nce would _I_ have?'

"None, with the present lot in the Inside Room. You're a heretic. You're
unsound. You've got dangerous ideas--accent on the dangerous. I doubt if
they'd even trust you with a blue pencil. You might inject something
radical into a thirty-head."

"Tommy," said Banneker, "I'm still new at this game. What becomes of
star reporters?"

"Drink," replied Tommy brusquely.

"Rats!" retorted Banneker. "That's guff. There aren't three heavy
drinkers in this office."

"A lot of the best men go that way," persisted Burt. "It's the late
hours and the irregular life, I suppose. Some drift out into other
lines. This office has trained a lot of playwrights and authors and
ad-men."

"But some must stick."

"They play out early. The game is too hard. They get to be hacks. _Or_
permanent desk-men. D'you know Philander Akely?"

"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.