Top of column, “next to reading,” as its contract specified, the lure of the Neverfail Company stood forth, bold and black.  “Boon to Troubled Womanhood” was the heading.  Dr. Elliot read, with slow emphasis, the lying half-promises, the specious pretenses of the company’s “Relief Pills.”  “No Case too Obstinate”:  “Suppression from Whatever Cause”:  “Thousands of Women have Cause to Bless this Sovereign Remedy”:  “Saved from Desperation.”

“No doubt what that means, is there?” queried the reader.

“It seems pretty plain.”

“What do you mean, then, by telling me you run an honest paper when you carry an abortion advertisement every day?”

“Will that medicine cause abortion?”

“Certainly it won’t cause abortion!”

“Well, then.”

“Can’t you see that makes it all the worse, in a way?  It promises to bring on abortion.  It encourages any fool girl who otherwise might be withheld from vice by fear of consequences.  It puts a weapon of argument into the hands of every rake and ruiner; ’If you get into trouble, this stuff will fix you all right.’  How many suicides do you suppose your ‘Boon to Womanhood’ and its kind of hellishness causes in a year, thanks to the help of your honest journalism?”

“When I said we were honest, I wasn’t thinking of the advertising.”

“But I am.  Can you be honest on one page and a crook on another?  Can you bang the big drum of righteousness in one column and promise falsely in the next to commit murder?  Ellis, why does the ‘Clarion’ carry such stuff as that?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Well, you’re asking me to help your sheet,” the ex-surgeon reminded him.

“Because Dr. L. Andre Surtaine is the Neverfail Company.”

“Oh,” said the other.  “And I suppose Dr. L. Andre Surtaine is the ‘Clarion,’ also.  Well, I don’t choose to be associated with that honorable and high-minded polecat, thank you.”

“Don’t be too sure about the ‘Clarion.’  Harrington Surtaine isn’t his father.”

“The same rotten breed.”

“Plus another strain.  Where it comes from I don’t know, but there’s something in the boy that may work out to big ends.”

Dr. Miles Elliot was an abrupt sort of person, as men of independent lives and thought are prone to be.  “Look here, Ellis,” he said:  “are you trying to be honest, yourself?  Now, don’t answer till you’ve counted three.”

“One—­two—­three,” said McGuire Ellis solemnly.  “I’m honestly trying to put the ‘Clarion’ on the level.  That’s what you really want to know, I suppose.”

“Against all the weight of influence of Dr. Surtaine?”

“Bless you; he doesn’t half realize he’s a crook.  Thinks he’s a pretty fine sort of chap.  The worst of it is, he is, too, in some ways.”

“Good to his family, I suppose, in the intervals of distributing poison and lies.”