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and I’m sorry if you’ve already answered this – do you know why her signals would stop so abruptly?’
    ‘I am told that there are any number of possible reasons – atmospheric conditions, or damage to the wireless apparatus, or anything at all.’
    That is odd, I thought. I had in mind the Republic accident of three years before: a ship rammed and slowly sinking, a wireless room in tatters, a Marconi boy scared out of his wits, a freezing North Atlantic fog pressing in thick and heavy – and yet all the while an unending stream of Morse code had poured from the ship, calling for help, guiding ships to the rescue. If the wireless had worked then, under such conditions, why not now, on a calm clear Atlantic?
    I don’t know whether it was the bourbon, or the vision of Bumpton’s eager face arriving at Penn Station, or simple puzzlement that made me put my next question, but it came flying out into the room before I realised I’d asked it. It seemed independent of me, as if it had its own form and presence.
    ‘Might it be because the Titanic has sunk?’
    People gasped. Franklin looked at me. He did not seem angry; his face was expressionless, waxlike, as if he’d been expecting the question. The thick smoke in the room softened the shine of his brow.
    ‘Let me tell you this,’ he said, his words low and measured. ‘I am absolutely confident that the Titanic is safe. Perfectly safe. It is inconceivable that she would have met with any serious accident without our being notified. In any event, the ship is unsinkable. Her bulkheads will keep her afloat indefinitely, so there’s no danger to the passengers. That much I do know.’
    I was watching his face carefully, trying to read it. There was something strange about it.
    ‘She is unsinkable,’ Franklin said again, more to himself than the reporters. ‘Her bulkheads, her bulkheads…’
    He stepped down from the desk, turned and walked out the door. The pressmen followed, rushing to their offices and telephones.
    I am not a rusher. I strolled from the building and found a saloon near Battery Park. I sat alone in a corner and tried to think. I could already see what sort of story this was becoming: a rerun of the Republic accident. A damaged ship, a spotty boy at his wireless key calling for help, a brave rescue at sea. A good story, no doubt, but it had been done before, and my own paper would not want me to write it. Bumpton was the adventure man. ‘His pen,’ the city editor had told me, ‘has a sensitivity to the narrative arc of adventure which yours does not. And his verbs are more active.’
    I doodled in my notebook, experimenting with some headline phrases: Titanic ’s danger over. Steamer hit iceberg late last night. Hours of anxiety at last relieved. ‘This afternoon,’ I then wrote, ‘Mr Franklin expressed his utmost confidence in the new liner Titanic .’ Too dry, I thought. I tried adding some Bumpton-like verbs. ‘The Titanic is limping towards Halifax. Mr Franklin has commanded a special train to race north on the New Haven line to collect her passengers.’ Limp. Command. Race. But still my copy was no good. Perhaps the city editor was right. My pen was just not suited to thrilling adventure.
    I found a telegraph office and wired my newspaper – ‘No bodies no story’ – and then caught a cab back to the station. As soon as I stepped into the vast brightness of the main concourse I saw on a nearby newsstand the late edition of The Evening Sun , proclaiming in inch-high letters: ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC AFTER COLLISION.
    What a shame, I thought, before I could stop myself.

CHAPTER 4
    Cyril Evans was woken by the glare of his cabin light. Stewart, the chief officer, stood in the doorframe, his hand on the light switch.
    ‘You’d better get up,’ said the chief. ‘A ship has been firing rockets. You’d better see whether anything is the matter.’
    ‘What time is it?’ Evans asked, blinking his eyes and swinging his legs from his