"Any experience?"

"None to speak of. I've written a few things. I thought you might remember my name."

"Your name? Banneker? No. Why should I?"

"You published some of my things in the Sunday edition, lately. From Manzanita, California."

"No. I don't think so. Mr. Homans." A graying man with the gait of a marionnette and the precise expression of a rocking-horse, who had just entered, crossed over. "Have we sent out any checks to a Mr. Banneker recently, in California?"

The new arrival, who was copy-reader and editorial selecter for the Sunday edition, repeated the name in just such a wooden voice as was to be expected. "No," he said positively.

"But I've cashed the checks," returned Banneker, annoyed and bewildered.

"And I've seen the clipping of the article in the Sunday Sphere of--"

"Just a moment. You're not in The Sphere office. Did you think you were?

Some one has directed you wrong. This is The Ledger."

"Oh!" said Banneker. "It was a policeman that pointed it out. I suppose I saw wrong." He paused; then looked up ingenuously. "But, anyway, I'd rather be on The Ledger."

Mr. Gordon smiled broadly, the thin blade poised over a plump, reddened knuckle.

"Would you! Now, why?"

"I've been reading it. I like the way it does things."

The editor laughed outright. "If you didn't look so honest, I would think that somebody of experience had been tutoring you. How many other places have you tried?"

"None."

"You were going to The Sphere first? On the promise of a job?"

"No. Because they printed what I wrote."

"The Sphere's ways are not our ways," pronounced Mr. Gordon primly.

"It's a fundamental difference in standards."

"I can see that."

"Oh, you can, can you?" chuckled the other. "But it's true that we have no opening here."

(The Ledger never did have an "opening"; but it managed to wedge in a goodly number of neophytes, from year to year, ninety per cent of whom were automatically and courteously ejected after due trial. Mr. Gordon performed a surpassing rataplan upon his long-suffering thumb-joint and wondered if this queer and direct being might qualify among the redeemable ten per cent.)

"I can wait." (They often said that.) "For a while," added the youth thoughtfully.

"How long have you been in New York?"

"Thirty-three days."

"And what have you been doing?"

"Reading newspapers."

"No! Reading--That's rather surprising. All of them?"

"All that I could manage."

"Some were so bad that you couldn't worry through them, eh?" asked the other with appreciation.

"Not that. But I didn't know the foreign languages except French, and Spanish, and a little Italian."

"The foreign-language press, too. Remarkable!" murmured the other. "Do you mind telling me what your idea was?"

"It was simple enough. As I wanted to get on a newspaper, I thought I ought to find out what newspapers were made of."

"Simple, as you say. Beautifully simple! So you've devised for yourself the little job of perfecting yourself in every department of journalism; politics, finances, criminal, sports, society; all of them, eh?"

"No; not all," replied Banneker.

"Not? What have you left out?"

"Society news" was the answer, delivered less promptly than the other replies.

Bestowing a twinkle of mingled amusement and conjecture upon the applicant's clothing, Mr. Gordon said:

"You don't approve of our social records? Or you're not interested? Or why is it that you neglect this popular branch?"

"Personal reasons."

This reply, which took the managing editor somewhat aback, was accurate if not explanatory. Miss Van Arsdale's commentaries upon Gardner and his quest had inspired Banneker with a contemptuous distaste for this type of journalism. But chiefly he had shunned the society columns from dread of finding there some mention of her who had been Io Welland. He was resolved to conquer and evict that memory; he would not consciously put himself in the way of anything that recalled it.

"Hum! And this notion of making an intensive study of the papers; was that original with you?"

"Well, no, not entirely. I got it from a man who made himself a bank president in seven years."

"Yes? How did he do that?"

"He started by reading everything he could find about money and coinage and stocks and bonds and other financial paper. He told me that it was incredible the things that financial experts didn't know about their own business--the deep-down things--and that he guessed it was so with any business. He got on top by really knowing the things that everybody was supposed to know."

"A sound theory, I dare say. Most financiers aren't so revealing."

"He and I were padding the hoof together. We were both hoboes then."

The managing editor looked up, alert, from his knuckle-tapping. "From bank president to hobo. Was his bank an important one?"

"The biggest in a medium-sized city."

"And does that suggest nothing to you, as a prospective newspaper man?"

"What? Write him up?"