Chapter 116 Next Time It's Not Just the Printing Plant

Chapter 116 Next Time, It Won't Just Be the Printing Plant

Three o'clock in the morning two days later.

The printing press of The New York Herald was brightly lit.

The printing of the early morning newspapers begins at midnight, and now they are entering the final binding stage.

The workers on the night shift were scattered across their workstations. Mike, the foreman in charge of tonight's shift, was a veteran in the printing industry with nearly 20 years of experience.

At that moment, Mike sniffed, sensing an ominous smell in the air.

It was a burnt smell, a mixture of charred rubber and boiling turpentine.

Mike abruptly turned his head to look at the warehouse on the east side. Orange light was shining through the crack of the heavy iron door.

"Fire! Everyone get out!"

The next few minutes were a race against death.

The night shift workers stumbled out of the gate and had just run onto the street when the explosion came from behind them.

The windows of the east warehouse were shattered by the blast wave, and flames shot into the night sky.

The fire truck arrived eight minutes later.

The fire was concentrated on the east side, where large quantities of ink and turpentine were stored, both of which are highly flammable and dangerous.

These flammable materials made extinguishing the fire extremely difficult; it took the fire department a full hour to put the blaze under the ashes.

The main structure of the factory building was fortunately saved. However, the ink raw materials stored in the east warehouse were completely lost.

The main printing press was completely submerged by high-pressure water from the fire hose, and the three auxiliary printing presses were reduced to scrap metal, losing any possibility of being put back into operation in the short term.

Fortunately, there were no casualties.

At four o'clock in the morning, Arthur arrived at the scene.

Yellow warning tape was put up at the entrance of the factory.

Patrick stood outside the police line, clutching the old hat tightly in his hand, his face grim.

Arthur walked through the crowd and went to his side.

Patrick gritted his teeth and said, "Mike just told me that the fire department determined it was due to aging electrical circuits."

"Arthur, that printing plant is newly rented. The electrical wiring was just replaced two months ago; I personally checked and signed off on each item on the acceptance form. I can guarantee this kind of problem couldn't possibly have happened here!"

Patrick slammed his hat onto his lap: "Walker did this. This fucking did Walker's work!"

Arthur gazed silently at the ruins, without uttering a word.

A crowd of passersby gathered on the street, and several reporters who had rushed over after hearing the news had already raised their cameras.

Arthur looked away and turned to Patrick: "Will this morning's paper be published?"

Patrick paused for a moment, then shook his head in anguish: "The main printing press is ruined, it's full of water. It won't turn at all."

"What about the backup machine?"

"The fire didn't reach the small factory on the west side. But it's an old, outdated machine that only has a third of its normal capacity and can only print on one side. The printing presses in other factories have already been assigned tasks, so there's no way to allocate production capacity today."

"That's enough. Print only one page this morning. Just the front page; nothing else—no supplements, no serials, nothing else."

Patrick looked up and asked, "What's on the front page?"

Arthur pulled a small notebook from his trench coat pocket and quickly scribbled a line in it. He tore off the page and handed it to Patrick.

Patrick took it and glanced at it in the dim light of the streetlamp.

There was only one line of words on the paper, written with such force that it seemed to penetrate the paper itself:

Someone burned down our printing plant last night.

Patrick was silent for two seconds. He carefully folded the paper and put it into his inner pocket.

He turned around and strode towards the small factory building to the west.

A reporter approached and held a microphone to Arthur's mouth: "Mr. Kennedy, the fire department says it's due to aging wiring. Do you accept this conclusion?"

Arthur glanced at the reporter: "I trust the fire department's professional judgment."

"Will your newspaper still be published this morning?"

"meeting."

The reporter was somewhat surprised: "Aren't you worried? I mean, this time it's a warehouse, next time it might be—"

Arthur turned his head and looked directly into the reporter's eyes.

"What are you worried about?"

"I'm worried this will happen again, and I'm worried about even more serious consequences."

Arthur paused for a moment. At that moment, the surrounding noise seemed to disappear, leaving only the mournful sound of the wind blowing through the ruins.

"If we stop publishing every time someone burns down our printing plant, then we don't deserve to be called a newspaper."

After saying that, he didn't look at anyone again and walked straight to the surviving small factory.

That morning, the New York Herald appeared at the newsstand two hours later than usual.

It became very thin and very light.

There was only one version, one sheet of paper.

The title was printed in bold:

Someone burned down our printing plant last night.

The main text was short; Arthur recounted the facts of what had happened the previous night: the time of the fire, its location, the fire department's arrival time, and one crucial piece of information: the printing plant's electrical circuits had just been replaced two months prior.

He did not name names or make any accusations.

He was simply writing down the facts.

At the end of the article, there are two lines of text in bold:

[This newspaper can only publish one page today. We are currently repairing our equipment.]

We will resume normal publishing tomorrow.

It's just these two sentences.

That afternoon, The New York Times published a statement on its front page expressing concern about the fire and mentioning the circuit replacement record.

The Herald Tribune published an editorial entitled "The Truth That Cannot Be Burned Away by Fire".

The Associated Press issued a press release, juxtaposing the fire with reports of the "pig tactics" of a few days prior.

On the streets of New York, people clutched this one-page newspaper tightly in their hands.

That afternoon, Arthur was checking the list of losses in his makeshift office when Patrick pushed open the door, his eyes red-rimmed.

"Arthur, you have to come and see."

"What's wrong?"

"The entrance to the small factory is blocked."

Arthur frowned: "A reporter?"

"No. It's a person."

Arthur went to the window and looked down.

The entrance to the small factory was packed with people.

They wore dusty work clothes, tattered hats, and carried brooms, shovels, and some even carried their own toolboxes.

They are not engineers and do not understand complex printing machinery.

They were just ordinary citizens who came spontaneously after reading the newspaper.

Patrick, standing behind Arthur, said, "I counted, there are nearly eighty people here. They said they don't know how to fix machines, but they can help move bricks, sweep up trash, or even just hand over a wrench. They said they can't let tomorrow's newspapers not come out."

Arthur looked down at the crowd rubbing their hands in the cold wind and remained silent for a long time. He pressed his hands against the cold windowsill until they trembled.

At that moment, there was an envelope on his desk.

A blank sheet of paper with a line of text made up of newspaper clippings pasted on it.

[Next time, it won't just be printing plants.]