The Importance of Ricardo Beaumont

I always liked Ricardo, the crabbed old round-backed red-headed news editor. Of course, Beaumont was the real boss, but he lived in a rarefied atmosphere of some Olympian height. As we saw him passing in lonely majesty to his inner sanctum, with his eyes staring vaguely and his mind hovering over the Balkans or the Persian Gulf. He was above and beyond us, but Ricardo was his first lieutenant, and to his youth that we knew.