And I'm ashamed of myself that I can do nothing. Not now, anyway. Later, perhaps...."

"No, I suppose you can't," she said listlessly. "But you'll be interested in seeing how the Zucker system works out; a half-page ad. in the Sunday edition gets a special signed and illustrated feature article, a quarter-page only a column of ordinary press stuff. A full page--I don't know what he'll offer for that. An editorial by E.B.

perhaps."

"Betty!"

"Forgive me, Ban. I'm sick at heart over it all. Of course, I know you wouldn't."

Going back in his car, Banneker reflected with profound distaste that the plan upon which he was hired was not essentially different from the Zucker scheme, in Marrineal's intent. He, too, was--if Marrineal's idea worked out--to draw down a percentage varying in direct ratio to his suppleness in accommodating his writings to "the best interests of the paper." He swore that he would see The Patriot and its proprietor eternally damned before he would again alter jot or tittle of his editorial expression with reference to any future benefit.

It did not take long for Mr. Zucker to manifest his presence to Banneker through a line asking for an interview, written in a neat, small hand upon a card reading:

_The Patriot--Special Theatrical Features E. Zucker, Representative_.

Mr. Zucker, being sent for, materialized as a buoyant little person, richly ornamented with his own initials in such carefully chosen locations as his belt-buckle, his cane, and his cigarettes. He was, he explained, injecting some new and profitable novelties into the department of dramatic criticism.

"Just a moment," quoth Banneker. "I thought that Allan Haslett had come on from Chicago to be our dramatic critic."

"Oh, he and the business office didn't hit it off very well," said little Zucker carelessly.

"Oh! And do you hit it off pretty well with the business office?"

"Naturally. It was Mr. Haring brought me on here; I'm a special departmental manager in the advertising department."

"Your card would hardly give the impression. It suggests the news rather than the advertising side."

"I'm both," stated Mr. Zucker, brightly beaming. "I handle the criticism and the feature stuff on salary, and solicit the advertising, on a percentage. It works out fine."

"So one might suppose." Banneker looked at him hard. "The idea being, if I get it correctly, that a manager who gives you a good, big line of advertising can rely on considerate treatment in the dramatic column of The Patriot."

"Well, there's no bargain to that effect. That wouldn't be classy for a big paper like ours," replied the high-if somewhat nave-minded Mr.

Zucker. "Of course, the managers understand that one good turn deserves another, and I ain't the man to roast a friend that helps me out. I started the scheme in Boston and doubled the theater revenue of my paper there in a year."

"I'm immensely interested," confessed Banneker. "But what is your idea in coming to me about this?"

"Big stuff, Mr. Banneker," answered the earnest Zucker. He laid a jeweled hand upon the other's knee, and removed it because some vestige of self-protective instinct warned him that that was not the proper place for it. "You may have noticed that we've been running a lot of special theater stuff in the Sunday." Banneker nodded. "That's all per schedule, as worked out by me. An eighth of a page ad. gets an article.

A quarter page ad. gets a signed special by me. Haffa page wins a grand little send-off by Bess Breezely with her own illustrations. Now, I'm figuring on full pages. If I could go to a manager and say: 'Gimme a full-page ad. for next Sunday and I'll see if I can't get Mr. Banneker to do an editorial on the show'--if I could say that, why, nothin' to it! Nothin' at-tall! Of course," he added ruminatively, "I'd have to pick the shows pretty careful."

"Perhaps you'd like to write the editorials, too," suggested Banneker with baleful mildness.

"I thought of that," admitted the other. "But I don't know as I could get the swing of your style. You certainly got a style, Mr. Banneker."

"Thank you."

"Well, what do you say?"

"Why, this. I'll look over next Sunday's advertising, particularly the large ads., and if there is a good subject in any of the shows, I'll try to do something about it."

"Fine!" enthused the unsuspecting pioneer of business-dramatic criticism. "It's a pleasure to work with a gentleman like you, Mr.

Banneker."

Withdrawing, even more pleased with himself than was his wont, Mr.

Zucker confided to Haring that the latter was totally mistaken in attributing a stand-offish attitude to Banneker. Why, you couldn't ask for a more reasonable man. Saw the point at once.

"Don't you go making any fool promises on the strength of what Banneker said to you," commented Haring.

With malign relish, Banneker looked up in the Sunday advertising the leading theater display, went to the musical comedy there exploited, and presently devoted a column to giving it a terrific and only half-merited slashing for vapid and gratuitous indecency. The play, which had been going none too well, straightway sold out a fortnight in advance, thereby attesting the power of the press as well as the appeal of pruriency to an eager and jaded public. Zucker left a note on the editorial desk warmly thanking his confrere for this evidence of cooperation.

Life was practicing its lesser ironies upon Banneker whilst maturing its greater ones.

CHAPTER XIII

In the regular course of political events, Laird was renominated on a fusion ticket. Thereupon the old ring, which had so long battened on the corruption or local government, put up a sleek and presentable figurehead. Marrineal nominated himself amidst the Homeric laughter of the professional politicians. How's he goin' to get anywhere, they demanded with great relish of the joke, when he ain't got any organization at-tall! Presently the savor oozed out of that joke.

Marrineal, it appeared, did have an organization, of sorts; worse, he had gathered to him, by methods not peculiarly his own, the support of the lesser East-Side foreign language press, which may or may not have believed in his protestations of fealty to the Common People, but certainly did appreciate the liberality of his political advertising appropriation, advertising, in this sense, to be accorded its freest interpretation. Worst of all, he had Banneker.

Banneker's editorials, not upon Marrineal himself (for he was too shrewd for that), but upon the cause of which Marrineal was standard-bearer, were persuasive, ingenious, forceful, and, to the average mind, convincing. Was Banneker himself convinced? It was a question which he resolutely refused to follow to its logical conclusion. Of the justice of the creed which The Patriot upheld, he was perfectly confident. But did Marrineal represent that creed? Did he represent anything but Marrineal? Stifling his misgivings, Banneker flung himself the more determinedly into the fight. It became apparent that he was going to swing an important fraction of the labor vote, despite the opposition of such clear-eyed leaders as McClintick. To this extent he menaced the old ring rather than the forces of reform, led by Laird and managed by Enderby. On the other hand, he was drawing from Laird, in so far as he still influenced the voters who had followed The Patriot in its original support of the reform movement. That Marrineal could not be elected, both of his opponents firmly believed; and in this belief, notwithstanding his claims of forthcoming victory, the independent candidate privately concurred. It would be enough, for the time, to defeat decisively whichever rival he turned his heaviest guns upon in the final onset; that would insure his future political prestige. Thus far, in his speeches, he had hit out impartially at both sides, denouncing the old ring for its corruption, girding at Laird as a fake reformer secretly committed to Wall Street through Judge Enderby, corporation lawyer, as intermediary.

Herein Banneker had refrained from following him. Ever the cat at the hole's mouth, the patient lurker, the hopeful waiter upon the event, the proprietor of The Patriot forbore to press his editorial chief. He still mistrusted the strength of his hold upon Banneker; feared a defiance when he could ill afford to meet it. What he most hoped was some development which would turn Banneker's heavy guns upon Laird so that, with the defeat of the fusion ticket candidate, the public would say, "The Patriot made him and The Patriot broke him."

Laird played into Marrineal's hands. Indignant at what he regarded as a desertion of principles by The Patriot, the fusion nominee, in one of his most important addresses, devoted a stinging ten minutes to a consideration of that paper, its proprietor, and its editorial writer, in its chosen role of "friend of labor." His text was the Veridian strike, his information the version which McClintick furnished him; he cited Banneker by name, and challenged him as a prostituted mind and a corrupted pen. Though Laird had spoken as he honestly believed, he did not have the whole story; McClintick, in his account, had ignored the important fact that Marrineal, upon being informed of conditions, had actually (no matter what his motive) remedied them. Banneker, believing that Laird was fully apprised, as he knew Enderby to be, was outraged.

This alleged reformer, this purist in politics, this apostle of honor and truth, was holding him up to contumely, through half-truths, for a course which any decent man must, in conscience, have followed. He composed a seething editorial, tore it up, substituted another wherein he made reply to the charges, in a spirit of ingenuity rather than ingenuousness, for The Patriot case, while sound, was one which could not well be thrown open to The Patriot's public; and planned vengeance when the time should come.

Io, on a brief trip from Philadelphia, lunched with him that week, and found him distrait.

"It's only politics," he said. "You're not interested in politics," and, as usual, "Let's talk about you."

She gave him that look which was like a smile deep in the shadows of her eyes. "Ban, do you know the famous saying of Terence?"

He quoted the "Homo sum." "That one?" he asked.

She nodded. "Now, hear my version: 'I am a woman; nothing that touches _my_ man is alien to my interests.'"

He laughed. But there was a note of gratitude in his voice, almost humble, as he said: "You're the only woman in the world, Io, who can quote the classics and not seem a prig."

"That's because I'm beautiful," she retorted impudently. "_Tell_ me I'm beautiful, Ban!"

"You're the loveliest witch in the world," he cried.

"So much for flattery. Now--politics."

He recounted the Laird charges.

"No; that wasn't fair," she agreed. "It was most unfair. But I don't believe Bob Laird knew the whole story. Did you ask him?"

"Ask him? I certainly did not. You don't understand much about politics, dearest."