“Hard?  All right,” retorted Edmonds.  “Unpleasant?  Who cares!  I’m talking about the dirty work.  Wait a minute, Mallory.  Didn’t you ever have an assignment that was an outrage on some decent man’s privacy?  Or, maybe woman’s?  Something that made you sick at your stomach to have to do?  Did you ever have to take a couple of drinks to give you nerve to ask some question that ought to have got you kicked downstairs for asking?”

Mallory, flushing angrily, was silent.  But McHale spoke up.  “Hell!  Every business has its stinks, I guess.  What about being a lawyer and serving papers?  Or a manufacturer and having to bootlick the buyers?  I tell you, if the public wants a certain kind of news, it’s the newspaper’s business to serve it to ’em; and it’s the newspaper man’s business to get it for his paper.  I say it’s up to the public.”

“The public,” murmured Edmonds.  “Swill-eaters.”

“All right!  Then give ’em the kind of swill they want,” cried McHale.

Edmonds so manipulated his little pipe that it pointed directly at Banneker.  “Would you?” he asked.

“Would I what?”

“Give ’em the kind of swill they want?  You seem to like to keep your hands clean.”

“Aren’t you asking me your original question in another form?” smiled the young man.

“You objected to it before.”

“I’ll answer it now.  A friend of mine wrote to me when I went on The Ledger, advising me always to be ready on a moment’s notice to look my job between the eyes and tell it to go to hell.”

“Yes; I’ve known that done, too,” interpolated Mallory.  “But in those cases it isn’t the job that goes.”  He pushed back his chair.  “Don’t let Pop Edmonds corrupt you with his pessimism, Banneker,” he warned.  “He doesn’t mean half of it.”

“Under the seal of the profession,” said the veteran.  “If there were outsiders present, it would be different.  I’d have to admit that ours is the greatest, noblest, most high-minded and inspired business in the world.  Free and enlightened press.  Fearless defender of the right.  Incorruptible agent of the people’s will.  Did I say ‘people’s will’ or ‘people’s swill’?  Don’t ask me!”

The others paid their accounts and followed Mallory out, leaving Banneker alone at the table with the saturnine elder.  Edmonds put a thumbful of tobacco in his pipe, and puffed silently.

“What will it get a man?” asked Banneker, setting down his coffee-cup.

“This game?” queried the other.

“Yes.”

“‘What shall it profit a man,’” quoted the veteran ruminatively.  “You know the rest.”

“No,” returned Banneker decidedly.  “That won’t do.  These fellows here haven’t sold their souls.”

“Or lost ’em.  Maybe not,” admitted the elder.  “Though I wouldn’t gamble strong on some of ’em.  But they’ve lost something.”

“Well, what is it?  That’s what I’m trying to get at.”