Ernst, the waiter, scuttled across the floor below, and disappeared back of the L-angle a few feet away.

"Somebody's dining there," remarked Edmonds, "while we've been stripping the character off every paper in the field."

"May it be all the editors and owners in a lump!" said Banneker. "I'm sorry I didn't talk louder. I'm feeling reckless."

"Bad frame of mind for a man seeking a job. By the way, what _are_ you out after, exactly? Aiming at the editorial page, aren't you?"

Banneker leaned over the table, his face earnest to the point of somberness. "Pop," he said, "you know I can write."

"You can write like the devil," Edmonds offered up on twin supports of vapor.

"Yes, and I can do more than that. I can think."

"For self, or others?" propounded the veteran.

"I take you. I can think for myself and make it profitable to others, if I can find the chance. Why, Pop, this editorial game is child's play!"

"You've tried it?"

"Experimentally. The opportunities are limitless. I could make people read editorials as eagerly as they read scandal or baseball."

"How?"

"By making them as simple and interesting as scandal or baseball."

"Oh! As easy as that," observed Edmonds scornfully. "High art, son!

Nobody's found the way yet. Perhaps, if--"

He stopped, took his pipe from his lips and let his raised eyes level themselves toward the corner of the L where appeared a figure.

"Would you gentlemen mind if I took my coffee with you?" said the newcomer smoothly.

Banneker looked with questioning eyebrows toward Edmonds, who nodded.

"Come up and sit down, Mr. Marrineal," invited Banneker, moving his chair to leave a vacancy between himself and his companion.

CHAPTER XIV

Tertius C. Marrineal was a man of forty, upon whom the years had laid no bonds. A large fortune, founded by his able but illiterate father in the timber stretches of the Great Lakes region, and spread out into various profitable enterprises of mining, oil, cattle, and milling, provided him with a constantly increasing income which, though no amateur at spending, he could never quite overtake. Like many other hustlers of his day and opportunity, old Steve Marrineal had married a shrewd little shopgirl who had come up with him through the struggle by the slow, patient steps described in many of our most improving biographies. As frequently occurs, though it doesn't get into the biographies, she who had played a helpful role in adversity, could not withstand affluence.

She bloated physically and mentally, and became the juicy and unsuspecting victim of a horde of parasites and flatterers who swarmed eagerly upon her, as soon as the rough and contemptuous protection of her husband was removed by the hand of a medical prodigy who advertised himself as the discoverer of a new and infallible cure for cancer, and whom Mrs. Marrineal, with an instinctive leaning toward quackery, had forced upon her spouse. Appraising his prospective widow with an accurate eye, the dying man left a testament bestowing the bulk of his fortune upon his son, with a few heavy income-producing properties for Mrs. Marrineal. Tertius Marrineal was devoted to his mother, with a jealous, pitying, and protective affection. This is popularly approved as the infallible mark of a good man. Tertius Marrineal was not a good man.

Nor was there any particular reason why he should be. Boys who have a business pirate for father, and a weak-minded coddler for mother, seldom grow into prize exhibits. Young Marrineal did rather better than might have been expected, thanks to the presence at his birth-cradle of a robust little good-fairy named Self-Preservation, who never gets half the credit given to more picturesque but less important gift-bringers.

He grew up with an instinctive sense of when to stop. Sometimes he stopped inopportunely. He quit several courses of schooling too soon, because he did not like the unyielding regimen of the institutions.

When, a little, belated, he contrived to gain entrance to a small, old, and fashionable Eastern college, he was able, or perhaps willing, to go only halfway through his sophomore year. Two years in world travel with a well-accredited tutor seemed to offer an effectual and not too rigorous method of completing the process of mind-formation. Young Marrineal got a great deal out of that trip, though the result should perhaps be set down under the E of Experience rather than that of Erudition. The mentor also acquired experience, but it profited him little, as he died within the year after the completion of the trip, his health having been sacrificed in a too conscientious endeavor to keep even pace with his pupil. Young Marrineal did not suffer in health. He was a robust specimen. Besides, there was his good and protective fairy always ready with the flag of warning at the necessary moment.

Launched into the world after the elder Marrineal's death, Tertius interested himself in sundry of the businesses left by his father.

Though they had been carefully devised and surrounded with safeguards, the heir managed to break into and improve several of them. The result was more money. After having gambled with fair luck, played the profuse libertine for a time, tried his hand at yachting, horse-racing, big-game hunting, and even politics, he successively tired of the first three, and was beaten at the last, but retained an unsatisfied hunger for it.

To celebrate his fortieth birthday, he had bought a house on the eastern vista of Central Park, and drifted into a rather indeterminate life, identified with no special purpose, occupation, or set. Large though his fortune was, it was too much disseminated and he was too indifferent to it, for him to be conspicuous in the money game which constitutes New York's lists of High Endeavor. His reputation, in the city of careless reckonings, was vague, but just a trifle tarnished; good enough for the casual contacts which had hitherto made up his life, but offering difficulties should he wish to establish himself more firmly.

The best clubs were closed to him; he had reached his possible summit along that path in achieving membership in the recently and superbly established Oligarchs Club, which was sumptuous, but over-vivid like a new Oriental rug. As to other social advancement, his record was an obstacle. Not that it was worse than, nor indeed nearly as bad as, that of many an established member of the inner circle; but the test for an outsider seeking admittance is naturally made more severe. Delavan Eyre, for example, an average sinner for one of his opportunities and standing, had certainly no better a general repute, and latterly a much more dubious one than Marrineal. But Eyre "belonged" of right.

As sufficient indication of Marrineal's status, by the way, it may be pointed out that, while he knew Eyre quite well, it was highly improbable that he would ever know Mrs. Eyre, or, if he did fortuitously come to know her, that he would be able to improve upon the acquaintance. All this Marrineal himself well understood. But it must not be inferred that he resented it. He was far too much of a philosopher for that. It amused him as offering a new game to be played, more difficult certainly and inferentially more interesting than any of those which had hitherto enlisted his somewhat languid efforts. He appreciated also, though with a cynical disbelief in the logic of the situation, that he must polish up his reputation. He was on the new quest at the time when he overheard Banneker and Edmonds discuss the journalistic situation in Katie's restaurant, and had already determined upon his procedure.

Sitting between the two newspaper workers, Marrineal overtopped them both; the supple strength of Banneker as well as the gnarly slenderness of Edmonds. He gave an impression of loose-jointed and rather lazy power; also of quiet self-confidence. He began to talk at once, with the easy, drifting commentary of a man who had seen everything, measured much, and liked the glittering show. Both of the others, one his elder, the other his junior, felt the ready charm of the man. Both were content to listen, waiting for the clue to his intrusion which he had contrived to make not only inoffensive, but seemingly a casual act of good-fellowship. The clue was not afforded, but presently some shrewd opinion of the newcomer upon the local political situation set them both to discussion. Quite insensibly Marrineal withdrew from the conversation, sipping his coffee and listening with an effect of effortless amenity.

"If we had a newspaper here that wasn't tied hard and fast, politically!" cried Edmonds presently.

Marrineal fingered a specially fragrant cigar. "But a newspaper must be tied to something, mustn't it?" he queried. "Otherwise it drifts."

"Why not to its reading public?" suggested Banneker.

"That's an idea. But can you tie to a public? Isn't the public itself adrift, like seaweed?"

"Blown about by the gales of politics." Edmonds accepted the figure.

"Well, the newspaper ought to be the gale."

"I gather that you gentlemen do not think highly of present journalistic conditions."

"You overheard our discussion," said Banneker bluntly.

Marrineal assented. "It did not seem private. Katie's is a sort of free forum. That is why I come. I like to listen. Besides, it touched me pretty closely at one or two points."

The two others turned toward him, waiting. He nodded, and took upon himself an air of well-pondered frankness. "I expect to take a more active part in journalism from now on."

Edmonds followed up the significant phrase. "_More_ active? You have newspaper interests?"

"Practically speaking, I own The Patriot. What do you gentlemen think of it?"

"Who reads The Patriot?" inquired Banneker. He was unprepared for the swift and surprised flash from Marrineal's fine eyes, as if some profoundly analytical or revealing suggestion had been made.

"Forty thousand men, women, and children. Not half enough, of course."

"Not a tenth enough, I would say, if I owned the paper. Nor are they the right kind of readers."

"How would you define them, then?" asked Marrineal, still in that smooth voice.

"Small clerks. Race-track followers. People living in that class of tenements which call themselves flats. The more intelligent servants.

Totally unimportant people."

"Therefore a totally unimportant paper?"

"A paper can be important only through what it makes people believe and think. What possible difference can it make what The Patriot's readers think?"

"If there were enough of them?" suggested Marrineal.

"No. Besides, you'll never get enough of them, in the way you're running the paper now."