"I needn't tell you that the paper is a success; a big success," began Marrineal.

"You needn't. But it's always pleasant to hear."

"Possibly too big a success. What would you say to letting circulation drop for a while?"

"What!" Banneker felt a momentary queer sensation near the pit of his stomach. If the circulation dropped, his income followed it. But could Marrineal be serious?

"The fact is we've reached the point where more circulation is a luxury.

We're printing an enormous paper, and wood-pulp prices are going up. If we could raise our advertising rates;--but Mr. Haring thinks that three raises a year is all the traffic will bear. The fact is, Mr. Banneker, that the paper isn't making money. We've run ahead of ourselves. You're swallowing all the profits."

Banneker's inner voice said warningly to Banneker, "So that's it."

Banneker's outer voice said nothing.

"Then there's the matter of advertising. Your policy is not helping us much there."

"The advertising is increasing."

"Not in proportion to circulation. Nothing like."

"If the proper ratio isn't maintained, that is the concern of the advertising department, isn't it?"

"Very much the concern. Will you talk with Mr. Haring about it?"

"No."

Early in Banneker's editorship it had been agreed that he should keep free of any business or advertising complications. Experience and the warnings of Russell Edmonds had told him that the only course of editorial independence lay in totally ignoring the effect of what he might write upon the profits and prejudices of the advertisers, who were, of course, the principal support of the paper. Furthermore, Banneker heartily despised about half of the advertising which the paper carried; dubious financial proffers, flamboyant mercantile copy of diamond dealers, cheap tailors, installment furniture profiteers, the lure of loan sharks and race-track tipsters, and the specious and deadly fallacies of the medical quacks. Appealing as it did to an ignorant and "easy" class of the public ("Banneker's First-Readers," Russell Edmonds was wont to call them), The Patriot offered a profitable field for all the pitfall-setters of print. The less that Banneker knew about them the more comfortable would he be. So he turned his face away from those columns.

The negative which he returned to Marrineal's question was no more or less than that astute gentleman expected.

"We carried an editorial last week on cigarettes, 'There's a Yellow Stain on Your Boy's Fingers--Is There Another on his Character?'"

"Yes. It is still bringing in letters."

"It is. Letters of protest."

"From the tobacco people?"

"Exactly. Mr. Banneker, don't you regard tobacco as a legitimate article of use?"

"Oh, entirely. Couldn't do without it, myself."

"Why attack it, then, in your column?"

"Because my column," answered Banneker with perceptible emphasis on the possessive, "doesn't believe that cigarettes are good for boys."

"Nobody does. But the effect of your editorial is to play into the hands of the anti-tobacco people. It's an indiscriminate onslaught on all tobacco. That's the effect of it."

"Possibly."

"And the result is that the tobacco people are threatening to cut us off from their new advertising appropriation."

"Out of my department," said Banneker calmly.

Marrineal was a patient man. He pursued. "You have offended the medical advertisers by your support of the so-called Honest Label Bill."

"It's a good bill."

"Nearly a quarter of our advertising revenue is from the patent-medicine people."

"Mostly swindlers."

"They pay your salary," Marrineal pointed out.

"Not mine," said Banneker vigorously. "The paper pays my salary."

"Without the support of the very advertisers that you are attacking, it couldn't continue to pay it. Yet you decline to admit any responsibility to them."

"Absolutely. To them or for them."

"I confess I can't see your basis," said the reasonable Marrineal.

"Considering what you have received in income from the paper--"

"I have worked for it."

"Admitted. But that you should absorb practically all the profits--isn't that a little lopsided, Mr. Banneker?"

"What is your proposition, Mr. Marrineal?"

Marrineal put his long, delicate fingers together, tip to tip before his face, and appeared to be carefully reckoning them up. About the time when he might reasonably have been expected to have audited the total and found it to be the correct eight with two supplementary thumbs, he ejaculated:

"Cooperation."

"Between the editorial page and the advertising department?"

"Perhaps I should have said profit-sharing. I propose that in lieu of our present arrangement, based upon a percentage on a circulation which is actually becoming a liability instead of an asset, we should reckon your salary on a basis of the paper's net earnings." As Banneker, sitting with thoughtful eyes fixed upon him, made no comment, he added: "To show that I do not underestimate your value to the paper, I propose to pay you fifteen per cent of the net earnings for the next three years. By the way, it won't be necessary hereafter, for you to give any time to the news or Sunday features."

"No. You've got out of me about all you could on that side," observed Banneker.

"The policy is established and successful, thanks largely to you. I would be the last to deny it."

"What do you reckon as my probable income under the proposed arrangement?"

"Of course," answered the proprietor apologetically, "it would be somewhat reduced this year. If our advertising revenue increases, as it naturally should, your percentage might easily rise above your earnings under the old arrangement."

"I see," commented Banneker thoughtfully. "You propose to make it worth my while to walk warily. As the pussy foots it, so to speak."

"I ask you to recognize the fairness of the proposition that you conduct your column in the best interests of the concern--which, under the new arrangement, would also be your own best interests."

"Clear. Limpidly clear," murmured Banneker. "And if I decline the new basis, what is the alternative?"