"That doesn't suit me at all," declared Banneker. "If I have got anything in me--and I think I have--I don't want it to make a noise like a part of a big machine. I'd rather make a small noise of my own."

"Buy a paper, then. Or write fluffy criticisms about art or theaters. Or get into the magazine field. You can write; O Lord! yes, you can write.

But unless you've got the devotion of a fanatic like McHale, or a born servant of the machine like 'Parson' Gale, or an old fool like me, willing to sink your identity in your work, you'll never be content as a reporter."

"Tell me something. Why do none of the men, talking among themselves, ever refer to themselves as reporters. It's always 'newspaper men.'"

Edmonds shot a swift glance at him. "What do you think?"

"I think," he decided slowly, "it's because there is a sort of stigma attached to reporting."

"Damn you, you're right!" snapped the veteran. "Though it's the rankest heresy to admit it. There's a taint about it. There's a touch of the pariah. We try to fool ourselves into thinking there isn't. But it's there, and we admit it when we use a clumsy, misfit term like 'newspaper man.'"

"Whose fault is it?"

"The public's. The public is a snob. It likes to look down on brains.

Particularly the business man. That's why I'm a Socialist. I'm ag'in the bourgeoisie."

"Aren't the newspapers to blame, in the kind of stuff they print?"

"And why do they print it?" demanded the other fiercely. "Because the public wants all the filth and scandal and invasion of privacy that it can get and still feel respectable."

"The Ledger doesn't go in for that sort of thing."

"Not as much as some of the others. But a little more each year. It follows the trend." He got up, quenched his pipe, and reached for his hat. "Drop in here about seven-thirty when you feel like hearing the old man maunder," he said with his slight, friendly smile.

Rising, Banneker leaned over to him. "Who's the man at the next table?"

he asked in a low voice, indicating a tall, broad, glossily dressed diner who was sipping his third _demi-tasse_, in apparent detachment from the outside world.

"His name is Marrineal," replied the veteran. "He dines here occasionally alone. Don't know what he does."

"He's been listening in."

"Curious thing; he often does."

As they parted at the door, Edmonds said paternally:

"Remember, young fellow, a Park Row reputation is written on glass with a wet finger. It doesn't last during the writing."

"And only dims the glass," said Banneker reflectively.

CHAPTER VIII

Heat, sudden, savage, and oppressive, bore down upon the city early that spring, smiting men in their offices, women in their homes, the horses between the shafts of their toil, so that the city was in danger of becoming disorganized. The visitation developed into the big story of successive days. It was the sort of generalized, picturesque "fluff-stuff" matter which Banneker could handle better than his compeers by sheer imaginative grasp and deftness of presentation. Being now a writer on space, paid at the rate of eight dollars a column of from thirteen to nineteen hundred words, he found the assignment profitable and the test of skill quite to his taste. Soft job though it was in a way, however, the unrelenting pressure of the heat and the task of finding, day after day, new phases and fresh phrases in which to deal with it, made inroads upon his nerves.

He took to sleeping ill again. Io Welland had come back in all the glamorous panoply of waking dreams to command and torment his loneliness of spirit. At night he dreaded the return to the draughtless room on Grove Street. In the morning, rising sticky-eyed and unrested, he shrank from the thought of the humid, dusty, unkempt hurly-burly of the office.

Yet his work was never more brilliant and individual.

Having finished his writing, one reeking midnight, he sat, spent, at his desk, hating the thought of the shut-in place that he called home.

Better to spend the night on a bench in some square, as he had done often enough in the earlier days. He rose, took his hat, and had reached the first landing when the steps wavered and faded in front of him and he found himself clutching for the rail. A pair of hands gripped his shoulders and held him up.

"What's the matter, Mr. Banneker?" asked a voice.

"God!" muttered Banneker. "I wish I were back on the desert."

"You want a drink," prescribed his volunteer prop.

As his vision and control reestablished themselves, Banneker found himself being led downstairs and to the nearest bar by young Fentriss Smith, who ordered two soda cocktails.

Of Smith he knew little except that the office called him "the permanent twenty-five-dollar man." He was one of those earnest, faithful, totally uninspired reporters, who can be relied upon implicitly for routine news, but are constitutionally impotent to impart color and life to any subject whatsoever. Patiently he had seen younger and newer men overtake and pass him; but he worked on inexorably, asking for nothing, wearing the air of a scholar with some distant and abstruse determination in view. Like Banneker he had no intimates in the office.

"The desert," echoed Smith in his quiet, well-bred voice. "Isn't it pretty hot, there, too?"

"It's open," said Banneker. "I'm smothering here."

"You look frazzled out, if you don't mind my saying so."

"I feel frazzled out; that's what I mind."

"Suppose you come out with me to-night as soon as I report to the desk,"

suggested the other.

Banneker, refreshed by the tingling drink, looked down at him in surprise. "Where?" he asked.

"I've got a little boat out here in the East River."

"A boat? Lord, that sounds good!" sighed Banneker.

"Does it? Then see here! Why couldn't you put in a few days with me, and cool off? I've often wanted to talk to you about the newspaper business, and get your ideas."

"But I'm newer at it than you are."

"For a fact! Just the same you've got the trick of it and I haven't.

I'll go around to your place while you pack a suitcase, and we're off."

"That's very good of you." Accustomed though he was to the swift and ready comradeship of a newspaper office, Banneker was puzzled by this advance from the shy and remote Smith. "All right: if you'll let me share expenses," he said presently.

Smith seemed taken aback at this. "Just as you like," he assented.

"Though I don't quite know--We'll talk of that later."

While Banneker was packing in his room, Smith, seated on the window-sill, remarked:

"I ought to tell you that we have to go through a bad district to get there."

"The Tunnel Gang?" asked Banneker, wise in the plague spots of the city.