“Perhaps.  But what would a desk lead to?

“City editor.  Night city editor.  Night editor.  Managing editor at fifteen thou.”

“After ten years.  If one has the patience.  I haven’t.  Besides, what chance would I have?’

“None, with the present lot in the Inside Room.  You’re a heretic.  You’re unsound.  You’ve got dangerous ideas—­accent on the dangerous.  I doubt if they’d even trust you with a blue pencil.  You might inject something radical into a thirty-head.”

“Tommy,” said Banneker, “I’m still new at this game.  What becomes of star reporters?”

“Drink,” replied Tommy brusquely.

“Rats!” retorted Banneker.  “That’s guff.  There aren’t three heavy drinkers in this office.”

“A lot of the best men go that way,” persisted Burt.  “It’s the late hours and the irregular life, I suppose.  Some drift out into other lines.  This office has trained a lot of playwrights and authors and ad-men.”

“But some must stick.”

“They play out early.  The game is too hard.  They get to be hacks. Or permanent desk-men.  D’you know Philander Akely?”

“Who is he?”

“Ask me who he was and I’ll tell you.  He was the brilliant youngster, the coruscating firework, the—­the Banneker of ten years ago.  Come into the den and meet him.”

In one of the inner rooms Banneker was introduced to a fragile, desiccated-looking man languidly engaged in scissoring newspaper after newspaper which he took from a pile and cast upon the floor after operation.  The clippings he filed in envelopes.  A checkerboard lay on the table beside him.

“Do you play draughts, Mr. Banneker?” he asked in a rumbling bass.

“Very little and very poorly.”

The other sighed.  “It is pure logic, in the form of contest.  Far more so than chess, which is merely sustained effort of concentration.  Are you interested in emblemology?”

“I’m afraid I know almost nothing of it,” confessed Banneker.

Akely sighed again, gave Banneker a glance which proclaimed an utter lack of interest, and plunged his shears into the editorial vitals of the Springfield Republican.  Tommy Burt led the surprised Banneker away.

“Dried up, played out, and given a measly thirty-five a week as hopper-feeder for the editorial room,” he announced.  “And he was the star man of his time.”

“That’s pretty rotten treatment for him, then,” said Banneker indignantly.

“Not a bit of it.  He isn’t worth what he gets.  Most offices would have chucked him out on the street.”

“What was his trouble?”

“Nothing in particular.  Just wore his machine out.  Everything going out, nothing coming in.  He spun out enough high-class copy to keep the ordinary reporter going for a life-time; but he spun it out too fast.  Nothing left.  The tragedy of it is that he’s quite happy.”

“Then it isn’t a tragedy at all.”