Following the editor, he passed through a large, low-ceilinged room, filled with desk-tables, each bearing a heavy crystal ink-well full of a fluid of particularly virulent purple.  A short figure, impassive as a Mongol, sat at a corner desk, gazing out over City Hall Park with a rapt gaze.  Across from him a curiously trim and graceful man, with a strong touch of the Hibernian in his elongated jaw and humorous gray eyes, clipped the early evening editions with an effect of highly judicious selection.  Only one person sat in all the long files of the work-tables, littered with copy-paper and disarranged newspapers; a dark young giant with the discouraged and hurt look of a boy kept in after school.  All this Banneker took in while the managing editor was disposing, usually with a single penciled word or number, of a sheaf of telegraphic “queries” left upon his desk.  Having finished, he swiveled in his chair, to face Banneker, and, as he spoke, kept bouncing the thin point of a letter-opener from the knuckles of his left hand.  His hands were fat and nervous.

“So you want to do newspaper work?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think I can make a go of it.”

“Any experience?”

“None to speak of.  I’ve written a few things.  I thought you might remember my name.”

“Your name?  Banneker?  No.  Why should I?”

“You published some of my things in the Sunday edition, lately.  From Manzanita, California.”

“No.  I don’t think so.  Mr. Homans.”  A graying man with the gait of a marionnette and the precise expression of a rocking-horse, who had just entered, crossed over.  “Have we sent out any checks to a Mr. Banneker recently, in California?”

The new arrival, who was copy-reader and editorial selecter for the Sunday edition, repeated the name in just such a wooden voice as was to be expected.  “No,” he said positively.

“But I’ve cashed the checks,” returned Banneker, annoyed and bewildered.  “And I’ve seen the clipping of the article in the Sunday Sphere of—­”

“Just a moment.  You’re not in The Sphere office.  Did you think you were?  Some one has directed you wrong.  This is The Ledger.”

“Oh!” said Banneker.  “It was a policeman that pointed it out.  I suppose I saw wrong.”  He paused; then looked up ingenuously.  “But, anyway, I’d rather be on The Ledger.”

Mr. Gordon smiled broadly, the thin blade poised over a plump, reddened knuckle.

“Would you!  Now, why?”

“I’ve been reading it.  I like the way it does things.”

The editor laughed outright.  “If you didn’t look so honest, I would think that somebody of experience had been tutoring you.  How many other places have you tried?”

“None.”

“You were going to The Sphere first?  On the promise of a job?”

“No.  Because they printed what I wrote.”

“The Sphere’s ways are not our ways,” pronounced Mr. Gordon primly.  “It’s a fundamental difference in standards.”