s to what you're going to do about
Laird. According to my private information, he's coming back at The
Patriot."

"For my editorials on the Combined franchise?"

"Hardly. He's too straight to resent honest criticism. No; for some of
the crooked stuff that we're running in our political news. Besides,
some suspicious and informed soul in the administration has read between
our political lines, and got a peep of the aspiring Tertius girding
himself for contest. Result, the city advertising is to be taken from
The Patriot."

It needed no more than a mechanical reckoning of percentages to tell
Banneker that this implied a serious diminution of his own income.
Further, such a procedure would be in effect a repudiation of The
Patriot and its editorial support.

"That's a rotten deal!" he exclaimed.

"No. Just politics. Justifiable, too, I should say, as politics go. I
doubt whether Laird would do it of his own motion; he plays a higher
game than that. But it isn't strictly within his province either to
effect or prevent. Anyhow, it's going to be done."

"If he wants to fight us--" began Banneker with gloom in his eyes.

"He doesn't want to fight anybody," cut in the expert. "He wants to be
mayor and run the city for what seems to him the city's best good. If he
thought Marrineal would carry on his work as mayor, I doubt if he'd
oppose him. But our shrewd old friend, Enderby, isn't of that mind.
Enderby understands Marrineal. He'll fight to the finish."

Edmonds left his friend in a glum perturbation of mind. Enderby
understood Marrineal, did he? Banneker wished that he himself did. If he
could have come to grips with his employer, he would at least have known
now where to take his stand. But Marrineal was elusive. No, not even
elusive; quiescent. He waited.

As time passed, Banneker's editorial and personal involvements grew more
complex. At what moment might a pressure from above close down on his
pen, and with what demand? How should he act in the crisis thus forced,
at Marrineal's slow pleasure? Take Edmonds's Gordian recourse; resign?
But he was on the verge of debt. His investments had gone badly; he
prided himself on the thought that it was partly through his own
immovable uprightness. Now, this threat to his badly needed percentages!
Surely The Patriot ought to be making a greater profit than it showed,
on its steadily waxing circulation. Why had he ever let himself be
wrenched from his first and impregnable