Shaken to the Core Read Online Free Page A

question. Her mother wouldn’t approve if she knew Kate was heading to the Call building to ask for a job as a staff photographer. While her mother at first hadn’t objected to Kate taking up photography as a hobby, she now thought it was an unnatural obsession for a young lady of Kate’s standing. She wanted her daughter to spend her time in the drawing room, drinking tea, crocheting for one of her charities, and receiving dapper young gentlemen from wealthy families.
    Kate found that kind of existence mind-numbingly boring. She preferred the darkroom to the drawing room. There had to be more to life than just marrying well. In fact, she didn’t want to marry at all, but it was better not to come right out and tell her mother that.
    “But how will you get back home?” her mother asked.
    “I’ll take the cable car. It stops right in front of the Fairmont Hotel, so I won’t have to walk far,” Kate said, knowing her mother didn’t like her walking along the street like a commoner, especially not while she was unchaperoned.
    Kate sighed. Sometimes she wondered if her family’s money afforded her any more freedom than their servants or the other working-class women had.
    “Kate,” her father called from the entryway. “Are you coming?”
    Not waiting for her mother to object again, Kate rushed out of the morning room.
    * * *
    Kate had her father stop the automobile in front of the Emporium, between Fourth and Fifth Street. She would walk the rest of the way and let him assume she intended to shop at the department store.
    Without waiting for her father to help her, she jumped down and stepped up onto the sidewalk. “Thank you.”
    “Don’t spend too much,” he said.
    “I won’t.” Quite the opposite. If all went according to plan, she would soon have her own money to spend and wouldn’t have to rely on the spending money her father gave her anymore.
    She watched as her father set his Model N Packard into motion and veered around a horse-drawn carriage on the way to his office at the foot of Market Street, near the ferry building. For a moment, she stood in the middle of the sidewalk of San Francisco’s main business street. Tall buildings—hotels, banks, restaurants, and stores—lined the broad avenue on both sides. A cable car rumbled down the center of the street while horse-drawn buggies, automobiles, and the occasional bicycle used the outer tracks. Newsboys dodged the vehicles, boldly crossing the street, sometimes jumping onto cable cars or the back of automobiles.
    After watching for a minute, she set off toward the intersection of Market, Kearny, and Third Streets, known as the Newspaper Angle. Here, the city’s three leading newspapers—the Chronicle , the Call , and the Examiner — had their offices.
    Kate ignored the Chronicle building with its clock tower and the Examiner with the Spanish tiles atop its roof. Her destination this morning was just one: the Spreckels building, home of the San Francisco Call . With its eighteen stories, it was the tallest building west of Chicago. The terra-cotta dome made it look like a crowned queen towering over her underlings. Kate glanced up at the square sandstone tower. She’d been in the building just once, dining with one of her suitors in the restaurant that occupied the domed roof. The view over the city had been spectacular even though her dinner companion had failed to impress her.
    Today, she wasn’t here to enjoy the view or the food. She marched through the marble lobby and to the elevator.
    Two men stepped in with her, one of them wearing a press badge on the lapel of his coat.
    Kate stared at it with longing. She would do her very best to march out with one of those.
    The elevator doors opened with a loud ding, and the two men indicated with a polite gesture that she should go first.
    Deep breath. Don’t show them how nervous you are. Kate squared her shoulders before stepping out of the elevator.
    The newsroom clearly was a world of its