"It would make a fairly sensational story."

"I couldn't do that. He was my friend. He wouldn't like it."

Mr. Gordon addressed his wedding-ring finger which was looking a bit scarified. "Such an article as that, properly done, would go a long way toward getting you a chance on this paper--Sit down, Mr. Banneker."

"You and I," said Banneker slowly and in the manner of the West, "can't deal."

"Yes, we can." The managing editor threw his steel blade on the desk.

"Sit down, I tell you. And understand this. If you come on this paper--I'm going to turn you over to Mr. Greenough, the city editor, with a request that he give you a trial--you'll be expected to subordinate every personal interest and advantage to the interests and advantages of the paper, _except_ your sense of honor and fair-play. We don't ask you to give that up; and if you do give it up, we don't want you at all. What have you done besides be a hobo?"

"Railroading. Station-agent."

"Where were you educated?"

"Nowhere. Wherever I could pick it up."

"Which means everywhere. Ever read George Borrow?"

"Yes."

The heavy face of Mr. Gordon lighted up. "Ree-markable! Keep on. He's a good offset to--to the daily papers. Writing still counts, on The Ledger. Come over and meet Mr. Greenough."

The city editor unobtrusively studied Banneker out of placid, inscrutable eyes, soft as a dove's, while he chatted at large about theaters, politics, the news of the day. Afterward the applicant met the Celtic assistant, Mr. Mallory, who broadly outlined for him the technique of the office. With no further preliminaries Banneker found himself employed at fifteen dollars a week, with Monday for his day off and directions to report on the first of the month.

As the day-desk staff was about departing at six o'clock, Mr. Gordon sauntered over to the city desk looking mildly apologetic.

"I practically had to take that young desert antelope on," said he.

"Too ingenuous to turn down," surmised the city editor.

"Ingenuous! He's heir to the wisdom of the ages. And now I'm afraid I've made a ghastly mistake."

"Something wrong with him?"

"I've had his stuff in the Sunday Sphere looked up."

"Pretty weird?" put in Mallory, gliding into his beautifully fitting overcoat.

"So damned good that I don't see how The Sphere ever came to take it.

Greenough, you'll have to find some pretext for firing that young phenomenon as soon as possible."

Perfectly comprehending his superior's mode of indirect expression the city editor replied:

"You think so highly of him as that?"

"Not one of our jobs will be safe from him if he once gets his foot planted," prophesied the other with mock ruefulness. "Do you know," he added, "I never even asked him for a reference."

"You don't need to," pronounced Mallory, shaking the last wrinkle out of himself and lighting the cigarette of departure. "He's got it in his face, if I'm any judge."

Highly elate, Banneker walked on springy pavements all the way to Grove Street. Fifteen a week! He could live on that. His other income and savings could be devoted to carrying out Miss Camilla's advice. For he need not save any more. He would go ahead, fast, now that he had got his start. How easy it had been.

Entering the Brashear door, he met plain, middle-aged little Miss Westlake. A muffler was pressed to her jaw. He recalled having heard her moving about her room, the cheapest and least desirable in the house, and groaning softly late in the night; also having heard some lodgers say that she was a typist with very little work. Obviously she needed a dentist, and presumably she had not the money to pay his fee. In the exultation of his good luck, Banneker felt a stir of helpfulness toward this helpless person.

"Oh!" said he. "How do you do! Could you find time to do some typing for me quite soon?"

It was said impulsively and was followed by a surge of dismay. Typing?

Type what? He had absolutely nothing on hand!

Well, he must get up something. At once. It would never do to disappoint that pathetic and eager hope, as of a last-moment rescue, expressed in the little spinster's quick flush and breathless, thankful affirmative.

CHAPTER III

Ten days' leeway before entering upon the new work. To which of scores of crowding purposes could Banneker best put the time? In his offhand way the instructive Mallory had suggested that he familiarize himself with the topography and travel-routes of the Island of Manhattan.

Indefatigably he set about doing this; wandering from water-front to water-front, invading tenements, eating at queer, Englishless restaurants, picking up chance acquaintance with chauffeurs, peddlers, street-fakers, park-bench loiterers; all that drifting and iridescent scum of life which variegates the surface above the depths. Everywhere he was accepted without question, for his old experience on the hoof had given him the uncoded password which loosens the speech of furtive men and wise. A receptivity, sensitized to a high degree by the inspiration of new adventure, absorbed these impressions. The faithful pocket-ledger was filling rapidly with notes and phrases, brisk and trenchant, set down with no specific purpose; almost mechanically, in fact, but destined to future uses. Mallory, himself no mean connoisseur of the tumultuous and flagrant city, would perhaps have found matter foreign to his expert apprehension could he have seen and translated the pages of 3 T 9901.

Banneker would go forward in the fascinating paths of exploration; but there were other considerations.

The outer man, for example. The inner man, too; the conscious inner man strengthened upon the strong milk of the philosophers, the priests, and the prophets so strangely mingled in that library now stored with Camilla Van Arsdale; exhilarated by the honey-dew of "The Undying Voices," of Keats and Shelley, and of Swinburne's supernal rhythms, which he had brought with him. One visit to the Public Library had quite appalled him; the vast, chill orderliness of it. He had gone there, hungry to chat about books! To the Public Library! Surely a Homeric joke for grim, tomish officialdom. But tomish officialdom had not even laughed at him; it was too official to appreciate the quality of such side-splitting innocence.... Was he likely to meet a like irresponsiveness when he should seek clothing for the body?

Watch the clubs, young Wickert had advised. Banneker strolled up Fifth Avenue, branching off here and there, into the more promising side streets.

It was the hour of the First Thirst; the institutions which cater to this and subsequent thirsts drew steadily from the main stream of human activity flowing past. Many gloriously clad specimens passed in and out of the portals, socially sacred as in the quiet Fifth Avenue clubs, profane as in the roaring, taxi-bordered "athletic" foundations; but there seemed to the anxious observer no keynote, no homogeneous character wherefrom to build as on a sure foundation. Lacking knowledge, his instinct could find no starting-point; he was bewildered in vision and in mind. Just off the corner of the quietest of the Forties, he met a group of four young men, walking compactly by twos. The one nearest him in the second line was Herbert Cressey. His heavy and rather dull eye seemed to meet Banneker's as they came abreast. Banneker nodded, half checking himself in his slow walk.

"How are you?" he said with an accent of surprise and pleasure.

Cressey's expressionless face turned a little. There was no response in kind to Banneker's smile.

"Oh! H'ware you!" said he vaguely, and passed on.

Banneker advanced mechanically until he reached the corner. There he stopped. His color had heightened. The smile was still on his lips; it had altered, taken on a quality of gameness. He did not shake his fist at the embodied spirit of metropolitanism before him, as had a famous Gallic precursor of his, also a determined seeker for Success in a lesser sphere; but he paraphrased Rastignac's threat in his own terms.

"I reckon I'll have to lick this town and lick it good before it learns to be friendly."

A hand fell on his arm. He turned to face Cressey.

"You're the feller that bossed the wreck out there in the desert, aren't you? You're--lessee--Banneker."

"I am." The tone was curt.

"Awfully sorry I didn't spot you at once." Cressey's genuineness was a sufficient apology. "I'm a little stuffy to-day. Bachelor dinner last night. What are you doing here? Looking around?"

"No. I'm living here."

"That so? So am I. Come into my club and let's talk. I'm glad to see you, Mr. Banneker."