“Is he?”

“He’s anti-anything that’s anti-Marrineal, and pro-anything that’s pro-Marrineal.  Haven’t you measured him yet?  All policy, no principle; there’s Mr. Tertius Marrineal for you....  Ban, it’s really you that holds me to this shop.”  Through convolutions of smoke from his tiny pipe, the old stager regarded the young star of journalism with a quaint and placid affection.  “Whatever rotten stuff is going on in the business and news department, your page goes straight and speaks clear....  I wonder how long Marrineal will stand for it ...  I wonder what he intends for the next campaign.”

“If my proprietor runs for office, I can’t very well not support him,” said Banneker, troubled.

“Not very well.  The pinch will come as to what you’re going to do about Laird.  According to my private information, he’s coming back at The Patriot.”

“For my editorials on the Combined franchise?”

“Hardly.  He’s too straight to resent honest criticism.  No; for some of the crooked stuff that we’re running in our political news.  Besides, some suspicious and informed soul in the administration has read between our political lines, and got a peep of the aspiring Tertius girding himself for contest.  Result, the city advertising is to be taken from The Patriot.”

It needed no more than a mechanical reckoning of percentages to tell Banneker that this implied a serious diminution of his own income.  Further, such a procedure would be in effect a repudiation of The Patriot and its editorial support.

“That’s a rotten deal!” he exclaimed.

“No.  Just politics.  Justifiable, too, I should say, as politics go.  I doubt whether Laird would do it of his own motion; he plays a higher game than that.  But it isn’t strictly within his province either to effect or prevent.  Anyhow, it’s going to be done.”

“If he wants to fight us—­” began Banneker with gloom in his eyes.

“He doesn’t want to fight anybody,” cut in the expert.  “He wants to be mayor and run the city for what seems to him the city’s best good.  If he thought Marrineal would carry on his work as mayor, I doubt if he’d oppose him.  But our shrewd old friend, Enderby, isn’t of that mind.  Enderby understands Marrineal.  He’ll fight to the finish.”

Edmonds left his friend in a glum perturbation of mind.  Enderby understood Marrineal, did he?  Banneker wished that he himself did.  If he could have come to grips with his employer, he would at least have known now where to take his stand.  But Marrineal was elusive.  No, not even elusive; quiescent.  He waited.