“It wasn’t dishonest.  The Ledger’s too clever for that.  It was unhonest.  You can’t be both neutral and fair on cold-blooded murder.”

“You weren’t precisely neutral in The Courier.”

Edmonds chuckled.  “I did rather put it over on the paper.  But that was easy.  Simply a matter of lining up the facts in logical sequence.”

“Horace Vanney says you’re an anarchist.”

“It’s mutual.  I think he’s one.  To hell with all laws and rights that discommode Me and My interests.  That’s the Vanney platform.”

“He thinks he ought to have advertised.”

“Wise guy!  So he ought.”

“To secure immunity?”

It required six long, hard puffs to elicit from Edmonds the opinion:  “He’d have got it.  Partly.  Not all he paid for.”

“Not from The Ledger,” said Banneker jealously.  “We’re independent in that respect.”

Edmonds laughed.  “You don’t have to bribe your own heeler.  The Ledger believes in Vanney’s kind of anarchism, as in a religion.”

“Could he have bought off The Courier?”

“Nothing as raw as that.  But it’s quite possible that if the Sippiac Mills had been a heavy advertiser, the paper wouldn’t have sent me to the riots.  Some one more sympathetic, maybe.”

“Didn’t they kick on your story?”

“Who?  The mill people?  Howled!”

“But it didn’t get them anything?”

“Didn’t it!  You know how difficult it is to get anything for publication out of old Rockface Enderby.  Well, I had a brilliant idea that this was something he’d talk about.  Law Enforcement stuff, you know.  And he did.  Gave me a hummer of an interview.  Tore the guts out of the mill-owners for violating all sorts of laws, and put it up that the mill-guards were themselves a lawless organization.  There’s nothing timid about Enderby.  Why, we’d have started a controversy that would be going yet.”

“Well, why didn’t you?”

“Interview was killed,” replied Edmonds, grinning ruefully.  “For the best interests of the paper.  That’s what the Vanney crowd’s kick got them.”

“Pop, what do you make of Willis Enderby?”

“Oh, he’s plodding along only a couple of decades behind his time.”

“A reactionary?”

“Didn’t I say he was plodding along?  A reactionary is immovable except in the wrong direction.  Enderby’s a conservative.”

“As a socialist you’re against any one who isn’t as radical as you are.”

“I’m not against Willis Enderby.  I’m for him,” grunted the veteran.

“Why; if he’s a conservative?”

“Oh, as for that, I can bring a long indictment against him.  He’s a firm believer in the capitalistic system.  He’s enslaved to the old economic theories, supply and demand, and all that rubbish from the ruins of ancient Rome.  He believes that gold is the only sound material for pillars of society.  The aristocratic idea is in his bones.”  Edmonds, by a feat of virtuosity, sent a thin, straight column of smoke, as it might have been an allegorical and sardonic pillar itself, almost to the ceiling.  “But he believes in fair play.  Free speech.  Open field.  The rigor of the game.  He’s a sportsman in life and affairs.  That’s why he’s dangerous.”