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?"

"Who? The mill people? Howled!"

"But it didn't get them anything?"

"Didn't it! You know how difficult it is to get anything for publication
out of old Rockface Enderby. Well, I had a brilliant idea that this was
something he'd talk about. Law Enforcement stuff, you know. And he did.
Gave me a hummer of an interview. Tore the guts out of the mill-owners
for violating all sorts of laws, and put it up that the mill-guards were
themselves a lawless organization. There's nothing timid about Enderby.
Why, we'd have started a controversy that would be going yet."

"Well, why didn't you?"

"Interview was killed," replied Edmonds, grinning ruefully. "For the
best interests of the paper. That's what the Vanney crowd's kick got
them."

"Pop, what do you make of Willis Enderby?"

"Oh, he's plodding along only a c