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

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

"Not a thing."

"You saw Mr. Densmore?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would he talk?"

"Yes; he made a statement."

"It didn't appear in the paper."

"There was nothing to it but unqualified denial."

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

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

"I had a note from you this morning."

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

"Containing your resignation."

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

"The Ledger does not recognize conditional resignation."

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

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

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

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

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

"Perfectly," agreed Banneker.

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

"Certainly."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Does it matter?" asked Banneker, smiling.

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

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

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

Banneker shook his head.

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

"My father."

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

"Yes. Did you know him?"

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

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

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

"A chance. Possibly a great chance."

"To think for yourself?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Or the honesty of the newspaper business?"

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

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

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

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

"Exactly. They simply disseminate it."

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

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

"A little."

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

"Approximately."

"How approximately?"

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

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

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

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

"I have."

"When?"

"Before I got your note."

"It never reached me."

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

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

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

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

"Then it _is_ a question of morals?"

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

"Yes."

"Successfully?"

"As far as I've gone."

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

"Not in everything."

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

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

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

"Not on those topics."

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

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

"What did you do?"

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

"You might have stopped writing for it."

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

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

"God forbid!" cried Banneker.

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

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

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

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

"And you need that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do what?"

"Quit."

"Who told you I was considering it?"

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

"Why?"

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

"Then some one _has_ been blabbing."

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

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

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

"Did you ever peep through a keyhole?"

"Figuratively speaking?"

"If you like. Either way."

"Yes."

"Would you do it to-day?"

"No."

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

"Or quit."

"You haven't quit?"

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

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

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

"An actress, wasn't she?"

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

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

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

"I wadded up the paper and stuffed it in his mouth. His lips felt pulpy. He hit me with a lead paper-weight and cut my head open. I don't know that I even hit him; I didn't specially want to hit him. I wanted to mark him. There was an extra-size open ink-well on his desk. I poured that over him and rubbed it into his face. S............