"I don't care if he does!" cried Betty. "He's a pig!"

Her manager, possessed of a second copy of The Ledger, now made a weighty contribution to the discussion. "Just the same, this'll help sell out the house. It's full of stuff we can lift to paper the town with."

He indicated several lines heartily praising Miss Raleigh and the cast, and one which, wrenched from its satirical context, was made to give an equally favorable opinion of the play. Something of Banneker's astonishment at this cavalier procedure must have been reflected in his face, for Marrineal, opposite, turned to him with a look of amusement.

"What's your view of that, Mr. Banneker?"

"Mine?" said Banneker promptly. "I think it's crooked. What's yours?"

"Still quick on the trigger," murmured the other, but did not answer the return query.

Replies in profusion came from the rest, however. "It isn't any crookeder than the review."—"D'you call that fair criticism!"—"Gurney! He hasn't an honest hair in his head."—"Every other critic is strong for it; this is the only knock."—"What did Laurence ever do to Gurney?"

Out of the welter of angry voices came Betty Raleigh's clear speech, addressed to Banneker.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Banneker; I'd forgotten that The Ledger is your paper."

"Oh, The Ledger ain't any worse than the rest of 'em, take it day in and day out," the manager remarked, busily penciling apposite texts for advertising, on the margin of Gurney's critique.

"It isn't fair," continued the star. "A man spends a year working over a play—it was more than a year on this, wasn't it, Denny?" she broke off to ask the author.

Laurence nodded. He looked tired and a little bored, Banneker thought.

"And a critic has a happy thought and five minutes to think it over, and writes something mean and cruel and facetious, and perhaps undoes a whole year's work. Is that right?"

"They ought to bar him from the theater," declared one of the women in the cast.

"And what do you think of that?" inquired Marrineal, still addressing Banneker.

Banneker laughed. "Admit only those who wear the bright and burnished badge of the Booster," he said. "Is that the idea?"

"Nobody objects to honest criticism," began Betty Raleigh heatedly, and was interrupted by a mild but sardonic "Hear! Hear!" from one of the magazine reviewers.

"Honest players don't object to honest criticism, then," she amended. "It's the unfairness that hurts."

"All of which appears to be based on the assumption that it is impossible for Mr. Gurney honestly to have disliked Mr. Laurence's play," pointed out Banneker. "Now, delightful as it seemed to me, I can conceive that to other minds—"

"Of course he could honestly dislike it," put in the playwright hastily. "It isn't that."

"It's the mean, slurring way he treated it," said the star "Mr. Banneker, just what did he say to you about it?"

Swiftly there leapt to his recollection the critic's words, at the close of the second act. "It's a relief to listen for once to comedy that is sincere and direct." ... Then why, why—"He said that you were all that the play required and the play was all that you required," he answered, which was also true, but another part of the truth. He was not minded to betray his associate.

"He's rotten," murmured the manager, now busy on the margin of another paper. "But I dunno as he's any rottener than the rest."

"On behalf of the profession of journalism, we thank you, Bezdek," said one of the critics.

"Don't mind old Bez," put in the elderly first-nighter. "He always says what he thinks he means, but he usually doesn't mean it."

"That is perhaps just as well," said Banneker quite quietly, "if he means that The Ledger is not straight."

"I didn't say The Ledger. I said Gurney. He's crooked as a corkscrew's hole."

There was a murmur of protest and apprehension, for this was going rather too far, which Banneker's voice stilled. "Just a minute. By that you mean that he takes bribes?"

"Naw!" snorted Bezdek.

"That he's influenced by favoritism, then?"

"I didn't say so, did I?"

"You've said either too little or too much."

"I can clear this up, I think," proffered the elderly first-nighter, in his courteous voice. "Mr. Gurney is perhaps more the writer than the critic. He is carried away by the felicitous phrase."

"He'd rather be funny than fair," said Miss Raleigh bluntly.

"The curse of dramatic criticism," murmured a magazine representative.

"Rotten," said Bezdek doggedly. "Crooked. Tryin' to be funny at other folks' expense. I'll give his tail a twist!" By which he meant Mr. Gurney's printed words.

"Apropos of the high cult of honesty," remarked Banneker.

"The curse of all journalism," put in Laurence. "The temptation to be effective at the expense of honesty."

"And what do you think of that?" inquired the cheerful Marrineal, still directing his query to Banneker.

"I think it's rather a large order. Why do you keep asking my opinion?"

"Because I suspect that you still bring a fresh mind to bear on these matters."

Banneker rose, and bade Betty Raleigh good-night. She retained his hand in hers, looking up at him with a glint of anxiety in her weary, childlike eyes. "Don't mind what we've said," she appealed to him. "We're all a little above ourselves. It's always so after an opening."

"I don't mind at all," he returned gravely: "unless it's true."

"Ah, it's true right enough," she answered dispiritedly. "Don't forget about the investigation. And don't let them dare to put you on on a matinee day."

Betty Raleigh was a conspicuous figure, at not one but half a dozen sessions of the investigation, which wound through an accelerating and sensational course, with Banneker as the chief figure. He was an extraordinary witness, ready, self-possessed, good-humored under the heckling of the politician lawyer who had claimed and received the right to appear, on the ground that his police clients might be summoned later on a criminal charge.

Before the proceedings were over, a complete overturn in the city government was foreshadowed, and it became evident that Judge Enderby might either head the movement as its candidate, or control it as its leader. Nobody, however, knew what he wished or intended politically. Every now and again in the progress of the hearings, Banneker would surprise on the lawyer's face an expression which sent his memory questing fruitlessly for determination of that elusive likeness, flickering dimly in the past.

Banneker's own role in the investigation kept him in the headlines; at times put him on the front page. Even The Ledger could only minimize, not suppress, his dominating and picturesque part.

But there was another and less pleasant sequel to the shooting, in its effect upon the office status. Though he was a "space-man" now, dependent for his earnings upon the number of columns weekly which he had in the paper, and ostensibly equipped to handle matter of importance, a long succession of the pettiest kind of assignments was doled out to him by the city desk: obituary notices of insignificant people, small police items, tipsters' yarns, routine jobs such as ship news, police headquarters substitution, even the minor courts usually relegated to the fifteen or twenty-dollar-a-week men. Or, worst and most grinding ordeal of a reporter's life, he was kept idle at his desk, like a misbehaving boy after school, when all the other men had been sent out. One week his total space came to but twenty-eight dollars odd. What this meant was plain enough; he was being disciplined for his part in the investigation.

Out of the open West which, under the rigor of the game, keeps its temper and its poise, Banneker had brought the knack of setting his teeth and smiling so serenely that one never even perceived the teeth to be set behind the smile. This ability stood him in good stead now. In his time of enforced leisure he bethought himself of the sketches which Miss Westlake had typed. With his just and keen perception, he judged them not to be magazine matter. But they might do as "Sunday stuff." He turned in half a dozen of them to Mr. Homans. When next he saw them they were lying, in uncorrected proof, on the managing editor's desk while Mr. Gordon gently rapped his knuckles over them.

"Where did you get the idea for these, Mr. Banneker?" he asked.

"I don't know. It came to me."

"Would you care to sign them?"

"Sign them?" repeated the reporter in surprise, for this was a distinction afforded to only a choice few on the conservative Ledger.

"Yes. I'm going to run them on the editorial page. Do us some more and keep them within the three-quarters. What's your full name?"

"I'd like to sign them 'Eban,'" answered the other, after some thought. "And thank you."

Assignments or no assignments, thereafter Banneker was able to fill his idle time. Made adventurous by the success of the "Vagrancies," he next tried his hand at editorials on light or picturesque topics, and with satisfying though not equal results, for here he occasionally stumbled upon the hard-rooted prejudices of the Inside Office, and beheld his efforts vanish into the irreclaimable limbo of the scrap-basket. Nevertheless, at ten dollars per column for this kind of writing, he continued to make a decent space bill, and clear himself of the doldrums where the waning of the city desk's favor had left him. All that he could now make he needed, for his change of domicile had brought about a corresponding change of habit and expenditure into which he slipped imperceptibly. To live on fifteen dollars a week, plus his own small income, which all went for "extras," had been simple, at Mrs. Brashear's. To live on fifty at the Regalton was much more of a problem. Banneker discovered that he was a natural spender. The discovery caused him neither displeasure nor uneasiness. He confidently purposed to have money to spend; plenty of it, as a mere, necessary concomitant to other things that he was after. Good reporters on space, working moderately, made from sixty to seventy-five dollars a week. Banneker set himself a mark of a hundred dollars. He intended to work very hard ... if Mr. Greenough would give him a chance.

Mr. Greenough's distribution of the day's news continued to be distinctly unfavorable to the new space-man. The better men on the staff began to comment on the city desk's discrimination. Banneker had, for a time, shone in heroic light: his feat had been honorable, not only to The Ledger office, but to the entire craft of reporting. In the investigation he had borne himself with unexceptionable modesty and equanimity. That he should be "picked on" offended that generous esprit de corps which was natural to the office. Tommy Burt was all for referring the matter to Mr. Gordon.

"You mind your own business, Tommy," said Banneker placidly. "Our friend the Joss will stick his foot into a gopher hole yet."

The assignment that afforded Banneker his chance was of the most unpromising. An old builder, something of a local character over in the Corlears Hook vicinity, had died. The Ledger, Mr. Greenough informed Banneker, in his dry, polite manner, wanted "a sufficient obit" of the deceased. Banneker went to the queer, decrepit frame cottage at the address given, and there found a group of old Sam Corpenshire's congeners, in solemn conclave over the dead. They welcomed the reporter, and gave him a ceremonial drink of whiskey, highly superior whiskey. They were glad that he had come to write of their dead friend. If ever a man deserved a good write-up, it was Sam Corpenshire. From one mouth to another they passed the word of his shrewd dealings, of his good-will to his neighbors, of his ripe judgment, of his friendliness to all sound things and sound men, of his shy, sly charities, of the thwarted romance, which, many years before, had left him lonely but unembittered; and out of it Banneker, with pen too slow for his eager will, wove not a two-stick obit, but a rounded column shot through with lights that played upon the little group of characters, the living around the dead, like sunshine upon an ancient garden.

Even Mr. Greenough congratulated Banneker, the next morning. In the afternoon mail came a note from Mr. Gaines of The New Era monthly. That perspicuous editor had instantly identified the style of the article with that of the "Eban" series, part of which he had read in typograph. He wrote briefly but warmly of the work: and would the writer not call and see him soon?

Perhaps the reporter might have accepted the significant invitation promptly, as he at first intended. But on the following morning he found in his box an envelope under French stamp, inscribed with writing which, though he had seen but two specimens of it, drove everything else out of his tumultuous thoughts. He took it, not to his desk, but to a side room of the art department, unoccupied at that hour, and opened it with chilled and fumbling hands.

Within was a newspaper clipping, from a Paris edition of an American daily. It gave a brief outline of the battle on the pier. In pencil on the margin were these words:

"Do you remember practicing, that day, among the pines? I'm so proud! Io."

He read it again. The last sentence affected him with a sensation of dizziness. Proud! Of his deed! It gave him the feeling that she had reclaimed, reappropriated him. No! That she had never for a moment released him. In a great surge, sweeping through his veins, he felt the pressure of her breast against his, the strong enfoldment of her arms, her breath upon his lips. He tore envelope and clipping into fragments.

By one of those strange associations of linked memory, such as "clangs and flashes for a drowning man," he sharply recalled where he had seen Willis Enderby before. His was the face in the photograph to which Camilla Van Arsdale had turned when death stretched out a hand toward her.



CHAPTER X

While the police inquiry was afoot, Banneker was, perforce, often late in reporting for duty, the regular hour being twelve-thirty. Thus the idleness which the city desk had imposed upon him was, in a measure, justified. On a Thursday, when he had been held in conference with Judge Enderby, he did not reach The Ledger office until after two. Mr. Greenough was still out for luncheon. No sooner had Banneker entered the swinging gate than Mallory called to him. On the assistant city editor's face was a peculiar expression, half humorous, half dubious, as he said:

"Mr. Greenough has left an assignment for you."

"All right," said Banneker, stretching out his hand for the clipping or slip. None was forthcoming.

"It's a tip," explained Mallory. "It's from a pretty convincing source. The gist of it is that the Delavan Eyres have separated and a divorce is impending. You know, of course, who the Eyres are."

"I've met Eyre."

"That so? Ever met his wife?"

"No," replied Banneker, in good faith.

"No; you wouldn't have, probably. They travel different paths. Besides, she's been practically living abroad. She's a stunner. It's big society stuff, of course. The best chance of landing the story is from Archie Densmore, her half-brother. The international polo-player, you know. You'll find him at The Retreat, down on the Jersey coast."

The Retreat Banneker had heard of as being a bachelor country club whose distinguishing marks were a rather Spartan athleticism, and a more stiffly hedged exclusiveness than any other social institution known to the elite of New York and Philadelphia, between which it stood midway.

"Then I'm to go and ask him," said Banneker slowly, "whether his sister is suing for divorce?"

"Yes," confirmed Mallory, a trifle nervously. "Find out who's to be named, of course. I suppose it's that new dancer, though there have been others. And there was a quaint story about some previous attachment of Mrs. Eyre's: that might have some bearing."

"I'm to ask her brother about that, too?"

"We want the story," answered Mallory, almost petulantly.

On the trip down into Jersey the reporter had plenty of time to consider his unsavory task. Some one had to do this kind of thing, so long as the public snooped and peeped and eavesdropped through the keyhole of print at the pageant of the socially great: this he appreciated and accepted. But he felt that it ought to be some one other than himself—and, at the same time, was sufficiently just to smile at himself for his illogical attitude.

A surprisingly good auto was found in the town of his destination, to speed him to the stone gateway of The Retreat. The guardian, always on duty there, passed him with a civil word, and a sober-liveried flunkey at the clubhouse door, after a swift, unobtrusive consideration of his clothes and bearing, took him readily for granted, and said that Mr. Densmore would be just about going on the polo field for practice. Did the gentleman know his way to the field? Seeing the flag on the stable, Banneker nodded, and walked over. A groom pointed out a spare, powerful looking young man with a pink face, startlingly defined by a straight black mustache and straighter black eyebrows, mounting a light-built roan, a few rods away. Banneker accosted him.

"Yes, my name is Densmore," he answered the visitor's accost.

"I'm a reporter from The Ledger," explained Banneker.

"A reporter?" Mr. Densmore frowned. "Reporters aren't allowed here, except on match days. How did you get in?"

"Nobody stopped me," answered the visitor in an expressionless tone.

"It doesn't matter," said the other, "since you're here. What is it; the international challenge?"

"A rumor has come to us—There's a tip come in at the office—We understood that there is—" Banneker pulled himself together and put the direct question. "Is Mrs. Delavan Eyre bringing a divorce suit against her husband?"

For a time there was a measured silence. Mr. Densmore's heavy brows seemed to jut outward and downward toward the questioner.

"You came out here from New York to ask me that?" he said presently.

"Yes."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. Who is named as co-respondent? And will there be a defense, or a counter-suit?"

"A counter-suit," repeated the man in the saddle quietly. "I wonder if you realize what you're asking?"

"I'm trying to get the news," said Banneker doggedly striving to hold to an ideal which momentarily grew more sordid and tawdry.

"And I wonder if you realize how you ought to be answered."

Yes; Banneker realized, with a sick realization. But he was not going to admit it. He kept silence.

"If this polo mallet were a whip, now," observed Mr. Densmore meditatively. "A dog-whip, for preference."

Under the shameful threat Banneker's eyes lightened. Here at least was something he could face like a man. His undermining nausea mitigated.

"What then?" he inquired in tones as level as those of his opponent.

"Why, then I'd put a mark on you. A reporter's mark."

"I think not."

"Oh; you think not?" The horseman studied him negligently. Trained to the fineness of steel in the school of gymnasium, field, and tennis court, he failed to recognize in the man before him a type as formidable, in its rugged power, as his own. "Or perhaps I'd have the grooms do it for me, before they threw you over the fence."

"It would be safer," allowed the other, with a smile that surprised the athlete.

"Safer?" he repeated. "I wasn't thinking of safety."

"Think of it," advised the visitor; "for if you set your grooms on me, they could perhaps throw me out. But as sure as they did I'd kill you the next time we met."

Densmore smiled. "You!" he said contemptuously. "Kill, eh? Did you ever kill any one?"

"Yes."

Under their jet brows Densmore's eyes took on a peculiar look of intensity. "A Ledger reporter," he murmured. "See here! Is your name Banneker, by any chance?"

"Yes."

"You're the man who cleared out the wharf-gang."

"Yes."

Densmore had been born and brought up in a cult to which courage is the basic, inclusive virtue for mankind, as chastity is for womankind. To his inground prejudice a man who was simply and unaffectedly brave must by that very fact be fine and admirable. And this man had not only shown an iron nerve, but afterward, in the investigation, which Densmore had followed, he had borne himself with the modesty, discretion, and good taste of the instinctive gentleman. The poloist was almost pathetically at a loss. When he spoke again his whole tone and manner had undergone a vital transformation.

"But, good God!" he cried in real distress and bewilderment, "a fellow who could do what you did, stand up to those gun-men in the dark and alone, to be garbaging around asking rotten, prying questions about a man's sister! No! I don't get it."

Banneker felt the blood run up into his face, under the sting of the other's puzzled protest, as it would never have done under open contempt or threat. A miserable, dull hopelessness possessed him. "It's part of the business," he muttered.

"Then it's a rotten business," retorted the horseman. "Do you have to do this?"

"Somebody has to get the news."

"News! Scavenger's filth. See here, Banneker, I'm sorry I roughed you about the whip. But, to ask a man questions about the women of his own family—No: I'm damned if I get it." He lost himself in thought, and when he spoke again it was as much to himself as to the man on the ground. "Suppose I did make a frank statement: you can never trust the papers to get it straight, even if they mean to, which is doubtful. And there's Io's name smeared all over—Hel-lo! What's the matter, now?" For his horse had shied away from an involuntary jerk of Banneker's muscles, responsive to electrified nerves, so sharply as to disturb the rider's balance.

"What name did you say?" muttered Banneker, involuntarily.

"Io. My foster-sister's nickname. Irene Welland, she was. You're a queer sort of society reporter if you don't know that."

"I'm not a society reporter."

"But you know Mrs. Eyre?"

"Yes; in a way," returned Banneker, gaining command of himself. "Officially, you might say. She was in a railroad wreck that I stage-managed out West. I was the local agent."

"Then I've heard about you," replied Densmore with interest, though he had heard only what little Io had deemed it advisable that he should know. "You helped my sister when she was hurt. We owe you something for that."

"Official duty."

"That's all right. But it was more than that. I recall your name now." Densmore's bearing had become that of a man to his equal. "I'll tell you, let's go up to the clubhouse and have a drink, shan't we? D' you mind just waiting here while I give this nag a little run to supple him up?"

He was off, leaving Banneker with brain awhirl. To steady himself against this sudden flood of memory and circumstance, Banneker strove to focus his attention upon the technique of the horse and his rider. When they returned he said at once:

"Are you going to play that pony?"

The horseman looked mildly surprised. "After he's learned a bit more. Shapes up well, don't you think?"

"Speed him up to me and give him a sharp twist to the right, will you?"

Accepting the suggestion without comment, Densmore cantered away and brought the roan down at speed. To the rider, his mount seemed to make the sudden turn perfectly. But Banneker stepped out and examined the off forefoot with a dubious face.

"Breaks a little there," he stated seriously.

The horseman tried the turn again, throwing his weight over. This time he did feel a slightly perceptible "give." "What's the remedy?" he asked.

"Build up the outer flange of the shoe. That may do it. But I shouldn't trust him without a thorough test. A good pony'll always overplay his safety a little in a close match."

The implication of this expert view aroused Densmore's curiosity. "You've played," he said.

"No: I've never played. I've knocked the ball about a little."

"Where?"

"Out in Santa Barbara. With the stable-boys."

So simply was it said that Densmore returned, quite as simply: "Were you a stable-boy?"

"No such luck, then. Just a kid, out of a job."

Densmore dismounted, handed reins and mallet to the visitor and said, "Try a shot or two."

Slipping his coat and waistcoat, Banneker mounted and urged the pony after the ball which the other sent spinning out across the field. He made a fairly creditable cut away to the left, following down and playing back moderately. While his mallet work was, naturally, uncertain, he played with a full, easy swing and in good form. But it was his horsemanship which specially commended itself to the critical eye of the connoisseur.

"Ridden range, haven't you?" inquired the poloist when the other came in.

"Quite a bit of it, in my time."

"Now, I'll tell you," said Densmore, employing his favorite formula. "There'll be practice later. It's an off day and we probably won't have two full teams. Let me rig you out, and you try it."

Banneker shook his head. "I'm here on business. I'm a reporter with a story to get."

"All right; it's up to a reporter to stick until he gets his news," agreed the other. "You dismiss your taxi, and stay out here and dine, and I'll run you back to town myself. And at nine o'clock I'll answer your question and answer it straight."

Banneker, gazing longingly at the bright turf of the field, accepted.

Polo is to The Retreat what golf is to the average country club. The news that Archie Densmore had a new player down for a try-out brought to the side-lines a number of the old-time followers of the game, including Poultney Masters, the autocrat of Wall Street and even more of The Retreat, whose stables he, in large measure, supported. In the third period, the stranger went in at Number Three on the pink team. He played rather poorly, but there was that in his style which encouraged the enthusiasts.

"He's material," grunted old Masters, blinking his pendulous eyelids, as Banneker, accepting the challenge of Jim Maitland, captain of the opposing team and roughest of players, for a ride-off, carried his own horse through by sheer adroitness and daring, and left the other rolling on the turf. "Anybody know who he is?"

"Heard Archie call him Banker, I think," answered one of the great man's hangers-on.

Later, Banneker having changed, sat in an angled window of the clubhouse, waiting for his host, who had returned from the stables. A group of members entering the room, and concealed from him by an L, approached the fireplace talking briskly.

"Dick says the feller's a reporter," declared one of them, a middle-aged man named Kirke. "Says he saw him tryin' to interview somebody on the Street, one day."

"Well, I don't believe it," announced an elderly member. "This chap of Densmore's looks like a gentleman and dresses like one. I don't believe he's a reporter. And he rides like a devil."

"I say there's ridin' and ridin'," proclaimed Kirke. "Some fellers ride like jockeys; some fellers ride like cowboys; some fellers ride like gentlemen. I say this reporter feller don't ride like a gentleman."

"Oh, slush!" said another discourteously. "What is riding like a gentleman?"

Kirke reverted to the set argument of his type. "I'll betcha a hundred he don't!"

"Who's to settle such a bet?"

"Leave it to Maitland," said somebody.

"I'll leave it to Archie Densmore if you like," offered the bettor belligerently.

"Leave it to Mr. Masters," suggested Kirke.

"Why not leave it to the horse?"

The suggestion, coming in a level and unconcerned tone from the depths of the chair in which Banneker was seated, produced an electrical effect. Banneker spoke only because the elderly member had walked over to the window, and he saw that he must be discovered in another moment. Out of the astonished silence came the elderly member's voice, gentle and firm.

"Are you the visitor we have been so frankly discussing?"

"I assume so."

"Isn't it rather unfortunate that you did not make your presence known sooner?"

"I hoped that I might have a chance to slip out unseen and save you embarrassment."

The other came forward at once with hand outstretched. "My name is Forster," he said. "You're Mr. Banker, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Banneker, shaking hands. For various reasons it did not seem worth while to correct the slight error.

"Look out! Here's the old man," said some one.

Poultney Masters plodded in, his broad paunch shaking with chuckles. "'Leave it to the horse,'" he mumbled appreciatively. "'Leave it to the horse.' It's good. It's damned good. The right answer. Who but the horse should know whether a man rides like a gentleman! Where's young Banneker?"

Forster introduced the two. "You've got the makings of a polo-man in you," decreed the great man. "Where are you playing?"

"I've never really played. Just practiced."

"Then you ought to be with us. Where's Densmore? We'll put you up and have you in by the next meeting."

"A reporter in The Retreat!" protested Kirke who had proffered the bet.

"Why not?" snapped old Poultney Masters. "Got any objections?"

Since the making or marring of his fortunes, like those of hundreds of other men, lay in the pudgy hollow of the financier's hand, poor Kirke had no objections which he could not and did not at once swallow. The subject of the flattering offer had, however.

"I'm much obliged," said he. "But I couldn't join this club. Can't afford it."

"You can't afford not to. It's a chance not many young fellows from nowhere get."

"Perhaps you don't know what a reporter's earnings are, Mr. Masters."

The rest of the group had drifted away, in obedience, Banneker suspected, to some indication given by Masters which he had not perceived.

"You won't be a reporter long. Opportunities will open out for a young fellow of your kind."

"What sort of opportunities?" inquired Banneker curiously.

"Wall Street, for example."

"I don't think I'd like the game. Writing is my line. I'm going to stick to it."

"You're a fool," barked Masters.

"That is a word I don't take from anybody," stated Banneker.

"You don't take? Who the—" The raucous snarl broke into laughter, as the other leaned abruptly forward. "Banneker," he said, "have you got me covered?"

Banneker laughed, too. Despite his brutal assumption of autocracy, it was impossible not to like this man. "No," he answered. "I didn't expect to be held up here. So I left my gun."

"You did a job on that pier," affirmed the other. "But you're a fool just the same—if you'll take it with a smile."

"I'll think it over," answered Banneker, as Densmore entered.

"Come and see me at the office," invited Masters as he shambled pursily away.

Across the dining-table Densmore said to his guest: "So the Old Boy wants to put you up here."

"Yes."

"That means a sure election."

"But even if I could afford it, I'd get very little use of the club. You see, I have only one day off a week."

"It is a rotten business, for sure!" said Densmore sympathetically. "Couldn't you get on night work, so you could play afternoons?"

"Play polo?" Banneker laughed. "My means would hardly support one pony."

"That'll be all right," returned the other nonchalantly. "There are always fellows glad to lend a mount to a good player. And you're going to be that."

The high lust of the game took and shook Banneker for a dim moment. Then he recovered himself. "No. I couldn't do that."

"Let's leave it this way, then. Whether you join now or not, come down once in a while as my guest, and fill in for the scratch matches. Later you may be able to pick up a few nags, cheap."

"I'll think it over," said Banneker, as he had said to old Poultney Masters.

Not until after the dinner did Banneker remind his host of their understanding. "You haven't forgotten that I'm here on business?"

"No; I haven't. I'm going to answer your question for publication. Mrs. Eyre has not the slightest intention of suing for divorce."

"About the separation?"

"No. No separation, either. Io is traveling with friends and will be back in a few months."

"That is authoritative?"

"You can quote me, if you like, though I'd rather nothing were published, of course. And I give you my personal word that it's true."

"That's quite enough."

"So much for publication. What follows is private: just between you and me."

Banneker nodded. After a ruminative pause Densmore asked an abrupt question.

"You found my sister after the wreck, didn't you?"

"Well; she found me."

"Was she hurt?"

"Yes."

"Badly?"

"I think not. There was some concussion of the brain, I suppose. She was quite dazed."

"Did you call a doctor?"

"No. She wouldn't have one."

"You know Miss Van Arsdale, don't you?"

"She's the best friend I've got in the world," returned Banneker, so impulsively that his interrogator looked at him curiously before continuing:

"Did you see Io at her house?"

"Yes; frequently," replied Banneker, wondering to what this all tended, but resolved to be as frank as was compatible with discretion.

"How did she seem?"

"She was as well off there as she could be anywhere."

"Yes. But how did she seem? Mentally, I mean."

"Oh, that! The dazed condition cleared up at once."

"I wish I were sure that it had ever cleared up," muttered Densmore.

"Why shouldn't you be sure?"

"I'm going to be frank with you because I think you may be able to help me with a clue. Since she came back from the West, Io has been unlike herself. The family has never understood her marriage with Del Eyre. She didn't really care for Del. [To his dismay, Banneker here beheld the glowing tip of his cigar perform sundry involuntary dips and curves. He hoped that his face was under better control.] The marriage was a fizzle. I don't believe it lasted a month, really. Eyre had always been a chaser, though he did straighten out when he married Io. He really was crazy about her; but when she chucked him, he went back to his old hunting grounds. One can understand that. But Io; that's different. She's always played the game before. With Del, I don't think she quite did. She quit: that's the plain fact of it. Just tired of him. No other cause that I can find. Won't get a divorce. Doesn't want it. So there's no one else in the case. It's queer. It's mighty queer. And I can't help thinking that the old jar to her brain—"

"Have you suggested that to her?" asked Banneker as the other broke off to ruminate mournfully.

"Yes. She only laughed. Then she said that poor old Del wasn't at fault except for marrying her in the face of a warning. I don't know what she meant by it; hanged if I do. But, you see, it's quite true: there'll be no divorce or separation.... You're sure she was quite normal when you last saw her at Miss Van Arsdale's?"

"Absolutely. If you want confirmation, why not write Miss Van Arsdale yourself?"

"No; I hardly think I'll do that.... Now as to that gray you rode, I've got a chance to trade him." And the talk became all of horse, which is exclusive and rejective of other interests, even of women.

Going back in the train, Banneker reviewed the crowding events of the day. At the bottom of his thoughts lay a residue, acid and stinging, the shame of the errand which had taken him to The Retreat, and which the memory of what was no less than a personal triumph could not submerge. That he, Errol Banneker, whose dealings with all men had been on the straight and level status of self-respect, should have taken upon him the ignoble task of prying into intimate affairs, of meekly soliciting the most private information in order that he might make his living out of it—not different in kind from the mendicancy which, even as a hobo, he had scorned—and that, at the end, he should have discerned Io Welland as the object of his scandal-chase; that fermented within him like something turned to foulness.

At the office he reported "no story." Before going home he wrote a note to the city desk.



CHAPTER XI

Impenetrability of expression is doubtless a valuable attribute to a joss. Otherwise so many josses would not display it. Upon the stony and placid visage of Mr. Greenough, never more joss-like than when, on the morning after Banneker went to The Retreat, he received the resultant note, the perusal thereof produced no effect. Nor was there anything which might justly be called an expression, discernible between Mr. Greenough's cloven chin-tip and Mr. Greenough's pale fringe of hair, when, as Banneker entered the office at noon, he called the reporter to him. Banneker's face, on the contrary, displayed a quite different impression; that of amiability.

"Nothing in the Eyre story, Mr. Banneker!"

"Not a thing."

"You saw Mr. Densmore?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would he talk?"

"Yes; he made a statement."

"It didn't appear in the paper."

"There was nothing to it but unqualified denial."

"I see; I see. That's all, Mr. Banneker.... Oh, by the way."

Banneker, who had set out for his desk, turned back.

"I had a note from you this morning."

As this statement required no confirmation, Banneker gave it none.

"Containing your resignation."

"Conditional upon my being assigned to pry into society or private scandals or rumors of them."

"The Ledger does not recognize conditional resignation."

"Very well." Banneker's smile was as sunny and untroubled as a baby's.

"I suppose you appreciate that some one must cover this kind of news."

"Yes. It will have to be some one else."

The faintest, fleeting suspicion of a frown troubled the Brahminical calm of Mr. Greenough's brow, only to pass into unwrinkled blandness.

"Further, you will recognize that, for the protection of the paper, I must have at call reporters ready to perform any emergency duty."

"Perfectly," agreed Banneker.

"Mr. Banneker," queried Mr. Greenough in a semi-purr, "are you too good for your job?"

"Certainly."

For once the personification of city-deskness, secure though he was in the justice of his position, was discomfited. "Too good for The Ledger?" he demanded in protest and rebuke.

"Let me put it this way; I'm too good for any job that won't let me look a man square between the eyes when I meet him on it."

"A dull lot of newspapers we'd have if all reporters took that view," muttered Mr. Greenough.

"It strikes me that what you've just said is the severest kind of an indictment of the whole business, then," retorted Banneker.

"A business that is good enough for a good many first-class men, even though you may not consider it so for you. Possibly being for the time—for a brief time—a sort of public figure, yourself, has—"

"Nothing at all to do with it," interrupted the urbane reporter. "I've always been this way. It was born in me."

"I shall consult with Mr. Gordon about this," said Mr. Greenough, becoming joss-like again. "I hardly think—" But what it was that he hardly thought, the subject of his animadversions did not then or subsequently ascertain, for he was dismissed in the middle of the sentence with a slow, complacent nod.

Loss of his place, had it promptly followed, would not have dismayed the rebel. It did not follow. Nothing followed. Nothing, that is, out of the ordinary run. Mr. Gordon said no word. Mr. Greenough made no reference to the resignation. Tommy Burt, to whom Banneker had confided his action, was of opinion that the city desk was merely waiting "to hand you something so raw that you'll have to buck it; something that not even Joe Bullen would take." Joe Bullen, an undertaker's assistant who had drifted into journalism through being a tipster, was The Ledger's "keyhole reporter" (unofficial).

"The joss is just tricky enough for that," said Tommy. "He'll want to put you in the wrong with Gordon. You're a pet of the boss's."

"Don't blame Greenough," said Banneker. "If you were on the desk you wouldn't want reporters that wouldn't take orders."

Van Cleve, oldest in standing of any of the staff, approached Banneker with a grave face and solemn warnings. To leave The Ledger was to depart forever from the odor of journalistic sanctity. No other office in town was endurable for a gentleman. Other editors treated their men like muckers. The worst assignment given out from The Ledger desk was a perfumed cinch in comparison with what the average city room dealt out. And he gave a formidable sketch of the careers (invariably downhill) of reckless souls who had forsaken the true light of The Ledger for the false lures which led into outer and unfathomable darkness. By this system of subtly threatened excommunication had The Ledger saved to itself many a good man who might otherwise have gone farther and not necessarily fared worse. Banneker was not frightened. But he did give more than a thought to the considerate standards and generous comradeship of the office. Only—was it worth the price in occasional humiliation?

Sitting, idle at his desk in one of the subsequent periods of penance, he bethought him of the note on the stationery of The New Era Magazine, signed, "Yours very truly, Richard W. Gaines." Perhaps this was opportunity beckoning. He would go to see the Great Gaines.

The Great Gaines received him with quiet courtesy. He was a stubby, thick, bearded man who produced an instant effect of entire candor. So peculiar and exotic was this quality that it seemed to set him apart from the genus of humankind in an aura of alien and daunting honesty. Banneker recalled hearing of outrageous franknesses from his lips, directed upon small and great, and, most amazingly, accepted without offense, because of the translucent purity of the medium through which, as it were, the inner prophet had spoken. Besides, he was usually right.

His first words to Banneker, after his greeting, were: "You are exceedingly well tailored."

"Does it matter?" asked Banneker, smiling.

"I'm disappointed. I had read into your writing midnight toil and respectable, if seedy, self-support."

"After the best Grub Street tradition? Park Row has outlived that."

"I know your tailor, but what's your college?" inquired this surprising man.

Banneker shook his head.

"At least I was right in that. I surmised individual education. Who taught you to think for yourself?"

"My father."

"It's an uncommon name. You're not a son of Christian Banneker, perhaps?"

"Yes. Did you know him?"

"A mistaken man. Whoring after strange gods. Strange, sterile, and disappointing. But a brave soul, nevertheless. Yes; I knew him well. What did he teach you?"

"He tried to teach me to stand on my own feet and see with my own eyes and think for myself."

"Ah, yes! With one's own eyes. So much depends upon whither one turns them. What have you seen in daily journalism?"

"A chance. Possibly a great chance."

"To think for yourself?"

Banneker started, at this ready application of his words to the problem which was already outlining itself by small, daily limnings in his mind.

"To write for others what you think for yourself?" pursued the editor, giving sharpness and definition to the outline.

"Or," concluded Mr. Gaines, as his hearer preserved silence, "eventually to write for others what they think for themselves?" He smiled luminously. "It's a problem in stress: x = the breaking-point of honesty. Your father was an absurdly honest man. Those of us who knew him best honored him."

"Are you doubting my honesty?" inquired Banneker, without resentment or challenge.

"Why, yes. Anybody's. But hopefully, you understand."

"Or the honesty of the newspaper business?"

A sigh ruffled the closer tendrils of Mr. Gaines's beard. "I have never been a journalist in the Park Row sense," he said regretfully. "Therefore I am conscious of solutions of continuity in my views. Park Row amazes me. It also appalls me. The daily stench that arises from the printing-presses. Two clouds; morning and evening.... Perhaps it is only the odor of the fertilizing agent, stimulating the growth of ideas. Or is it sheer corruption?"

"Two stages of the same process, aren't they?" suggested Banneker.

"Encouraging to think so. Yet labor in a fertilizing plant, though perhaps essential, is hardly conducive to higher thinking. You like it?"

"I don't accept your definition at all," replied Banneker. "The newspapers are only a medium. If there is a stench, they do not originate it. They simply report the events of the day."

"Exactly. They simply disseminate it."

Banneker was annoyed at himself for flushing. "They disseminate news. We've got to have news, to carry on the world. Only a small fraction of it is—well, malodorous. Would you destroy the whole system because of one flaw? You're not fair."

"Fair? Of course I'm not. How should I be? No; I would not destroy the system. Merely deodorize it a bit. But I suppose the public likes the odors. It sniffs 'em up like—like Cyrano in the bake-shop. A marvelous institution, the public which you and I serve. Have you ever thought of magazine work, Mr. Banneker?"

"A little."

"There might be a considerable future there for you. I say 'might.' Nothing is more uncertain. But you have certain—er—stigmata of the writer—That article, now, about the funereal eulogies over the old builder; did you report that talk as it was?"

"Approximately."

"How approximately?"

"Well; the basic idea was there. The old fellows gave me that, and I fitted it up with talk. Surely there's nothing dishonest in that," protested Banneker.

"Surely not," agreed the other. "You gave the essence of the thing. That is a higher veracity than any literal reporting which would be dull and unreadable. I thought I recognized the fictional quality in the dialogue."

"But it wasn't fiction," denied Banneker eagerly.

The Great Gaines gave forth one of his oracles. "But it was. Good dialogue is talk as it should be talked, just as good fiction is life as it should be lived—logically and consecutively. Why don't you try something for The New Era?"

"I have."

"When?"

"Before I got your note."

"It never reached me."

"It never reached anybody. It's in my desk, ripening."

"Send it along, green, won't you? It may give more indications that way. And first work is likely to be valuable chiefly as indication."

"I'll mail it to you. Before I go, would you mind telling me more definitely why you advise me against the newspaper business?"

"I advise? I never advise as to questions of morals or ethics. I have too much concern with keeping my own straight."

"Then it is a question of morals?"

"Or ethics. I think so. For example, have you tried your hand at editorials?"

"Yes."

"Successfully?"

"As far as I've gone."

"Then you are in accord with the editorial policy of The Ledger?"

"Not in everything."

"In its underlying, unexpressed, and immanent theory that this country can best be managed by an aristocracy, a chosen few, working under the guise of democracy?"

"No; I don't believe that, of course."

"I do, as it happens. But I fail to see how Christian Banneker's son and eleve could. Yet you write editorials for The Ledger."

"Not on those topics."

"Have you never had your editorials altered or cut or amended, in such manner as to give a side-slant toward the paper's editorial fetiches?"

Again and most uncomfortably Banneker felt his color change. "Yes; I have," he admitted.

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? The Chief controls the editorial page."

"You might have stopped writing for it."

"I needed the money. No; that isn't true. More than the money, I wanted the practice and the knowledge that I could write editorials if I wished to."

"Are you thinking of going on the editorial side?"

"God forbid!" cried Banneker.

"Unwilling to deal in other men's ideas, eh? Well, Mr. Banneker, you have plenty of troubles before you. Interesting ones, however."

"How much could I make by magazine writing?" asked Banneker abruptly.

"Heaven alone knows. Less than you need, I should say, at first. How much do you need?"

"My space bill last week was one hundred and twenty-one dollars. I filled 'em up on Sunday specials."

"And you need that?"

"It's all gone," grinned Banneker boyishly.

"As between a safe one hundred dollars-plus, and a highly speculative nothing-and-upwards, how could any prudent person waver?" queried Mr. Gaines as he shook hands in farewell.

For the first time in the whole unusual interview, Banneker found himself misliking the other's tone, particularly in the light emphasis placed upon the word prudent. Banneker did not conceive kindly of himself as a prudent person.

Back at the office, Banneker got out the story of which he had spoken to Mr. Gaines, and read it over. It seemed to him good, and quite in the tradition of The New Era. It was polite, polished, discreet, and, if not precisely subtle, it dealt with interests and motives lying below the obvious surfaces of life. It had amused Banneker to write it; which is not to say that he spared laborious and conscientious effort. The New Era itself amused him, with its air of well-bred aloofness from the flatulent romanticism which filled the more popular magazines of the day with duke-like drummers or drummer-like dukes, amiable criminals and brisk young business geniuses, possessed of rather less moral sense than the criminals, for its heroes, and for its heroines a welter of adjectives exhaling an essence of sex. Banneker could imagine one of these females straying into Mr. Gaines's editorial ken, and that gentleman's bland greeting as to his own sprightly second maid arrayed and perfumed, unexpectedly encountered at a charity bazar. Too rarefied for Banneker's healthy and virile young tastes, the atmosphere in which The New Era lived and moved and had its consistently successful editorial being! He preferred a freer air to the mild scents of lavender and rose-ash, even though it might blow roughly at times. Nevertheless, that which was fine and fastidious in his mind recognized and admired the restraint, the dignity, the high and honorably maintained standards of the monthly. It had distinction. It stood apart from and consciously above the reading mob. In some respects it was the antithesis of that success for which Park Row strove and sweated.

Banneker felt that he, too, could claim a place on those heights. Yes; he liked his story. He thought that Mr. Gaines would like it. Having mailed it, he went to Katie's to dinner. There he found Russell Edmonds discussing his absurdly insufficient pipe with his customary air of careworn watchfulness lest it go out and leave him forlorn and unsolaced in a harsh world. The veteran turned upon the newcomer a grim twinkle.

"Don't you do it," he advised positively.

"Do what?"

"Quit."

"Who told you I was considering it?"

"Nobody. I knew it was about time for you to reach that point. We all do—at certain times."

"Why?"

"Disenchantment. Disillusionment. Besides, I hear the city desk has been horsing you."

"Then some one has been blabbing."

"Oh, those things ooze out. Can't keep 'em in. Besides, all city desks do that to cubs who come up too fast. It's part of the discipline. Like hazing."

"There are some things a man can't do," said Banneker with a sort of appeal in his voice.

"Nothing," returned Edmonds positively. "Nothing he can't do to get the news."

"Did you ever peep through a keyhole?"

"Figuratively speaking?"

"If you like. Either way."

"Yes."

"Would you do it to-day?"

"No."

"Then it's a phase a reporter has to go through?"

"Or quit."

"You haven't quit?"

"I did. For a time. In a way. I went to jail."

"Jail? You?" Banneker had a flash of intuition. "I'll bet it was for something you were proud of."

"I wasn't ashamed of the jail sentence, at any rate. Youngster, I'm going to tell you about this." Edmonds's fine eyes seemed to have receded into their hollows as he sat thinking with his pipe neglected on the table. "D'you know who Marna Corcoran was?"

"An actress, wasn't she?"

"Leading lady at the old Coliseum Theater. A good actress and a good woman. I was a cub then on The Sphere under Red McGraw, the worst gutter-pup that ever sat at a city desk, and a damned good newspaper man. In those days The Sphere specialized on scandals; the rottener, the better; stuff that it wouldn't touch to-day. Well, a hell-cat of a society woman sued her husband for divorce and named Miss Corcoran. Pure viciousness, it was. There wasn't a shadow of proof, or even suspicion."

"I remember something about that case. The woman withdrew the charge, didn't she?"

"When it was too late. Red McGraw had an early tip and sent me to interview Marna Corcoran. He let me know pretty plainly that my job depended on my landing the story. That was his style; a bully. Well, I got the interview; never mind how. When I left her home Miss Corcoran was in a nervous collapse. I reported to McGraw. 'Keno!' says he. 'Give us a column and a half of it. Spice it.' I spiced it—I guess. They tell me it was a good job. I got lost in the excitement of writing and forgot what I was dealing with, a woman. We had a beat on that interview. They raised my salary, I remember. A week later Red called me to the desk. 'Got another story for you, Edmonds. A hummer. Marna Corcoran is in a private sanitarium up in Connecticut; hopelessly insane. I wouldn't wonder if our story did it.' He grinned like an ape. 'Go up there and get it. Buy your way in, if necessary. You can always get to some of the attendants with a ten-spot. Find out what she raves about; whether it's about Allison. Perhaps she's given herself away. Give us another red-hot one on it. Here's the address.'

"I wadded up the paper and stuffed it in his mouth. His lips felt pulpy. He hit me with a lead paper-weight and cut my head open. I don't know that I even hit him; I didn't specially want to hit him. I wanted to mark him. There was an extra-size open ink-well on his desk. I poured that over him and rubbed it into his face. Some of it got into his eyes. How he yelled! Of course he had me arrested. I didn't make any defense; I couldn't without bringing in Marna Corcoran's name. The Judge thought I was crazy. I was, pretty near. Three months, he gave me. When I came out Marna Corcoran was dead. I went to find Red McGraw and kill him. He was gone. I think he suspected what I would do. I've never set eyes on him since. Two local newspapers sent for me as soon as my term was up and offered me jobs. I thought it was because of what I had done to McGraw. It wasn't. It was on the strength of the Marna Corcoran interview."

"Good God!"

"I needed a job, too. But I didn't take either of those. Later I got a better one with a decent newspaper. The managing editor said when he took me on: 'Mr. Edmonds, we don't approve of assaults on the city desk. But if you ever receive in this office an assignment of the kind that caused your outbreak, you may take it out on me.' There are pretty fine people in the newspaper business, too."

Edmonds retrieved his pipe, discovering with a look of reproach and dismay that it was out. He wiped away some tiny drops of sweat which had come out upon the grayish skin beneath his eyes, while he was recounting his tragedy.

"That makes my troubles seem petty," said Banneker, under his breath. "I wonder—"

"You wonder why I told you all this," supplemented the veteran. "Since I have, I'll tell you the rest; how I made atonement in a way. Ten years ago I was on a city desk myself. Not very long; but long enough to find I didn't like it. A story came to me through peculiar channels. It was a scandal story; one of those things that New York society whispers about all over the place, yet it's almost impossible to get anything to go on. When I tell you that even The Searchlight, which lives on scandal, kept off it, you can judge how dangerous it was. Well; I had it pat. It was really big stuff of its kind. The woman was brilliant, a daughter of one of the oldest and most noted New York families; and noted in her own right. She had never married: preferred to follow her career. The man was eminent in his line: not a society figure, except by marriage—his wife was active in the Four Hundred—because he had no tastes in that direction. He was nearly twenty years senior to the girl. The affair was desperate from the first. How far it went is doubtful; my informant gave it the worst complexion. Certainly there must have been compromising circumstances, for the wife left him, holding over him the threat of exposure. He cared nothing for himself; and the girl would have given up everything for him. But he was then engaged on a public work of importance; exposure meant the ruin of that. The wife made conditions; that the man should neither speak to, see, nor communicate with the girl. He refused. The girl went into exile and forced him to make the agreement. My informant had a copy of the letter of agreement; you can see how close she was to the family. She said that, if we printed it, the man would instantly break barriers, seek out the girl, and they would go away together. A front-page story, and exclusive."

"So it was a woman who held the key!" exclaimed Banneker.

Edmonds turned on him. "What does that mean? Do you know anything of the story?"

"Not all that you've told me. I know the people."

"Then why did you let me go on?"

"Because they—one of them—is my friend. There is no harm to her in my knowing. It might even be helpful."

"Nevertheless, I think you should have told me at once," grumbled the veteran. "Well, I didn't take the story. The informer said that she would place it elsewhere. I told her that if she did I would publish the whole circumstances of her visit and offer, and make New York too hot to hold her. She retired, bulging with venom like a mad snake. But she dares not tell."

"The man's wife, was it not?"

"Some one representing her, I suspect. A bad woman, that wife. But I saved the girl in memory of Marna Corcoran. Think what the story would be worth, now that the man is coming forward politically!" Edmonds smiled wanly. "It was worth a lot even then, and I threw my paper down on it. Of course I resigned from the city desk at once."

"It's a fascinating game, being on the inside of the big things," ruminated Banneker. "But when it comes to a man's enslaving himself to his paper, I—don't—know."

"No: you won't quit," prophesied the other.

"I have. That is, I've resigned."

"Of course. They all do, of your type. It was the peck of dirt, wasn't it?"

Banneker nodded.

"Gordon won't let you go. And you won't have any more dirt thrown at you—probably. If you do, it'll be time enough then."

"There's more than that."

"Is there? What?"

"We're a pariah caste, Edmonds, we reporters. People look down on us."

"Oh, that be damned! You can't afford to be swayed by the ignorance or snobbery of outsiders. Play the game straight, and let the rest go."

"But we are, aren't we?" persisted Banneker.

"What! Pariahs?" The look which the old-timer bent upon the rising star of the business had in it a quality of brooding and affection. "Son, you're too young to have come properly to that frame of mind. That comes later. With the dregs of disillusion after the sparkle has died out."

"But it's true. You admit it."

"If an outsider said that we were pariahs I'd call him a liar. But, what's the use, with you? It isn't reporting alone. It's the whole business of news-getting and news-presenting; of journalism. We're under suspicion. They're afraid of us. And at the same time they're contemptuous of us."

"Why?"

"Because people are mostly fools and fools are afraid or contemptuous of what they don't understand."

Banneker thought it over. "No. That won't do," he decided. "Men that aren't fools and aren't afraid distrust us and despise the business. Edmonds, there's nothing wrong, essentially, in furnishing news for the public. It's part of the spread of truth. It's the handing on of the light. It's—it's as big a thing as religion, isn't it?"

"Bigger. Religion, seven days a week."

"Well, then—"

"I know, son," said Edmonds gently. "You're thirsting for the clear and restoring doctrine of journalism. And I'm going to give you hell's own heresy. You'll come to it anyway, in time." His fierce little pipe glowed upward upon his knotted brows. "You talk about truth, news: news and truth as one and the same thing. So they are. But newspapers aren't after news: not primarily. Can't you see that?"

"No. What are they after?"

"Sensation."

Banneker turned the word over in his mind, evoking confirmation in the remembered headlines even of the reputable Ledger.

"Sensation," repeated the other. "We've got the speed-up motto in industry. Our newspaper version of it is 'spice-up.' A conference that may change the map of Europe will be crowded off any front page any day by young Mrs. Poultney Masters making a speech in favor of giving girls night-keys, or of some empty-headed society dame being caught in a roadhouse with another lady's hubby. Spice: that's what we're looking for. Something to tickle their jaded palates. And they despise us when we break our necks or our hearts to get it for 'em."

"But if it's what they want, the fault lies with the public, not with us," argued Banneker.

"I used to know a white-stuff man—a cocaine-seller—who had the same argument down pat," retorted Edmonds quietly.

Banneker digested that for a time before continuing.

"Besides, you imply that because news is sensational, it must be unworthy. That isn't fair. Big news is always sensational. And of course the public wants sensation. After all, sensation of one sort or another is the proof of life."

"Hence the noble profession of the pander," observed Edmonds through a coil of minute and ascending smoke-rings. "He also serves the public."

"You're not drawing a parallel—"

"Oh, no! It isn't the same thing, quite. But it's the same public. Let me tell you something to remember, youngster. The men who go to the top in journalism, the big men of power and success and grasp, come through with a contempt for the public which they serve, compared to which the contempt of the public for the newspaper is as skim milk to corrosive sublimate."

"Perhaps that's what is wrong with the business, then."

"Have you any idea," inquired Edmonds softly, "what the philosophy of the Most Ancient Profession is?"

Banneker shook his head.

"I once heard a street-walker on the verge of D.T.'s—she was intelligent; most of 'em are fools—express her analytical opinion of the men who patronized her. The men who make our news system have much the same notion of their public. How much poison they scatter abroad we won't know until a later diagnosis."

"Yet you advise me to stick in the business."

"You've got to. You are marked for it."

"And help scatter the poison!"

"God forbid! I've been pointing out the disease of the business. There's a lot of health in it yet. But it's got to have new blood. I'm too old to do more than help a little. Son, you've got the stuff in you to do the trick. Some one is going to make a newspaper here in this rotten, stink-breathing, sensation-sniffing town that'll be based on news. Truth! There's your religion for you. Go to it."

"And serve a public that I'll despise as soon as I get strong enough to disregard it's contempt for me," smiled Banneker.

"You'll find a public that you can't afford to despise," retorted the veteran. "There is such a public. It's waiting."

"Well; I'll know in a couple of weeks," said Banneker. "But I think I'm about through."

For Edmonds's bitter wisdom had gone far toward confirming his resolution to follow up his first incursion into the magazine field if it met with the success which he confidently expected of it.

As if to hold him to his first allegiance, the ruling spirits of The Ledger now began to make things easy for him. Fat assignments came his way again. Events which seemed almost made to order for his pen were turned over to him by the city desk. Even though he found little time for Sunday "specials," his space ran from fifteen to twenty-five dollars a day, and the "Eban" skits on the editorial page, now paid at double rates because of their popularity, added a pleasant surplus. To put a point to his mysteriously restored favor, Mr. Greenough called up one hot morning and asked Banneker to make what speed he could to Sippiac, New Jersey. Rioting had broken out between mill-guards and the strikers of the International Cloth Company factories, with a number of resulting fatalities. It was a "big story." That Banneker was specially fitted, through his familiarity with the ground, to handle it, the city editor was not, of course, aware.

At Sippiac, Banneker found the typical industrial tragedy of that time and condition, worked out to its logical conclusion. On the one side a small army of hired gun-men, assured of full protection and endorsement in whatever they might do: on the other a mob of assorted foreigners, ignorant, resentful of the law, which seemed only a huge mechanism of injustice manipulated by their oppressors, inflamed by the heavy potations of a festal night carried over into the next day, and, because of the criminally lax enforcement of the law, tacitly permitted to go armed. Who had started the clash was uncertain and, perhaps in essentials, immaterial; so perfectly and fatefully had the stage been set for mutual murder. At the close of the fray there were ten dead. One was a guard: the rest, strikers or their dependents, including a woman and a six-year-old child, both shot down while running away.

By five o'clock that afternoon Banneker was in the train returning to the city with a board across his knees, writing. Five hours later his account was finished. At the end of his work, he had one of those ideas for "pointing" a story, mere commonplaces of journalism nowadays, which later were to give him his editorial reputation. In the pride of his publicity-loving soul, Mr. Horace Vanney, chief owner of the International Cloth Mills, had given to Banneker a reprint of an address by himself, before some philosophical and inquiring society, wherein he had set forth some of his simpler economic theories. A quotation, admirably apropos to Banneker's present purposes, flashed forth clear and pregnant, to his journalistic memory. From the Ledger "morgue" he selected one of several cuts of Mr. Vanney, and turned it in to the night desk for publication, with this descriptive note:

Horace Vanney, Chairman of the Board of the International Cloth Company, Who declares that if working-women are paid more than a bare living wage, The surplus goes into finery and vanities which tempt them to ruin, Mr. Vanney's mills pay girls four dollars a week.

Ravenously hungry, Banneker went out to order a long-delayed dinner at Katie's. Hardly had he swallowed his first mouthful of soup, when an office boy appeared.

"Mr. Gordon wants to know if you can come back to the office at once."

On the theory that two minutes, while important to his stomach, would not greatly matter to the managing editor, Banneker consumed the rest of his soup and returned. He found Mr. Gordon visibly disturbed.

"Sit down, Mr. Banneker," he said.

Banneker compiled.

"We can't use that Sippiac story."

Banneker sat silent and attentive.

"Why did you write it that way?"

"I wrote it as I got it."

"It is not a fair story."

"Every fact—"

"It is a most unfair story."

"Do you know Sippiac, Mr. Gordon?" inquired Banneker equably.

"I do not. Nor can I believe it possible that you could acquire the knowledge of it implied in your article, in a few hours."

"I spent some time investigating conditions there before I came on the paper."

Mr. Gordon was taken aback. Shifting his stylus to his left hand, he assailed severally the knuckles of his right therewith before he spoke. "You know the principles of The Ledger, Mr. Banneker."

"To get the facts and print them, so I have understood."

"These are not facts." The managing editor rapped sharply upon the proof. "This is editorial matter, hardly disguised."

"Descriptive, I should call it," returned the writer amiably.

"Editorial. You have pictured Sippiac as a hell on earth."

"It is."

"Sentimentalism!" snapped the other. His heavy visage wore a disturbed and peevish expression that rendered it quite plaintive. "You have been with us long enough, Mr. Banneker, to know that we do not cater to the uplift-social trade, nor are we after the labor vote."

"Yes, sir. I understand that."

"Yet you present here, what is, in effect, a damning indictment of the Sippiac Mills."

"The facts do that; not I."

"But you have selected your facts, cleverly—oh, very cleverly—to produce that effect, while ignoring facts on the other side."

"Such as?"

"Such as the presence and influence of agitators. The evening editions have the names, and some of the speeches."

"That is merely clouding the main issue. Conditions are such there that no outside agitation is necessary to make trouble."

"But the agitators are there. They're an element and you have ignored it. Mr. Banneker, do you consider that you are dealing fairly with this paper, in attempting to commit it to an inflammatory, pro-strike course?"

"Certainly, if the facts constitute that kind of an argument."

"What of that picture of Horace Vanney? Is that news?"

"Why not? It goes to the root of the whole trouble."

"To print that kind of stuff," said Mr. Gordon forcibly, "would make The Ledger a betrayer of its own cause. What you personally believe is not the point."

"I believe in facts."

"It is what The Ledger believes that is important here. You must appreciate that, as long as you remain on the staff, your only honorable course is to conform to the standards of the paper. When you write an article, it appears to our public, not as what Mr. Banneker says, but as what The Ledger says."

"In other words," said Banneker thoughtfully, "where the facts conflict with The Ledger's theories, I'm expected to adjust the facts. Is that it?"

"Certainly not! You are expected to present the news fairly and without editorial emphasis."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Gordon, but I don't believe I could rewrite that story so as to give a favorable slant to the International's side. Shooting down women and kids, you know—"

Mr. Gordon's voice was crisp as he cut in. "There is no question of your rewriting it. That has been turned over to a man we can trust."

"To handle facts tactfully," put in Banneker in his mildest voice.

Considerably to his surprise, he saw a smile spread over Mr. Gordon's face. "You're an obstinate young animal, Banneker," he said. "Take this proof home, put it under your pillow and dream over it. Tell me a week from now what you think of it."

Banneker rose. "Then, I'm not fired?" he said.

"Not by me."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm trusting in your essential honesty to bring you around."

"To be quite frank," returned Banneker after a moment's thought, "I'm afraid I've got to be convinced of The Ledger's essential honesty to come around."

"Go home and think it over," suggested the managing editor.

To his associate, Andreas, he said, looking at Banneker's retreating back: "We're going to lose that young man, Andy. And we can't afford to lose him."

"What's the matter?" inquired Andreas, the fanatical devotee of the creed of news for news' sake.

"Quixotism. Did you read his story?"

"Yes."

Mr. Gordon looked up from his inflamed knuckles for an opinion.

"A great job," pronounced Andreas, almost reverently.

"But not for us."

"No; no. Not for us."

"It wasn't a fair story," alleged the managing editor with a hint of the defensive in his voice.

"Too hot for that," the assistant supported his chief. "And yet perhaps—"

"Perhaps what?" inquired Mr. Gordon with roving and anxious eye.

"Nothing," said Andreas.

As well as if he had finished, Mr. Gordon supplied the conclusion. "Perhaps it is quite as fair as our recast article will be."

It was, on the whole, fairer.



CHAPTER XII

Sound though Mr. Gordon's suggestion was, Banneker after the interview did not go home to think it over. He went to a telephone booth and called up the Avon Theater. Was the curtain down? It was, just. Could he speak to Miss Raleigh? The affair was managed.

"Hello, Bettina."

"Hello, Ban."

"How nearly dressed are you?"

"Oh—half an hour or so."

"Go out for a bite, if I come up there?"

The telephone receiver gave a transferred effect of conscientious consideration. "No: I don't think so. I'm tired. This is my night for sleep."

To such a basis had the two young people come in the course of the police investigation and afterward, that an agreement had been formulated whereby Banneker was privileged to call up the youthful star at any reasonable hour and for any reasonable project, which she might accept or reject without the burden of excuse.

"Oh, all right!" returned Banneker amiably.

The receiver produced, in some occult manner, the manner of not being precisely pleased with this. "You don't seem much disappointed," it said.

"I'm stricken but philosophical. Don't you see me, pierced to the heart, but—"

"Ban," interrupted the instrument: "you're flippant. Have you been drinking?"

"No. Nor eating either, now that you remind me."

"Has something happened?"

"Something is always happening in this restless world."

"It has. And you want to tell me about it."

"No. I just want to forget it, in your company."

"Is it a decent night out?"

"Most respectable."

"Then you may come and walk me home. I think the air will do me good."

"It's very light diet, though," observed Banneker.

"Oh, very well," responded the telephone in tones of patient resignation. "I'll watch you eat. Good-bye."

Seated at a quiet table in the restaurant, Betty Raleigh leaned back in her chair, turning expectant eyes upon her companion.

"Now tell your aged maiden auntie all about it."

"Did I say I was going to tell you about it?"

"You said you weren't. Therefore I wish to know."

"I think I'm fired."

"Fired? From The Ledger? Do you care?"

"For the loss of the job? Not a hoot. Otherwise I wouldn't be going to fire myself."

"Oh: that's it, is it?"

"Yes. You see, it's a question of my doing my work my way or The Ledger's way. I prefer my way."

"And The Ledger prefers its way, I suppose. That's because what you call your work, The Ledger considers its work."

"In other words, as a working entity, I belong to The Ledger."

"Well, don't you?"

"It isn't a flattering thought. And if the paper wants me to falsify or suppress or distort, I have to do it. Is that the idea?"

"Unless you're big enough not to."

"Being big enough means getting out, doesn't it?"

"Or making yourself so indispensable that you can do things your own way."

"You're a wise child, Betty," said he. "What do you really think of the newspaper business?"

"It's a rotten business."

"That's frank, anyway."

"Now I've hurt your feelings. Haven't I?"

"Not a bit. Roused my curiosity: that's all. Why do you think it a rotten business?"

"It's so—so mean. It's petty."

"As for example?" he pressed.

"See what Gurney did to me—to the play," she replied naively. "Just to be smart."

"Whew! Talk about the feminine propensity for proving a generalization by a specific instance! Gurney is an old man reared in an old tradition. He isn't metropolitan journalism."

"He's dramatic criticism," she retorted.

"No. Only one phase of it."

"Anyway, a successful phase."

"He wants to produce his little sensation," ruminated Banneker, recalling Edmonds's bitter diagnosis. "He does it by being clever. There are worse ways, I suppose."

"He'd always rather say a clever thing than a true one."

Banneker gave her a quick look. "Is that the disease from which the newspaper business is suffering?"

"I suppose so. Anyway, it's no good for you, Ban, if it won't let you be yourself. And write as you think. This isn't new to me. I've known newspaper men before, a lot of them, and all kinds."

"Weren't any of them honest?"

"Lots. But very few of them independent. They can't be. Not even the owners, though they think they are."

"I'd like to try that."

"You'd only have a hundred thousand bosses instead of one," said she wisely.

"You're talking about the public. They're your bosses, too, aren't they?"

"Oh, I'm only a woman. It doesn't matter. Besides, they're not. I lead 'em by the ear—the big, red, floppy ear. Poor dears! They think I love 'em all."

"Whereas what you really love is the power within yourself to please them. You call it art, I suppose."

"Ban! What a repulsive way to put it. You're revenging yourself for what I said about the newspapers."

"Not exactly. I'm drawing the deadly parallel."

She drew down her pretty brows in thought. "I see. But, at worst, I'm interpreting in my own way. Not somebody else's."

"Not your author's?"

"Certainly not," she returned mutinously. "I know how to put a line over better than he possibly could. That's my business."

"I'd hate to write a play for you, Bettina."

"Try it," she challenged. "But don't try to teach me how to play it after it's written."

"I begin to see the effect of the bill-board's printing the star's name in letters two feet high and the playwright's in one-inch type."

"The newspapers don't print yours at all, do they? Unless you shoot some one," she added maliciously.

"True enough. But I don't think I'd shine as a playwright."

"What will you do, then, if you fire yourself?"

"Fiction, perhaps. It's slow but glorious, I understand. When I'm starving in a garret, awaiting fame with the pious and cocksure confidence of genius, will you guarantee to invite me to a square meal once a fortnight? Think what it would give me to look forward to!"

She was looking him in the face with an expression of frank curiosity. "Ban, does money never trouble you?"

"Not very much," he confessed. "It comes somehow and goes every way."

"You give the effect of spending it with graceful ease. Have you got much?"

"A little dribble of an income of my own. I make, I suppose, about a quarter of what your salary is."

"One doesn't readily imagine you ever being scrimped. You give the effect of pros—no, not of prosperity; of—well—absolute ease. It's quite different."

"Much nicer."

"Do you know what they call you, around town?"

"Didn't know I had attained the pinnacle of being called anything, around town."

"They call you the best-dressed first-nighter in New York."

"Oh, damn!" said Banneker fervently.

"That's fame, though. I know plenty of men who would give half of their remaining hairs for it."

"I don't need the hairs, but they can have it."

"Then, too, you know, I'm an asset."

"An asset?"

"Yes. To you, I mean." She pursed her fingers upon the tip of her firm little chin and leaned forward. "Our being seen so much together. Of course, that's a brashly shameless thing to say. But I never have to wear a mask for you. In that way you're a comfortable person."

"You do have to furnish a diagram, though."

"Yes? You're not usually stupid. Whether you try for it or not—and I think there's a dash of the theatrical in your make-up—you're a picturesque sort of animal. And I—well, I help out the picture; make you the more conspicuous. It isn't your good looks alone—you're handsome as the devil, you know, Ban," she twinkled at him—"nor the super-tailored effect which you pretend to despise, nor your fame as a gun-man, though that helps a lot.... I'll give you a bit of tea-talk: two flappers at The Plaza. 'Who's that wonderful-looking man over by the palm?'—'Don't you know him? Why, that's Mr. Banneker.'—'Who's he; and what does he do? Have I seen him on the stage?'—'No, indeed! I don't know what he does; but he's an ex-ranchman and he held off a gang of river-pirates on a yacht, all alone, and killed eight or ten of them. Doesn't he look it!'"

"I don't go to afternoon teas," said the subject of this sprightly sketch, sulkily.

"You will! If you don't look out. Now the same scene several years hence. Same flapper, answering same question: 'Who's Banneker? Oh, a reporter or something, on one of the papers.' Et voila tout!"

"Suppose you were with me at the Plaza, as an asset, several years hence?"

"I shouldn't be—several years hence."

Banneker smiled radiantly. "Which I am to take as fair warning that, unless I rise above my present lowly estate, that waxing young star, Miss Raleigh, will no longer—"

"Ban! What right have you to think me a wretched little snob?"

"None in the world. It's I that am the snob, for even thinking about it. Just the same, what you said about 'only a reporter or something' struck in."

"But in a few years from now you won't be a reporter."

"Shall I still be privileged to invite Miss Raleigh to supper—or was it tea?"

"You're still angry. That isn't fair of you when I'm being so frank. I'm going to be even franker. I'm feeling that way to-night. Comes of being tired, I suppose. Relaxing of the what-you-callems of inhibition. Do you know there's a lot of gossip about us, back of stage?"

"Is there? Do you mind it?"

"No. It doesn't matter. They think I'm crazy about you." Her clear, steady eyes did not change expression or direction.

"You're not; are you?"

"No; I'm not. That's the strange part of it."

"Thanks for the flattering implication. But you couldn't take any serious interest in a mere reporter, could you?" he said wickedly.

This time Betty laughed. "Couldn't I! I could take serious interest in a tumblebug, at times. Other times I wouldn't care if the whole race of men were extinct—and that's most times. I feel your charm. And I like to be with you. You rest me. You're an asset, too, in a way, Ban; because you're never seen with any woman. You're supposed not to care for them.... You've never tried to make love to me even the least little bit, Ban. I wonder why."

"That sounds like an invitation, but—"

"But you know it isn't. That's the delightful part of you; you do know things like that."

"Also I know better than to risk my peace of mind."

"Don't lie to me, my dear," she said softly. "There's some one else."

He made no reply.

"You see, you don't deny it." Had he denied it, she would have said: "Of course you'd deny it!" the methods of feminine detective logic being so devised.

"No; I don't deny it."

"But you don't want to talk about her."

"No."

"It's as bad as that?" she commiserated gently. "Poor Ban! But you're young. You'll get over it." Her brooding eyes suddenly widened. "Or perhaps you won't," she amended with deeper perceptiveness. "Have you been trying me as an anodyne?" she demanded sternly.

Banneker had the grace to blush. Instantly she rippled into laughter.

"I've never seen you at a loss before. You look as sheepish as a stage-door Johnnie when his inamorata gets into the other fellow's car. Ban, you never hung about stage-doors, did you? I think it would be good for you; tame your proud spirit and all that. Why don't you write one of your 'Eban' sketches on John H. Stage-Door?"

"I'll do better than that. Give me of your wisdom on the subject and I'll write an interview with you for Tittle-Tattle."

"Do! And make me awfully clever, please. Our press-agent hasn't put anything over for weeks. He's got a starving wife and seven drunken children, or something like that, and, as he'll take all the credit for the interview and even claim that he wrote it unless you sign it, perhaps it'll get him a raise and he can then buy the girl who plays the manicure part a bunch of orchids. He'd have been a stage-door Johnnie if he hadn't stubbed his toe and become a press-agent."

"All right," said Banneker. "Now: I'll ask the stupid questions and you give the cutie answers."

It was two o'clock when Miss Betty Raleigh, having seen the gist of all her witty and profound observations upon a strange species embodied in three or four scrawled notes on the back of a menu, rose and observed that, whereas acting was her favorite pastime, her real and serious business was sleep. At her door she held her face up to him as straightforwardly as a child. "Good luck to you, dear boy," she said softly. "If I ever were a fortune-teller, I would say that your star was for happiness and success."

He bent and kissed her cheek lightly. "I'll have my try at success," he said. "But the other isn't so easy."

"You'll find them one and the same," was her parting prophecy.

Inured to work at all hours, Banneker went to the small, bare room in his apartment which he kept as a study, and sat down to write the interview. Angles of dawn-light had begun to irradiate the steep canyon of the street by the time he had finished. He read it over and found it good, for its purposes. Every line of it sparkled. It had the effervescent quality which the reading public loves to associate with stage life and stage people. Beyond that, nothing. Banneker mailed it to Miss Westlake for typing, had a bath, and went to bed. At noon he was at The Ledger office, fresh, alert, and dispassionately curious to ascertain the next resolution of the mix-up between the paper and himself.

Nothing happened; at least, nothing indicative. Mr. Greenough's expression was as flat and neutral as the desk over which he presided as he called Banneker's name and said to him:

"Mr. Horace Vanney wishes to relieve his soul of some priceless information. Will you call at his office at two-thirty?"

It was Mr. Vanney's practice, whenever any of his enterprises appeared in a dubious or unfavorable aspect, immediately to materialize in print on some subject entirely unrelated, preferably an announcement on behalf of one of the charitable or civic organizations which he officially headed. Thus he shone forth as a useful, serviceable, and public-spirited citizen, against whom (such was the inference which the newspaper reader was expected to draw) only malignancy could allege anything injurious. In this instance his offering upon the altar of publicity, carefully typed and mimeographed, had just enough importance to entitle it to a paragraph of courtesy. After it was given out to those who called, Mr. Vanney detained Banneker.

"Have you read the morning papers, Mr. Banneker?"

"Yes. That's my business, Mr. Vanney."

"Then you can see, by the outbreak in Sippiac, to what disastrous results anarchism and fomented discontent lead."

"Depends on the point of view. I believe that, after my visit to the mills for you, I told you that unless conditions were bettered you'd have another and worse strike. You've got it."

"Fortunately it is under control. The trouble-makers and thugs have been taught a needed lesson."

"Especially the six-year-old trouble-making thug who was shot through the lungs from behind."

Mr. Vanney scowled. "Unfortunate. And the papers laid unnecessary stress upon that. Wholly unnecessary. Most unfair."

"You would hardly accuse The Ledger, at least, of being unfair to the mill interests."

"Yes. The Ledger's handling, while less objectionable than some of the others, was decidedly unfortunate."

Banneker gazed at him in stupefaction. "Mr. Vanney, The Ledger minimized every detail unfavorable to the mills and magnified every one which told against the strikers. It was only its skill that concealed the bias in every paragraph."

"You are not over-loyal to your employer, sir," commented the other severely.

"At least I'm defending the paper against your aspersions," returned Banneker.

"Most unfair," pursued Mr. Vanney. "Why publish such matter at all? It merely stirs up more discontent and excites hostility against the whole industrial system which has made this country great. And I give more copy to the newspaper men than any other public man in New York. It's rank ingratitude, that's what it is." He meditated upon the injurious matter. "I suppose we ought to have advertised," he added pensively. "Then they'd let us alone as they do the big stores."

Banneker left the Vanney offices with a great truth illuminating his brain; to wit, that news, whether presented ingenuously or disingenuously, will always and inevitably be unpopular with those most nearly affected. For while we all read avidly what we can find about the other man's sins and errors, we all hope, for our own, the kindly mantle of silence. And because news always must and will stir hostility, the attitude of a public, any part of which may be its next innocent (or guilty) victim, is instinctively inimical. Another angle of the pariahdom of those who deal in day-to-day history, for Banneker to ponder.

Feeling a strong desire to get away from the troublous environment of print, Banneker was glad to avail himself of Densmore's invitation to come to The Retreat on the following Monday and try his hand at polo again. This time he played much better, his mallet work in particular being more reliable.

"You ride like an Indian," said Densmore to him after the scratch game, "and you've got no nerves. But I don't see where you got your wrist, except by practice."

"I've had the practice, some time since."

"But if you've only knocked about the field with stable-boys—"

"That's the only play I've ever had. But when I was riding range in the desert, I picked up an old stick and a ball of the owner's, and I've chased that ball over more miles of sand and rubble than you'd care to walk. Cactus plants make very fair goal posts, too; but the sand is tricky going for the ball."

Densmore whistled. "That explains it. Maitland says you'll make the club team in two years. Let us get together and fix you up some ponies," invited Densmore.

Banneker shook his head, but wistfully.

"Until you're making enough to carry your own."

"That might be ten years, in the newspaper business. Or never.

"Then get out of it. Let Old Man Masters find you something in the Street. You could get away with it," persuaded Densmore. "And he'll do anything for a polo-man."

"No, thank you. No paid-athlete job for mine. I'd rather stay a reporter."

"Come into the club, anyway. You can afford that. And at least you can take a mount on your day off."

"I'm thinking of another job where I'll have more time to myself than one day a week," confessed Banneker, having in mind possible magazine work. He thought of the pleasant remoteness of The Retreat. It was expensive; it would involve frequent taxi charges. But, as ever, Banneker had an unreasoning faith in a financial providence of supply. "Yes: I'll come in," he said. "That is, if I can get in."

"You'll get in, with Poultney Masters for a backer. Otherwise, I'll tell you frankly, I think your business would keep you out, in spite of your polo."

"Densmore, there's something I've been wanting to put up to you."

Densmore's heavy brows came to attention. "Fire ahead."

"You were ready to beat me up when I came here to ask you certain questions."

"I was. Any fellow would be. You would."

"Perhaps. But suppose, through the work of some other reporter, a divorce story involving the sister and brother-in-law of some chap in your set had appeared in the papers."

"No concern of mine."

"But you'd read it, wouldn't you?"

"Probably."

"And if your paper didn't have it in and another paper did, you'd buy the other paper to find out about it."

"If I was interested in the people, I might."

"Then what kind of a sport are you, when you're keen to read about other people's scandals, but sore on any one who inquires about yours?"

"That's the other fellow's bad luck. If he—"

"You don't get my point. A newspaper is simply a news exchange. If you're ready to read about the affairs of others, you should not resent the activity of the newspaper that attempts to present yours. I'm merely advancing a theory."

"Damned ingenious," admitted the polo-player. "Make a reporter a sort of public agent, eh? Only, you see, he isn't. He hasn't any right to my private affairs."

"Then you shouldn't take advantage of his efforts, as you do when you read about your friends."

"Oh, that's too fine-spun for me. Now, I'll tell you; just because I take a drink at a bar I don't make a pal of the bartender. It comes to about the same thing, I fancy. You're trying to justify your profession. Let me ask you; do you feel that you're within your decent rights when you come to a stranger with such a question as you put up to me?"

"No; I don't," replied Banneker ruefully. "I feel like a man trying to hold up a bigger man with a toy pistol."

"Then you'd better get into some other line."

But whatever hopes Banneker may have had of the magazine line suffered a set-back when, a few days later, he called upon the Great Gaines at his office, and was greeted with a cheery though quizzical smile.

"Yes; I've read it," said the editor at once, not waiting for the question. "It's clever. It's amazingly clever."

"I'm glad you like it," replied Banneker, pleased but not surprised.

Mr. Gaines's expression became one of limpid innocence. "Like it? Did I say I liked it?"

"No; you didn't say so."

"No. As a matter of fact I don't like it. Dear me, no! Not at all. Where did you get the idea?" asked Mr. Gaines abruptly.

"The plot?"

"No; no. Not the plot. The plot is nothing. The idea of choosing such an environment and doing the story in that way."

"From The New Era Magazine."

"I begin to see. You have been studying the magazine."

"Yes. Since I first had the idea of trying to write for it."

"Flattered, indeed!" said Mr. Gaines dryly. "And you modeled yourself upon—what?"

"I wrote the type of story which the magazine runs to."

"Pardon me. You did not. You wrote, if you will forgive me, an imitation of that type. Your story has everything that we strive for except reality."

"You believe that I have deliberately copied—"

"A type, not a story. No; you are not a plagiarist, Mr. Banneker. But you are very thoroughly a journalist."

"Coming from you that can hardly be accounted a compliment."

"Nor is it so intended. But I don't wish you to misconstrue me. You are not a journalist in your style and method; it goes deeper than that. You are a journalist in your—well, in your approach. 'What the public wants.'"

Inwardly Banneker was raging. The incisive perception stung. But he spoke lightly. "Doesn't The New Era want what its public wants?"

"My dear sir, in the words of a man who ought to have been an editor of to-day, 'The public be damned!' What I looked to you for was not your idea of what somebody else wanted you to write, but your expression of what you yourself want to write. About hoboes. About railroad wrecks. About cowmen or peddlers or waterside toughs or stage-door Johnnies, or ward politicians, or school-teachers, or life. Not pink teas."

"I have read pink-tea stories in your magazine."

"Of course you have. Written by people who could see through the pink to the primary colors underneath. When you go to a pink tea, you are pink. Did you ever go to one?"

Still thoroughly angry, Banneker nevertheless laughed, "Then the story is no use?"

"Not to us, certainly. Miss Thornborough almost wept over it. She said that you would undoubtedly sell it to The Bon Vivant and be damned forever."

"Thank her on my behalf," returned the other gravely. "If The Bon Vivant wants it and will pay for it, I shall certainly sell it to them."

"Out of pique?... Hold hard, young sir! You can't shoot an editor in his sanctum because of an ill-advised but natural question."

"True enough. Nor do I want—well, yes; I would rather like to."

"Good! That's natural and genuine."

"What do you think The Bon Vivant would pay for that story?" inquired Banneker.

"Perhaps a hundred dollars. Cheap, for a career, isn't it!"

"Isn't the assumption that there is but one pathway to the True Art and but one signboard pointing to it a little excessive?"

"Abominably. There are a thousand pathways, broad and narrow. They all go uphill.... Some day when you spin something out of your own inside, Mr. Banneker, forgive the well-meaning editor and let us see it. It might be pure silk."

All the way downtown, Banneker cursed inwardly but brilliantly. This was his first set-back. Everything prior which he had attempted had been successful. Inevitably the hard, firm texture of his inner endurance had softened under the spoiled-child treatment which the world had readily accorded him. Even while he recognized this, he sulked.

To some extent he was cheered up by a letter from the editor of that lively and not too finicky publication, Tittle-Tattle. The interview with Miss Raleigh was acclaimed with almost rapturous delight. It was precisely the sort of thing wanted. Proof had already been sent to Miss Raleigh, who was equally pleased. Would Mr. Banneker kindly read and revise enclosed proof and return it as soon as possible? Mr. Banneker did better than that. He took back the corrected proof in person. The editor was most cordial, until Banneker inquired what price was to be paid for the interview. Then the editor was surprised and grieved. It appeared that he had not expected to pay anything for it.