"The Morning Ledger," volunteered Tommy Burt, "has a high and well-merited reputation for its fidelity to the principles of truth and fairness and to the best interests of the reading public. It never gives the public any news to play with that it thinks the dear little thing ought not to have. Did you say anything? No? Well; you meant it. You're wrong. The Ledger is the highest-class newspaper in New York. We are the Elect!" In his first revulsion of anger, Banneker was for going to Mr. Greenough and having it out with him. If it meant his resignation, very good. He was ready to look his job in the eye and tell it to go to hell. Turning the matter over in his mind, however, he decided upon another course. So far as the sensational episode of which he was the central figure went, he would regard himself consistently as a private citizen with no responsibility whatsoever to The Ledger. Let the paper print or suppress what it chose; his attitude toward it would be identical with his attitude toward the other papers. Probably the office powers would heartily disapprove of his having any dealings with Enderby and his Law Enforcement Society. Let them! He telephoned a brief but final message to Enderby and Enderby. When, late that night, Mr. Gordon called him over and suggested that it was highly desirable to let the whole affair drop out of public notice as soon as the startling facts would permit, he replied that Judge Enderby had already arranged to push an investigation. "Doubtless," observed the managing editor. "It is his specialty. But without your evidence they can't go far." "They can have my evidence." Mr. Gordon, who had been delicately balancing his letter-opener, now delivered a whack of such unthinking ferocity upon his fat knuckle as to produce a sharp pang. He gazed in surprise and reproach upon the aching thumb and something of those emotions informed the regard which he turned slowly upon Banneker. Mr. Gordon's frame of mind was unenviable. The Inside Room, moved by esoteric considerations, political and, more remotely, financial, had issued to him a managerial ukase; no police investigation if it could be avoided. Now, news was the guise in which Mr. Gordon sincerely worshiped Truth, the God. But Mammon, in the Inside Room, held the purse-strings Mr. Gordon had arrived at his honorable and well-paid position, not by wisdom alone, but also by compromise. Here was a situation where news must give way to the more essential interests of the paper. "Mr. Banneker," he said, "that investigation will take a great deal of your time; more, I fear, than the paper can afford to give you." "They will arrange to put me on the stand in the mornings." "Further, any connection between a Ledger man and the Enderby Committee is undesirable and injudicious." "I'm sorry," answered Banneker simply. "I've said I'd go through with it."