“Rotten,” said Bezdek doggedly.  “Crooked.  Tryin’ to be funny at other folks’ expense. I’ll give his tail a twist!” By which he meant Mr. Gurney’s printed words.

“Apropos of the high cult of honesty,” remarked Banneker.

“The curse of all journalism,” put in Laurence.  “The temptation to be effective at the expense of honesty.”

“And what do you think of that?” inquired the cheerful Marrineal, still directing his query to Banneker.

“I think it’s rather a large order.  Why do you keep asking my opinion?”

“Because I suspect that you still bring a fresh mind to bear on these matters.”

Banneker rose, and bade Betty Raleigh good-night.  She retained his hand in hers, looking up at him with a glint of anxiety in her weary, childlike eyes.  “Don’t mind what we’ve said,” she appealed to him.  “We’re all a little above ourselves.  It’s always so after an opening.”

“I don’t mind at all,” he returned gravely:  “unless it’s true.”

“Ah, it’s true right enough,” she answered dispiritedly.  “Don’t forget about the investigation.  And don’t let them dare to put you on on a matinee day.”

Betty Raleigh was a conspicuous figure, at not one but half a dozen sessions of the investigation, which wound through an accelerating and sensational course, with Banneker as the chief figure.  He was an extraordinary witness, ready, self-possessed, good-humored under the heckling of the politician lawyer who had claimed and received the right to appear, on the ground that his police clients might be summoned later on a criminal charge.

Before the proceedings were over, a complete overturn in the city government was foreshadowed, and it became evident that Judge Enderby might either head the movement as its candidate, or control it as its leader.  Nobody, however, knew what he wished or intended politically.  Every now and again in the progress of the hearings, Banneker would surprise on the lawyer’s face an expression which sent his memory questing fruitlessly for determination of that elusive likeness, flickering dimly in the past.

Banneker’s own role in the investigation kept him in the headlines; at times put him on the front page.  Even The Ledger could only minimize, not suppress, his dominating and picturesque part.

But there was another and less pleasant sequel to the shooting, in its effect upon the office status.  Though he was a “space-man” now, dependent for his earnings upon the number of columns weekly which he had in the paper, and ostensibly equipped to handle matter of importance, a long succession of the pettiest kind of assignments was doled out to him by the city desk:  obituary notices of insignificant people, small police items, tipsters’ yarns, routine jobs such as ship news, police headquarters substitution, even the minor courts usually relegated to the fifteen or twenty-dollar-a-week men.  Or, worst and most grinding ordeal of a reporter’s life, he was kept idle at his desk, like a misbehaving boy after school, when all the other men had been sent out.  One week his total space came to but twenty-eight dollars odd.  What this meant was plain enough; he was being disciplined for his part in the investigation.