"None, now. But we'll be after him hot and heavy within a year."

"Not the editorial page," declared Banneker.

"Well, I hope not. It would be rather a right-about, wouldn't it? But Marrineal isn't afraid of a right-about. You know his creed as to his readers: 'The public never remembers.' Of course, you realize what Marrineal is after, politically."

"No. He's never said a word to me."

"Nor to me. But others have. The mayoralty."

"For himself?"

"Of course. He's quietly building up his machine."

"But Laird will run for reelection."

"He'll knife Laird."

"It's true Laird hasn't treated us very well, in the matter of backing our policies," admitted Banneker thoughtfully. "The Combined Street Railway franchise, for instance."

"He was right in that and you were wrong, Ban. He had to follow the comptroller there."

"Is that where our split with Enderby is going to come? Over the election?"

"Yes. Enderby is the brains and character back of the Laird administration. He represents the clean government crowd, with its financial power."

Banneker stirred fretfully in his chair. "Damn it!" he growled. "I wish we could run this paper _as_ a newspaper and not as a chestnut rake."

"How sweet and simple life would be!" mocked the veteran. "Still, you know, if you're going to use The Patriot as a blunderbuss to point at the heads of your own enemies, you can't blame the owner if he--"

"You think Marrineal knows?" interposed Banneker sharply.

"About The Searchlight matter? You can bet on one thing, Ban. Everything that Ely Ives knows, Tertius Marrineal knows. So far as Ives thinks it advisable for him to know, that is. Over and above which Tertius is no fool, himself. You may have noticed that."

"It's bothered me from time to time," admitted the other dryly.

"It'll bother both of us more, presently," prophesied Edmonds.

"Then I've been playing direct into Marrineal's hands in attacking Laird on the franchise matter."

"Yes. Keep on."

"Strange advice from you, Pop. You think my position on that is wrong."

"What of that? You think it's right. Therefore, go ahead. Why quit a line of policy just because it obliges your employes? Don't be over-conscientious, son."

"I've suspected for some time that the political news was being adroitly manipulated against the administration. Has Marrineal tried to ring you in on that?"

"No; and he won't."

"Why not?"

"He knows that, in the main, I'm a Laird man. Laird is giving us what we asked for, an honest administration."

"Suppose, when Marrineal develops his plans, he comes to you, which would be his natural course, to handle the news end of the anti-Laird campaign. What would you do?"

"Quit."

Banneker sighed. "It's so easy for you."

"Not so easy as you think, son. Even though there's a lot of stuff being put over in the news columns that makes me sore and sick. Marrineal's little theory of using news as a lever is being put into practice pretty widely. Also we're selling it."

"Selling our news columns?"

"Some of 'em. For advertising. You're well out of any responsibility for that department. I'd resign to-morrow if it weren't for the fact that Marrineal still wants to cocker up the labor crowd for his political purposes, and so gives me a free hand in my own special line. By the way, he's got the Veridian matter all nicely smoothed out. Oh, my, yes!

Fired the general manager, put in all sorts of reforms, recognized the union, the whole programme! That's to spike McClintick's guns if he tries to trot out Veridian again as proof that Marrineal is, at heart, anti-labor."

"Is he?"

"He's anti-anything that's anti-Marrineal, and pro-anything that's pro-Marrineal. Haven't you measured him yet? All policy, no principle; there's Mr. Tertius Marrineal for you.... Ban, it's really you that holds me to this shop." Through convolutions of smoke from his tiny pipe, the old stager regarded the young star of journalism with a quaint and placid affection. "Whatever rotten stuff is going on in the business and news department, your page goes straight and speaks clear.... I wonder how long Marrineal will stand for it ... I wonder what he intends for the next campaign."

"If my proprietor runs for office, I can't very well not support him,"

said Banneker, troubled.

"Not very well. The pinch will come as to what you're going to do about Laird. According to my private information, he's coming back at The Patriot."

"For my editorials on the Combined franchise?"

"Hardly. He's too straight to resent honest criticism. No; for some of the crooked stuff that we're running in our political news. Besides, some suspicious and informed soul in the administration has read between our political lines, and got a peep of the aspiring Tertius girding himself for contest. Result, the city advertising is to be taken from The Patriot."

It needed no more than a mechanical reckoning of percentages to tell Banneker that this implied a serious diminution of his own income.

Further, such a procedure would be in effect a repudiation of The Patriot and its editorial support.

"That's a rotten deal!" he exclaimed.

"No. Just politics. Justifiable, too, I should say, as politics go. I doubt whether Laird would do it of his own motion; he plays a higher game than that. But it isn't strictly within his province either to effect or prevent. Anyhow, it's going to be done."

"If he wants to fight us--" began Banneker with gloom in his eyes.

"He doesn't want to fight anybody," cut in the expert. "He wants to be mayor and run the city for what seems to him the city's best good. If he thought Marrineal would carry on his work as mayor, I doubt if he'd oppose him. But our shrewd old friend, Enderby, isn't of that mind.

Enderby understands Marrineal. He'll fight to the finish."

Edmonds left his friend in a glum perturbation of mind. Enderby understood Marrineal, did he? Banneker wished that he himself did. If he could have come to grips with his employer, he would at least have known now where to take his stand. But Marrineal was elusive. No, not even elusive; quiescent. He waited.

As time passed, Banneker's editorial and personal involvements grew more complex. At what moment might a pressure from above close down on his pen, and with what demand? How should he act in the crisis thus forced, at Marrineal's slow pleasure? Take Edmonds's Gordian recourse; resign?

But he was on the verge of debt. His investments had gone badly; he prided himself on the thought that it was partly through his own immovable uprightness. Now, this threat to his badly needed percentages!

Surely The Patriot ought to be making a greater profit than it showed, on its steadily waxing circulation. Why had he ever let himself be wrenched from his first and impregnable system of a straight payment on increase of circulation? Would it be possible to force Marrineal back into that agreement? No income was too great, surely, to recompense for such trouble of soul as The Patriot inflicted upon its editorial mouthpiece.... Through the murk of thoughts shot, golden-rayed, the vision of Io.

No world could be other than glorious in which she lived and loved him and was his.