
one of Audrey, very delicate and audacious, and not greatly
resembling the young woman who lay in her bed and read the article
aloud, between dismay and laughter, to old Terry Mackenzie.
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