“All right,” said Banneker.  “Now:  I’ll ask the stupid questions and you give the cutie answers.”

It was two o’clock when Miss Betty Raleigh, having seen the gist of all her witty and profound observations upon a strange species embodied in three or four scrawled notes on the back of a menu, rose and observed that, whereas acting was her favorite pastime, her real and serious business was sleep.  At her door she held her face up to him as straightforwardly as a child.  “Good luck to you, dear boy,” she said softly.  “If I ever were a fortune-teller, I would say that your star was for happiness and success.”

He bent and kissed her cheek lightly.  “I’ll have my try at success,” he said.  “But the other isn’t so easy.”

“You’ll find them one and the same,” was her parting prophecy.

Inured to work at all hours, Banneker went to the small, bare room in his apartment which he kept as a study, and sat down to write the interview.  Angles of dawn-light had begun to irradiate the steep canyon of the street by the time he had finished.  He read it over and found it good, for its purposes.  Every line of it sparkled.  It had the effervescent quality which the reading public loves to associate with stage life and stage people.  Beyond that, nothing.  Banneker mailed it to Miss Westlake for typing, had a bath, and went to bed.  At noon he was at The Ledger office, fresh, alert, and dispassionately curious to ascertain the next resolution of the mix-up between the paper and himself.

Nothing happened; at least, nothing indicative.  Mr. Greenough’s expression was as flat and neutral as the desk over which he presided as he called Banneker’s name and said to him: 

“Mr. Horace Vanney wishes to relieve his soul of some priceless information.  Will you call at his office at two-thirty?”

It was Mr. Vanney’s practice, whenever any of his enterprises appeared in a dubious or unfavorable aspect, immediately to materialize in print on some subject entirely unrelated, preferably an announcement on behalf of one of the charitable or civic organizations which he officially headed.  Thus he shone forth as a useful, serviceable, and public-spirited citizen, against whom (such was the inference which the newspaper reader was expected to draw) only malignancy could allege anything injurious.  In this instance his offering upon the altar of publicity, carefully typed and mimeographed, had just enough importance to entitle it to a paragraph of courtesy.  After it was given out to those who called, Mr. Vanney detained Banneker.

“Have you read the morning papers, Mr. Banneker?”

“Yes.  That’s my business, Mr. Vanney.”

“Then you can see, by the outbreak in Sippiac, to what disastrous results anarchism and fomented discontent lead.”

“Depends on the point of view.  I believe that, after my visit to the mills for you, I told you that unless conditions were bettered you’d have another and worse strike.  You’ve got it.”