"And if you touch a drop during the next week," reiterated the chief, "I'll put a head on you!"
"But supposin' this dago conspiracy should turn out to be a fake?" objected the Irishman.
"Then," said the reporter with determination, "you'll have to hatch one yourself, and I'll discover it. But two things are certain. Something's got to be exposed, and I've got to get that editorship."
CHAPTER II.
IN WHICH CECIL BANBOROUGH ATTEMPTS TO DRIVE PUBLIC OPINION.
It is a trifle chilly in the early morning, even by the first of May, and Cecil shivered slightly as he paced the rustic platform at Meadowbrook with his publisher and host of the night before.
"You see," the great man was saying, "there's an etiquette about all these things. We can't advertise our publications in the elevated trains like tomato catsup or the latest thing in corsets. It's not dignified. The book must succeed, if at all, through the recognised channels of criticism and on its own merits. Of course it's a bad season. But once the war's well under way, people will give up newspapers and return to literature."
"Meantime it wants a boom," contended the young Englishman, with an insistence that apparently jarred on his hearer, who answered shortly:
"And that, Mr. Banborough, it is not in my power to give your book, or any other man's."