But the thin, knotty face of Edmonds was turned upon him with so kindly a regard in the hollow eyes that he felt an innate stir of knowledge that here was a man who might be a friend. He made no answer, however, merely glancing at the speaker. To learn that the denizens of Park Row were discussing him, caused him neither surprise nor elation. While he knew that he had made hit after hit with his work, he was not inclined to over-value the easily won reputation. Edmonds's next remark did not please him.

"We were discussing how much dirt you'd eat to hold your job on The Ledger."

"The Ledger doesn't ask its men to eat dirt, Edmonds," put in Mallory sharply.

"Chop, fried potatoes, coffee, and a stein of Nicklas-brau," Banneker specified across the table to the waiter. He studied the mimeographed bill-of-fare with selective attention. "And a slice of apple pie," he decided. Without change of tone, he looked up over the top of the menu at Edmonds slowly puffing his insignificant pipe and said: "I don't like your assumption, Mr. Edmonds."

"It's ugly," admitted the other, "but you have to answer it. Oh, not to me!" he added, smiling. "To yourself."

"It hasn't come my way yet."

"It will. Ask any of these fellows. We've all had to meet it. Yes; you, too, Mallory. We've all had to eat our peck of dirt in the sacred name of news. Some are too squeamish. They quit."

"If they're too squeamish, they'd never make real newspaper men,"

pronounced McHale. "You can't be too good for your business."

"Just so," said Tommy Burt acidly, "but your business can be too bad for you."

"There's got to be news. And if there's got to be news there have got to be men willing to do hard, unpleasant work, to get it," argued Mallory.

"Hard? All right," retorted Edmonds. "Unpleasant? Who cares! I'm talking about the dirty work. Wait a minute, Mallory. Didn't you ever have an assignment that was an outrage on some decent man's privacy? Or, maybe woman's? Something that made you sick at your stomach to have to do? Did you ever have to take a couple of drinks to give you nerve to ask some question that ought to have got you kicked downstairs for asking?"

Mallory, flushing angrily, was silent. But McHale spoke up. "Hell! Every business has its stinks, I guess. What about being a lawyer and serving papers? Or a manufacturer and having to bootlick the buyers? I tell you, if the public wants a certain kind of news, it's the newspaper's business to serve it to 'em; and it's the newspaper man's business to get it for his paper. I say it's up to the public."

"The public," murmured Edmonds. "Swill-eaters."

"All right! Then give 'em the kind of swill they want," cried McHale.

Edmonds so manipulated his little pipe that it pointed directly at Banneker. "Would you?" he asked.

"Would I what?"

"Give 'em the kind of swill they want? You seem to like to keep your hands clean."

"Aren't you asking me your original question in another form?" smiled the young man.

"You objected to it before."

"I'll answer it now. A friend of mine wrote to me when I went on The Ledger, advising me always to be ready on a moment's notice to look my job between the eyes and tell it to go to hell."

"Yes; I've known that done, too," interpolated Mallory. "But in those cases it isn't the job that goes." He pushed back his chair. "Don't let Pop Edmonds corrupt you with his pessimism, Banneker," he warned. "He doesn't mean half of it."

"Under the seal of the profession," said the veteran. "If there were outsiders present, it would be different. I'd have to admit that ours is the greatest, noblest, most high-minded and inspired business in the world. Free and enlightened press. Fearless defender of the right.

Incorruptible agent of the people's will. Did I say 'people's will' or 'people's swill'? Don't ask me!"

The others paid their accounts and followed Mallory out, leaving Banneker alone at the table with the saturnine elder. Edmonds put a thumbful of tobacco in his pipe, and puffed silently.

"What will it get a man?" asked Banneker, setting down his coffee-cup.

"This game?" queried the other.

"Yes."

"'What shall it profit a man,'" quoted the veteran ruminatively. "You know the rest."

"No," returned Banneker decidedly. "That won't do. These fellows here haven't sold their souls."

"Or lost 'em. Maybe not," admitted the elder. "Though I wouldn't gamble strong on some of 'em. But they've lost something."

"Well, what is it? That's what I'm trying to get at."

"Independence. They're merged in the paper they write for."

"Every man's got to subordinate himself to his business, if he's to do justice to it and himself, hasn't he?"

"Yes. If you're buying or selling stocks or socks, it doesn't matter.

The principles you live by aren't involved. In the newspaper game they are."

"Not in reporting, though."

"If reporting were just gathering facts and presenting them, it wouldn't be so. But you're deep enough in by now to see that reporting of a lot of things is a matter of coloring your version to the general policy of your paper. Politics, for instance, or the liquor question, or labor troubles. The best reporters get to doing it unconsciously. Chameleons."

"And you think it affects them?"

"How can it help? There's a slow poison in writing one way when you believe another."

"And that's part of the dirt-eating?"

"Well, yes. Not so obvious as some of the other kinds. Those hurt your pride, mostly. This kind hurts your self-respect."

"But where does it get you, all this business?" asked Banneker reverting to his first query.

"I'm fifty-two years old," replied Edmonds quietly.

Banneker stared. "Oh, I see!" he said presently. "And you're considered a success. Of course you _are_ a success."

"On Park Row. Would you like to be me? At fifty-two?"

"No, I wouldn't," said Banneker with a frankness which brought a faint smile to the other man's tired face. "Yet you've got where you started for, haven't you?"

"Perhaps I could answer that if I knew where I started for or where I've got to."

"Put it that you've got what you were after, then."

"No's the answer. Upper-case No. I want to get certain things over to the public intelligence. Maybe I've got one per cent of them over. Not more."

"That's something. To have a public that will follow you even part way--"

"Follow me? Bless you; they don't know me except as a lot of print that they occasionally read. I'm as anonymous as an editorial writer. And that's the most anonymous thing there is."