Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ambassador was alone in his study... . The Night Whee Magazines featuring novelettes and short stories must, because of editorial requirements, treat very short stories as mere filler material, to plug up loose pages after the main body of the issue has been completed. Therefore when a short-short story brings forth from readers a larger volume of acclaim than all the other stories in the issue combined—and sets an all-time record for any story in the magazine's history—then that short-short must be a very special classic indeed. The name of the story that achieved such unexpected applause from the readers of Weird Tales is “The Night Wire.” Read it yourself and you will understand why it is considered a gem worthy of Poe. EW YORK, September 30 CP Flash, “Ambassador Holliwell died here today. The end came suddenly as the There is something ungodly about these night wire jobs. You sit up here on the top floor of a skyscraper and listen in to the whispers of a civiliza- tion. New York, London, Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore—they’re your next- door neighbors after the street lights go dim and the world has gone to sleep. , Along in the quiet hours between two and four, the receiving operators doze over their sounders and the news comes in. Fires and disasters and suicides. Murders, crowds, catastrophes. Sometimes an earthquake with a casualty list as long as your arm. The night wire man takes it down almost in his sleep, picking it off on his typewriter with one finger. Once in a long time you prick up your ears and listen. You’ve heard of some one you knew in Singapore, Halifax or Paris, long ago. Maybe they’ve been promoted, but more probably they've been murdered or drowned. Perhaps they just decided to quit and took some bizarre way out. Made it interesting enough to get in the news. But that doesn’t happen often. Most of the time you sit and doze and tap, tap on your typewriter and wish you were home in bed. 12