"Think up that 'call-me-Bob' business yourself?"

"I got it from a reliable source."

"Damn lie," remarked Poultney Masters equably. "Did the work, though.

Banneker, why didn't you let me know you were in the market?"

"In the stock-market? What has that--"

"_You_ know what market I mean," retorted the great man with unconcealed contempt. "What you don't know is your own game. Always seek the highest bidder before you sell, my boy."

"I'll take that from no man--" began Banneker hotly.

Immediately he was sensible of a phenomenon. His angry eyes, lifted to Poultney Masters's glistening little beads, were unable to endure the vicious amusement which he read therein. For the first time in his life he was stared down. He passed on, followed by a low and scornful hoot.

Meeting Willis Enderby while charge and counter-charge still rilled the air, Io put the direct query to him:

"Cousin Billy, what is the truth about the Laird-Masters story?"

"Made up out of whole cloth," responded Enderby.

"Who made it up?"

Comprehension and pity were in his intonation as he replied: "Not Banneker, I understand. It was passed on to him."

"Then you don't think him to blame?" she cried eagerly.

"I can't exculpate him as readily as that. Such a story, considering its inevitable--I may say its intended--consequences, should never have been published without the fullest investigation."

"Suppose"--she hesitated--"he had it on what he considered good authority?"

"He has never even cited his authority."

"Couldn't it have been confidential?" she pleaded.

"Io, do you know his authority? Has he told you?"

"No."

Enderby's voice was very gentle as he put his next question. "Do you trust Banneker, my dear?"

She met his regard, unflinchingly, but there was a piteous quiver about the lips which formed the answer. "I have trusted him. Absolutely."

"Ah; well! I've seen too much good and bad too inextricably mingled in human nature, to judge on part information."

Election day came and passed. On the evening of it the streets were ribald with crowds gleefully shrieking! "Call me Dennis, wifie. I'm stung!" Laird had been badly beaten, running far behind Marrineal.

Halloran, the ring candidate, was elected. Banneker did it.

As he looked back on the incidents of the campaign and its culminating event with a sense of self-doubt poisoning his triumph, that which most sickened him of his own course was not the overt insult from the financial emperor, but the soft-palmed gratulation of Horace Vanney.

CHAPTER XIV

Ambition is the most conservative of influences upon a radical mind. No sooner had Tertius Marrineal formulated his political hopes than there were manifested in the conduct of The Patriot strange symptoms of a hankering after respectability. Essentially Marrineal was not respectable, any more than he was radical. He was simply and singly selfish. But, having mapped out for himself a career which did not stop short of a stately and deep-porticoed edifice in Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue (for his conception of the potential leverage of a great newspaper increased with The Patriot's circulation), he deemed it advisable to moderate some of the more blatant features, on the same principle which had induced him to reform the Veridian lumber mill abuses, lest they be brought up to his political detriment later. A long-distance thinker, Tertius Marrineal.

Operating through invisible channels and by a method which neither Banneker nor Edmonds ever succeeded in fathoming, his influence now began to be felt for the better tone of the news columns. They became less glaringly sensational. Yet the quality of the news upon which the paper specialized was the same; it was the handling which was insensibly altered. That this was achieved without adversely affecting circulation was another proof, added to those already accumulated, of Marrineal's really eminent journalistic capacities. The change was the less obvious, because The Patriot's competitors in the Great Three-Ringed Circus of Sensation had found themselves being conducted, under that leadership, farther along the primrose path of stimulation and salaciousness than they had realized, and had already modified their policies.

Even under the new policy, however, The Patriot would hardly have proven, upon careful analysis, more decent or self-respecting. But it was less obvious; cleverer in avoiding the openly offensive. Capron had been curbed in his pictorial orgies. The copy-readers had been supplied with a list of words and terms tabooed from the captions. But the influence of Severance was still potent in the make-up of the news.

While Banneker was relieved at the change, he suspected its impermanency should it prove unsuccessful. To neither his chief editorial writer nor Russell Edmonds had the proprietor so much as hinted at the modification of scheme. His silence to these two was part of his developing policy of separating more widely the different departments of the paper in order that he might be the more quietly and directly authoritative over all.

The three men were lunching late at Delmonico's, and talking politics, when Edmonds leaned forward in his seat to look toward the entrance.

"There's Severance," said he. "What's the matter with him?"

The professional infuser of excitements approached walking carefully among the tables. His eyes burned in a white face.

"On one of his sprees," diagnosed Banneker. "Oh, Severance! Sit down here."

"I beg your p-p-pardon." Severance spoke with marked deliberation and delicacy, but with a faint stammer. "These not b-being office hours, I have not the p-pleasure of your acquaintance."

Marrineal smiled.

"The p-pale rictus of the damned," observed Severance. "As one damned soul to another, I c-confess a longing for companionship of m-my own sort. Therefore I accept your invitation. Waiter, a Scotch h-highball."

"We were talking of--" began Banneker, when the newcomer broke in:

"Talk of m-me. Of me and m-my work. I exult in my w-work. L-like Mr.

Whitman, I celebrate myself. I p-point with pride. What think you, gentlemen, of to-day's paper in honor of which I have t-taken my few drinks?"

"If you mean the Territon story," growled Edmonds, "it's rotten."

"Precisely. I thank you for your g-golden opinion. Rotten. Exactly as intended."

"Put a woman's good name on trial and sentence it on hearsay without appeal or recourse."

"There is always the danger of going too far along those lines," pointed out Marrineal judicially.

"Pardon me, all-wise Proprietor. The d-danger lies in not going far enough. The frightful p-peril of being found dull."

"The Territon story assays too thin in facts, as we've put it out. If Mrs. Territon doesn't leave her husband now for McLaurin," opined Marrineal, "we are in a difficult position. I happen to know her and I very much doubt--"

"Doubt not at all, d-doubting Tertius. The very fact of our publishing the story will force her hand. It's an achievement, that story. No other p-paper has a line of it."

"Not more than one other would touch it, in its present form," said Banneker. "It's too raw."

"The more virtue to us. I r-regard that story as an inspiration. Nobody could have brought it off b-but me. 'A god, a god their Severance ruled,'" punned the owner of the name.