At Riordan’s, much frequented by policemen and reporters, Jack Lanagan sat with Leslie, that greatest chief of his time, discussing one of Dan’s delectable Bismarck herrings and a “steam.” It was not above the very human Leslie to mingle in the free democracy of Dan’s back room, where the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate foregathered to settle in seasoned nonchalance the problems of the world. Leslie was speaking. “You haven’t lost out, Jack,” he was saying. “But if that narrow-gauge Sampson elects to fire you--which I know he won’t--I’ll give you work if I’ve got to pay you out of my contingent fund. Get off that suisses diet and report. The _Enquirer_ can’t afford to lose you.” Lanagan, unshaven for a week, looked otherwise disreputable. “The _Enquirer_,” he reported judicially, “can afford to lose anybody. It’s a sweat-shop life, reporting; and they fill your place just as easily as Schwartz, down there on Stevenson Street, fills a place at one of his shirt machines. Nothing is as dead as a yesterday’s paper--excepting it has a libel in it; and nothing is so perishable as a reporter’s reputation. The slate is swabbed clean once every twenty-four hours. Your job is precisely that long.” “Rats. You’re in a beautiful humour. They can’t forget that Iowa Slim exclusive very soon.” “No; but only because of the fact that I haven’t shown up for work since. They had given me warning before then. I’m through unless they send for me, and they don’t seem to be doing that. As a matter of cold-blooded fact, the _Enquirer_ likes my work but not my weakness. My type don’t get much sympathy these times. I belong to the generation of the tramp printer; the days of a real ethical code in the profession. We old-timers are taking the gad--what few of us there are left--three times over for an even break with these peg-topped trouser boys at ten a week who once wrote a class farce. “No, chief,” concluded Lanagan dispassionately and deliberately, “I guess I’ve shot my bolt in San Francisco. I’ll ship on a banana boat and flag it on to Panama. Maybe when I get there I will tangle up in some big complication and another Davis will come along to chronicle me with that other Derelict; a grand story, by the way, chief--a newspaper epic. You should read it.” Leslie ignored the morose mood of the reporter. “Shot nothing,” he said in disgust. “Take a Turkish bath and sweat that grouch out of your system. Here, take this ten. I want you to get back to your paper. You’re too valuable a man to be out of work in this town.” Lanagan rejected the proffered money, and Leslie was attempting to force it on him--there was a warm bond of friendship between the two men and a mutual admiration for the abilities of each other--when when Brady from the upper office stuck his head through the door. He saluted.