"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.
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