Success, A Novel

Heat, sudden, savage, and oppressive, bore down upon the city early that spring, smiting men in their offices, women in their homes, the horses between the shafts of their toil, so that the city was in danger of becoming disorganized.  The visitation developed into the big story of successive days.  It was the sort of generalized, picturesque “fluff-stuff” matter which Banneker could handle better than his compeers by sheer imaginative grasp and deftness of presentation.  Being now a writer on space, paid at the rate of eight dollars a column of from thirteen to nineteen hundred words, he found the assignment profitable and the test of skill quite to his taste.  Soft job though it was in a way, however, the unrelenting pressure of the heat and the task of finding, day after day, new phases and fresh phrases in which to deal with it, made inroads upon his nerves.

He took to sleeping ill again.  Io Welland had come back in all the glamorous panoply of waking dreams to command and torment his loneliness of spirit.  At night he dreaded the return to the draughtless room on Grove Street.  In the morning, rising sticky-eyed and unrested, he shrank from the thought of the humid, dusty, unkempt hurly-burly of the office.  Yet his work was never more brilliant and individual.

Having finished his writing, one reeking midnight, he sat, spent, at his desk, hating the thought of the shut-in place that he called home.  Better to spend the night on a bench in some square, as he had done often enough in the earlier days.  He rose, took his hat, and had reached the first landing when the steps wavered and faded in front of him and he found himself clutching for the rail.  A pair of hands gripped his shoulders and held him up.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Banneker?” asked a voice.

“God!” muttered Banneker.  “I wish I were back on the desert.”

“You want a drink,” prescribed his volunteer prop.

As his vision and control reestablished themselves, Banneker found himself being led downstairs and to the nearest bar by young Fentriss Smith, who ordered two soda cocktails.

Of Smith he knew little except that the office called him “the permanent twenty-five-dollar man.”  He was one of those earnest, faithful, totally uninspired reporters, who can be relied upon implicitly for routine news, but are constitutionally impotent to impart color and life to any subject whatsoever.  Patiently he had seen younger and newer men overtake and pass him; but he worked on inexorably, asking for nothing, wearing the air of a scholar with some distant and abstruse determination in view.  Like Banneker he had no intimates in the office.

“The desert,” echoed Smith in his quiet, well-bred voice.  “Isn’t it pretty hot, there, too?”

“It’s open,” said Banneker.  “I’m smothering here.”

“You look frazzled out, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I feel frazzled out; that’s what I mind.”

“Suppose you come out with me to-night as soon as I report to the desk,” suggested the other.

Banneker, refreshed by the tingling drink, looked down at him in surprise.  “Where?” he asked.

“I’ve got a little boat out here in the East River.”

“A boat?  Lord, that sounds good!” sighed Banneker.

“Does it?  Then see here!  Why couldn’t you put in a few days with me, and cool off?  I’ve often wanted to talk to you about the newspaper business, and get your ideas.”

“But I’m newer at it than you are.”

“For a fact!  Just the same you’ve got the trick of it and I haven’t.  I’ll go around to your place while you pack a suitcase, and we’re off.”

“That’s very good of you.”  Accustomed though he was to the swift and ready comradeship of a newspaper office, Banneker was puzzled by this advance from the shy and remote Smith.  “All right:  if you’ll let me share expenses,” he said presently.

Smith seemed taken aback at this.  “Just as you like,” he assented.  “Though I don’t quite know—­We’ll talk of that later.”

While Banneker was packing in his room, Smith, seated on the window-sill, remarked: 

“I ought to tell you that we have to go through a bad district to get there.”

“The Tunnel Gang?” asked Banneker, wise in the plague spots of the city.

“Just this side of their stamping ground.  It’s a gang of wharf rats.  There have been a number of hold-ups, and last week a dead woman was found under the pier.”

Banneker made an unobtrusive addition to his packing.  “They’ll have to move fast to catch me,” he observed.

“Two of us together won’t be molested.  But if you’re alone, be careful.  The police in that precinct are no good.  They’re either afraid or they stand in with the gang.”

On Fifth Avenue the pair got a late-cruising taxicab whose driver, however, declined to take them nearer than one block short of the pier.  “The night air in that place ain’t good fer weak constitutions,” he explained.  “One o’ my pals got a headache last week down on the pier from bein’ beaned with a sandbag.”

No one interfered with the two reporters, however.  A whistle from the end of the pier evolved from the watery dimness a dinghy, which, in a hundred yards of rowing, delivered them into a small but perfectly appointed yacht.  Banneker, looking about the luxurious cabin, laughed a little.

“That was a bad guess of mine about half expenses,” he said good-humoredly.  “I’d have to mortgage my future for a year.  Do you own this craft?”

“My father does.  He’s been called back West.”

Bells rang, the wheel began to churn, and Banneker, falling asleep in his berth with a vivifying breeze blowing across him, awoke in broad daylight to a view of sparkling little waves which danced across his vision to smack impudently the flanks of the speeding craft.

“We’ll be in by noon,” was Smith’s greeting as they met on the companionway for a swim.

“What do you do it for?” asked Banneker, seated at the breakfast table, with an appetite such as he had not known for weeks.

“Do what?”

“Two men’s work at twenty-five per for The Ledger?”

“Training.”

“Are you going to stick to the business?”

“The family,” explained Smith, “own a newspaper in Toledo.  It fell to them by accident.  Our real business is manufacturing farm machinery, and none of us has ever tried or thought of manufacturing newspapers.  So they wished on me the job of learning how.”

“Do you like it?”

“Not particularly.  But I’m going through with it.”

Banneker felt a new and surprised respect for his host.  He could forecast the kind of small city newspaper that Smith would make; careful, conscientious, regular in politics, loyal to what it deemed the best interests of the community, single-minded in its devotion to the Smith family and its properties; colorless, characterless, and without vision or leadership in all that a newspaper should, according to Banneker’s opinion, stand for.  So he talked with the fervor of an enthusiast, a missionary, a devotee, who saw in that daily chronicle of the news an agency to stir men’s minds and spur their thoughts, if need be, to action; at the same time the mechanism and instrument of power, of achievement, of success.  Fentriss Smith listened and was troubled in spirit by these unknown fires.  He had supposed respectability to be the final aim and end of a sound newspaper tradition.

The apparent intimacy which had sprung up between twenty-five-dollar Smith and the reserved, almost hermit-like Banneker was the subject of curious and amused commentary in The Ledger office.  Mallory hazarded a humorous guess that Banneker was tutoring Smith in the finer arts of journalism, which was not so far amiss as its proponent might have supposed.

The Great Heat broke several evenings later in a drench of rain and wind.  This, being in itself important news, kept Banneker late at his writing, and he had told his host not to wait, that he would join him on the yacht sometime about midnight.  So Smith had gone on alone.

The next morning Tommy Burt, lounging into the office from an early assignment, approached the City Desk with a twinkle far back in his lively eyes.

“Hear anything of a shoot-fest up in the Bad Lands last night?” he asked.

“Not yet,” replied Mr. Greenough.  “They’re getting to be everyday occurrences up there.  Is it on the police slips, Mr. Mallory?”

“No.  Nothing in that line,” answered the assistant, looking over his assortment.

“Police are probably suppressing it,” opined Burt.

“Have you got the story?” queried Mr. Greenough.

“In outline.  It isn’t really my story.”

“Whose is it, then?”

“That’s part of it.”  Tommy Burt leaned against Mallory’s desk and appeared to be revolving some delectable thought in his mind.

“Tommy,” said Mallory, “they didn’t open that committee meeting you’ve been attending with a corkscrew, did they?”

“I’m intoxicated with the chaste beauties of my story, which isn’t mine,” returned the dreamily smiling Mr. Burt.  “Here it is, boiled down.  Guest on an anchored yacht returning late, sober, through the mist.  Wharf-gang shooting craps in a pier-shed.  They size him up and go to it; six of ’em.  Knives and one gun:  maybe more.  The old game:  one asks for the time.  Another sneaks up behind and gives the victim the elbow-garrote.  The rest rush him.  Well, they got as far as the garrote.  Everything lovely and easy.  Then Mr. Victim introduces a few specialties.  Picks a gun from somewhere around his shirt-front, shoots the garroter over his shoulder; kills the man in front, who is at him with a stiletto, ducks a couple of shots from the gang, and lays out two more of ’em.  The rest take to the briny.  Tally:  two dead, one dying, one wounded, Mr. Guest walks to the shore end, meets two patrolmen, and turns in his gun.  ‘I’ve done a job for you,’ says he.  So they pinch him.  He’s in the police station, incomunicado.”

Throughout the narrative, Mr. Greenough had thrown in little, purring interjections of “Good!  Good good!” At the conclusion Mallory exclaimed!

“Moses!  That is a story!  You say it isn’t yours?  Why not?”

“Because it’s Banneker’s.”

“Why?”

“He’s the guest with the gun.”

Mallory jumped in his chair.  “Banneker!” he exclaimed.  “Oh, hell!” he added disconsolately.

“Takes the shine out of the story, doesn’t it?” observed Burt with a malicious smile.

One of the anomalous superstitions of newspaperdom is that nothing which happens to a reporter in the line of his work is or can be “big news.”  The mere fact that he is a reporter is enough to blight the story.

“What was Banneker doing down there?” queried Mr. Greenough.

“Visiting on a yacht.”

“Is that so?” There was a ray of hope in the other’s face.  The glamour of yachting association might be made to cast a radiance about the event, in which the damnatory fact that the principal figure was a mere reporter could be thrown into low relief.  Such is the view which journalistic snobbery takes of the general public’s snobbery.  “Whose yacht?”

Again the spiteful little smile appealed on Burt’s lips as he dashed the rising hope.  “Fentriss Smith’s.”

And again the expletive of disillusion burst from between Mallory’s teeth as he saw the front-page double-column spread, a type-specialty of the usually conservative Ledger upon which it prided itself, dwindle to a carefully handled inside-page three-quarter of a column.

“You say that Mr. Banneker is in the police station?” asked the city editor.

“Or at headquarters.  They’re probably working the third degree on him.”

“That won’t do,” declared the city desk incumbent, with conviction.  He caught up the telephone, got the paper’s City Hall reporter, and was presently engaged in some polite but pointed suggestions to His Honor the Mayor.  Shortly after, Police Headquarters called; the Chief himself was on the wire.

“The Ledger is behind Mr. Banneker, Chief,” said Mr. Greenough crisply.  “Carrying concealed weapons?  If your men in that precinct were fit to be on the force, there would be no need for private citizens to go armed.  You get the point, I see.  Good-bye.”

“Unless I am a bad guesser we’ll have Banneker back here by evening.  And there’ll be no manhandling in his case,” Mallory said to Burt.

Counsel was taken of Mr. Gordon, as soon as that astute managing editor arrived, as to the handling of the difficult situation.  The Ledger, always cynically intolerant of any effort to better the city government, as savoring of “goo-gooism,” which was its special bete noire, could not well make the shooting a basis for a general attack upon police laxity, though it was in this that lay the special news possibility of the event.  On the other hand, the thing was far too sensational to be ignored or too much slurred.

Andreas, the assistant managing editor, in charge of the paper’s make-up, a true news-hound with an untainted delight in the unusual and striking, no matter what its setting might be, who had been called into the conference, advocated “smearing it all over the front page, with Banneker’s first-hand statement for the lead—­pictures too.”

Him, Mr. Greenough, impassive joss of the city desk, regarded with a chill eye.  “One reporter visiting another gets into a muss and shoots up some riverside toughs,” he remarked contemptuously.  “You can hardly expect our public to get greatly excited over that.  Are we going into the business of exploiting our own cubs?”

Thereupon there was sharp discussion to which Mr. Gordon put an end by remarking that the evening papers would doubtless give them a lead; meantime they could get Banneker’s version.

First to come in was The Evening New Yorker, the most vapid of all the local prints, catering chiefly to the uptown and shopping element.  Its heading half-crossed the page proclaiming “Guest of Yachtsman Shoots Down Thugs.”  Nowhere in the article did it appear that Banneker had any connection with the newspaper world.  He was made to appear as a young Westerner on a visit to the yacht of a millionaire business man, having come on from his ranch in the desert, and presumptively—­to add the touch of godhead—­a millionaire himself.

“The stinking liars!” said Andreas.

“That settles it,” declared Mr. Gordon.  “We’ll give the facts plainly and without sensationalism; but all the facts.”

“Including Mr. Banneker’s connection here?” inquired Mr. Greenough.

“Certainly.”

The other evening papers, more honest than The Evening New Yorker, admitted, though, as it were, regretfully and in an inconspicuous finale to their accounts that the central figure of the sensation was only a reporter.  But the fact of his being guest on a yacht was magnified and glorified.

At five o’clock Banneker arrived, having been bailed out after some difficulty, for the police were frightened and ugly, foreseeing that this swift vengeance upon the notorious gang, meted out by a private hand, would throw a vivid light upon their own inefficiency and complaisance.  Happily the District Attorney’s office was engaged in one of its periodical feuds with the Police Department over some matter of graft gone astray, and was more inclined to make a cat’s-paw than a victim out of Banneker.

Though inwardly strung to a high pitch, for the police officials had kept him sleepless through the night by their habitual inquisition, Banneker held himself well in hand as he went to the City Desk to report gravely that he had been unable to come earlier.

“So we understand, Mr. Banneker,” said Mr. Greenough, his placid features for once enlivened.  “That was a good job you did.  I congratulate you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Greenough,” returned Banneker.  “I had to do it or get done.  And, at that, it wasn’t much of a trick.  They were a yellow lot.”

“Very likely:  very likely.  You’ve handled a gun before.”

“Only in practice.”

“Ever shot anybody before?”

“No, sir.”

“How does it feel?” inquired the city editor, turning his pale eyes on the other and fussing nervously with his fingers.

“At first you want to go on killing,” answered Banneker.  “Then, when it’s over, there’s a big let-down.  It doesn’t seem as if it were you.”  He paused and added boyishly:  “The evening papers are making an awful fuss over it.”

“What do you expect?  It isn’t every day that a Wild West Show with real bullets and blood is staged in this effete town.”

“Of course I knew there’d be a kick-up about it,” admitted Banneker.  “But, some way—­well, in the West, if a gang gets shot up, there’s quite a bit of talk for a while, and the boys want to buy the drinks for the fellow that does it, but it doesn’t spread all over the front pages.  I suppose I still have something of the Western view….  How much did you want of this, Mr. Greenough?” he concluded in a business-like tone.

“You are not doing the story, Mr. Banneker.  Tommy Burt is.”

“I’m not writing it?  Not any of it?”

“Certainly not.  You’re the hero”—­there was a hint of elongation of the first syllable which might have a sardonic connotation from those pale and placid lips—­“not the historian.  Burt will interview you.”

“A Patriot reporter has already.  I gave him a statement.”

Mr. Greenough frowned.  “It would have been as well to have waited.  However.”

“Oh, Banneker,” put in Mallory, “Judge Enderby wants you to call at his office.”

“Who’s Judge Enderby?”

“Chief Googler of the Goo-Goos; the Law Enforcement Society lot.  They call him the ablest honest lawyer in New York.  He’s an old crab.  Hates the newspapers, particularly us.”

“Why?”

“He cherishes some theory,” said Mr. Greenough in his most toneless voice, “that a newspaper ought to be conducted solely in the interests of people like himself.”

“Is there any reason why I should go chasing around to see him?”

“That’s as you choose.  He doesn’t see reporters often.  Perhaps it would be as well.”

“His outfit are after the police,” explained Mallory.  “That’s what he wants you for.  It’s part of their political game.  Always politics.”

“Well, he can wait until to-morrow, I suppose,” remarked Banneker indifferently.

Greenough examined him with impenetrable gaze.  This was a very cavalier attitude toward Judge Willis Enderby.  For Enderby was a man of real power.  He might easily have been the most munificently paid corporation attorney in the country but for the various kinds of business which he would not, in his own homely phrase, “poke at with a burnt stick.”  Notwithstanding his prejudices, he was confidential legal adviser, in personal and family affairs, to a considerable percentage of the important men and women of New York.  He was supposed to be the only man who could handle that bull-elephant of finance, ruler of Wall Street, and, when he chose to give it his contemptuous attention, dictator, through his son and daughters, of the club and social world of New York, old Poultney Masters, in the apoplectic rages into which the slightest thwart to his will plunged him.  To Enderby’s adroitness the financier (one of whose pet vanities was a profound and wholly baseless faith in himself as a connoisseur of art) owed it that he had not become a laughing-stock through his purchase of a pair of particularly flagrant Murillos, planted for his special behoof by a gang of clever Italian swindlers.  Rumor had it that when Enderby had privately summed up his client’s case for his client’s benefit before his client as referee, in these words:  “And, Mr. Masters, if you act again in these matters without consulting me, you must find another lawyer; I cannot afford fools for clients”—­they had to call in a physician and resort to the ancient expedient of bleeding, to save the great man’s cerebral arteries from bursting.

Toward the public press, Enderby’s attitude was the exact reverse of Horace Vanney’s.  For himself, he unaffectedly disliked and despised publicity; for the interests which he represented, he delegated it to others.  He would rarely be interviewed; his attitude toward the newspapers was consistently repellent.  Consequently his infrequent utterances were treasured as pearls, and given a prominence far above those of the too eager and over-friendly Mr. Vanney, who, incidentally, was his associate on the directorate of the Law Enforcement Society.  The newspapers did not like Willis Enderby any more than he liked them.  But they cherished for him an unrequited respect.

That a reporter, a nobody of yesterday whose association with The Ledger constituted his only claim to any status whatever, should profess indifference to a summons from a man of Enderby’s position, suggested affectation to Mr. Greenough’s suspicions.  Young Mr. Banneker’s head was already swelling, was it?  Very well; in the course of time and his duties, Mr. Greenough would apply suitable remedies.

If Banneker were, indeed, taking a good conceit of himself from the conspicuous position achieved so unexpectedly, the morning papers did nothing to allay it.  Most of them slurred over, as lightly as possible, the fact of his journalistic connection; as in the evening editions, the yacht feature was kept to the fore.  There were two exceptions.  The Ledger itself, in a colorless and straightforward article, frankly identified the hero of the episode, in the introductory sentence, as a member of its city staff, and his host of the yacht as another journalist.  But there was one notable omission about which Banneker determined to ask Tommy Burt as soon as he could see him.  The Patriot, most sensational of the morning issues, splurged wildly under the caption, “Yacht Guest Cleans Out Gang Which Cowed Police.”  The Sphere, in an editorial, demanded a sweeping and honest investigation of the conditions which made life unsafe in the greatest of cities.  The Sphere was always demanding sweeping and honest investigations, and not infrequently getting them.  In Greenough’s opinion this undesirable result was likely to be achieved now.  To Mr. Gordon he said: 

“We ought to shut down all we can on the Banneker follow-up.  An investigation with our man as prosecuting witness would put us in the position of trying to reform the police, and would play into the hands of the Enderby crowd.”

The managing editor shook a wise and grizzled head.  “If The Patriot keeps up its whooping and The Sphere its demanding, the administration will have to do something.  After all, Mr. Greenough, things have become pretty unendurable in the Murder Precinct.”

“That’s true.  But the signed statement of Banneker’s in The Patriot—­it’s really an interview faked up as a statement—­is a savage attack on the whole administration.”

“I understand,” remarked Mr. Gordon, “that they were going to beat him up scientifically in the station house when Smith came in and scared them out of it.”

“Yes.  Banneker is pretty angry over it.  You can’t blame him.  But that’s no reason why we should alienate the city administration….  Then you think, Mr. Gordon, that we’ll have to keep the story running?”

“I think, Mr. Greenough, that we’ll have to give the news,” answered the managing editor austerely.  “Where is Banneker now?”

“With Judge Enderby, I believe.  In case of an investigation he won’t be much use to us until it’s over.”

“Can’t be helped,” returned Mr. Gordon serenely.  “We’ll stand by our man.”

Banneker had gone to the old-fashioned offices of Enderby and Enderby, in a somewhat inimical frame of mind.  Expectant of an invitation to aid the Law Enforcement Society in cleaning up a pest-hole of crime, he was half determined to have as little to do with it as possible.  Overnight consideration had developed in him the theory that the function of a newspaper is informative, not reformative; that when a newspaper man has correctly adduced and frankly presented the facts, his social as well as his professional duty is done.  Others might hew out the trail thus blazed; the reporter, bearing his searchlight, should pass on to other dark spots.  All his theories evaporated as soon as he confronted Judge Enderby, forgotten in the interest inspired by the man.

A portrait painter once said of Willis Enderby that his face was that of a saint, illumined, not by inspiration, but by shrewdness.  With his sensitiveness to beauty of whatever kind, Banneker felt the extraordinary quality of the face, beneath its grim outline, interpreting it from the still depth of the quiet eyes rather than from the stern mouth and rather tyrannous nose.  He was prepared for an abrupt and cold manner, and was surprised when the lawyer rose to shake hands, giving him a greeting of courtly congratulation upon his courage and readiness.  If the purpose of this was to get Banneker to expand, as he suspected, it failed.  The visitor sensed the cold reserve behind the smile.

“Would you be good enough to run through this document?” requested the lawyer, motioning Banneker to a seat opposite himself, and handing him a brief synopsis of what the Law Enforcement Society hoped to prove regarding police laxity.

Exercising that double faculty of mind which later became a part of the Banneker legend in New York journalism, the reader, whilst absorbing the main and quite simple points of the report, recalled an instance in which an Atkinson and St. Philip ticket agent had been maneuvered into a posture facing a dazzling sunset, and had adjusted his vision to find it focused upon the barrel of a 45.  Without suspecting the Judge of hold-up designs, he nevertheless developed a parallel.  Leaving his chair he walked over and sat by the window.  Halfway through the document, he quietly laid it aside and returned the lawyer’s studious regard.

“Have you finished?” asked Judge Enderby.

“No.”

“You do not find it interesting?”

“Less interesting than your idea in giving it to me.”

“What do you conceive that to have been?”

By way of reply, Banneker cited the case of Tim Lake, the robbed agent.  “I think,” he added with a half smile, “that you and I will do better in the open.”

“I think so, too.  Mr. Banneker, are you honest?”

“Where I came from, that would be regarded as a trouble-hunter’s question.”

“I ask you to regard it as important and take it without offense.”

“I don’t know about that,” returned Banneker gravely.  “We’ll see.  Honest, you say.  Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you begin by doubting the honesty of a stranger against whom you know nothing?”

“Legal habit, I dare say.  Fortified, in this case, by your association with The Ledger.”

“You haven’t a high opinion of my paper?”

“The very highest, of its adroitness and expertness.  It can make the better cause appear the worse with more skill than any other journal in America.”

“I thought that was the specialty of lawyers.”

Judge Enderby accepted the touch with a smile.

“A lawyer is an avowed special pleader.  He represents one side.  A newspaper is supposed to be without bias and to present the facts for the information of its one client, the public.  You will readily appreciate the difference.”

“I do.  Then you don’t consider The Ledger honest.”

Judge Enderby’s composed glance settled upon the morning’s issue, spread upon his desk.  “I have, I assume, the same opinion of The Ledger’s honesty that you have.”

“Do you mind explaining that to me quite simply, so that I shall be sure to understand it?” invited Banneker.

“You have read the article about your exploit?”

“Yes.”

“Is that honest?”

“It is as accurate a job as I’ve ever known done.”

“Granted.  Is it honest?”

“I don’t know,” answered the other after a pause.  “I intend to find out.”

“You intend to find out why it is so reticent on every point that might impugn the police, I take it.  I could tell you; but yours is the better way.  You gave the same interview to your own paper that you gave to The Patriot, I assume.  By the way, what a commentary on journalism that the most scurrilous sheet in New York should have given the fullest and frankest treatment to the subject; a paper written by the dregs of Park Row for the reading of race-track touts and ignorant servant girls!”

“Yes; I gave them the same interview.  It may have been crowded out—­”

“For lack of space,” supplied Enderby in a tone which the other heartily disliked.  “Mr. Banneker, I thought that this was to be in the open.”

“I’m wrong,” confessed the other.  “I’ll know by this evening why the police part was handled that way, and if it was policy—­” He stopped, considering.

“Well?” prompted the other.

“I’ll go through to the finish with your committee.”

“You’re as good as pledged,” retorted the lawyer.  “I shall expect to hear from you.”

As soon as he could find Tommy Burt, Banneker put to him the direct question.  “What is the matter with the story as I gave it to you?”

Burt assumed an air of touching innocence.  “The story had to be handled with great care,” he explained blandly.

“Come off, Tommy.  Didn’t you write the police part?”

Tommy Burl’s eyes denoted the extreme of candor.  “It was suggested to me that your views upon the police, while interesting and even important, might be misunderstood.”

“Is that so?  And who made the suggestion?”

“An all-wise city desk.”

“Thank you.  Tommy.”

“The Morning Ledger,” volunteered Tommy Burt, “has a high and well-merited reputation for its fidelity to the principles of truth and fairness and to the best interests of the reading public.  It never gives the public any news to play with that it thinks the dear little thing ought not to have.  Did you say anything?  No?  Well; you meant it.  You’re wrong.  The Ledger is the highest-class newspaper in New York.  We are the Elect!”

In his first revulsion of anger, Banneker was for going to Mr. Greenough and having it out with him.  If it meant his resignation, very good.  He was ready to look his job in the eye and tell it to go to hell.  Turning the matter over in his mind, however, he decided upon another course.  So far as the sensational episode of which he was the central figure went, he would regard himself consistently as a private citizen with no responsibility whatsoever to The Ledger.  Let the paper print or suppress what it chose; his attitude toward it would be identical with his attitude toward the other papers.  Probably the office powers would heartily disapprove of his having any dealings with Enderby and his Law Enforcement Society.  Let them!  He telephoned a brief but final message to Enderby and Enderby.  When, late that night, Mr. Gordon called him over and suggested that it was highly desirable to let the whole affair drop out of public notice as soon as the startling facts would permit, he replied that Judge Enderby had already arranged to push an investigation.

“Doubtless,” observed the managing editor.  “It is his specialty.  But without your evidence they can’t go far.”

“They can have my evidence.”

Mr. Gordon, who had been delicately balancing his letter-opener, now delivered a whack of such unthinking ferocity upon his fat knuckle as to produce a sharp pang.  He gazed in surprise and reproach upon the aching thumb and something of those emotions informed the regard which he turned slowly upon Banneker.

Mr. Gordon’s frame of mind was unenviable.  The Inside Room, moved by esoteric considerations, political and, more remotely, financial, had issued to him a managerial ukase; no police investigation if it could be avoided.  Now, news was the guise in which Mr. Gordon sincerely worshiped Truth, the God.  But Mammon, in the Inside Room, held the purse-strings Mr. Gordon had arrived at his honorable and well-paid position, not by wisdom alone, but also by compromise.  Here was a situation where news must give way to the more essential interests of the paper.

“Mr. Banneker,” he said, “that investigation will take a great deal of your time; more, I fear, than the paper can afford to give you.”

“They will arrange to put me on the stand in the mornings.”

“Further, any connection between a Ledger man and the Enderby Committee is undesirable and injudicious.”

“I’m sorry,” answered Banneker simply.  “I’ve said I’d go through with it.”

Mr. Gordon selected a fresh knuckle for his modified drumming.  “Have you considered your duty to the paper, Mr. Banneker?  If not, I advise you to do so.”  The careful manner, more than the words, implied threat.

Banneker leaned forward as if for a confidential communication, as he lapsed into a gross Westernism: 

“Mr. Gordon, I am paying for this round of drinks.”

Somehow the managing editor received the impression that this remark, delivered in just that tone of voice and in its own proper environment, was usually accompanied by a smooth motion of the hand toward the pistol holster.

Banneker, after asking whether there was anything more, and receiving a displeased shake of the head, went away.

“Now,” said he to the waiting Tommy Burt, “they’ll probably fire me.”

“Let ’em!  You can get plenty of other jobs.  But I don’t think they will.  Old Gordon is really with you.  It makes him sick to have to doctor news.”

Sleepless until almost morning, Banneker reviewed in smallest detail his decision and the situation to which it had led.  He thought that he had taken the right course.  He felt that Miss Camilla would approve.  Judge Enderby’s personality, he recognized, had exerted some influence upon his decision.  He had conceived for the lawyer an instinctive respect and liking.  There was about him a power of attraction, not readily definable, but seeming mysteriously to assert some hidden claim from the past.

Where had he seen that fine and still face before?