"Or quit."

"You haven't quit?"

"I did. For a time. In a way. I went to jail."

"Jail? You?" Banneker had a flash of intuition. "I'll bet it was for something you were proud of."

"I wasn't ashamed of the jail sentence, at any rate. Youngster, I'm going to tell you about this." Edmonds's fine eyes seemed to have receded into their hollows as he sat thinking with his pipe neglected on the table. "D'you know who Marna Corcoran was?"

"An actress, wasn't she?"

"Leading lady at the old Coliseum Theater. A good actress and a good woman. I was a cub then on The Sphere under Red McGraw, the worst gutter-pup that ever sat at a city desk, and a damned good newspaper man. In those days The Sphere specialized on scandals; the rottener, the better; stuff that it wouldn't touch to-day. Well, a hell-cat of a society woman sued her husband for divorce and named Miss Corcoran. Pure viciousness, it was. There wasn't a shadow of proof, or even suspicion."

"I remember something about that case. The woman withdrew the charge, didn't she?"

"When it was too late. Red McGraw had an early tip and sent me to interview Marna Corcoran. He let me know pretty plainly that my job depended on my landing the story. That was his style; a bully. Well, I got the interview; never mind how. When I left her home Miss Corcoran was in a nervous collapse. I reported to McGraw. 'Keno!' says he. 'Give us a column and a half of it. Spice it.' I spiced it--I guess. They tell me it was a good job. I got lost in the excitement of writing and forgot what I was dealing with, a woman. We had a beat on that interview. They raised my salary, I remember. A week later Red called me to the desk.

'Got another story for you, Edmonds. A hummer. Marna Corcoran is in a private sanitarium up in Connecticut; hopelessly insane. I wouldn't wonder if our story did it.' He grinned like an ape. 'Go up there and get it. Buy your way in, if necessary. You can always get to some of the attendants with a ten-spot. Find out what she raves about; whether it's about Allison. Perhaps she's given herself away. Give us another red-hot one on it. Here's the address.'

"I wadded up the paper and stuffed it in his mouth. His lips felt pulpy.

He hit me with a lead paper-weight and cut my head open. I don't know that I even hit him; I didn't specially want to hit him. I wanted to mark him. There was an extra-size open ink-well on his desk. I poured that over him and rubbed it into his face. Some of it got into his eyes.

How he yelled! Of course he had me arrested. I didn't make any defense; I couldn't without bringing in Marna Corcoran's name. The Judge thought _I_ was crazy. I was, pretty near. Three months, he gave me. When I came out Marna Corcoran was dead. I went to find Red McGraw and kill him. He was gone. I think he suspected what I would do. I've never set eyes on him since. Two local newspapers sent for me as soon as my term was up and offered me jobs. I thought it was because of what I had done to McGraw. It wasn't. It was on the strength of the Marna Corcoran interview."

"Good God!"

"I needed a job, too. But I didn't take either of those. Later I got a better one with a decent newspaper. The managing editor said when he took me on: 'Mr. Edmonds, we don't approve of assaults on the city desk.

But if you ever receive in this office an assignment of the kind that caused your outbreak, you may take it out on me.' There are pretty fine people in the newspaper business, too."

Edmonds retrieved his pipe, discovering with a look of reproach and dismay that it was out. He wiped away some tiny drops of sweat which had come out upon the grayish skin beneath his eyes, while he was recounting his tragedy.

"That makes my troubles seem petty," said Banneker, under his breath. "I wonder--"

"You wonder why I told you all this," supplemented the veteran. "Since I have, I'll tell you the rest; how I made atonement in a way. Ten years ago I was on a city desk myself. Not very long; but long enough to find I didn't like it. A story came to me through peculiar channels. It was a scandal story; one of those things that New York society whispers about all over the place, yet it's almost impossible to get anything to go on.

When I tell you that even The Searchlight, which lives on scandal, kept off it, you can judge how dangerous it was. Well; I had it pat. It was really big stuff of its kind. The woman was brilliant, a daughter of one of the oldest and most noted New York families; and noted in her own right. She had never married: preferred to follow her career. The man was eminent in his line: not a society figure, except by marriage--his wife was active in the Four Hundred--because he had no tastes in that direction. He was nearly twenty years senior to the girl. The affair was desperate from the first. How far it went is doubtful; my informant gave it the worst complexion. Certainly there must have been compromising circumstances, for the wife left him, holding over him the threat of exposure. He cared nothing for himself; and the girl would have given up everything for him. But he was then engaged on a public work of importance; exposure meant the ruin of that. The wife made conditions; that the man should neither speak to, see, nor communicate with the girl. He refused. The girl went into exile and forced him to make the agreement. My informant had a copy of the letter of agreement; you can see how close she was to the family. She said that, if we printed it, the man would instantly break barriers, seek out the girl, and they would go away together. A front-page story, and exclusive."

"So it was a woman who held the key!" exclaimed Banneker.

Edmonds turned on him. "What does that mean? Do you know anything of the story?"

"Not all that you've told me. I know the people."

"Then why did you let me go on?"

"Because they--one of them--is my friend. There is no harm to her in my knowing. It might even be helpful."

"Nevertheless, I think you should have told me at once," grumbled the veteran. "Well, I didn't take the story. The informer said that she would place it elsewhere. I told her that if she did I would publish the whole circumstances of her visit and offer, and make New York too hot to hold her. She retired, bulging with venom like a mad snake. But she dares not tell."

"The man's wife, was it not?"

"Some one representing her, I suspect. A bad woman, that wife. But I saved the girl in memory of Marna Corcoran. Think what the story would be worth, now that the man is coming forward politically!" Edmonds smiled wanly. "It was worth a lot even then, and I threw my paper down on it. Of course I resigned from the city desk at once."

"It's a fascinating game, being on the inside of the big things,"

ruminated Banneker. "But when it comes to a man's enslaving himself to his paper, I--don't--know."

"No: you won't quit," prophesied the other.

"I have. That is, I've resigned."

"Of course. They all do, of your type. It was the peck of dirt, wasn't it?"

Banneker nodded.

"Gordon won't let you go. And you won't have any more dirt thrown at you--probably. If you do, it'll be time enough then."

"There's more than that."

"Is there? What?"

"We're a pariah caste, Edmonds, we reporters. People look down on us."

"Oh, that be damned! You can't afford to be swayed by the ignorance or snobbery of outsiders. Play the game straight, and let the rest go."

"But we are, aren't we?" persisted Banneker.

"What! Pariahs?" The look which the old-timer bent upon the rising star of the business had in it a quality of brooding and affection. "Son, you're too young to have come properly to that frame of mind. That comes later. With the dregs of disillusion after the sparkle has died out."

"But it's true. You admit it."

"If an outsider said that we were pariahs I'd call him a liar. But, what's the use, with you? It isn't reporting alone. It's the whole business of news-getting and news-presenting; of journalism. We're under suspicion. They're afraid of us. And at the same time they're contemptuous of us."

"Why?"

"Because people are mostly fools and fools are afraid or contemptuous of what they don't understand."

Banneker thought it over. "No. That won't do," he decided. "Men that aren't fools and aren't afraid distrust us and despise the business.

Edmonds, there's nothing wrong, essentially, in furnishing news for the public. It's part of the spread of truth. It's the handing on of the light. It's--it's as big a thing as religion, isn't it?"

"Bigger. Religion, seven days a week."

"Well, then--"

"I know, son," said Edmonds gently. "You're thirsting for the clear and restoring doctrine of journalism. And I'm going to give you hell's own heresy. You'll come to it anyway, in time." His fierce little pipe glowed upward upon his knotted brows. "You talk about truth, news: news and truth as one and the same thing. So they are. But newspapers aren't after news: not primarily. Can't you see that?"

"No. What are they after?"

"Sensation."

Banneker turned the word over in his mind, evoking confirmation in the remembered headlines even of the reputable Ledger.