column and a half of it.  Spice it.’  I spiced it—­I guess.  They tell me it was a good job.  I got lost in the excitement of writing and forgot what I was dealing with, a woman.  We had a beat on that interview.  They raised my salary, I remember.  A week later Red called me to the desk.  ’Got another story for you, Edmonds.  A hummer.  Marna Corcoran is in a private sanitarium up in Connecticut; hopelessly insane.  I wouldn’t wonder if our story did it.’  He grinned like an ape.  ’Go up there and get it.  Buy your way in, if necessary.  You can always get to some of the attendants with a ten-spot.  Find out what she raves about; whether it’s about Allison.  Perhaps she’s given herself away.  Give us another red-hot one on it.  Here’s the address.’

“I wadded up the paper and stuffed it in his mouth.  His lips felt pulpy.  He hit me with a lead paper-weight and cut my head open.  I don’t know that I even hit him; I didn’t specially want to hit him.  I wanted to mark him.  There was an extra-size open ink-well on his desk.  I poured that over him and rubbed it into his face.  Some of it got into his eyes.  How he yelled!  Of course he had me arrested.  I didn’t make any defense; I couldn’t without bringing in Marna Corcoran’s name.  The Judge thought I was crazy.  I was, pretty near.  Three months, he gave me.  When I came out Marna Corcoran was dead.  I went to find Red McGraw and kill him.  He was gone.  I think he suspected what I would do.  I’ve never set eyes on him since.  Two local newspapers sent for me as soon as my term was up and offered me jobs.  I thought it was because of what I had done to McGraw.  It wasn’t.  It was on the strength of the Marna Corcoran interview.”

“Good God!”

“I needed a job, too.  But I didn’t take either of those.  Later I got a better one with a decent newspaper.  The managing editor said when he took me on:  ’Mr. Edmonds, we don’t approve of assaults on the city desk.  But if you ever receive in this office an assignment of the kind that caused your outbreak, you may take it out on me.’  There are pretty fine people in the newspaper business, too.”

Edmonds retrieved his pipe, discovering with a look of reproach and dismay that it was out.  He wiped away some tiny drops of sweat which had come out upon the grayish skin beneath his eyes, while he was recounting his tragedy.

“That makes my troubles seem petty,” said Banneker, under his breath.  “I wonder—­”

“You wonder why I told you all this,” supplemented the veteran.  “Since I have, I’ll tell you the rest; how I made atonement in a way.  Ten years ago I was on a city desk myself.  Not very long; but long enough to find I didn’t like it.  A story came to me through peculiar channels.  It was a scandal story; one of those things that New York society whispers about all over the place, yet it’s almost impossible to get anything to go on.  When I tell you that even The Searchlight, which lives on scandal, kept