"Do you expect to get copy for nothing?" inquired the astonished and annoyed Banneker.

"If it comes to that," retorted the sharp-featured young man at the editorial desk, "you're the one that's getting something for nothing."

"I don't follow you."

"Come off! This is red-hot advertising matter for Betty Raleigh, and you know it. Why, I ought to charge a coupla hundred for running it at all. But you being a newspaper man and the stuff being so snappy, I'm willing to make an exception. Besides, you're a friend of Raleigh's, ain't you? Well—'nuff said!"

It was upon the tip of Banneker's tongue to demand the copy back. Then he bethought himself of Betty's disappointment. The thing was well done. If he had been a thousand miles short of giving even a hint of the real Betty—who was a good deal of a person—at least he had embodied much of the light and frivolous charm which was her stage stock-in-trade, and what her public wanted. He owed her that much, anyhow.

"All right," he said shortly.

He left, and on the street-car immersed himself in some disillusioning calculations. Suppose he did sell the rejected story to The Bon Vivant. One hundred dollars, he had learned, was the standard price paid by that frugal magazine; that would not recompense him for the time bestowed upon it. He could have made more by writing "specials" for the Sunday paper. And on top of that to find that a really brilliant piece of interviewing had brought him in nothing more substantial than congratulations and the sense of a good turn done for a friend!

The magazine field, he began to suspect, might prove to be arid land.



CHAPTER XIII

What next? Banneker put the query to himself with more seriousness than he had hitherto given to estimating the future. Money, as he told Betty Raleigh, had never concerned him much. His start at fifteen dollars a week had been more than he expected; and though his one weekly evening of mild sybaritism ate up all his margin, and his successful sartorial experiments consumed his private surplus, he had no cause for worry, since his salary had been shortly increased to twenty, and even more shortly thereafter to twenty-five. Now it was a poor week in which he did not exceed the hundred. All of it went, rather more fluently than had the original fifteen. Frugal though he could be in normal expenditures, the rental of his little but fashionably situated apartment, his new club expenses, his polo outfit, and his occasional associations with the after-theater clique, which centered at The Avon, caused the debit column to mount with astonishing facility. Furthermore, through his Western associations he had an opportunity to pick up two half-broken polo ponies at bargain prices. He had practically decided to buy them. Their keep would be a serious item. He must have more money. How to get it? Harder work was the obvious answer. Labor had no terrors for Banneker. Mentally he was a hardened athlete, always in training. Being wise and self-protective, he did no writing on his day off. But except for this period of complete relaxation, he gave himself no respite. Any morning which did not find him writing in his den, after a light, working breakfast, he put in at the Library near by, insatiably reading economics, sociology, politics, science, the more serious magazines, and always the news and comments of the day. He was possessed of an assertive and sane curiosity to know what was going on in the world, an exigence which pressed upon him like a healthy appetite, the stimulus of his hard-trained mental condition. The satisfaction of this demand did not pay an immediate return; he obtained little or no actual material to be transmuted into the coin of so-much-per-column, except as he came upon suggestions for editorial use; and, since his earlier experience of The Ledger's editorial method with contributions (which he considered light-fingered), he had forsworn this medium. Notwithstanding this, he wrote or sketched out many an editorial which would have astonished, and some which would have benefited, the Inside Room where the presiding genius, malicious and scholarly, dipped his pen alternately into luminous ether and undiluted venom. Some day, Banneker was sure, he himself was going to say things editorially.

His opinion of the editorial output in general was unflattering. It seemed to him bound by formalism and incredibly blind to the immense and vivid interest of the news whereby it was surrounded, as if a man, set down in a meadow full of deep and clear springs, should elect to drink from a shallow, torpid, and muddy trickle. Legislation, taxes, transportation problems, the Greatness of Our City, our National Duty (whatever it might be at the time—and according to opinion), the drink question, the race problem, labor and capital; these were the reiterated topics, dealt with informatively often, sometimes wittily, seldom impartially. But, at best, this was but the creaking mechanism of the artificial structure of society, and it was varied only by an occasional literary or artistic sally, or a preachment in the terms of a convinced moralization upon the unvarying text that the wages of sin is death. Why not a touch of humanism, now and again, thought Banneker, following the inevitable parallels in paper after paper; a ray of light striking through into the life-texture beneath?

By way of experiment he watched the tide of readers, flowing through the newspaper room of the Public Library, to ascertain what they read. Not one in thirty paid any attention to the editorial pages. Essaying farther afield, he attended church on several occasions. His suspicions were confirmed; from the pulpit he heard, addressed to scanty congregations, the same carefully phrased, strictly correct comments, now dealing, however, with the mechanism of another world. The chief point of difference was that the newspaper editorials were, on the whole, more felicitously worded and more compactly thought out. Essentially, however, the two ran parallel.

Banneker wondered whether the editorial rostrum, too, was fated to deliver its would-be authoritative message to an audience which threatened to dwindle to the vanishing point. Who read those carefully wrought columns in The Ledger? Pot-bellied chair-warmers in clubs; hastening business men appreciative of the daily assurance that stability is the primal and final blessing, discontent the cardinal sin, the extant system perfect and holy, and any change a wile of the forces of destruction—as if the human race had evoluted by the power of standing still! For the man in the street they held no message. No; nor for the woman in the home. Banneker thought of young Smith of the yacht and the coming millions, with a newspaper waiting to drop into his hands. He wished he could have that newspaper—any newspaper, for a year. He'd make the man in the street sit up and read his editorials. Yes, and the woman in the home. Why not the boy and the girl in school, also? Any writer, really master of his pen, ought to be able to make even a problem in algebra editorially interesting!

And if he could make it interesting, he could make it pay.... But how was he to profit by all this hard work, this conscientious technical training to which he was devoting himself? True, it was improving his style. But for the purposes of Ledger reporting, he wrote quite well enough. Betterment here might be artistically satisfactory; financially it would be fruitless. Already his space bills were the largest, consistently, on the staff, due chiefly to his indefatigable industry in devoting every spare office hour to writing his "Eban" sketches, now paid at sixteen dollars a column, and Sunday "specials." He might push this up a little, but not much.

From the magazine field, expectations were meager in the immediate sense. True, The Bon Vivant had accepted the story which The Era rejected; but it had paid only seventy-five dollars. Banneker did not care to go farther on that path. Aside from the unsatisfactory return, his fastidiousness revolted from being identified with the output of a third-class and flashy publication. Whatever The Ledger's shortcomings, it at least stood first in its field. But was there any future for him there, other than as a conspicuously well-paid reporter? In spite of the critical situation which his story of the Sippiac riots had brought about, he knew that he was safe as long as he wished to stay.

"You're too valuable to lose," said Tommy Burt, swinging his pudgy legs over Banneker's desk, having finished one of his mirthful stories of a row between a wine agent and a theatrical manager over a doubly reserved table in a conspicuous restaurant. "Otherwise—phutt! But they'll be very careful what kind of assignments they hand over to your reckless hands in future. You mustn't throw expensive and brittle conventions at the editor's head. They smash."

"And the fragments come back and cut. I know. But what does it all lead to, Tommy?"

"Depends on which way you're going."

"To the top, naturally."

"From anybody else that would sound blatant, Ban," returned Tommy admiringly. "Somehow you get away with it. Are you as sincere as you act?"

"In so far as my intentions go. Of course, I may trip up and break myself in two."

"No. You'll always fall light. There's a buoyancy about you.... But what about coming to the end of the path and finding nowhere else to proceed?"

"Paragon of wisdom, you have stated the situation. Now produce the answer."

"More money?" inquired Tommy.

"More money. More opportunity."

"Then you've got to aim at the executive end. Begin by taking a copy-desk."

"At forty a week?"

"It isn't so long ago that twenty-five looked pretty big to you, Ban."

"A couple of centuries ago," stated Banneker positively. "Forty a week wouldn't keep me alive now."

"You could write a lot of specials. Or do outside work."

"Perhaps. But what would a desk lead to?

"City editor. Night city editor. Night editor. Managing editor at fifteen thou."

"After ten years. If one has the patience. I haven't. Besides, what chance would I have?'

"None, with the present lot in the Inside Room. You're a heretic. You're unsound. You've got dangerous ideas—accent on the dangerous. I doubt if they'd even trust you with a blue pencil. You might inject something radical into a thirty-head."

"Tommy," said Banneker, "I'm still new at this game. What becomes of star reporters?"

"Drink," replied Tommy brusquely.

"Rats!" retorted Banneker. "That's guff. There aren't three heavy drinkers in this office."

"A lot of the best men go that way," persisted Burt. "It's the late hours and the irregular life, I suppose. Some drift out into other lines. This office has trained a lot of playwrights and authors and ad-men."

"But some must stick."

"They play out early. The game is too hard. They get to be hacks. Or permanent desk-men. D'you know Philander Akely?"

"Who is he?"

"Ask me who he was and I'll tell you. He was the brilliant youngster, the coruscating firework, the—the Banneker of ten years ago. Come into the den and meet him."

In one of the inner rooms Banneker was introduced to a fragile, desiccated-looking man languidly engaged in scissoring newspaper after newspaper which he took from a pile and cast upon the floor after operation. The clippings he filed in envelopes. A checkerboard lay on the table beside him.

"Do you play draughts, Mr. Banneker?" he asked in a rumbling bass.

"Very little and very poorly."

The other sighed. "It is pure logic, in the form of contest. Far more so than chess, which is merely sustained effort of concentration. Are you interested in emblemology?"

"I'm afraid I know almost nothing of it," confessed Banneker.

Akely sighed again, gave Banneker a glance which proclaimed an utter lack of interest, and plunged his shears into the editorial vitals of the Springfield Republican. Tommy Burt led the surprised Banneker away.

"Dried up, played out, and given a measly thirty-five a week as hopper-feeder for the editorial room," he announced. "And he was the star man of his time."

"That's pretty rotten treatment for him, then," said Banneker indignantly.

"Not a bit of it. He isn't worth what he gets. Most offices would have chucked him out on the street."

"What was his trouble?"

"Nothing in particular. Just wore his machine out. Everything going out, nothing coming in. He spun out enough high-class copy to keep the ordinary reporter going for a life-time; but he spun it out too fast. Nothing left. The tragedy of it is that he's quite happy."

"Then it isn't a tragedy at all."

"Depends on whether you take the Christian or the Buddhist point of view. He's found his Nirvana in checker problems and collecting literature about insignia. Write? I don't suppose he'd want to if he could. 'There but for the grace of God goes'—you or I. I think the facilis descensus to the gutter is almost preferable."

"So you've shown him to me as a dreadful warning, have you, Tommy?" mused Banneker aloud.

"Get out of it, Ban; get out of it."

"Why don't you get out of it yourself?"

"Inertia. Or cowardice. And then, I haven't come to the turning-point yet. When I do reach it, perhaps it'll be too late."

"What do you reckon the turning-point?"

"As long as you feel the excitement of the game," explained this veteran of thirty, "you're all right. That will keep you going; the sense of adventure, of change, of being in the thick of things. But there's an underlying monotony, so they tell me: the monotony of seeing things by glimpses, of never really completing a job, of being inside important things, but never of them. That gets into your veins like a clogging poison. Then you're through. Quit it, Ban, before it's too late."

"No. I'm not going to quit the game. It's my game. I'm going to beat it."

"Maybe. You've got the brains. But I think you're too stiff in the backbone. Go-to-hell-if-you-don't-like-the-way-I-do-it may be all right for a hundred-dollar-a-week job; but it doesn't get you a managing editorship at fifteen to twenty thousand. Even if it did, you'd give up the go-to-hell attitude as soon as you landed, for fear it would cost you your job and be too dear a luxury."

"All right, Mr. Walpole," laughed Banneker. "When I find what my price is, I'll let you know. Meantime I'll think over your well-meant advice."

If the normal way of advancement were closed to him in The Ledger office because of his unsound and rebellious attitude on social and labor questions, there might be better opportunities in other offices, Banneker reflected.

Before taking any step he decided to talk over the general situation with that experienced campaigner, Russell Edmonds. Him and his diminutive pipe he found at Katie's, after most of the diners had left. The veteran nodded when Banneker told him of his having reached what appeared to be a cul-de-sac.

"It's about time you quit," said Edmonds vigorously.

"You've changed your mind?"

The elder nodded between two spirals of smoke which gave him the appearance of an important godling delivering oracles through incense. "That was a dam' bad story you wrote of the Sippiac killings."

"I didn't write it."

"Didn't uh? You were there."

"My story went to the office cat."

"What was the stuff they printed? Amalgamated Wire Association?"

"No. Machine-made rewrite in the office."

"It wasn't dishonest. The Ledger's too clever for that. It was unhonest. You can't be both neutral and fair on cold-blooded murder."

"You weren't precisely neutral in The Courier."

Edmonds chuckled. "I did rather put it over on the paper. But that was easy. Simply a matter of lining up the facts in logical sequence."

"Horace Vanney says you're an anarchist."

"It's mutual. I think he's one. To hell with all laws and rights that discommode Me and My interests. That's the Vanney platform."

"He thinks he ought to have advertised."

"Wise guy! So he ought."

"To secure immunity?"

It required six long, hard puffs to elicit from Edmonds the opinion: "He'd have got it. Partly. Not all he paid for."

"Not from The Ledger," said Banneker jealously. "We're independent in that respect."

Edmonds laughed. "You don't have to bribe your own heeler. The Ledger believes in Vanney's kind of anarchism, as in a religion."

"Could he have bought off The Courier?"

"Nothing as raw as that. But it's quite possible that if the Sippiac Mills had been a heavy advertiser, the paper wouldn't have sent me to the riots. Some one more sympathetic, maybe."

"Didn't they kick on your story?"

"Who? The mill people? Howled!"

"But it didn't get them anything?"

"Didn't it! You know how difficult it is to get anything for publication out of old Rockface Enderby. Well, I had a brilliant idea that this was something he'd talk about. Law Enforcement stuff, you know. And he did. Gave me a hummer of an interview. Tore the guts out of the mill-owners for violating all sorts of laws, and put it up that the mill-guards were themselves a lawless organization. There's nothing timid about Enderby. Why, we'd have started a controversy that would be going yet."

"Well, why didn't you?"

"Interview was killed," replied Edmonds, grinning ruefully. "For the best interests of the paper. That's what the Vanney crowd's kick got them."

"Pop, what do you make of Willis Enderby?"

"Oh, he's plodding along only a couple of decades behind his time."

"A reactionary?"

"Didn't I say he was plodding along? A reactionary is immovable except in the wrong direction. Enderby's a conservative."

"As a socialist you're against any one who isn't as radical as you are."

"I'm not against Willis Enderby. I'm for him," grunted the veteran.

"Why; if he's a conservative?"

"Oh, as for that, I can bring a long indictment against him. He's a firm believer in the capitalistic system. He's enslaved to the old economic theories, supply and demand, and all that rubbish from the ruins of ancient Rome. He believes that gold is the only sound material for pillars of society. The aristocratic idea is in his bones." Edmonds, by a feat of virtuosity, sent a thin, straight column of smoke, as it might have been an allegorical and sardonic pillar itself, almost to the ceiling. "But he believes in fair play. Free speech. Open field. The rigor of the game. He's a sportsman in life and affairs. That's why he's dangerous."

"Dangerous? To whom?"

"To the established order. To the present system. Why, son, all we Socialists ask is fair play. Give us an even chance for labor, for the proletariat; an even show before the courts, an open forum in the newspapers, the right to organize as capital organizes, and we'll win. If we can't win, we deserve to lose. I say that men like Willis Enderby are our strongest supporters."

"Probably he thinks his side will win, under the strict rules of the game."

"Of course. But if he didn't, he'd still be for fair play, to the last inch."

"That's a pretty fine thing to say of a man, Pop."

"It's a pretty fine man," said Edmonds.

"What does Enderby want? What is he after?"

"For himself? Nothing. It's something to be known as the ablest honest lawyer in New York. Or, you can turn it around and say he's the honestest able lawyer in New York. I think, myself, you wouldn't be far astray if you said the ablest and honestest. No; he doesn't want anything more than what he's got: his position, his money, his reputation. Why should he? But it's going to be forced on him one of these days."

"Politically?"

"Yes. Whatever there is of leadership in the reform element here centers in him. It's only a question of time when he'll have to carry the standard."

"I'd like to be able to fall in behind him when the time comes."

"On The Ledger?" grunted Edmonds.

"But I shan't be on The Ledger when the time comes. Not if I can find any other place to go."

"Plenty of places," affirmed Edmonds positively.

"Yes; but will they give me the chance I want?"

"Not unless you make it for yourself. But let's canvass 'em. You want a morning paper."

"Yes. Not enough salary in the evening field."

"Well: you've thought of The Sphere first, I suppose."

"Naturally. I like their editorial policy. Their news policy makes me seasick."

"I'm not so strong for the editorials. They're always for reform and never for progress."

"Ah, but that's epigram."

"It's true, nevertheless. The Sphere is always tiptoeing up to the edge of some decisive policy, and then running back in alarm. What of The Observer? They're looking for new blood."

"The Observer! O Lord! Preaches the eternal banalities and believes them the eternal verities."

"Epigram, yourself," grinned Edmonds. "Well, The Monitor?"

"The three-card Monitor, and marked cards at that."

"Yes; you'd have to watch the play. The Graphic then?"

"Nothing but an ornamental ghost. The ghost of a once handsomely kept lady. I don't aspire to write daily epitaphs."

"And The Messenger I suppose you wouldn't even call a kept lady. Too common. Babylonian stuff. But The Express is respectable enough for anybody."

"And conscious of it in every issue. One long and pious scold, after a high-minded, bad-tempered formula of its own."

"Then I'll give you a motto for your Ledger." Edmonds puffed it out enjoyably,—decorated with bluish and delicate whorls. "'Meliora video proboque, deleriora sequor.'"

"No; I won't have that. The last part will do; we do follow the worser way; but if we see the better, we don't approve it. We don't even recognize it as the better. We're honestly convinced in our advocacy of the devil."

"I don't know that we're honestly convinced of anything on The Courier, except of the desirability of keeping friendly with everybody. But such as we are, we'd grab at you."

"No; thanks, Pop. You yourself are enough in the troubled-water duckling line for one old hen like The Courier."

"Then there remains only The Patriot, friend of the Pee-pul."

"Skimmed scum," was Banneker's prompt definition. "And nothing in the soup underneath."

Ernst, the waiter, scuttled across the floor below, and disappeared back of the L-angle a few feet away.

"Somebody's dining there," remarked Edmonds, "while we've been stripping the character off every paper in the field."

"May it be all the editors and owners in a lump!" said Banneker. "I'm sorry I didn't talk louder. I'm feeling reckless."

"Bad frame of mind for a man seeking a job. By the way, what are you out after, exactly? Aiming at the editorial page, aren't you?"

Banneker leaned over the table, his face earnest to the point of somberness. "Pop," he said, "you know I can write."

"You can write like the devil," Edmonds offered up on twin supports of vapor.

"Yes, and I can do more than that. I can think."

"For self, or others?" propounded the veteran.

"I take you. I can think for myself and make it profitable to others, if I can find the chance. Why, Pop, this editorial game is child's play!"

"You've tried it?"

"Experimentally. The opportunities are limitless. I could make people read editorials as eagerly as they read scandal or baseball."

"How?"

"By making them as simple and interesting as scandal or baseball."

"Oh! As easy as that," observed Edmonds scornfully. "High art, son! Nobody's found the way yet. Perhaps, if—"

He stopped, took his pipe from his lips and let his raised eyes level themselves toward the corner of the L where appeared a figure.

"Would you gentlemen mind if I took my coffee with you?" said the newcomer smoothly.

Banneker looked with questioning eyebrows toward Edmonds, who nodded. "Come up and sit down, Mr. Marrineal," invited Banneker, moving his chair to leave a vacancy between himself and his companion.



CHAPTER XIV

Tertius C. Marrineal was a man of forty, upon whom the years had laid no bonds. A large fortune, founded by his able but illiterate father in the timber stretches of the Great Lakes region, and spread out into various profitable enterprises of mining, oil, cattle, and milling, provided him with a constantly increasing income which, though no amateur at spending, he could never quite overtake. Like many other hustlers of his day and opportunity, old Steve Marrineal had married a shrewd little shopgirl who had come up with him through the struggle by the slow, patient steps described in many of our most improving biographies. As frequently occurs, though it doesn't get into the biographies, she who had played a helpful role in adversity, could not withstand affluence. She bloated physically and mentally, and became the juicy and unsuspecting victim of a horde of parasites and flatterers who swarmed eagerly upon her, as soon as the rough and contemptuous protection of her husband was removed by the hand of a medical prodigy who advertised himself as the discoverer of a new and infallible cure for cancer, and whom Mrs. Marrineal, with an instinctive leaning toward quackery, had forced upon her spouse. Appraising his prospective widow with an accurate eye, the dying man left a testament bestowing the bulk of his fortune upon his son, with a few heavy income-producing properties for Mrs. Marrineal. Tertius Marrineal was devoted to his mother, with a jealous, pitying, and protective affection. This is popularly approved as the infallible mark of a good man. Tertius Marrineal was not a good man.

Nor was there any particular reason why he should be. Boys who have a business pirate for father, and a weak-minded coddler for mother, seldom grow into prize exhibits. Young Marrineal did rather better than might have been expected, thanks to the presence at his birth-cradle of a robust little good-fairy named Self-Preservation, who never gets half the credit given to more picturesque but less important gift-bringers. He grew up with an instinctive sense of when to stop. Sometimes he stopped inopportunely. He quit several courses of schooling too soon, because he did not like the unyielding regimen of the institutions. When, a little, belated, he contrived to gain entrance to a small, old, and fashionable Eastern college, he was able, or perhaps willing, to go only halfway through his sophomore year. Two years in world travel with a well-accredited tutor seemed to offer an effectual and not too rigorous method of completing the process of mind-formation. Young Marrineal got a great deal out of that trip, though the result should perhaps be set down under the E of Experience rather than that of Erudition. The mentor also acquired experience, but it profited him little, as he died within the year after the completion of the trip, his health having been sacrificed in a too conscientious endeavor to keep even pace with his pupil. Young Marrineal did not suffer in health. He was a robust specimen. Besides, there was his good and protective fairy always ready with the flag of warning at the necessary moment.

Launched into the world after the elder Marrineal's death, Tertius interested himself in sundry of the businesses left by his father. Though they had been carefully devised and surrounded with safeguards, the heir managed to break into and improve several of them. The result was more money. After having gambled with fair luck, played the profuse libertine for a time, tried his hand at yachting, horse-racing, big-game hunting, and even politics, he successively tired of the first three, and was beaten at the last, but retained an unsatisfied hunger for it. To celebrate his fortieth birthday, he had bought a house on the eastern vista of Central Park, and drifted into a rather indeterminate life, identified with no special purpose, occupation, or set. Large though his fortune was, it was too much disseminated and he was too indifferent to it, for him to be conspicuous in the money game which constitutes New York's lists of High Endeavor. His reputation, in the city of careless reckonings, was vague, but just a trifle tarnished; good enough for the casual contacts which had hitherto made up his life, but offering difficulties should he wish to establish himself more firmly.

The best clubs were closed to him; he had reached his possible summit along that path in achieving membership in the recently and superbly established Oligarchs Club, which was sumptuous, but over-vivid like a new Oriental rug. As to other social advancement, his record was an obstacle. Not that it was worse than, nor indeed nearly as bad as, that of many an established member of the inner circle; but the test for an outsider seeking admittance is naturally made more severe. Delavan Eyre, for example, an average sinner for one of his opportunities and standing, had certainly no better a general repute, and latterly a much more dubious one than Marrineal. But Eyre "belonged" of right.

As sufficient indication of Marrineal's status, by the way, it may be pointed out that, while he knew Eyre quite well, it was highly improbable that he would ever know Mrs. Eyre, or, if he did fortuitously come to know her, that he would be able to improve upon the acquaintance. All this Marrineal himself well understood. But it must not be inferred that he resented it. He was far too much of a philosopher for that. It amused him as offering a new game to be played, more difficult certainly and inferentially more interesting than any of those which had hitherto enlisted his somewhat languid efforts. He appreciated also, though with a cynical disbelief in the logic of the situation, that he must polish up his reputation. He was on the new quest at the time when he overheard Banneker and Edmonds discuss the journalistic situation in Katie's restaurant, and had already determined upon his procedure.

Sitting between the two newspaper workers, Marrineal overtopped them both; the supple strength of Banneker as well as the gnarly slenderness of Edmonds. He gave an impression of loose-jointed and rather lazy power; also of quiet self-confidence. He began to talk at once, with the easy, drifting commentary of a man who had seen everything, measured much, and liked the glittering show. Both of the others, one his elder, the other his junior, felt the ready charm of the man. Both were content to listen, waiting for the clue to his intrusion which he had contrived to make not only inoffensive, but seemingly a casual act of good-fellowship. The clue was not afforded, but presently some shrewd opinion of the newcomer upon the local political situation set them both to discussion. Quite insensibly Marrineal withdrew from the conversation, sipping his coffee and listening with an effect of effortless amenity.

"If we had a newspaper here that wasn't tied hard and fast, politically!" cried Edmonds presently.

Marrineal fingered a specially fragrant cigar. "But a newspaper must be tied to something, mustn't it?" he queried. "Otherwise it drifts."

"Why not to its reading public?" suggested Banneker.

"That's an idea. But can you tie to a public? Isn't the public itself adrift, like seaweed?"

"Blown about by the gales of politics." Edmonds accepted the figure. "Well, the newspaper ought to be the gale."

"I gather that you gentlemen do not think highly of present journalistic conditions."

"You overheard our discussion," said Banneker bluntly.

Marrineal assented. "It did not seem private. Katie's is a sort of free forum. That is why I come. I like to listen. Besides, it touched me pretty closely at one or two points."

The two others turned toward him, waiting. He nodded, and took upon himself an air of well-pondered frankness. "I expect to take a more active part in journalism from now on."

Edmonds followed up the significant phrase. "More active? You have newspaper interests?"

"Practically speaking, I own The Patriot. What do you gentlemen think of it?"

"Who reads The Patriot?" inquired Banneker. He was unprepared for the swift and surprised flash from Marrineal's fine eyes, as if some profoundly analytical or revealing suggestion had been made.

"Forty thousand men, women, and children. Not half enough, of course."

"Not a tenth enough, I would say, if I owned the paper. Nor are they the right kind of readers."

"How would you define them, then?" asked Marrineal, still in that smooth voice.

"Small clerks. Race-track followers. People living in that class of tenements which call themselves flats. The more intelligent servants. Totally unimportant people."

"Therefore a totally unimportant paper?"

"A paper can be important only through what it makes people believe and think. What possible difference can it make what The Patriot's readers think?"

"If there were enough of them?" suggested Marrineal.

"No. Besides, you'll never get enough of them, in the way you're running the paper now."

"Don't say 'you,' please," besought Marrineal. "I've been keeping my hands off. Watching."

"And now you're going to take hold?" queried Edmonds. "Personally?"

"As soon as I can find my formula—and the men to help me work it out," he added, after a pause so nicely emphasized that both his hearers had a simultaneous inkling of the reason for his being at their table.

"I've seen newspapers run on formula before," muttered Edmonds.

"Onto the rocks?"

"Invariably."

"That's because the formulas were amateur formulas, isn't it?"

The veteran of a quarter-century turned a mildly quizzical smile upon the adventurer into risky waters. "Well?" he jerked out.

Marrineal's face was quite serious as he took up the obvious implication. "Where is the dividing line between professional and amateur in the newspaper business? You gentlemen will bear with me if I go into personal details a little. I suppose I've always had the newspaper idea. When I was a youngster of twenty, I tried myself out. Got a job as a reporter in St. Louis. It was just a callow escapade. And of course it couldn't last. I was an undisciplined sort of cub. They fired me; quite right, too. But I did learn a little. And at least it educated me in one thing; how to read newspapers." He laughed lightly. "Perhaps that is as nearly thorough an education as I've ever had in anything."

"It's rather an art, newspaper reading," observed Banneker.

"You've tried it, I gather. So have I, rather exhaustively in the last year. I've been reading every paper in New York every day and all through."

"That's a job for an able-minded man," commented Edmonds, looking at him with a new respect.

"It put eye-glasses on me. But if it dimmed my eyes, it enlightened my mind. The combined newspapers of New York do not cover the available field. They do not begin to cover it.... Did you say something, Mr. Banneker?"

"Did I? I didn't mean to," said Banneker hastily. "I'm a good deal interested."

"I'm glad to hear that," returned Marrineal with gravity. "After I'd made my estimate of what the newspapers publish and fail to publish, I canvassed the circulation lists and news-stands and made another discovery. There is a large potential reading public not yet tied up to any newspaper. It's waiting for the right paper."

"The imputation of amateurishness is retracted, with apologies," announced Russell Edmonds.

"Accepted. Though there are amateur areas yet in my mind. I bought The Patriot."

"Does that represent one of the areas?"

"It represents nothing, thus far, except what it has always represented, a hand-to-mouth policy and a financial deficit. But what's wrong with it from your point of view?"

"Cheap and nasty," was the veteran's succinct criticism.

"Any more so than The Sphere? The Sphere's successful."

"Because it plays fair with the main facts. It may gloss 'em up with a touch of sensationalism, like the oil on a barkeep's hair. But it does go after the facts, and pretty generally it presents 'em as found. The Patriot is fakey; clumsy at it, too. Any man arrested with more than five dollars in his pocket is a millionaire clubman. If Bridget O'Flaherty jumps off Brooklyn Bridge, she becomes a prominent society woman with picture (hers or somebody else's) in The Patriot. And the cheapest little chorus-girl tart, who blackmails a broker's clerk with a breach of promise, gets herself called a 'distinguished actress' and him a 'well-known financier.' Why steal the Police Gazette's rouge and lip-stick?"

"Because it's what the readers want."

"All right. But at least give it to 'em well done. And cut out the printing of wild rumors as news. That doesn't get a paper anything in the long run. None of your readers have any faith in The Patriot."

"Does any paper have the confidence of its public?" returned Marrineal.

Touched upon a sensitive spot, Edmonds cursed briefly. "If it hasn't, it's because the public has a dam'-fool fad for pretending it doesn't believe what it reads. Of course it believes it! Otherwise, how would it know who's president, or that the market sagged yesterday? This 'I-never-believe-what-I-read-in-the-papers' guff makes me sick to the tips of my toes."

"Only the man who knows newspapers from the inside can disbelieve them scientifically," put in Banneker with a smile.

"What would you do with The Patriot if you had it?" interrogated the proprietor.

"I? Oh, I'd try to make it interesting," was the prompt and simple reply.

"How, interesting?"

For his own purposes Banneker chose to misinterpret the purport of the question. "So interesting that half a million people would have to read it."

"You think you could do that?"

"I think it could be done."

"Will you come with me and try it?"

"You're offering me a place on The Patriot staff?"

"Precisely. Mr. Edmonds is joining."

That gentleman breathed a small cloud of blue vapor into the air together with the dispassionate query: "Is that so? Hadn't heard of it."

"My principle in business is to determine whether I want a man or an article, and then bid a price that can't be rejected."

"Sound," admitted the veteran. "Perfectly sound. But I'm not specially in need of money."

"I'm offering you opportunity."

"What kind?"

"Opportunity to handle big stories according to the facts as you see them. Not as you had to handle the Sippiac strike story."

Edmonds set down his pipe. "What did you think of that?"

"A masterpiece of hinting and suggestion and information for those who can read between the lines. Not many have the eye for it. With me you won't have to write between the lines. Not on labor or political questions, anyway. You're a Socialist, aren't you?"

"Yes. You're not going to make The Patriot a Socialist paper, are you?"

"Some people might call it that. I'm going to make it a popular paper. It's going to be for the many against the few. How are you going to bring about Socialism?"

"Education."

"Exactly! What better chance could you ask? A paper devoted to the interests of the masses, and willing to print facts. I want you to do the same sort of thing that you've been doing for The Courier; a job of handling the big, general stories. You'll be responsible to me alone. The salary will be a third higher than you are now getting. Think it over."

"I've thought. I'm bought," said Russell Edmonds. He resumed his pipe.

"And you, Mr. Banneker?"

"I'm not a Socialist, in the party sense. Besides a Socialist paper in New York has no chance of big circulation."

"Oh, The Patriot isn't going to tag itself. Politically it will be independent. Its policy will be socialistic only in that it will be for labor rather than capital and for the under dog as against the upper dog. It certainly won't tie up to the Socialist Party or advocate its principles. It's for fair play and education."

"What's your purpose?" demanded Banneker. "Money?"

"I've a very comfortable income," replied Marrineal modestly.

"Political advancement? Influence? Want to pull the wires?" persisted the other.

"The game. I'm out of employment and tired of it."

"And you think I could be of use in your plan? But you don't know much about me."

Marrineal murmured smilingly something indefinite but complimentary as to Banneker's reputation on Park Row; but this was by no means a fair index to what he knew about Banneker.

Indeed, that prematurely successful reporter would have been surprised at the extent to which Marrineal's private investigations had gone. Not only was the purchaser of The Patriot apprised of Banneker's professional career in detail, but he knew of his former employment, and also of his membership in The Retreat, which he regarded with perplexity and admiration. Marrineal was skilled at ascertainments. He made a specialty of knowing all about people.

"With Mr. Edmonds on roving commission and you to handle the big local stuff," he pursued, "we should have the nucleus of a news organization. Like him, you would be responsible to me alone. And, of course, it would be made worth your while. What do you think? Will you join us?"

"No."

"No?" There was no slightest hint of disappointment, surprise, or resentment in Marrineal's manner. "Do you mind giving me the reason?"

"I don't care to be a reporter on The Patriot."

"Well, this would hardly be reporting. At least, a very specialized and important type."

"For that matter, I don't care to be a reporter on any paper much longer. Besides, you need me—or some one—in another department more than in the news section."

"You don't like the editorials," was the inference which Marrineal drew from this, and correctly.

"I think they're solemn flapdoodle."

"So do I. Occasionally I write them myself and send them in quietly. It isn't known yet that I own the property; so I don't appear at the office. Mine are quite as solemn and flapdoodlish as the others. To which quality do you object the most?"

"Solemnity. It's the blight of editorial expression. All the papers suffer from it."

"Then you wouldn't have the editorial page modeled on that of any of our contemporaries."

"No. I'd try to make it interesting. There isn't a page in town that the average man-in-the-street-car can read without a painful effort at thought."

"Editorials are supposed to be for thinking men," put in Edmonds.

"Make the thinking easy, then. Don't make it hard, with heavy words and a didactic manner. Talk to 'em. You're trying to reach for their brain mechanism. Wrong idea. Reach for their coat-lapels. Hook a finger in the buttonholes and tell 'em something about common things they never stopped to consider. Our editorializers are always tucking their hands into their oratorical bosoms and discoursing in a sonorous voice about freight differentials as an element in stabilizing the market. How does that affect Jim Jones? Why, Jim turns to the sporting page. But if you say to him casually, in print, 'Do you realize that every woman who brings a child into the world shows more heroism than Teddy Roosevelt when he charged up San Juan Hill?'—what'll Jim do about that? Turn to the sporting page just the same, maybe. But after he's absorbed the ball-scores, he'll turn back to the editorial. You see, he never thought about Mrs. Jones just that way before."

"Sentimentalism," observed Marrineal. "Not altogether original, either." But he did not speak as a critic. Rather as one pondering upon new vistas of thought.

"Why shouldn't an editorial be sentimental about something besides the starry flag and the boyhood of its party's candidate? Original? I shouldn't worry overmuch about that. All my time would be occupied in trying to be interesting. After I got 'em interested, I could perhaps be instructive. Very cautiously, though. But always man to man: that's the editorial trick, as I see it. Not preacher to congregation."

"Where are your editorials, son?" asked the veteran Edmonds abruptly.

"Locked up." Banneker tapped his forehead.

"In the place of their birth?" smiled Marrineal.

"Oh, I don't want too much credit for my idea. A fair share of it belongs to a bald-headed and snarling old nondescript whom I met one day in the Public Library and shall probably never meet again anywhere. Somebody had pointed me out—it was after that shooting mess—and the old fellow came up to me and growled out, 'Employed on a newspaper?' I admitted it. 'What do you know about news?' was his next question. Well, I'm always open to any fresh slants on the business, so I asked him politely what he knew. He put on an expression like a prayerful owl and said, 'Suppose I came into your office with the information that a destructive plague was killing off the earthworms?' Naturally, I thought one of the librarians had put up a joke on me; so I said, 'Refer you to the Anglers' Department of the All-Outdoors Monthly.' 'That is as far as you could see into the information?' he said severely. I had to confess that it was. 'And you are supposed to be a judge of news!' he snarled. Well, he seemed so upset about it that I tried to be soothing by asking him if there was an earthworm pestilence in progress. 'No,' answers he, 'and lucky for you. For if the earthworms all died, so would you and the rest of us, including your accursed brood of newspapers, which would be some compensation. Read Darwin,' croaks the old bird, and calls me a callow fool, and flits."

"Who was he? Did you find out?" asked Edmonds.

"Some scientific grubber from the museum. I looked up the Darwin book and decided that he was right; not Darwin; the old croaker."

"Still, that was not precisely news," pointed out Marrineal.

"Theoretical news. I'm not sure," pursued Banneker, struck with a new idea, "that that isn't the formula for editorial writing; theoretical news. Supplemented by analytical news, of course."

"Philosophizing over Darwin and dead worms would hardly inspire half a million readers to follow your editorial output, day after day." Marrineal delivered his opinion suavely.

"Not if written in the usual style, suggesting a conscientious rehash of the encyclopedia. But suppose it were done differently, and with a caption like this, 'Why Does an Angle-Worm Wriggle?' Set that in irregular type that weaved and squirmed across the column, and Jones-in-the-street-car would at least look at it."

"Good Heavens! I should think so," assented Marrineal. "And call for the police."

"Or, if that is too sensational," continued Banneker, warming up, "we could head it 'Charles Darwin Would Never Go Fishing, Because' and a heavy dash after 'because.'"

"Fakey," pronounced Edmonds. "Still, I don't know that there's any harm in that kind of faking."

"Merely a trick to catch the eye. I don't know whether Darwin ever went fishing or not. Probably he did if only for his researches. But, in essentials, I'm giving 'em a truth; a big truth."

"What?" inquired Marrineal.

"Solemn sermonizers would call it the inter-relations of life or something to that effect. What I'm after is to coax 'em to think a little."

"About angle-worms?"

"About anything. It's the process I'm after. Only let me start them thinking about evolution and pretty soon I'll have them thinking about the relations of modern society—and thinking my way. Five hundred thousand people, all thinking in the way we told 'em to think—"

"Could elect Willis Enderby mayor of New York," interjected the practical Edmonds.

Marrineal, whose face had become quite expressionless, gave a little start. "Who?" he said.

"Judge Enderby of the Law Enforcement Society."

"Oh! Yes. Of course. Or any one else."

"Or any one else," agreed Banneker, catching a quick, informed glance from Edmonds.

"Frankly, your scheme seems a little fantastic to me," pronounced the owner of The Patriot. "But that may be only because it's new. It might be worth trying out." He reverted again to his expressionless reverie, out of which exhaled the observation: "I wonder what the present editorial staff could do with that."

"Am I to infer that you intend to help yourself to my idea?" inquired Banneker.

Mr. Marrineal aroused himself hastily from his editorial dream. Though by no means a fearful person, he was uncomfortably sensible of a menace, imminent and formidable. It was not in Banneker's placid face, nor in the unaltered tone wherein the pertinent query was couched. Nevertheless, the object of that query became aware that young Banneker was not a person to be trifled with. He now went on, equably to say:

"Because, if you do, it might be as well to give me the chance of developing it."

Possibly the "Of course," with which Marrineal responded to this reasonable suggestion, was just a little bit over-prompt.

"Give me ten days. No: two weeks, and I'll be ready to show my wares. Where can I find you?"

Marrineal gave a telephone address. "It isn't in the book," he said. "It will always get me between 9 A.M. and noon."

They talked of matters journalistic, Marrineal lapsing tactfully into the role of attentive listener again, until there appeared in the lower room a dark-faced man of thirty-odd, spruce and alert, who, upon sighting them, came confidently forward. Marrineal ordered him a drink and presented him to the two journalists as Mr. Ely Ives. As Mr. Ives, it appeared, was in the secret of Marrineal's journalistic connection, the talk was resumed, becoming more general. Presently Marrineal consulted his watch.

"You're not going up to the After-Theater Club to-night?" he asked Banneker, and, on receiving a negative reply, made his adieus and went out with Ives to his waiting car.

Banneker and Edmonds looked at each other. "Don't both speak at once," chuckled Banneker. "What do you?"

"Think of him? He's a smooth article. Very smooth. But I've seen 'em before that were straight as well as smooth."

"Bland," said Banneker. "Bland with a surpassing blandness. A blandness amounting to blandeur, as grandness in the highest degree becomes grandeur. I like that word," Banneker chucklingly approved himself. "But I wouldn't use it in an editorial, one of those editorials that our genial friend was going to appropriate so coolly. A touch of the pirate in him, I think. I like him."

"Yes; you have to. He makes himself likable. What do you figure Mr. Ely Ives to be?"

"Henchman."

"Do you know him?"

"I've seen him uptown, once or twice. He has some reputation as an amateur juggler."

"I know him, too. But he doesn't remember me or he wouldn't have been so pleasant," said the veteran, committing two errors in one sentence, for Ely Ives had remembered him perfectly, and in any case would never have exhibited any unnecessary rancor in his carefully trained manner. "Wrote a story about him once. He's quite a betting man; some say a sure-thing bettor. Several years ago Bob Wessington was giving one of his famous booze parties on board his yacht 'The Water-Wain,' and this chap was in on it somehow. When everybody was tanked up, they got to doing stunts and he bet a thousand with Wessington he could swarm up the backstay to the masthead. Two others wished in for a thousand apiece, and he cleaned up the lot. It cut his hands up pretty bad, but that was cheap at three thousand. Afterwards it turned out that he'd been practicing that very climb in heavy gloves, down in South Brooklyn. So I wrote the story. He came back with a threat of a libel suit. Fool bluff, for it wasn't libelous. But I looked up his record a little and found he was an ex-medical student, from Chicago, where he'd been on The Chronicle for a while. He quit that to become a press-agent for a group of oil-gamblers, and must have done some good selling himself, for he had money when he landed here. To the best of my knowledge he is now a sort of lookout for the Combination Traction people, with some connection with the City Illuminating Company on the side. It's a secret sort of connection."

Banneker made the world-wide symbolistic finger-shuffle of money-handling. "Legislative?" he inquired.

"Possibly. But it's more keeping a watch on publicity and politics. He gives himself out as a man-about-town, and is supposed to make a good thing out of the market. Maybe he does, though I notice that generally the market makes a good thing out of the smart guy who tries to beat it."

"Not a particularly desirable person for a colleague."

"I doubt if he'd be Marrineal's colleague exactly. The inside of the newspaper isn't his game. More likely he's making himself attractive and useful to Marrineal just to find out what he's up to with his paper."

"I'll show him something interesting if I get hold of that editorial page."

"Son, are you up to it, d'you think?" asked Edmonds with affectionate solicitude. "It takes a lot of experience to handle policies."

"I'll have you with me, won't I, Pop? Besides, if my little scheme works, I'm going out to gather experience like a bee after honey."

"We'll make a queer team, we three," mused the veteran, shaking his bony head, as he leaned forward over his tiny pipe. His protuberant forehead seemed to overhang the idea protectively. Or perhaps threateningly. "None of us looks at a newspaper from the same angle or as the same kind of a machine as the others view it."

"Never mind our views. They'll assimilate. What about his?"

"Ah! I wish I knew. But he wants something. Like all of us." A shade passed across the clearly modeled severity of the face. Edmonds sighed. "I don't know but that I'm too old for this kind of experiment. Yet I've fallen for the temptation."

"Pop," said Banneker with abrupt irrelevance, "there's a line from Emerson that you make me think of when you look like that. 'His sad lucidity of soul.'"

"Do I? But it isn't Emerson. It's Matthew Arnold."

"Where do you find time for poetry, you old wheelhorse! Never mind; you ought to be painted as the living embodiment of that line."

"Or as a wooden automaton, jumping at the end of a special wire from 'our correspondent.' Ban, can you see Marrineal's hand on a wire?"

"If it's plain enough to be visible, I'm underestimating his tact. I'd like to have a lock of his hair to dream on to-night. I'm off to think things over, Pop. Good-night."

Banneker walked uptown, through dimmed streets humming with the harmonic echoes of the city's never-ending life, faint and delicate. He stopped at Sherry's, and at a small table in the side room sat down with a bottle of ale, a cigarette, and some stationery. When he rose, it was to mail a letter. That done, he went back to his costly little apartment upon which the rent would be due in a few days. He had the cash in hand: that was all right. As for the next month, he wondered humorously whether he would have the wherewithal to meet the recurring bill, not to mention others. However, the consideration was not weighty enough to keep him sleepless.

Custom kindly provides its own patent shock-absorbers to all the various organisms of nature; otherwise the whole regime would perish. Necessarily a newspaper is among the best protected of organisms against shock: it deals, as one might say, largely in shocks, and its hand is subdued to what it works in. Nevertheless, on the following noon The Ledger office was agitated as it hardly would have been had Brooklyn Bridge fallen into the East River, or the stalest mummy in the Natural History Museum shown stirrings of life. A word was passing from eager mouth to incredulous ear.

Banneker had resigned.



CHAPTER XV

Looking out of the front window, into the decorum of Grove Street, Mrs. Brashear could hardly credit the testimony of her glorified eyes. Could the occupant of the taxi indeed be Mr. Banneker whom, a few months before and most sorrowfully, she had sacrificed to the stern respectability of the house? And was it possible, as the very elegant trunk inscribed "E.B.—New York City" indicated, that he was coming back as a lodger? For the first time in her long and correct professional career, the landlady felt an unqualified bitterness in the fact that all her rooms were occupied.

The occupant of the taxi jumped out and ran lightly up the steps.

"How d'you do, Mrs. Brashear. Am I still excommunicated?"

"Oh, Mr. Banneker! I'm so glad to see you. If I could tell you how often I've blamed myself—"

"Let's forget all that. The point is I've come back."

"Oh, dear! I do hate not to take you in. But there isn't a spot."

"Who's got my old room?"

"Mr. Hainer."

"Hainer? Let's turn him out."

"I would in a minute," declared the ungrateful landlady to whom Mr. Hainer had always been a model lodger. "But the law—"

"Oh, I'll fix Hainer if you'll fix the room."

"How?" asked the bewildered Mrs. Brashear.

"The room? Just as it used to be. Bed, table, couple of chairs, bookshelf."

"But Mr. Hainer's things?"

"Store 'em. It'll be for only a month."

Leaving his trunk, Banneker sallied forth in smiling confidence to accost and transfer the unsuspecting occupant of his room. To achieve this, it was necessary only to convince the object of the scheme that the incredible offer was made in good faith; an apartment in the "swell" Regalton, luxuriously furnished, service and breakfast included, rent free for a whole month. A fairy-tale for the prosaic Hainer to be gloated over for the rest of his life! Very quietly, for this was part of the bargain, the middle-aged accountant moved to his new glories and Banneker took his old quarters. It was all accomplished that evening. The refurnishing was finished on the following day.

"But what are you doing it for, if I may be so bold, Mr. Banneker?" asked the landlady.

"Peace, quiet, and work," he answered gayly. "Just to be where nobody can find me, while I do a job."

Here, as in the old, jobless days, Banneker settled down to concentrated and happy toil. Always a creature of Spartan self-discipline in the matter of work, he took on, in this quiet and remote environment, new energies. Miss Westlake, recipient of the output as it came from the hard-driven pen, was secretly disquieted. Could any human being maintain such a pace without collapse? Day after day, the devotee of the third-floor-front rose at seven, breakfasted from a thermos bottle and a tin box, and set upon his writing; lunched hastily around the corner, returned with armfuls of newspapers which he skimmed as a preliminary to a second long bout with his pen; allowed himself an hour for dinner, and came back to resume the never-ending task. As in the days of the "Eban" sketches, now on the press for book publication, it was write, rewrite, and re-rewrite, the typed sheets coming back to Miss Westlake amended, interlined, corrected, but always successively shortened and simplified. Profitable, indeed, for the solicitous little typist; but she ventured, after a fortnight of it, to remonstrate on the score of ordinary prudence. Banneker laughed, though he was touched, too, by her interest.

"I'm indestructible," he assured her. "But next week I shall run around outside a little."

"You must," she insisted.

"Field-work, I believe they call it. The Elysian Fields of Manhattan Island. Perhaps you'll come with me sometimes and see that I attend properly to my recreation."

Curiosity as well as a mere personal interest prompted her to accept. She did not understand the purpose of these strange and vivid writings committed to her hands, so different from any of the earlier of Mr. Banneker's productions; so different, indeed, from anything that she had hitherto seen in any print. Nor did she derive full enlightenment from her Elysian journeys with the writer. They seemed to be casual if not aimless. The pair traveled about on street-cars, L trains, Fifth Avenue buses, dined in queer, crowded restaurants, drank in foreign-appearing beer-halls, went to meetings, to Cooper Union forums, to the Art Gallery, the Aquarium, the Museum of Natural History, to dances in East-Side halls: and everywhere, by virtue of his easy and graceful good-fellowship, Banneker picked up acquaintances, entered into their discussions, listened to their opinions and solemn dicta, agreeing or controverting with equal good-humor, and all, one might have carelessly supposed, in the idlest spirit of a light-minded Haroun al Raschid.

"What is it all about, if you don't mind telling?" asked his companion as he bade her good-night early one morning.

"To find what people naturally talk about," was the ready answer.

"And then?"

"To talk with them about what interests them. In print."

"Then it isn't Elysian-fielding at all."

"No. It's work. Hard work."

"And what do you do after it?"

"Oh, sit up and write for a while."

"You'll break down."

"Oh, no! It's good for me."

And, indeed, it was better for him than the alternative of trying to sleep without the anodyne of complete exhaustion. For again, his hours were haunted by the not-to-be-laid spirit of Io Welland. As in those earlier days when, with hot eyes and set teeth, he had sent up his nightly prayer for deliverance from the powers of the past—

"Heaven shield and keep us free From the wizard, Memory And his cruel necromancies!"—

she came back to her old sway over his soul, and would not be exorcised.—So he drugged his brain against her with the opiate of weariness.

Three of his four weeks had passed when Banneker began to whistle at his daily stent. Thereafter small boys, grimy with printer's ink, called occasionally, received instructions and departed, and there emanated from his room the clean and bitter smell of paste, and the clip of shears. Despite all these new activities, the supply of manuscript for Miss Westlake's typewriter never failed. One afternoon Banneker knocked at the door, asked her if she thought she could take dictation direct, and on her replying doubtfully that she could try, transferred her and her machine to his den, which was littered with newspapers, proof-sheets, and foolscap. Walking to and fro with a sheet of the latter inscribed with a few notes in his hand, the hermit proceeded to deliver himself to the briskly clicking writing machine.

"Three-em dash," said he at the close. "That seemed to go fairly well."

"Are you training me?" asked Miss Westlake.

"No. I'm training myself. It's easier to write, but it's quicker to talk. Some day I'm going to be really busy"—Miss Westlake gasped—"and time-saving will be important. Shall we try it again to-morrow?"

She nodded. "I could brush up my shorthand and take it quicker."

"Do you know shorthand?" He looked at her contemplatively. "Would you care to take a regular position, paying rather better than this casual work?"

"With you?" asked Miss Westlake in a tone which constituted a sufficient acceptance.

"Yes. Always supposing that I land one myself. I'm in a big gamble, and these," he swept a hand over the littered accumulations, "are my cards. If they're good enough, I'll win."

"They are good enough," said Miss Westlake with simple faith.

"I'll know to-morrow," replied Banneker.

For a young man, jobless, highly unsettled of prospects, the ratio of whose debts to his assets was inversely to what it should have been, Banneker presented a singularly care-free aspect when, at 11 A.M. of a rainy morning, he called at Mr. Tertius Marrineal's Fifth Avenue house, bringing with him a suitcase heavily packed. Mr. Marrineal's personal Jap took over the burden and conducted it and its owner to a small rear room at the top of the house. Banneker apprehended at the first glance that this was a room for work. Mr. Marrineal, rising from behind a broad, glass-topped table with his accustomed amiable smile, also looked workmanlike.

"You have decided to come with us, I hope," said he pleasantly enough, yet with a casual politeness which might have been meant to suggest a measure of indifference. Banneker at once caught the note of bargaining.

"If you think my ideas are worth my price," he replied.

"Let's have the ideas."

"No trouble to show goods," Banneker said, unclasping the suitcase. He preferred to keep the talk in light tone until his time came. From the case he extracted two close-packed piles of news-print, folded in half.

"Coals to Newcastle," smiled Marrineal. "These seem to be copies of The Patriot."

"Not exact copies. Try this one." Selecting an issue at random he passed it to the other.

Marrineal went into it carefully, turning from the front page to the inside, and again farther in the interior, without comment. Nor did he speak at once when he came to the editorial page. But he glanced up at Banneker before settling down to read.

"Very interesting," he said presently, in a non-committal manner. "Have you more?"

Silently Banneker transferred to the table-top the remainder of the suitcase's contents. Choosing half a dozen at random, Marrineal turned each inside out and studied the editorial columns. His expression did not in any degree alter.

"You have had these editorials set up in type to suit yourself, I take it," he observed after twenty minutes of perusal; "and have pasted them into the paper."

"Exactly."

"Why the double-column measure?"

"More attractive to the eye. It stands out."

"And the heavy type for the same reason?"

"Yes. I want to make 'em just as easy to read as possible."

"They're easy to read," admitted the other. "Are they all yours?"

"Mine—and others'."

Marrineal looked a bland question. Banneker answered it.

"I've been up and down in the highways and the low-ways, Mr. Marrineal, taking those editorials from the speech of the ordinary folk who talk about their troubles and their pleasures."

"I see. Straight from the throbbing heart of the people. Jones-in-the-street-car."

"And Mrs. Jones. Don't forget her. She'll read 'em."

"If she doesn't, it won't be because they don't bid for her interest. Here's this one, 'Better Cooking Means Better Husbands: Try It.' That's the argumentum ad feminam with a vengeance."

"Yes. I picked that up from a fat old party who was advising a thin young wife at a fish-stall. 'Give'm his food right an' he'll come home to it, 'stid o' workin' the free lunch.'"

"Here are two on the drink question. 'Next Time Ask the Barkeep Why He Doesn't Drink,' and, 'Mighty Elephants Like Rum—and Are Chained Slaves.'"

"You'll find more moralizing on booze if you look farther. It's one of the subjects they talk most about."

"'The Sardine is Dead: Therefore More Comfortable Than You, Mr. Straphanger,'" read Marrineal.

"Go up in the rush-hour L any day and you'll hear that editorial with trimmings."

"And 'Mr. Flynn Owes You a Yacht Ride' is of the same order, I suppose."

"Yes. If it had been practicable, I'd have had some insets with that: a picture of Flynn, a cut of his new million-dollar yacht, and a table showing the twenty per cent dividends that the City Illuminating Company pays by over-taxing Jones on his lighting and heating. That would almost tell the story without comment."

"I see. Still making it easy for them to read."

Marrineal ran over a number of other captions, sensational, personal, invocative, and always provocative: "Man, Why Hasn't Your Wife Divorced You?" "John L. Sullivan, the Great Unknown." "Why Has the Ornithorhyncus Got a Beak?" "If You Must Sell Your Vote, Ask a Fair Price For It." "Mustn't Play, You Kiddies: It's a Crime: Ask Judge Croban." "Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, Christ; All Dead, But—!!!" "The Inventor of Goose-Plucking Was the First Politician. They're At It Yet." "How Much Would You Pay a Man to Think For You?" "Air Doesn't Cost Much: Have You Got Enough to Breathe?"

"All this," said the owner of The Patriot, "is taken from what people talk and think about?"

"Yes."

"Doesn't some of it reach out into the realm of what Mr. Banneker thinks they ought to talk and think about?"

Banneker laughed. "Discovered! Oh, I won't pretend but what I propose to teach 'em thinking."

"If you can do that and make them think our way—"

"'Give me place for my fulcrum,' said Archimedes."

"But that's an editorial you won't write very soon. One more detail. You've thrown up words and phrases into capital letters all through for emphasis. I doubt whether that will do."

"Why not?"

"Haven't you shattered enough traditions without that? The public doesn't want to be taught with a pointer. I'm afraid that's rather too much of an innovation."

"No innovation at all. In fact, it's adapted plagiarism."

"From what?"

"Harper's Monthly of the seventy's. I used to have some odd volumes in my little library. There was a department of funny anecdote; and the point of every joke, lest some obtuse reader should overlook it, was printed in italics. That," chuckled Banneker, "was in the days when we used to twit the English with lacking a sense of humor. However, the method has its advantages. It's fool-proof. Therefore I helped myself to it."

"Then you're aiming at the weak-minded?"

"At anybody who can assimilate simple ideas plainly expressed," declared the other positively. "There ought to be four million of 'em within reaching distance of The Patriot's presses."

"Your proposition—though you haven't made any as yet—is that we lead our editorial page daily with matter such as this. Am I correct?"

"No. Make a clean sweep of the present editorials. Substitute mine. One a day will be quite enough for their minds to work on."

"But that won't fill the page," objected the proprietor.

"Cartoon. Column of light comment. Letters from readers. That will," returned Banneker with severe brevity.

"It might be worth trying," mused Marrineal.

"It might be worth, to a moribund paper, almost anything." The tone was significant.

"Then you are prepared to join our staff?"

"On suitable terms."

"I had thought of offering you," Marrineal paused for better effect, "one hundred and fifty dollars a week."

Banneker was annoyed. That was no more than he could earn, with a little outside work, on The Ledger. He had thought of asking two hundred and fifty. Now he said promptly:

"Those editorials are worth three hundred a week to any paper. As a starter," he added.

A pained and patient smile overspread Marrineal's regular features. "The Patriot's leader-writer draws a hundred at present."

"I dare say."

"The whole page costs barely three hundred."

"It is overpaid."

"For a comparative novice," observed Marrineal without rancor, "you do not lack self-confidence."

"There are the goods," said Banneker evenly. "It is for you to decide whether they are worth the price asked."

"And there's where the trouble is," confessed Marrineal. "I don't know. They might be."

Banneker made his proposition. "You spoke of my being a novice. I admit the weak spot. I want more experience. You can afford to try this out for six months. In fact, you can't afford not to. Something has got to be done with The Patriot, and soon. It's losing ground daily."

"You are mistaken," returned Marrineal.

"Then the news-stands and circulation lists are mistaken, too," retorted the other. "Would you care to see my figures?"

Marrineal waved away the suggestion with an easy gesture which surrendered the point.

"Very well. I'm backing the new editorial idea to get circulation."

"With my money," pointed out Marrineal.

"I can't save you the money. But I can spread it for you, that three hundred dollars."

"How, spread it?"

"Charge half to editorial page: half to the news department."

"On account of what services to the news department?"

"General. That is where I expect to get my finishing experience. I've had enough reporting. Now I'm after the special work; a little politics, a little dramatic criticism; a touch of sports; perhaps some book-reviewing and financial writing. And, of course, an apprenticeship in the Washington office."

"Haven't you forgotten the London correspondence?"

Whether or not this was sardonic, Banneker did not trouble to determine. "Too far away, and not time enough," he answered. "Later, perhaps, I can try that."

"And while you are doing all these things who is to carry out the editorial idea?"

"I am."

Marrineal stared. "Both? At the same time?"

"Yes."

"No living man could do it."

"I can do it. I've proved it to myself."

"How and where?"

"Since I last saw you. Now that I've got the hang of it, I can do an editorial in the morning, another in the afternoon, a third in the evening. Two and a half days a week will turn the trick. That leaves the rest of the time for the other special jobs."

"You won't live out the six months."

"Insure my life if you like," laughed Banneker. "Work will never kill me."

Marrineal, sitting with inscrutable face turned half away from his visitor, was beginning, "If I meet you on the salary," when Banneker broke in:

"Wait until you hear the rest. I'm asking that for six months only. Thereafter I propose to drop the non-editorial work and with it the salary."

"With what substitute?"

"A salary based upon one cent a week for every unit of circulation put on from the time the editorials begin publication."

"It sounds innocent," remarked Marrineal. "It isn't as innocent as it sounds," he added after a penciled reckoning on the back of an envelope. "In case we increase fifty thousand, you will be drawing twenty-five thousand a year."

"Well? Won't it be worth the money?"

"I suppose it would," admitted Marrineal dubiously. "Of course fifty thousand in six months is an extreme assumption. Suppose the circulation stands still?"

"Then I starve. It's a gamble. But it strikes me that I'm giving the odds."

"Can you amuse yourself for an hour?" asked Marrineal abruptly.

"Why, yes," answered Banneker hesitantly. "Perhaps you'd turn me loose in your library. I'd find something to put in the time on there."

"Not very much, I'm afraid," replied his host apologetically. "I'm of the low-brow species in my reading tastes, or else rather severely practical. You'll find some advertising data that may interest you, however."

From the hour—which grew to an hour and a half—spent in the library, Banneker sought to improve his uncertain conception of his prospective employer's habit and trend of mind. The hope of revelation was not borne out by the reading matter at hand. Most of it proved to be technical.

When he returned to Marrineal's den, he found Russell Edmonds with the host.

"Well, son, you've turned the trick," was the veteran's greeting.

"You've read 'em?" asked Banneker, and Marrineal was shrewd enough to note the instinctive shading of manner when expert spoke to expert. He was an outsider, being merely the owner. It amused him.

"Yes. They're dam' good."

"Aren't they dam' good?" returned Banneker eagerly.

"They'll save the day if anything can."

"Precisely my own humble opinion if a layman may speak," put in Marrineal. "Mr. Banneker, shall I have the contract drawn up?"

"Not on my account. I don't need any. If I haven't made myself so essential after the six months that you have to keep me on, I'll want to quit."

"Still in the gambling mood," smiled Marrineal.

The two practical journalists left, making an appointment to spend the following morning with Marrineal in planning policy and methods. Banneker went back to his apartment and wrote Miss Camilla Van Arsdale all about it, in exultant mood.

"Brains to let! But I've got my price. And I'll get a higher one: the highest, if I can hold out. It's all due to you. If you hadn't kept my mind turned to things worth while in the early days at Manzanita, with your music and books and your taste for all that is fine, I'd have fallen into a rut. It's success, the first real taste. I like it. I love it. And I owe it all to you."

Camilla Van Arsdale, yearning over the boyish outburst, smiled and sighed and mused and was vaguely afraid, with quasi-maternal fears. She, too, had had her taste of success; a marvelous stimulant, bubbling with inspiration and incitement. But for all except the few who are strong and steadfast, there lurks beneath the effervescence a subtle poison.



CHAPTER XVI

Not being specially gifted with originality of either thought or expression, Mr. Herbert Cressey stopped Banneker outside of his apartment with the remark made and provided for the delayed reunion of frequent companions: "Well I thought you were dead!"

By way of keeping to the same level Banneker replied cheerfully: "I'm not."

"Where've you been all this while?"

"Working."

"Where were you Monday last? Didn't see you at Sherry's."

"Working."

"And the week before? You weren't at The Retreat."

"Working, also."

"And the week before that? Nobody's seen so much—"

"Working. Working. Working."

"I stopped in at your roost and your new man told me you were away and might be gone indefinitely. Funny chap, your new man. Mysterious sort of manner. Where'd you pick him up?"

"Oh, Lord! Hainer!" exclaimed Banneker appreciatively. "Well, he told the truth."

"You look pulled down, too, by Jove!" commented Cressey, concern on his sightly face. "Ridin' for a fall, aren't you?"

"Only for a test. I'm going to let up next week."

"Tell you what," proffered Cressey. "Let's do a day together. Say Wednesday, eh? I'm giving a little dinner that night. And, oh, I say! By the way—no: never mind that. You'll come, won't you? It'll be at The Retreat."

"Yes: I'll come. I'll be playing polo that afternoon."

"Not if Jim Maitland sees you first. He's awfully sore on you for not turning up to practice. Had a place for you on the second team."

"Don't want it. I'm through with polo."

"Ban! What the devil—"

"Work, I tell you. Next season I may be able to play. For the present I'm off everything."

"Have they made you all the editors of The Ledger in one?"

"I'm off The Ledger, too. Give you all the painful details Wednesday. Fare-you-well."

General disgust and wrath pervaded the atmosphere of the polo field when Banneker, making his final appearance on Wednesday, broke the news to Maitland, Densmore, and the others.

"Just as you were beginning to know one end of your stick from the other," growled the irate team captain.

Banneker played well that afternoon because he played recklessly. Lack of practice sometimes works out that way; as if luck took charge of a man's play and carried him through. Three of the five goals made by the second team fell to his mallet, and he left the field heartily cursed on all sides for his recalcitrancy in throwing himself away on work when the sport of sports called him. Regretful, yet well pleased with himself, he had his bath, his one, lone drink, and leisurely got into his evening clothes. Cressey met him at the entry to the guest's lounge giving on the general dining-room.

"Damned if you're not a good-lookin' chap, Ban!" he declared with something like envy in his voice. "Thinning down a bit gives you a kind of look. No wonder Mertoun puts in his best licks on your clothes."

"Which reminds me that I've neglected even Mertoun," smiled Banneker.

"Go ahead in, will you? I've got to bone some feller for a fresh collar. My cousin's in there somewhere. Mrs. Rogerson Lyle from Philadelphia. She's a pippin in pink. Go in and tell on yourself, and order her a cocktail."

Seeking to follow the vague direction, Banneker turned to the left and entered a dim side room. No pippin in pink disclosed herself. But a gracious young figure in black was bending over a table looking at a magazine, the long, free curve of her back turned toward him. He advanced. The woman said in a soft voice that shook him to the depths of his soul:

"Back so soon, Archie? Want Sis to fix your tie?"

She turned then and said easily: "Oh, I thought you were my brother.... How do you do, Ban?"

Io held out her hand to him. He hardly knew whether or not he took it until he felt the close, warm pressure of her fingers. Never before had he so poignantly realized that innate splendor of femininity that was uniquely hers, a quality more potent than any mere beauty. Her look met his straight and frankly, but he heard the breath flutter at her lips, and he thought to read in her eyes a question, a hunger, and a delight. His voice was under rigid control as he said:

"I didn't know you were to be here, Mrs. Eyre."

"I knew that you were," she retorted. "And I'm not Mrs. Eyre, please. I'm Io."

He shook his head. "That was in another world."

"Oh, Ban, Ban!" she said. Her lips seemed to cherish the name that they gave forth so softly. "Don't be a silly Ban. It's the same world, only older; a million years older, I think.... I came here only because you were coming. Are you a million years older, Ban?"

"Unfair," he said hoarsely.

"I'm never unfair. I play the game." Her little, firm chin went up defiantly. Yes: she was more lovely and vivid and desirable than in the other days. Or was it only the unstifled yearning in his heart that made her seem so? "Have you missed me?" she asked simply.

He made no answer.

"I've missed you." She walked over to the window and stood looking out into the soft and breathing murk of the night. When she came back to him, her manner had changed. "Fancy finding you here of all places!" she said gayly.

"It isn't such a bad place to be," he said, relieved to meet her on the new ground.

"It's a goal," she declared. "Half of the aspiring gilded youth of the city would give their eye-teeth to make it. How did you manage?"

"I didn't manage. It was managed for me. Old Poultney Masters put me in."

"Well, don't scowl at me! For a reporter, you know, it's rather an achievement to get into The Retreat."

"I suppose so. Though I'm not a reporter now."

"Well, for any newspaper man. What are you, by the way?"

"A sort of all-round experimental editor."

"I hadn't heard of that," said Io, with a quickness which apprised him that she had been seeking information about him.

"Nobody has. It's only just happened."

"And I'm the first to know of it? That's as it should be," she asserted calmly. "You shall tell me all about it at dinner."

"Am I taking you in?"

"No: you're taking in my cousin, Esther Forbes. But I'm on your left. Be nice to me."

Others came in and joined them. Banneker, his inner brain a fiery whorl, though the outer convolutions which he used for social purposes remained quite under control, drifted about making himself agreeable and approving himself to his host as an asset of the highest value. At dinner, sprightly and mischievous Miss Forbes, who recalled their former meeting at Sherry's, found him wholly delightful and frankly told him so. He talked little with Io; but he was conscious to his nerve-ends of the sweet warmth of her so near him. To her questions about his developing career he returned vague replies or generalizations.

"You're not drinking anything," she said, as the third course came on. "Have you renounced the devil and all his works?" There was an impalpable stress upon the "all."

His answer, composed though it was in tone, quite satisfied her. "I wouldn't dare touch drink to-night."

After dinner there was faro bank. Banneker did not play. Io, after a run of indifferent luck, declared herself tired of the game and turned to him.

"Take me out somewhere where there is air to breathe."

They stood together on the stone terrace, blown lightly upon by a mist-ladden breeze.

"It ought to be a great drive of rain, filling the world," said Io in her voice of dreams. "The roar of waters above us and below, and the glorious sense of being in the grip of a resistless current.... We're all in the grip of resistless currents. D'you believe that yet, Ban?"

"No."

"Skeptic! You want to work out your own fate. You 'strive to see, to choose your path.' Well, you've climbed. Is it success. Ban?"

"It will be."

"And have you reached the Mountains of Fulfillment?"

He shook his head. "One never does, climbing alone."

"Has it been alone, Ban?"

"Yes."

"Always?"

"Always."

"So it has been for me—really. No," she added swiftly; "don't ask me questions. Not now. I want to hear more of your new venture."

He outlined his plan and hopes for The Patriot.

"It's good," she said gravely. "It's power, and so it's danger. But it's good.... Are we friends, Ban?"

"How can we be!"

"How can we not be! You've tried to drop me out of your life. Oh, I know, because I know you—better than you think. You'll never drop me out of your life again," she murmured with confident wistfulness. "Never, Ban.... Let's go in."

Not until she came to bid him good-night, with a lingering handclasp, her palm cleaving to his like the reluctant severance of lips, did she tell him that she was going away almost immediately. "But I had to make sure first that you were really alive, and still Ban," she said.

It was many months before he saw her again.



PART III

FULFILLMENT



CHAPTER I

The House With Three Eyes sent forth into the darkness a triple glow of hospitality. Through the aloof Chelsea district street, beyond the westernmost L structure, came taxicabs, hansoms, private autos, to discharge at the central door men who were presently revealed, under the lucent globe above the lintel, to be for the most part silhouette studies in the black of festal tailoring and silk hat against the white of expansive shirt-front. Occasionally, though less often, one of the doors at either flank of the house, also overwatched by shining orbs, opened to discharge an early departure. A midnight wayfarer, pausing opposite to contemplate this inexplicable grandeur in a dingy neighborhood, sought enlightenment from the passing patrolman:

"Wot's doin'? Swell gamblin' joint? Huh?" As he spoke a huge, silent car crept swiftly to the entry, which opened to swallow up two bareheaded, luxuriously befurred women, with their escorts. The curious wayfarer promptly amended his query, though not for the better.

"Naw!" replied the policeman with scorn. "That's Mr. Banneker's house."

"Banneker? Who's Banneker?"

With augmented contempt the officer requested the latest quotations on clover seed. "He's the editor of The Patriot," he vouchsafed. "A millionaire, too, they say. And a good sport."

"Givin' a party, huh?"

"Every Saturday night," answered he of the uniform and night-stick, who, having participated below-stairs in the reflections of the entertainment, was condescending enough to be informative. "Say, the swellest folks in New York fall over themselves to get invited here."

"Why ain't he on Fi'th Avenyah, then?" demanded the other.

"He makes the Fi'th Avenyah bunch come to him," explained the policeman, with obvious pride. "Took a couple of these old houses on long lease, knocked out the walls, built 'em into one, on his own plan, and, say! It's a pallus! I been all through it."

A lithely powerful figure took the tall steps of the house three at a time, and turned, under the light, to toss away a cigar.

"Cheest!" exclaimed the wayfarer in tones of awe: "that's K.O. Doyle, the middleweight, ain't it?"

"Sure! That's nothin'. If you was to get inside there you'd bump into some of the biggest guys in town; a lot of high-ups from Wall Street, and maybe a couple of these professors from Columbyah College, and some swell actresses, and a bunch of high-brow writers and painters, and a dozen dames right off the head of the Four Hundred list. He takes 'em, all kinds, Mr. Banneker does, just so they're somethin'. He's a wonder."

The wayfarer passed on to his oniony boarding-house, a few steps along, deeply marveling at the irruption of magnificence into the neighborhood in the brief year since he had been away.

Equipages continued to draw up, unload, and withdraw, until twelve thirty, when, without so much as a preliminary wink, the House shut its Three Eyes. A scant five minutes earlier, an alert but tired-looking man, wearing the slouch hat of the West above his dinner coat, had briskly mounted the steps and, after colloquy with the cautious, black guardian of the door, had been admitted to a side room, where he was presently accosted by a graying, spare-set guest with ruminative eyes.

"I heard about this show by accident, and wanted in," explained the newcomer in response to the other's look of inquiry. "If I could see Banneker—"

"It will be some little time before you can see him. He's at work."

"But this is his party, isn't it?"

"Yes. The party takes care of itself until he comes down."

"Oh; does it? Well, will it take care of me?"

"Are you a friend of Mr. Banneker's?"

"In a way. In fact, I might claim to have started him on his career of newspaper crime. I'm Gardner of the Angelica City Herald."