"Don't say 'you,' please," besought Marrineal. "I've been keeping my hands off. Watching."

"And now you're going to take hold?" queried Edmonds. "Personally?"

"As soon as I can find my formula--and the men to help me work it out,"

he added, after a pause so nicely emphasized that both his hearers had a simultaneous inkling of the reason for his being at their table.

"I've seen newspapers run on formula before," muttered Edmonds.

"Onto the rocks?"

"Invariably."

"That's because the formulas were amateur formulas, isn't it?"

The veteran of a quarter-century turned a mildly quizzical smile upon the adventurer into risky waters. "Well?" he jerked out.

Marrineal's face was quite serious as he took up the obvious implication. "Where is the dividing line between professional and amateur in the newspaper business? You gentlemen will bear with me if I go into personal details a little. I suppose I've always had the newspaper idea. When I was a youngster of twenty, I tried myself out.

Got a job as a reporter in St. Louis. It was just a callow escapade. And of course it couldn't last. I was an undisciplined sort of cub. They fired me; quite right, too. But I did learn a little. And at least it educated me in one thing; how to read newspapers." He laughed lightly.

"Perhaps that is as nearly thorough an education as I've ever had in anything."

"It's rather an art, newspaper reading," observed Banneker.

"You've tried it, I gather. So have I, rather exhaustively in the last year. I've been reading every paper in New York every day and all through."

"That's a job for an able-minded man," commented Edmonds, looking at him with a new respect.

"It put eye-glasses on me. But if it dimmed my eyes, it enlightened my mind. The combined newspapers of New York do not cover the available field. They do not begin to cover it.... Did you say something, Mr.

Banneker?"

"Did I? I didn't mean to," said Banneker hastily. "I'm a good deal interested."

"I'm glad to hear that," returned Marrineal with gravity. "After I'd made my estimate of what the newspapers publish and fail to publish, I canvassed the circulation lists and news-stands and made another discovery. There is a large potential reading public not yet tied up to any newspaper. It's waiting for the right paper."

"The imputation of amateurishness is retracted, with apologies,"

announced Russell Edmonds.

"Accepted. Though there are amateur areas yet in my mind. I bought The Patriot."

"Does that represent one of the areas?"

"It represents nothing, thus far, except what it has always represented, a hand-to-mouth policy and a financial deficit. But what's wrong with it from your point of view?"

"Cheap and nasty," was the veteran's succinct criticism.

"Any more so than The Sphere? The Sphere's successful."

"Because it plays fair with the main facts. It may gloss 'em up with a touch of sensationalism, like the oil on a barkeep's hair. But it does go after the facts, and pretty generally it presents 'em as found. The Patriot is fakey; clumsy at it, too. Any man arrested with more than five dollars in his pocket is a millionaire clubman. If Bridget O'Flaherty jumps off Brooklyn Bridge, she becomes a prominent society woman with picture (hers or somebody else's) in The Patriot. And the cheapest little chorus-girl tart, who blackmails a broker's clerk with a breach of promise, gets herself called a 'distinguished actress' and him a 'well-known financier.' Why steal the Police Gazette's rouge and lip-stick?"

"Because it's what the readers want."

"All right. But at least give it to 'em well done. And cut out the printing of wild rumors as news. That doesn't get a paper anything in the long run. None of your readers have any faith in The Patriot."

"Does any paper have the confidence of its public?" returned Marrineal.

Touched upon a sensitive spot, Edmonds cursed briefly. "If it hasn't, it's because the public has a dam'-fool fad for pretending it doesn't believe what it reads. Of course it believes it! Otherwise, how would it know who's president, or that the market sagged yesterday? This 'I-never-believe-what-I-read-in-the-papers' guff makes me sick to the tips of my toes."

"Only the man who knows newspapers from the inside can disbelieve them scientifically," put in Banneker with a smile.

"What would _you_ do with The Patriot if you had it?" interrogated the proprietor.

"I? Oh, I'd try to make it interesting," was the prompt and simple reply.

"How, interesting?"

For his own purposes Banneker chose to misinterpret the purport of the question. "So interesting that half a million people would have to read it."

"You think you could do that?"

"I think it could be done."

"Will you come with me and try it?"

"You're offering me a place on The Patriot staff?"

"Precisely. Mr. Edmonds is joining."

That gentleman breathed a small cloud of blue vapor into the air together with the dispassionate query: "Is that so? Hadn't heard of it."

"My principle in business is to determine whether I want a man or an article, and then bid a price that can't be rejected."

"Sound," admitted the veteran. "Perfectly sound. But I'm not specially in need of money."

"I'm offering you opportunity."

"What kind?"

"Opportunity to handle big stories according to the facts as you see them. Not as you had to handle the Sippiac strike story."

Edmonds set down his pipe. "What did you think of that?"

"A masterpiece of hinting and suggestion and information for those who can read between the lines. Not many have the eye for it. With me you won't have to write between the lines. Not on labor or political questions, anyway. You're a Socialist, aren't you?"

"Yes. You're not going to make The Patriot a Socialist paper, are you?"

"Some people might call it that. I'm going to make it a popular paper.

It's going to be for the many against the few. How are you going to bring about Socialism?"

"Education."