Three Days Before the Shooting by Ralph Ellison

IT WAS LIKE THIS: Last night, during the drinking and joking at the club, I had completely forgotten that earlier in the day I had agreed to cover for a young colleague who had decided, rather impulsively, I thought, to slip away to Boston to marry a Radcliffe girl. The night editor had left me alone during the evening (he knew where to locate me), but then around four A. M. I found myself rushing in a still-drunken and dream-thronged state with notebook and tape recorder to the scene of a killing which had been reported in the vicinity of the Capitol. It was the location which disturbed Scoggins, the night editor, and caused him to awaken me.

The cabbie let me out in front of an old three-storied Georgian house, and I hurried up the steps to find two beefy policemen being directed in a thunderous attack against a door set to the right of a dimly lit vestibule by a sergeant of detectives. He acknowledged my press card with a nod, but when I tried to get a line on what had happened his hands flew to his ears and he gestured toward the two officers who threw themselves forward-hungh! - and bounced off the door as though they were made of rubber.