"Who is he?"

"Ask me who he _was_ and I'll tell you. He was the brilliant youngster, the coruscating firework, the--the Banneker of ten years ago. Come into the den and meet him."

In one of the inner rooms Banneker was introduced to a fragile, desiccated-looking man languidly engaged in scissoring newspaper after newspaper which he took from a pile and cast upon the floor after operation. The clippings he filed in envelopes. A checkerboard lay on the table beside him.

"Do you play draughts, Mr. Banneker?" he asked in a rumbling bass.

"Very little and very poorly."

The other sighed. "It is pure logic, in the form of contest. Far more so than chess, which is merely sustained effort of concentration. Are you interested in emblemology?"

"I'm afraid I know almost nothing of it," confessed Banneker.

Akely sighed again, gave Banneker a glance which proclaimed an utter lack of interest, and plunged his shears into the editorial vitals of the Springfield Republican. Tommy Burt led the surprised Banneker away.

"Dried up, played out, and given a measly thirty-five a week as hopper-feeder for the editorial room," he announced. "And he was the star man of his time."

"That's pretty rotten treatment for him, then," said Banneker indignantly.

"Not a bit of it. He isn't worth what he gets. Most offices would have chucked him out on the street."

"What was his trouble?"

"Nothing in particular. Just wore his machine out. Everything going out, nothing coming in. He spun out enough high-class copy to keep the ordinary reporter going for a life-time; but he spun it out too fast.

Nothing left. The tragedy of it is that he's quite happy."

"Then it isn't a tragedy at all."

"Depends on whether you take the Christian or the Buddhist point of view. He's found his Nirvana in checker problems and collecting literature about insignia. Write? I don't suppose he'd want to if he could. 'There but for the grace of God goes'--you or I. _I_ think the _facilis descensus_ to the gutter is almost preferable."

"So you've shown him to me as a dreadful warning, have you, Tommy?"

mused Banneker aloud.

"Get out of it, Ban; get out of it."

"Why don't you get out of it yourself?"

"Inertia. Or cowardice. And then, I haven't come to the turning-point yet. When I do reach it, perhaps it'll be too late."

"What do you reckon the turning-point?"

"As long as you feel the excitement of the game," explained this veteran of thirty, "you're all right. That will keep you going; the sense of adventure, of change, of being in the thick of things. But there's an underlying monotony, so they tell me: the monotony of seeing things by glimpses, of never really completing a job, of being inside important things, but never of them. That gets into your veins like a clogging poison. Then you're through. Quit it, Ban, before it's too late."

"No. I'm not going to quit the game. It's my game. I'm going to beat it."

"Maybe. You've got the brains. But I think you're too stiff in the backbone. Go-to-hell-if-you-don't-like-the-way-I-do-it may be all right for a hundred-dollar-a-week job; but it doesn't get you a managing editorship at fifteen to twenty thousand. Even if it did, you'd give up the go-to-hell attitude as soon as you landed, for fear it would cost you your job and be too dear a luxury."

"All right, Mr. Walpole," laughed Banneker. "When I find what my price is, I'll let you know. Meantime I'll think over your well-meant advice."

If the normal way of advancement were closed to him in The Ledger office because of his unsound and rebellious attitude on social and labor questions, there might be better opportunities in other offices, Banneker reflected.

Before taking any step he decided to talk over the general situation with that experienced campaigner, Russell Edmonds. Him and his diminutive pipe he found at Katie's, after most of the diners had left.

The veteran nodded when Banneker told him of his having reached what appeared to be a _cul-de-sac_.

"It's about time you quit," said Edmonds vigorously.

"You've changed your mind?"

The elder nodded between two spirals of smoke which gave him the appearance of an important godling delivering oracles through incense.

"That was a dam' bad story you wrote of the Sippiac killings."

"I didn't write it."

"Didn't uh? You were there."

"My story went to the office cat."

"What was the stuff they printed? Amalgamated Wire Association?"

"No. Machine-made rewrite in the office."

"It wasn't dishonest. The Ledger's too clever for that. It was unhonest.

You can't be both neutral and fair on cold-blooded murder."

"You weren't precisely neutral in The Courier."

Edmonds chuckled. "I did rather put it over on the paper. But that was easy. Simply a matter of lining up the facts in logical sequence."

"Horace Vanney says you're an anarchist."

"It's mutual. I think he's one. To hell with all laws and rights that discommode _Me_ and _My_ interests. That's the Vanney platform."

"He thinks he ought to have advertised."

"Wise guy! So he ought."

"To secure immunity?"

It required six long, hard puffs to elicit from Edmonds the opinion: "He'd have got it. Partly. Not all he paid for."

"Not from The Ledger," said Banneker jealously. "We're independent in that respect."

Edmonds laughed. "You don't have to bribe your own heeler. The Ledger believes in Vanney's kind of anarchism, as in a religion."

"Could he have bought off The Courier?"

"Nothing as raw as that. But it's quite possible that if the Sippiac Mills had been a heavy advertiser, the paper wouldn't have sent me to the riots. Some one more sympathetic, maybe."

"Didn't they kick on your story?"