aid. "Take this
proof home, put it under your pillow and dream over it. Tell me a week
from now what you think of it."

Banneker rose. "Then, I'm not fired?" he said.

"Not by me."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm trusting in your essential honesty to bring you around."

"To be quite frank," returned Banneker after a moment's thought, "I'm
afraid I've got to be convinced of The Ledger's essential honesty to
come around."

"Go home and think it over," suggested the managing editor.

To his associate, Andreas, he said, looking at Banneker's retreating
back: "We're going to lose that young man, Andy. And we can't afford to
lose him."

"What's the matter?" inquired Andreas, the fanatical devotee of the
creed of news for news' sake.

"Quixotism. Did you read his story?"

"Yes."

Mr. Gordon looked up from his inflamed knuckles for an opinion.

"A great job," pronounced Andreas, almost reverently.

"But not for us."

"No; no. Not for us."

"It wasn't a fair story," alleged the managing editor with a hint of the
defensive in his voice.

"Too hot for that," the assistant supported his chief. "And yet
perhaps--"

"Perhaps what?" inquired Mr. Gordon with roving and anxious eye.

"Nothing," said Andreas.

As well as if he had finished, Mr. Gordon supplied the conclusion.
"Perhaps it is quite as fair as our recast article will be."

It was, on the whole, fairer.

CHAPTER XII

Sound though Mr. Gordon's suggestion was, Banneker after the interview
did not go home to think it over. He went to a telephone booth and
called up the Avon Theater. Was the curtain down? It was, just. Could he
speak to Miss Raleigh? The affair was managed.

"Hello, Bettina."

"Hello, Ban."

"How nearly dressed are you?"

"Oh--half an hour or so."

"Go out for a bite, if I come up there?"

The telephone receiver gave a transferred effect of conscientious
consideration. "No: I don't think so. I'm tired. This is my night for
sleep."

To such a basis had the two young people come in the course of the
police investigation and afterward, that an agreement had been
formulated whereby Banneker was privileged to call up the youthful star
at any reasonable hour and for any reasonable project, which she might
accept or reject without the burden of excuse.

"Oh, all right!" returned Banneker amiably.

The receiver produced, in some occult manner, the manner of not being
precisely pleased with this. "You don't seem much disappo